Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — Friday’s jobs report, and why the media is getting it wrong. — Billionaire influence over the midterm elections. — Saudi’s stabbing America in the back on oil. — Why we need a monthly report on corporate profits. — Why He...
Oct 08, 2022•14 min
Gallup reports that a whopping (and record) 72 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 approve of labor unions. That’s especially remarkable given that a bare 3 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 belong to one. Despite the recent victories of Starbucks workers and noteworthy efforts by Amazon warehouse workers, the rate of union membership in America has fallen to its lowest in seventy years: now a bare 6 percent of private-sector employees. Republicans hate unions. De...
Oct 06, 2022•7 min
Conservative economists shrug their shoulders at the record accumulation of wealth at the very top of America. They claim it’s not a problem because wealth is not a zero-sum game: A huge amount at the top doesn’t necessarily reduce the wealth (or potential wealth) of anyone else. They fail to see that wealth begets power. And power is a zero-sum game. Its possession by certain people means others don’t have it. Substantial power in the hands of a few people can dramatically reduce everyone else’...
Oct 05, 2022•6 min
Elon Musk just revived his bid for Twitter Inc. at his original offering price of $44 billion — or $54.20 a share — thereby avoiding a courtroom fight. (Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter on Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.) So, after six months of brainless brawling bedlam, it looks like Twitter now goes to Elon. But should this critical social platform go to someone with the attention span of a fruit fly and the impetuousness of Donald Trump...
Oct 05, 2022•4 min
One of my goals in this newsletter is to help you uncover the ways wealth and power shape public policy. Today, I’m going to focus on a topic that may seem wonky to you — but that’s exactly the point. Its very wonkiness disguises the power dynamic lying behind it. The issue is how we measure the economy. Start with the rate of inflation — how fast prices are rising. That number is now driving the Federal Reserve, our central bank, to raise interest rates — which in turn is causing mortgage and b...
Oct 04, 2022•6 min
Friends, Sorry to intrude on your day once again, but I can’t remain silent in the face of Trump’s tirade against Mitch McConnell. On Friday, Trump criticized McConnell for approving Democratic bills, and asked rhetorically if McConnell has done so “because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them.” Trump concluded by asserting that McConnell “has a DEATH WISH.” These are ugly and dangerous words even by Trump’s own rock-bottom standard of indecency. They could be int...
Oct 03, 2022•4 min
My friends, Make no mistake: Donald Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterm elections, five weeks from tomorrow (voting has already begun in several states). Even if he decides not to run, he’s laying the groundwork for authoritarianism. In the upcoming midterms, 60 percent of us will have an election denier on our ballot , most of them endorsed by Trump. In the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates who embrace Trump’s...
Oct 03, 2022•7 min
Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — Hurricane Ian and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis’s demonizing of “socialism.” — The Republican Party’s traditional harangue about federal spending (except when their states are under water). — The “Disclose Act” — requir...
Oct 01, 2022•17 min
No Republican governor has been more vocal in his opposition to what he describes as “socialism” than Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis. “I stand against socialism,” DeSantis thundered in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. “Socialist policies have failed time and time again.” In June, DeSantis signed an education bill directing Florida’s Department of Education to develop a curriculum educating students on the evils of socialism (as well as communism). But how exactly does DeSantis define “soc...
Sep 30, 2022•6 min
On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019. Over those thirty years, the share of total national weaheld by families in the top 1% increased from 27 percent to 34 percent, while families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2 percent. Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American. H...
Sep 29, 2022•6 min
In a post here on September 8, I asked the billionaires who are bankrolling candidates who have tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election how they rationalize spending their fortunes financing insurrection. I specifically included Peter Thiel, Stephen Schwarzman, Steve Wynn, Patrick Byrne, and Ken Griffin in my question. Ken Griffin, the multi-billion-dollar CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, is the only one to respond so far — yesterday, in a tart letter to the Guardian (where I had subseq...
Sep 28, 2022•4 min
Last week, a panel of medical experts recommended for the first time that doctors screen all adult patients under 65 for anxiety disorders. The advisory group, called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, said the guidance was intended to help prevent mental health disorders from going undetected and untreated for years or even decades. It made a similar recommendation for children and teenagers earlier this year. Appointed by an arm of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the...
Sep 27, 2022•6 min
Last Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian civilians would be drafted to bolster forces in his unpopular war in Ukraine. Almost immediately, the Kremlin faced widespread opposition, including demonstrations. On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “citizens with higher education” would be exempt from the draft, especially those in telecommunications, information technology, banking and “systematically important” media companies. When I heard this news I flashed back ...
Sep 26, 2022•7 min
Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — profit-price inflation rather than wage-price inflation — Tump rallies and his embrace of QAnon — Republican candidates who refuse to commit to be bound by election results — Nse Ufot and the power of hope through on-the-...
Sep 25, 2022•18 min
Friends, Today’s New York Times has a story about Russia’s powerful internet regulator, Roskmnadzor, whose collection of personal data about average Russians has, in the Times’s words, “catapulted Russia, along with authoritarian countries like China and Iran, to the forefront of nations that aggressively use technology as a tool of repression.” A few weeks ago, the Times ran a story about China’s collection of personal data on its citizens through phone-tracking devices, voice prints, one of th...
Sep 23, 2022•8 min
It makes my blood boil. Since March I’ve been screaming about the Fed’s total misreading of inflation — believing it’s being caused by workers getting wage hikes, when the real cause is powerful corporations raising prices higher than their costs. I’m not so grandiose as to think my screams would have any direct influence on the Fed. My hope was that my argument and data might be picked up by a few voices in the media, which would lead some Democrats in Congress to pick up on it, and that maybe ...
Sep 22, 2022•4 min
Friends, One of the most horrific legacies of Trump is the unwillingness of Republican candidates to commit to being bound by election results. Senate candidates who have refused to commit to accepting the results are Republicans Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, and J.D. Vance in Ohio, according to news reports . Two candidates for governor have also refused to be bound: Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for the governor of Michigan, and Geoff Die...
Sep 20, 2022•5 min
I’m against trafficking of migrants. But luring unsuspecting people onto planes with lies about jobs, housing, and education awaiting them, and then depositing them onto an island off the coast of Massachusetts that’s totally unprepared to receive them, is a form of human trafficking. The people you’re talking about aren’t American citizens. They have no rights. Even if they’re not Americans, U.S. law prohibits kidnapping people and moving them across state lines. I didn’t kidnap them. They’re h...
Sep 19, 2022•5 min
Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch. Today I’m offline with family, so instead of our regular klatch, I’m bringing you a terrific conversation I just had with Nse Ufot , CEO of New Georgia Project (NGP). NGP is one of the most important grassroots voting-rights organizations — in one of the most important voting states. NGP is now registering over 600,000 young people and people of color to vote in all 159 of Georgia’s counties. Nse describes the organization as a “tech star...
Sep 17, 2022•18 min
Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened that if he is indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” adding “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.” These words followed on last month’s threat by Senator Lindsey Graham that if Trump is prosecuted, there would be “riots in the street.” Trump appeared to endorse Graham’s threat, sharing a vide...
Sep 16, 2022•3 min
A few days ago, I received an email from an associate producer at the Dr. Phil Show. They recently came across my film “ Inequality for All” and wanted to know “if I’d be interested in joining Dr. Phil as an expert guest for an upcoming episode.” Hey, why not? The Dr. Phil Show is the number 1 rated daytime TV talk show in America. It has over 2 million viewers. I have lots to say to those viewers about the perils of widening inequality. Then I read the rest of the email. “For this conversation ...
Sep 12, 2022•7 min
In early August, the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that would have stripped from their state constitution a woman’s right to choose — and they did it by a whopping 18-point margin . Since then, and largely in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women have been registering to vote across the country in astounding numbers. Many appear to be supporting Democratic candidates even in states such as Kansas, where Democrats have almost become a...
Sep 09, 2022•4 min
I have a serious question. It’s for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind? I don’t mean to be snide or snarky. I’m genuinely curious. I’m not interested in Trump’s answer to this question. He is too far gone — lost in the depths of his own pathological ego. I’m also not asking the millions of Trump followers, Fox News viewer...
Sep 08, 2022•7 min
Today marks the start of the school year for many public schools. Which makes me think of Alice Camp. (I wrote about her some months ago. Many of you have asked me to repost what I wrote — and add a bit more about her and about our teachers. So here goes.) I arrived in Mrs. Camp’s third-grade classroom in Lewisboro Elementary School, in South Salem, New York, as an extremely short, shy, insecure 8-year-old who was often bullied and mocked on the bus and made to feel like a loser on the playgroun...
Sep 06, 2022•6 min
One week after a team of F.B.I. agents descended on his private club and residence in Florida, Trump warned that things could get out of hand if the Justice Department kept the heat on him. “People are so angry at what is taking place,” Trump told Fox News, predicting that if the “temperature” isn’t brought down, “terrible things are going to happen.” But Trump and his allies are doing all they can to increase the temperature. Last Sunday, one of Trump’s closest allies, Senator Lindsey Graham, w...
Sep 01, 2022•7 min
Billionaire GOP mega-donor Steve Wynn has some free messaging advice for Republicans, which he proffered in a conference call last Wednesday with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and Newt Gingrich (the audio was obtained by Politico ): He urged the GOP to run TV ads telling average working people that Democrats have funded the IRS to hammer them. Wynn even offered a script: “Tell them the IRS is ‘coming after you if you’re a waiter, if you’re a bartender, if you’re anybody with...
Aug 30, 2022•7 min
I like to tweet. Not as much as I like to write here on Substack where I get to share my thoughts at some length. On Twitter it’s a different kind of conversation, and pace — like speed chess. Last Tuesday I tweeted: I was surprised at the outrage my little tweet provoked. The Washington Examiner , for example: Ultra left-wing elitist and former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration Robert Reich tweeted earlier this week, “Just wondering if ‘DeSantis’ is now officially a synonym f...
Aug 29, 2022•7 min
When Robert Draper of the New York Times recently asked Rose Sperry, a state committeewoman for Arizona’s G.O.P., to name the first Republican leader she ever admired, she immediately mentioned former Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy. “I grew up during the time that Joe McCarthy was doing his talking,” Sperry said . “I was young, but I was listening. If he were here today, I would say, ‘Get him in there as president!’” I also grew up during the time Joe McCarthy was “doing his talking,” and I was ...
Aug 26, 2022•13 min
Among the many ironies and hypocrisies leading up to the 2022 midterms, one deserving special mention is Trump’s and the GOP’s unremitting claim that America has become more violent and dangerous under Biden and the Democrats. “Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” Trump said in a recent speech to the America First Policy Institute. “We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout Am...
Aug 25, 2022•5 min
For several years, Brian Stelter’s Sunday CNN show, “Reliable Sources,” has been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, rightwing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican Party. Last week, CNN abruptly canceled the show and effectively fired Stelter and his staff. Why? The show had good ratings and was commercially successful. (More people watched it than MSNBC.) The show was cancelled by Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, who ...
Aug 23, 2022•5 min
