As former secretary of labor, I’m always interested in the annual count of unionized workers issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This year’s count shows that the 70-year decline of unions continues . The share of unionized American workers dropped from 10.8 percent last year to 10.3 percent now. The rate among private-sector workers hit a new rock bottom of 6.1 percent — about one-seventh of its level in the middle of the 20th century. How to square this with the huge surge in labor activi...
Feb 03, 2022•8 min
When I was a young teenager near the middle of the last century, I asked the high school librarian if I could borrow J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Why did I want to read it? she asked. I lied and told her my parents told me it was excellent literature. The real reason I wanted to read The Catcher in the Rye was it had been banned from the library. I knew the librarian kept one copy behind her desk, and I was determined to get it. She reluctantly handed it to me. I read it voraciously. ...
Feb 01, 2022•4 min
The midterm elections are just over nine months away. What will Democrats run on? What will Republicans run on? One hint came at a Houston-area Trump rally Saturday night. “If I run and if I win,” the former guy said, referring to 2024, “we will treat those people from January 6th fairly.” He then added, “and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.” Trump went on to demand "the biggest protest we have ever had" if federal prosecutors in Wash...
Jan 31, 2022•8 min
In light of the news this week that the economy has been growing at a record rate (and corporate profits are also hitting record highs, the stock market notwithstanding), several of you have asked me specifically what can be done to spread the benefits of economic growth. I have a few ideas, which I’ll share with you in coming weeks. One idea is an old one that was tried with great success but is now all but forgotten. It’s called profit-sharing . It emerged from the tumultuous period when Ameri...
Jan 29, 2022•6 min
How can it be that the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace since 1984 last year (according to yesterday’s report from the Commerce Department) but most Americans remain gloomy about the economy, and blame Biden and the Democrats? The New York Times declares that the cause of this paradox is inflation: “Biden is suffering in the polls as high inflation saps confidence in the economy, even as growth comes in strong.” Rubbish. Americans are gloomy about the economy despite its record growth becau...
Jan 28, 2022•6 min
I just heard Joe Manchin say Biden should move to the “center.” Political consultant Mark Penn wrote in the New York Times that “Biden should follow the lead of Bill Clinton, and move to the center.” Duh. Who wants to be on the fringe? Political careers are imperiled by labels like “left-winger” (or “right-winger”). The public feels safer with a president who proclaims total commitment to the middle. FDR always sought to position himself as a centrist. So did Nixon (remember the “silent majority...
Jan 27, 2022•4 min
Inflation! It’s dominating all economic news. It’s the main reason the stock market is going nuts. It’s what Fed officials are discussing in today’s meeting (they’re expected to raise interest rates several times over the next twelve months). But in all of the inflated verbiage over inflation, there’s been little or no discussion about the role that large, hugely-profitable corporations are playing. Yet inflation is intimately connected to corporate power (as I discussed on this page last month ...
Jan 25, 2022•7 min
In light of last week’s devastating senate vote on voting rights, I keep hearing “voting rights are dead.” Wrong . If voting rights are dead, American democracy is dead. And if American democracy is dead, the entire project that began (imperfectly, to be sure) in 1776 and has been a beacon for the world, is dead. I will not accept that. Nor, I assume, will you. But what can and should be done now? I’ll get to that in a moment. First, though, it’s important to acknowledge that our two major parti...
Jan 24, 2022•7 min
Wall Street may be having a bad week, but top bankers are doing wonderfully well. After a blockbuster year , the five biggest Wall Street banks just paid out $142 billion in bonuses and compensation for 2021. This was $18 billion more than in 2020. JPMorgan Chase reported record profits, and Citigroup’s annual profit more than doubled. Let me remind you (as if you need reminding) that 2020 and 2021 were not exactly blockbuster years for the rest of America. In the first three decades after World...
Jan 22, 2022•7 min
What can possibly explain Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes against voting rights this week? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone -- themselves included -- knew bipartisanship was impossible? Why did they say they couldn’t support changing the filibuster rules when only last month they voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes? Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legisl...
Jan 21, 2022•8 min
Across America, hospitals are pushed to the limit because so many health care workers have quit just as Omicron is surging. But hospitals aren’t alone, and Omicron isn’t the only culprit. We’re witnessing one of the most profound changes in the American labor force in a half century, at least since middle-class women entered paid work in large numbers during the 1970s. Only this time, women and men aren’t entering work. Many are leaving it (or at least, the way work has been organized). For deca...
Jan 20, 2022•5 min
This week may be a nadir for the Biden administration. After Krysten Sinema’s very public refusal to budge on the filibuster, voting rights legislation is stuck. Senate Democrats plan to go through the motions (due to a parliamentary maneuver, it will be the first time the Senate will actually debate voting rights) but the effort is doomed as long as the filibuster remains. Similarly, after Joe Manchin’s refusal to agree to Biden’s “Build Back Better” package, Biden’s social and climate measure ...
Jan 18, 2022•5 min
The convergence today of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and of the Senate’s unwillingness to protect voting rights causes me to remember my childhood friend and protector, whom I knew as Mickey. I was always very short for my age, which made me an easy target for bullies. To protect myself, I got into the habit of befriending older boys who’d watch my back. One summer when I was around 8 years old I found Mickey, a kind and gentle teenager with a ready smile who made sure I stayed safe. Years went b...
Jan 17, 2022•7 min
These are hard times to keep your spirits up. Thinking you might need a bit of a boost, I’d like to introduce you to two young people who give me hope about the future of American politics. The first is Chloe Maxmin. I met her a few years ago when, still in her early-twenties and an unapologetic progressive, she had been elected to the Maine House of Representatives. She was the first Democrat ever to represent her district — Maine’s Lincoln County, the state’s most rural. The county also among ...
Jan 15, 2022•8 min
Capitalism and democracy are compatible only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. That’s why I took some comfort just after the attack on the Capitol when many big corporations solemnly pledged they’d no longer finance the campaigns of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn the election results. Well, those days are over. Turns out they were over the moment the public stopped paying attention. A report published last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington shows that over ...
Jan 14, 2022•8 min
It infuriates me when members of Congress — whether Republican or Democrat — squander the public’s trust. There’s so little of it left to squander. So when I find a conflict of interest by members of Congress for which there’s an easy remedy, I’m ready to shout it from the rooftops. And when I discover Congress won’t take action, I’m ready to scream. Today I want to talk about a very big conflict, with a very easy remedy. And I’d like your help getting the word out and putting pressure on Congre...
Jan 13, 2022•6 min
Yesterday, a member of our group named Emmet Bondurant, a distinguished constitutional lawyer from Georgia, commented on this page about the filibuster: The biggest lie of all is the Senate’s claim that it “is the greatest deliberative body in the world.” The filibuster makes the Senate the least deliberative legislative and least democratic legislative body by allowing a minority of Senators to prevent the Senate from debating, much less voting on, any legislation that is opposed by the minorit...
Jan 11, 2022•8 min
President Biden will go to Georgia tomorrow to give a speech on voting rights. It’s expected to be as hard-hitting as his speech last Thursday about Trump and the attack on the Capitol. Biden will push for reform of the senate filibuster to carve out voting rights from its 60-vote requirement, thereby opening the way for senate Democrats to enact the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Amendment Act. As you probably know, the Freedom to Vote Act would preempt state efforts to su...
Jan 10, 2022•8 min
We’ve gone through the shameful first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and of the refusal of 147 members of Congress (all Republicans) to certify all the electors from states that voted for Biden, on the basis of no evidence of fraud. So far, no political figure has been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. We’ve seen 34 voter-suppression bills enacted by 19 Republican state legislatures; at least 8 give state legislatures the power to disregard election outcomes. More than 400 add...
Jan 08, 2022•9 min
I sometimes hear from people who tell me they’ve been fighting for years for the common good — for social justice, for a stronger democracy, for a sustainable environment — but they can’t do it any longer. They’re burnt out. “I’m done,” one of my former students wrote me last week. She’s been in the trenches for more than three years at a nonprofit dedicated to environmental justice, putting in 10 to 12-hour days, often six and sometimes seven days a week. “Maybe I’ve made a small difference,” s...
Jan 07, 2022•8 min
Friends, The words “anniversary” or “commemoration” do not appropriately characterize this day. What occurred a year ago is nothing to be memorialized, nothing to glorify. What happened on January 6, 2021 was frightening and shameful. That date shall live in infamy — like December 7, 1941 and 9/11. The difference is that on those days the United States was attacked by foreign powers, whereas on this date the United States was attacked by Americans — some waving American flags, most of them loyal...
Jan 06, 2022•2 min
Friends, With Trump’s Big Lie largely unchallenged by Republican lawmakers, the Republican Party has swung almost entirely into the Trump camp. Over 70 percent of registered Republicans believe Trump won the 2020 election. Trump has worked to purge from the state and national party anyone he considers insufficiently loyal to him. His closest supporters have become so extreme that they are openly supporting authoritarianism and talking of Democrats as “vermin.” Meanwhile, more than a third of Ame...
Jan 05, 2022•3 min
Last week I suggested that Trump maintains a hold on a large fraction of America because he fills a void created by a system that has left them behind. I followed with the question raised by Frank Capra’s iconic film “ It’s a Wonderful Life ,” in which the greedy Mr. Potter tries to take over Bedford Falls: Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything? We’re well on the way to the Potterizing of America. To take one example, the expanded child tax credit payments will...
Jan 04, 2022•8 min
Before we turn to what I’m calling the "Potterizing” of America (the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few at the very top), we need to deal with one of its shameful consequences that will be front and center this week: accountability for Trump’s ongoing attempted coup and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Thursday marks the first anniversary of that attack. Last Wednesday I discussed four truths underlying the attack: (1) Trump incited it, (2) it culminated two months of hi...
Jan 03, 2022•9 min
Happy new year. I hope it’s a safe and healthy one for you and your family. Over the last few days I’ve shared with you some facts and thoughts about Trump’s continuing attempted coup. I’ve also suggested that an answer to it (and to Trumpism in general) can be found in Frank Capra’s 1946 iconic movie “ It’s a Wonderful Life ” and the central question it posed: Do we join together, or let the Mr. Potters of America own and run everything? Today, the first of 2022, struck me as an appropriate one...
Jan 01, 2022•4 min
My post yesterday on the real lesson of January 6 provoked a great discussion (many thanks to those of you who participated). It also prompted me to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “ It’s a Wonderful Life, ” which was released 75 years ago this month. When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movi...
Dec 30, 2021•7 min
I’m sorry to intrude on your holiday week with this, but I want you to be prepared for what’s to come next week. January 6 will be the first anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history. On that date in 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by thousands of armed loyalists to Donald Trump, some intent on killing members of Congress. Roughly 140 officers were injured in the attack . Five people died that day. But even now, almost a year later, Americans remain confused a...
Dec 29, 2021•12 min
My father once said that at the 1939 World’s Fair he saw an exhibit about the future featuring “picture phones” that allowed people to talk and see each other. He predicted the gadgets would fail because users would find them awkward and unnerving. Well, that future is now — and it’s not awkward in the slightest. I just had FaceTime calls with my two sons and their families (including two wonderful daughters-in-law and a granddaughter) – one in New York, the other in Los Angeles. I can’t tell yo...
Dec 28, 2021•5 min
‘Tis the time to cash in gift certificates, shop for post-Christmas bargains, and fill shelves and closets with more stuff. I for one don’t want anything more, thank you. My shelves are already overflowing with books. My attic is full of old chairs and tables, chafing dishes, pictures, games, children’s toys, ski equipment, stereos, a broken easel. My closet can’t fit any more clothes, most of which I haven’t worn in years. I’m drowning in stuff. Once a year (usually around the holidays), I drop...
Dec 27, 2021•7 min
Friends, The reason I write this newsletter is not just to inform (and occasionally amuse) you, but also to arm you with the truth so you can fight more effectively for the common good. The forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, and stoking hatred and inequality have many weapons at their disposal — lobbyists, media megaphones, and money to bribe lawmakers. But their most powerful weapon is cynicism. They’re betting that if they can get us to feel like we can’t make a difference...
Dec 24, 2021•8 min
