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
As the saying goes, in America everyone is entitled to a second chance — especially con artists. Herewith the 6 rules for getting a second (or third or fourth) chance to sell a giant con: 1. Market a mundane idea as “disruptive.” Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, hyped his office-sharing startup as the first “physical social network.” In reality it was nothing more than what you’d find in any coffee shop with customers at their laptops, but Neumann made it sound so revolutionary — “disruptive...
Aug 22, 2022•7 min
Hello friends, On Saturdays I have a cup of coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse and we invite you to join us and chime in with comments. She asks questions that many of you also want to discuss. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. We cover both the highlights and lowlights, and aim to provide a larger context for the news. I’m somewhat on vacation this week but we did our best to record at a distance, cups of joe in hand. (Please forg...
Aug 20, 2022•12 min
I was born on June 24 in 1946 to Mildred Freshman Reich and Edwin Saul Reich at the Mercy Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That was ten days after Donald John Trump was born to Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump at the Jamaica hospital in the borough of Queens, New York. It was 12 days before George Walker Bush was born to Barbara Pierce Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. And 56 days before William Jefferson Blythe III, whose name wa...
Aug 19, 2022•6 min
The Clean Air Act of 1970 authorized the government to regulate air pollution. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden just signed into law, allocates more than $300 billion to energy and climate reform, including $30 billion in subsidies for manufacturers of solar panels and components, wind turbines, inverters, and batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. Notice the difference? The Inflation Reduction Act is a large and important step toward slowing or reversing climate change....
Aug 18, 2022•8 min
Tomorrow, Wyoming Republicans will determine the fate of Representative Liz Cheney — whom Trump has targeted for revenge ever since she criticized him for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Six days after that attack — when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump — she said on the House floor: “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this wo...
Aug 15, 2022•9 min
On Saturdays I have a cup of coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse, and we press record on my laptop so you can listen and chime in with any comments. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. She asks me about the economic and political happenings of the past week (this past one was a doozy). We cover both the highlights and lowlights, and aim to provide a larger context around what we’re all being presented with (or not) in the news. We oft...
Aug 13, 2022•14 min
Notably, the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t attract a single Republican vote in the Senate. (And at least one Democratic senator — Kyrsten Sinema — made sure its tax provisions wouldn’t raise tax rates on rich individuals.) Why? We talk a lot about money in politics, but there’s a huge and growing difference between the big money (campaign donations of $1 million or more), most of it pouring into Republican coffers and small money (individual donations of $200 or less), mainly pouring into the D...
Aug 12, 2022•5 min
Senator Joe Manchin has been Congress’s largest recipient of money from natural gas pipeline companies. He just reciprocated by gaining Senate support for the Mountain Valley pipeline in West Virginia and expedited approval for pipelines nationwide. Senator Krysten Sinema is among Congress’s largest recipients of money from the private-equity industry. She just reciprocated by preserving private-equity’s tax loophole in the Inflation Reduction Act. We almost take for granted big corporate money ...
Aug 11, 2022•8 min
Republican candidates for Senate, House and governorships in the upcoming midterms have been filling the airwaves today with baseless assertions that the FBI search of Mar-a-lago shows the politicization of the Justice Department and undermines the rule of law. Republicans ranging from third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have issued statements brimming with outrage and accusation. Last night, the RNC sent out a fundraising text : “THIS IS NOT A D...
Aug 10, 2022•4 min
The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July , more than twice the number analysts had expected. And the rate of unemployment dipped to just 3.5 percent. Undeniably good news. But this good news also means the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep raising interest rates, believing the job market is now too “tight.” This is not good news. The Fed is wrong: The job market is not too tight. In fact, the share of Americans working or actively looking for w...
Aug 09, 2022•5 min
The original justification for elite higher education in the United States was to train the future leaders of American democracy. As Charles W. Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869, noted, Harvard existed to inculcate the ideals of “service and stewardship.” Since then, Harvard has produced eight US presidents; Yale, five. (Stanford can boast Herbert Hoover, if it feels compelled to do so.) Elite universities have also produced a disproportionate number of senators and representatives ...
Aug 08, 2022•6 min
Each Saturday I grab coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse, and we turn on my laptop mic so you can listen in and then provide your two cents in the comments. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. She asks me questions about the economic and political happenings of the past week. We cover both the highlights and lowlights, and aim to provide a larger context around what we’re all being presented with (or not!) in the news. She’s Gen X and...
Aug 06, 2022•16 min
Yesterday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addressed a crowd of thousands of American admirers in Dallas, Texas, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Orban described Hungary and America as “twin fronts” in a struggle against globalists, progressives, communists, and “fake news.” To fully comprehend Orban’s influence on the Trump Republican Party, you need to understand the Orban has stripped Hungary of its democratic institutions and demonized immigrants. But that’s not ...
Aug 05, 2022•6 min
Today, I want to talk about Kansas. Not about its corn as high as an elephant’s eye, nor about Dorothy and Toto trying to find their way home, but about Kansas as the geographic and Republican center of America, Kansas as the vintage Norman Rockwell core of America, Kansas as what the Republican Party was before being hijacked by Newt Gingrich and then mugged by a New York real estate con artist. I’m moved to do so because on Tuesday the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that ...
Aug 04, 2022•5 min
Defamation law may turn out to be America’s most important weapon against rightwing media lies. On Friday, Infowars star Alex Jones’ parent media company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy in the midst of a defamation damages trial underway in Austin, Texas. Jones, you may recall, had portrayed the Sandy Hook school shooting massacre as a hoax involving actors, aimed at increasing gun control. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was among the 20 children an...
Aug 02, 2022•8 min
TONIGHT I’m talking with Stephanie Ruhle, on MSNBC’s 11th Hour, about the biggest difference between Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — the so-called “carried interest loophole” that rewards big bucks to private equity managers. This week, the spotlight once again will be on Manchin and Sinema (dubbed “ Manchinema ” by the Washington press corps as the two blocked much of Biden’s agenda) because it’s the Democrats’ last chance for a large package — Manchin has agreed to $790 billion — on the clima...
Aug 01, 2022•6 min
My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week: The Fed’s decision to raise interest rates yet again — wrong medicine? Recession — should we be worried? Joe Manchin’s change of heart — will it stick? Merrick Garland’s inevitable decision of whether to prosecute Trump — by when? Plus a special request from Heather — if you're willing to take a stab at composing a very short theme song for this ...
Jul 30, 2022•15 min
Has Joe Manchin really, finally seen the light? Word is that President (sorry) Senator Manchin has agreed to roughly $433 billion in new spending, much of it focused on lowering energy costs, increasing clean energy production, and reducing carbon emissions. Part of the Manchin-approved deal would raise $739 billion in taxes over the next decade — including a new minimum tax on corporations and additional funding to help the Internal Revenue Service pursue tax cheats. 1. A few grounds for skepti...
Jul 28, 2022•9 min
Today, Donald Trump returns to Washington — his first visit since leaving in disgrace after January 6 — to deliver the keynote address for the America First Policy Institute’s “America First Agenda Summit.” The purpose of this confab is to give Trump some policy creds as he prepares to announce a 2024 run for re-election. Brooke Rollins, one of the organizers of the Institute and the Summit (who was domestic policy adviser in Trump’s White House) says “having worked next to him for almost three ...
Jul 26, 2022•6 min
