$40 trillion of debt and all we got was rich people

I finished the book Queer as Folklore, the Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward. It is a discussion of many beings and monsters from the queer point of view. Coward says folklore is a great source of historical perspective because it is created by the people, not the people in control who write history. In each chapter Coward delves into quite a bit of history of each creature. Some of the things I learned from the book: One will see a lot of mermaid symbolism at Pride events. Some of it is because mermaids have to give up something to live in the human world, as many queer people have to give up something to live in the straight world. Hans Christian Anderson, bisexual, wrote his The Little Mermaid (far darker than the Disney version) after he had been turned down by a guy he had fallen in love with, quite likely because the other guy was straight. Unicorns are another creature featured in Pride events because they are always seen as the outsider. These were originally not the gentle creatures that cavort with virgins. Early versions were more sexual and dangerous. When one talks about feeling horny, it is the unicorn’s horn that gave us that term. Queer people understand demons because through history the reason for our queerness was frequently attributed to being possessed by demons. The book also covers the queer side of fairies, vampires, werewolves, witches, aliens, and supermen. Many times Coward wrote that a writer of an important story about one of these creatures was queer. An example is Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. An intriguing idea: What if the wolf that Red Riding Hood encountered didn’t kill Grandma, instead Grandma was a werewolf? One can read history and folklore and totally miss the queer details. But those details are frequently there. Even the author had to educate himself in the finer points of some cultures to know that certain details were actually coding a queer meaning. An example is reading about two nuns who “spoiled” themselves. I enjoyed the book. Yesterday I wrote about Natalie Harp, the woman who seems to be a constant companion to the nasty guy. In a campaign speech Sen. Jon Ossoff said the phrase, “travel with Natalie,” without defining what role she plays for him. The White House and Republicans freaked out. Kos of Daily Kos discussed what all this might mean. The nasty guy having an affair with Harp would be a good story for Republicans. To them an affair is a sign of manliness and an 80 year old having an affair signals he’s still got it! If that’s a scandal, they’d gladly defend it.

The reality is much harder to spin. This looks like the opposite of the virile, macho image Trump has spent his entire life constructing. This isn’t a powerful man attracting younger women. It’s an increasingly diminished old man apparently unable to tolerate being separated from his emotional support aide. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times has an even better term for it. She described Harp as a “human binky” for Trump. That’s not macho. That’s not virile. That’s dependency. And that’s why the details of Trump’s dependence on Harp are so politically dangerous. She offers a window into the version of Trump that Republicans have spent years trying to keep out of view.

The American national debt has passed $40 trillion. That’s two trillion higher in the last year (or is it since the start of this year?). There has been a string of stories this week in the NPR show Marketplace on what it all means. The biggest affect is that as the national debt rises and looks to be harder to pay back (just paying interest on that debt is now $1 trillion a year) the higher investors demand the interest rate to be. To attract money to finance mortgages banks now have to pay a comparable rate. That raises rates on mortgages. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried a maneuver to lower the interest rate. The maneuver was to buy back long-term government bonds by issuing short-term bonds. The market was pleased. For a day. Then the market said spending billions to fix a problem that is trillions in size isn’t going to work. Bessent also said we’ll grow our way out of it. Yeah, Treasury Secretaries have been saying that for decades as the debt has gotten larger. And as Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal said, growing an economy at 2% a year (which is a robust economy) can’t overcome a debt that is growing at 6% a year. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Bessent pulled out the old standby of the nasty guy and his minions: Blame Biden. At least Biden had a reason for increasing the debt – the pandemic and pulling the economy out of the chaos it caused. That’s an important use of a deficit and resulting debt. But the nasty guy doesn’t have that excuse. Thom Hartmann of the Kos community discussed where that $40 trillion debt came from and the implications of it. Hartmann started off with a chart of the national debt that goes through 2020, so doesn’t show what the nasty guy’s crew has been doing over the last two years. The chart shows the debt as percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Since GDP has been increasing translating the amount in dollars doesn’t work. The debt was high at the end of WWII, another good reason for a government to go into debt. After the war Congress and presidents were good at reducing that debt. Until Reagan and his voodoo economics. The debt went down under Clinton. By the end of Bush II the debt was $14 trillion. Obama had to deal with the Great Recession, another good use of debt. Then the debt took off again during the nasty guy’s first term. Before Reagan the top tax rate was 70% to 91%. People could become rich, but not so rich as to buy politicians and the Supreme Court. In that time we built the Interstate Highway system. College was cheap to free. The GI Bill offered cheap mortgages. We created Medicare and Medicaid, built schools and hospitals, and sent men to the moon. Reagan followed Jude Wanniski’s strategy:

Cut taxes on the rich and spend like a drunken sailor when a Republican is in the White House, and then scream about the national debt and demand cuts to social programs when a Democrat comes into office.

The purpose of that was to reduce the size – and power – of the middle class, so they didn’t have the political power to challenge rich people. Oppressing the poor was also a goal. Hartmann makes another critical point. I noted that the US government now pays $1 trillion in interest. Who does that money go to? Rich people. We went from the rich paying into the US treasury to the rich receiving an extremely safe revenue stream from the US treasury. Who pays all that interest? Poor people, though not directly. This is another policy to get money flowing upward, from poor to rich. Japan’s national debt is nearly twice ours, at 237% of GDP to our 121% of GDP. The difference is what that money was spent on. They have universal health care, bullet trains, almost no homelessness, and a life expectancy 5 years longer than ours. We have billionaires. And a health system that can bankrupt us and college tuition that can put us into debt for life. Hartmann rightly calls this a scam. What are Democrats doing about this scam? Not much of anything. They get too much money from rich people. What could Democrats do? Teach us what the scam is doing to the country. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did that for a while. But much more needs to be done.

When Republicans loudly and self-righteously proclaim that America can’t afford Medicare for All or tuition-free college, we all need to be clear about what they’re really saying. They’re telling us that they’ve already spent that money, on themselves and their rich buddies, and stuck you and me with the debt and the interest payments. ... After all, we paid down most of our national debt once before following the most expensive war in world history, and we did it while building the world’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class because we taxed great wealth at rates requiring the morbidly rich to contribute to society like the rest of us. It worked then and it will work now, if we can just squeeze the political and moral courage out of our elected representatives.

I get the feeling the rich want to make sure the poor stay poor, that there are few to challenge (or even join) them at the top of the social hierarchy.

The gargantuan lie: We have more time

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed comments by film director Adam McKay. He created The Big Short about the 2007-9 financial crisis, Vice about Dick Cheney, and Don’t Look Up about our tendency to ignore global warming. McKay wrote an essay for Current Affairs titled “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate.” Dartagnan wrote:

In an essay for Current Affairs, titled “The Gargantuan Lie that is Collapsing the World’s Climate,” McKay highlights a phenomenon that he argues is the most insidious and dangerous impediment to any effective action on global climate change: “It is a lie told worldwide by hundreds of thousands of institutions, elected officials, many universities, legacy news, some large non-profits and eventually—as the deception entered mainstream culture—even by ourselves, to ourselves, every single moment of every day.” What is this “lie” about which McKay writes? It is the lie that “we have more time.” ... He’s talking about the more insidious interpretation: the unobtrusive hum in the background of our mind that knows something is terribly wrong here, but counsels us not to think about it too much, because it’s too exhausting and debilitating. It may not even be a conscious denial of reality, more of a reflex actually. The lie that soothingly says tomorrow is another day, so don’t worry and its really OK to “keep doing what we’re doing” because tomorrow is — without a shred of doubt — most assuredly “another day.”

UK Chief Scientist David King warned that what we do over the next three-four years will determine the fate of humanity. The problem is that warning came five, almost six, years ago. And in that time nothing significant has been done – even worse, the country elected the nasty guy who is doing all he can to make the situation worse. And that implies it’s too late to save humanity. Climate scientists said we should act to avoid warming the planet by 1.5C. We’ve passed that. The benchmark is now not to exceed warming by 2.0C and we’re way too close to it. But that much warming means we leave behind a stable climate, one that has “seasons.” The human population is now above 8 billion. Warming by that much means potentially lethal heat-related survival stress, crop failures and mass, involuntary migration. Some predictions predict the death of a billion people, others say two billion. If warming reaches 3.0C, and we’re not doing anything to prevent it, predictions say deaths could reach four billion – yes, half of humanity – by 2050. Those deaths have started to happen. Back to that gargantuan lie. That played out three weeks ago in a news report of tornadoes in New York City that said nothing about the historical significance of those tornadoes and said nothing about climate change. This week the New York Times discussed the depleted water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The article did mention climate change, which is good, but didn’t mention the drivers of climate change. McKay showed that as the temperatures go up, US news mentions of “climate” go down. As the problem worsens the media is informing us less. Fossil fuel companies and their enablers are working to distract us. Part of how they do it is keep saying, “we have more time.” Oliver Willis of Kos reported that ABC and parent company Disney sued the Federal Communications Commission in response to FCC Chair Brendan Carr bringing their station licenses up for renewal early with a threat of cancellation. ABC says it’s a First Amendment issue and the FCC threat is because some of its shows are critical of the nasty guy. Willis wrote that ABC has grown a spine. After the nasty guy won in 2024 ABC paid $15 million over a suit experts argued was frivolous and could have easily been won. But they caved, hoping for some good will from the nasty guy. That good will didn’t last long. To stay in the nasty guy’s good graces, one must forever agree to his demands. Thankfully, ABC saw it couldn’t do that. Emily Singer of Kos reported Sen. Jon Ossoff, in his bid to keep his seat is blasting the nasty guy and his opponent Mike Collins. Over the weekend at a campaign event he said:

He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.

Who is Natalie? That’s Natalie Harp. She’s been seen traveling with the nasty guy. She has been leaving him notes that sound like love letters or a great deal of sucking up. Her role hasn’t been defined by the White House. I’ve read a lot of speculation. Aide? Eye candy? She does look a lot like Ivanka and Melania. Nurse or nanny to a decrepit old man who butters him up to make him feel better about himself? Note that Ossoff mentioned her name, but made no comment about what role she fills. Even so, the White House freaked out, saying nasty things about Ossoff. Singer concluded:

If Trump and the White House really wanted this story to go away, they would simply let it go rather than draw attention to it with childish social media posts. But leave it to Trump and his administration to create more problems for themselves based on their sick desire for revenge and humiliation.

In Wednesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a lot of commentary about Ossoff’s comments. My favorite is by Niles Francis:

Idk if it was the point but man Ossoff sure has flabbered the gasts of an entire administration and right-wing media ecosystem.

The nasty guy has spurned the leaders of South Korea for another attempt to be best buds with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. That prompted exlrrp to post a meme in the comments showing the nasty guy saluting someone in uniform that is not American (I don’t recognize the person). In the background is Kim. The caption says, “Every time a maga tries to claim Dems are Communist, show them this pic.” In the comments of Tuesday’s roundup exlrrp posted a tweet from middleageriot showing Kim and the nasty guy shaking hands for the camera. The caption (which may be fictional): “Kim Jong-un: ‘I moved on Trump like a bitch. When you’re tyrannical dictator, he’ll let you do it. He’ll let you do anything.’”

Outsiders v. establishment

Max Burns of Daily Kos discussed what Democratic voters really want. Four Democratic candidates for a variety of offices, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, got where they are “by campaigning as outsiders frustrated with Washington’s do-nothing Democratic establishment.” The Democratic establishment and the centrist group Third Way (see below) are fighting the Democratic Socialists in their own party. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gets an angry response when he tries to steer voters away from outsider candidates.

What Schumer, Third Way, and the Beltway barnacles that make up the aging Democratic elite fail to recognize is that this year’s election isn’t a battle between their party’s left flank and its centrists: It’s a referendum on the failed incrementalism of the Democratic establishment. ... That’s bad news for Democratic politicians who have spent decades promising voters that real change was just around the corner—and failing to deliver. The Democratic establishment “told you that every election for the last decade or two has been the most important election of your life, and then [they] get in power and aren’t willing to govern like this was the most important election of your life,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne argued on a recent episode of Lincoln Square’s “Strategy Session.” “It’s such a frustrating experience as a Democrat.” ... Cornered by their own disconnect from a base that demands Democrats actually start using their political clout, Schumer and Third Way can’t see that their desire to hold on to power actually harms their party’s ability to serve the American people. Worse still, Democratic establishment leaders seem more intent on defeating insurgent candidates like El-Sayed than in understanding and harnessing the message that made them so popular.

Robpos of the Kos community discussed Third Way. The group is preparing to use $15 million to “discredit democratic socialism.” Third Way is a dark money political organization. Its source of funding is hidden. Robpos looked over the most recent Board of Trustees. All in his list work for a big bank, such as Goldman Sachs, or for a private equity company. Robpos concluded:

These folks are not on our side. Third Way is NOT a “centrist” Democratic think tank no matter what they say, or how they are presented by the media.

Robpos noted that Third Way is trying to reduce it’s dependence on small donors (meaning more dependence on billionaires). Their goal, according to Robert Reich discussing a Third Way memo, is “to curb ‘far-left influence,’ adopt a ‘pro-capitalist’ stance, and stop ‘demonizing wealth and corporations.’” All this means Third Way is made up of people aligned with Republicans who declare they are “centrist” Democrats (and hope the media doesn’t look closely) with the goal of preserving the Democratic establishment who are already in the pocket of rich people. Put another way, the reason why Democrats have been making only incremental changes is they don’t want to annoy (with the resulting pulling of funding) their rich paymasters. This is the reason why voters see the party so unfavorably and why they are voting for candidates who are anti-establishment. Kelly Candaele, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos interviewed Sheri Berman, author of the book The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left, and the Challenges Facing Democracy Today. Here are some of the things they talked about. In the post-war era (aren’t we at a time when we should ask which war?) of approximately 1945 to 1975 the economic pie was growing and the slices were more evenly distributed with less privileged groups also gaining. Economists had thought we couldn't have both growing profits and growing wages and couldn't have growth without increased inequality. Both of those were shown not to be true in this era. That era ended with Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America. They yanked their countries so far right that they were replaced by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton who were much more center-left than Democratic politicians before them. That created slow growth, rising inequality, relatively high unemployment, low productivity gains, and weaker unions. That weakened both the working class and middle class. And with the center-left turning away from strong worker support there was less reason to vote for the center-left. With the weakened situation of the working class, even the middle class, the ideas of the far-right have room to thrive. These ideas include: economics is zero-sum, therefore immigrants and minorities are why you aren’t getting ahead. Also, the system is rotten. Of course, the evidence of the post-war boom are obscured. Promoting the idea that economics is zero-sum leads to polarization and demonization.

But the polling tells us that while Trump has grown increasingly unpopular, the Democrats remain remarkably unpopular as well. If the Democrats don’t deal with their internal divisions — between radicals and moderates — and manage to unite around a platform that can prove attractive to a decent number of wavering and independent voters, they could still lose in 2028 and then face a Republican Party that will remain a radical threat to American democracy.

I donate to a lot of different organizations – LGBTQ of course, gun safety, voting rights, health research, etc. Over the years I’ve mailed off checks – and as much as possible I donate by check so credit cards don’t take a cut – and every few months a check isn’t cashed. I call the organization and they say they never received it. I don’t cancel the check because I discover the problem because the check isn’t cashed. I don’t investigate whether a cashed check was cashed by someone other than who I wrote it out to. The checks are just gone. There have been a few times when checks sent to a particular organization are more likely to be lost. When those mount up I sometimes stop donating to them. Yesterday an envelope was returned to me. I had addressed it to an organization I stopped donating to because the checks so often didn’t get cashed. It has the usual Postal Service yellow sticker saying “return to sender, not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward.” I opened the envelope. The check inside was dated four years ago.