A living, breathing Confederate monument

It has been a few months since I last wrote about an episode of Gaslit Nation. I paused because what hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discussed was getting overwhelming. However, this week’s episode Quid Pro Joe is about Sen. Joe Manchin and is a follow up of one of their episodes back in April. Since I wrote about that episode I thought I should write about this one. Manchin has had the nickname of Quid Pro Joe for several years. The term quid pro quo means essentially “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” That’s also the currency of the nasty guy mob family. Manchin is the single vote in the senate threatening to block the $3.5 trillion package that’s mostly about infrastructure, though also about strengthening the social safety net and doing a lot about the climate crisis. Chalupa then focused on what is in the package for children, how it will lift many out of poverty and support them from a very young age. This package is a very big deal. So Manchin screwing over children, the country, and the climate is a big deal. It is important to understand what’s in it for him. Chalupa said that Manchin is essentially an Exxon lobbyist. Though coal is no longer a big part of West Virginia’s workforce, it is a big part of Manchin’s finances. So Manchin is a single selfish, greedy, rich person in the US Senate, which is set up to protect greedy rich people. The Senate ...

continues to be one of the serious damaging mistakes of the founding fathers. It continues to plague the American experiment. I know the founding fathers launched a revolution, then fought a war, then had to establish a government and deal with the aftermath of war. And none of that was easy. But their bad judgment and compromises threatened not only our democracy, but the world.

Manchin’s daughter, Heather Bresch, was the president and CEO of drug company Mylan. Under her leadership the price of EpiPens, which stop life-threatening allergic reactions, rose from less than $100 to over $600. Her compensation rose from $2 million to almost $19 million. Manchin’s wife Gayle, head of the National Association of State Boards of Education, lobbied states to require schools to stock EpiPens. A lot of quid pro quo in one family. There is now a class action lawsuit against Mylan for monopolizing the EpiPen market. That huge price hike hurts people. Bresch profited off death. She is a white-collar criminal. She merged her company with one in the Netherlands to get lower tax rates. So she’s also a tax dodger. Why is Bresch not being prosecuted? This is known to members of Congress. Why isn’t this being used as leverage against Manchin? Why aren’t Democrats using LBJ-style, or even Moscow Mitch-style, arm twisting to get Manchin to serve the American public, which is his job? A key part of that $3.5 trillion package would allow Medicare negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies – such as Mylar – which would save the government and citizens billions of dollars. It would also give Medicare more insight into how pharma executives set prices. For the Manchin family that’s now a conflict of interest. Chalupa said,

Manchin used to be tough on pharmaceutical companies and drug prices, but they apparently bought him off by hiring his daughter.

So why don’t the Democrats buy Manchin by giving his wife a cushy job? They tried. Republicans and their dark money machine have more money than Democrats do and offered a higher bid. Kendzior thinks part of what drives Manchin is oligarch envy – wanting to live like oligarchs in Russia and Middle East. Kendzior said that oligarchs

want further erasure of any kind of legal constraints. They want to build dynastic kleptocracies. They want to have elite criminal impunity not only for themselves, but also for their families. And they've discovered that the best way of doing this is by installing themselves and installing their family members into office. Because when you are making the law, you can live above it.

We’ve been seeing it in the Republican party for a long time and that idea has taken over the party. We’re now seeing it within the Democratic Party. Not it is frightening because this level of corruption and kleptocracy is an “immediate existential threat to our existence” mostly through the current climate catastrophe. Even if Manchin could be bought off, there’s still the problem of oligarchs living above (and rewriting) the law and able to buy off politicians. The election of Biden has not changed this problem because it is a justice issue and our legal system is broken. On Friday I wrote that Manchin agreed to a revised Freedom to Vote Act. He also said a few days ago, “The filibuster stays as is.” Chalupa said:

So that means they're going to need 10 Republicans in the Senate to join them. And that's simply not going to happen, obviously, because Republicans depend on voter suppression to come to power and stay in power. So Manchin is just doing this—the Freedom to Vote Act—because he needs to buy himself some PR. He needs to get some good press headlines. He needs to continue his gaslighting of America so people are distracted thinking that he's a team player when, in reality, he's an enemy within.

As Chalupa said in the previous episode about Manchin:

Joe Manchin will never come around because Joe Manchin is a living, breathing Confederate monument. Joe Manchin profits from White supremacy, which continues—like the centuries-old system of slavery before it—to exploit human bodies for profit. His daughter did this. His wife did it. And now he's doing it from his perch in the US Senate. And he doesn't care about all the non-White lives that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis, that are most vulnerable to slipping through the cracks, to being plunged deeper into poverty. The climate crisis, the greed crisis plaguing the healthcare industry, the economic crisis, the growing income inequality gap, those are crises that impact all of us, but they hit non-White people harder, and the damage lasts across generations. Joe Manchin, like the living, breathing Confederate monuments before him, simply does not care.

Kendzior noted the climate catastrophes – hurricanes and fires – are being met with incredible inertia. She is told “Don’t worry about Manchin!” Which is quickly followed by “Oh, but there's Joe Manchin. Nothing we could do. Why bother trying?” Are Democrats afraid to take on Manchin because they don’t want to deal with entrenched corruption, including their own? Does Biden and his Department of Justice hesitate to go after Bresch because that would renew (baseless) attacks on his son Hunter? Sleazy and illegal have become incredibly blurred over the last 30 years. Perhaps Democrats can win a couple seats in the Senate in 2022 (Val Demings over Marco Rubio in Florida could be one of them) so that Manchin isn’t so pivotal. Alas, voter suppression laws, such as those being passed in Florida, may prompt too many people to think it’s rigged, so why vote? Vote anyway. But Democrats have to stop treating voting as a bargaining chip. Voting is too fundamental. In the rest of the episode Kendzior and Chalupa discussed the possible fallout of the California recall (they taped the episode the morning of the vote and I waited for the transcript). That included Larry Elder, the top GOP opponent, talking about fraud while the election was still going on. Thankfully, Elder’s loss was so big he dropped that story. They also talked about the “Justice for J6” rally that was held today, though a few days in the future at the time this episode was recorded. Kendzior talkd about what might happen. Today’s news was: not much. 700 people were expected, about 450 showed up. I’ll have more on this later.