Capitalism has always come into conflict with freedom and equality

Now that the nasty guy is blocked from the ballot in two states, an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos discusses the question: Can he run? Some of the points: Several states have ruled on whether the nasty guy violated the 14th amendment and should be barred from being on the presidential ballot. And these rulings have been all over: Yes he should be banned, not he shouldn’t, we aren’t the ones to say.

Until the high court rules, any state could adopt its own standard on whether Trump, or anyone else, can be on the ballot. That's the sort of legal chaos the court is supposed to prevent.

The nasty guy’s lawyers have reasons why he should be on the ballot. The prosecuting lawyers have reasons why he shouldn’t. The insurrection was almost three years ago. This is an issue only now because until the nasty guy filed papers to be on the ballot it wasn’t a question courts could take up. Is this a partisan issue?

Well, of course it is. Bellows is a Democrat, and all the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democrats. Six of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans, three by Trump himself. But courts don't always split on predictable partisan lines. The Colorado ruling was 4-3 — so three Democratic appointees disagreed with barring Trump. Several prominent legal conservatives have championed the use of Section 3 against the former president.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Perry Bacon of the Washington Post who says we should use the 14th Amendment to keep the nasty guy off the ballot.

The argument that doing so would be undemocratic is nonsense. Democracy is not just elections; it’s also a broader system of rules, laws and norms. Even if you think democracy is mostly about elections, you can’t support having Trump as president again, because he only supports elections if he is declared the winner. It cannot be a requirement of democracy that you allow the election of leaders who will then end free and fair elections — and therefore democracy itself.

When Nikki Haley was asked about the cause of the Civil War and did not mention slavery she accused the person asking the question of being a Democratic plant. Monte Wolverton posted a cartoon of Dark Brandon exhorting actual potted plants to, “Go Now!... To town hall meetings everywhere and ask GOP candidates hard questions!” Another AP article reported that the very Republican legislature in Ohio approved two anti-trans bills. Very Republican Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed them. Yeah, he defied his caucus. They’re contemplating an override. On the law banning treatment for gender transitioning DeWine said:

Now, while there are rare times in the law in other circumstances where the state overrules the medical decisions made by the parents, I can think of no examples where this is done where it is not only against the decision of the parent, but also against the medical judgement of the treating physician and against the judgement of the treating team of medical experts. Therefore, I cannot sign this bill as it currently written.

As I read that I kept thinking isn’t the same true for laws banning abortion? Didn’t Ohioans just vote to put abortion protections in the state constitution? Since abortion is protected in Ohio that might be why DeWine didn’t think of it. DeWine did announce three actions his administration will take. First is direct agencies (which ones isn’t reported) to ban transitioning surgery on those under 18. This is to combat the fallacy that gender transitioning goes straight to surgery – which doesn’t happen anyway. Second, he agrees with the legislature there isn’t sufficient data on those who receive gender affirming care. So he is directing appropriate agencies to gather the data. Third, he and his team will draft rules to prevent “pop up clinics” to make sure families get accurate counseling on care. The legislature passed one bill banning puberty blockers and hormone therapies, treatments available for more than a decade and long endorsed by major medical associations. Another bill would have banned transgender women from girls sports, for the bad reasons claimed in other states. These were vetoed. Here’s an article that’s been sitting in my browser tabs since early October. I accumulated a bunch of other articles to discuss along with it and since then I wrote about more important (or shorter) topics. This article is by John Patrick Leary for Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was posted on Kos. The article discusses neoliberalism, which Leary defines.

Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy and a political system devoted to enforcing economic competition, protecting the power of businesses, and celebrating the “free market”—that is, the capitalist market—as the wisest and best judge of people, institutions, and ideas. ... Capitalism, which relies on the productive power of hierarchy—many people working under the authority of a smaller group of bosses—has always come into conflict with political systems based on freedom and equality. Neoliberalism, [Wellesley College history professor Quinn] Slobodian argues, is a response by politicians and capitalists to protect the market from interference by democratic representatives of the people. So, for example, when international free-trade agreements, like NAFTA, require national governments to privatize public utilities and adjust their labor laws to encourage economic growth, they allow corporations and private businesses to overrule government demands for social justice.

Some examples. There is the Lyft driver that is classified as an independent contractor and must maintain their car at their own expense. There is the Detroit student who must navigate the “archipelago” of charter schools, some operated at a profit where they and their parents don’t have much time to research options, leading to anxiety. There are social media corporations mining teenagers’ social lives for advertising dollars. What used to be free or low cost public college now force massive education debt. In Britain public housing was privatized and those who could not afford maintenance sold to investors, who increased rents and made Britain’s affordable housing crisis worse.

This is neoliberalism in a nutshell: The state uses its muscle to break up a public asset, turning what had once been a public, democratic obligation (providing and maintaining affordable housing for the people) into an individual’s personal obligation, subject to the power of the private market. In the process, an asset built and maintained by a democratic government—public housing—became, in the end, just another engine to create private fortunes. ... None of this is exactly new, even if the problems are getting worse. Defining neoliberalism can seem unnecessarily complicated if we concentrate too much on that prefix—what’s so “neo” about low wages and expensive housing? So, to keep it simple: Neoliberalism is the newest stage of a very old conflict between capitalism and democracy.

On to those other articles. One is even older than the Leary article. It is by Aldous Pennyfathing of Kos, though the useful quote is by Greg Sargent of WaPo:

New data on tax avoidance by the ultrarich badly undermines GOP claims to being an anti-elite, pro-worker party. It shows that if Republicans get their way with regard to the IRS, a nontrivial number of very rich Americans would continue to underpay taxes they owe, effectively making out like bandits — some literally so. Nearly 1,000 tax filers who earn more than $1 million per year have still not filed federal tax returns for at least one year from 2017 to 2020, according to IRS data provided to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

So, yeah, Republicans are the party of the rich and rich tax cheats. Remember the news about the high price of eggs in the fall of 2022? In a story from late November Mark Sumner wrote:

As Bloomberg Law reports, food companies began complaining about the price-fixing scheme all the way back in 2011. What’s more, the scheme was seemingly put in place in the 1990s, if not sooner. The story about the price-fixing of eggs turns out to not be so much about how food producers conspired to drive up prices at a time when the nation was struggling from the lingering effects of a pandemic. It’s a story about how food industry groups and corporate producers are always looking for ways to cheat the system. ... When it’s all put together, what it shows is an industry that has been manipulating the market for seemingly three decades or more, and that took advantage of both a real disease [bird flu] and media hype about inflation to disguise a naked grab for record profits. ... Inflation caused by corporate greed can’t be addressed by raising interest rates that harm consumers. Solving the underlying problem can’t be done until the public is fully aware of the real cause of rising prices. But corporate media is failing them on this issue, as it is on so many others.

In early December Meteor Blades of Kos wrote:

A new report from progressive UK.-based think-tanks IPPR and Common Wealth says profiteering played a major role in jacking up prices far above the rise in costs, reinforcing a previous but narrower study showing such an impact. Among other things, the researchers called for a global corporation tax to curtail unrestrained profits.

In early 2022 energy, mining, monopolistic food, technology, telecommunications, and banking all saw “profits leap ahead of inflation.” Some of these companies tripled their profits. Because energy and food prices feed into costs across all sectors of the economy the profit grabs made inflation run higher and last longer. Food production got particular attention because the largest four food companies – Archer-Daniels-Midland, Cargill, Bunge, and Dreyfus – control about 70-90 percent of the world grain market. The profits for the four rose 255% in 2021. In mid-November, Sen. Bob Casey, chairman of the Subcommittee on Children and Families released a report —“Stuffing Their Pockets: How Big Food and Agriculture Businesses Are Making Your Holiday Meals More Expensive.” From the report:

This report examines how the agribusiness companies that process Americans’ food have increased prices for everyday staple foods and raises questions about why those price increases are necessary. These same companies have a history of engaging in price-fixing, colluding to raise prices, anti-competitive conduct, and touting their ability to raise prices without limit. [...] Finally, the Department of Justice recently initiated a lawsuit that suggests almost the entire chicken, turkey, and pork industry are engaged in price-fixing practices.