Fire Sale

 

“In a country that amended the Constitution to ban beer… then fixed it when we realized it was dumb… surely we can amend it again to say corporations aren’t people and money isn’t speech.” 

--Pete Buttigieg, 16 January 2025, LaCross, Wisconsin town hall

Analyst Brian Allen said Amen! 

"We corrected Prohibition. We can correct Citizens United. Democracy shouldn’t be for sale."

Best Tactical Suggestion of the Day

 

Excellent idea! And you know who could make it happen? Ken Martin, the new chair of the DNC. He could do it. If he had any imagination at all.

Granholm and Buttigieg Named to Biden's Cabinet

 

Jennifer Granholm, to be secretary of the Department of Energy

She is the former governor of Michigan and has been a strong advocate for zero-emissions vehicles. She is currently an adjunct professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and has argued that the United States risks being left behind by other countries if it doesn’t develop alternate energy technologies. "Her pick is a clear sign that Biden wants the department to play an important role in combating climate change" (WashPost).

The bulk of the department's mandate has to do with the maintenance and safeguarding of the nation’s nuclear weapons and handling the cleanup efforts at contaminated nuclear sites. The nuclear program consumes about 75 percent of the department’s budget. “The Energy Department is actually the Nuclear Weapons Department,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. Granholm would not be the first energy secretary without a background in nuclear issues, but she could rely on the expertise of deputies. 

The Energy Department's role in promoting research began getting more attention in the Obama administration and is likely to feature prominently under Biden, given his promises to tackle climate change. Granholm worked with Biden in Michigan a decade ago when he was overseeing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and he credits her with helping to save the auto industry and the union jobs it supports.

Pete Buttigieg, to be secretary of the Department of Transportation

[Indebted to Tyler Pager and Sam Mintz at Politico]

Buttigieg’s ascension to the top spot at DOT marks the culmination of a meteoric rise in politics over the last two years from the mayor of South Bend to the first openly gay Cabinet secretary, if he is confirmed.

But Buttigieg's landing spot comes as a surprise given his thin transportation policy resume.

Buttigieg, 38, wanted to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations, a position that went to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and he was also considered for Commerce secretary. But Buttigieg has a limited political future in his home state of Indiana, and Buttigieg supporters were hopeful Biden would give the mayor a high-profile spot to gain more experience and bolster his big political ambitions.

If confirmed, Buttigieg will head to Washington to take responsibility for nearly 55,000 employees, an $87 billion budget and more than a dozen administrations, overseeing the nation’s airspace, highway system, pipeline safety and much more.

Buttigieg became a top-tier presidential contender, eventually winning the Iowa caucuses and finishing second in the New Hampshire primary. His presidential bid flamed out after the first four early states, largely because he failed to make any inroads with voters of color, a critical constituency in the Democratic primary.

 

Maybe the Graveyard Is Whistling Past Us

I shouldn't write anything until I see results tonight from 14 states. I shouldn't. I won't. I will.

The political party to which I belong is so goddamn fearful of the threatened blossoming of its own purported values that it is getting itself ready and psyched up to snatch the presidential nomination from Bernie Sanders, if it should come to that.

I posted results from a poll that showed a fear of "socialism" ranking higher than the fear of death among a significant portion of Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. The very possibility of either a President Sanders or a President Warren (either!) rattles their timbers, though they are themselves prime beneficiaries of the very socialism they fear. The logic of that shivers my timbers.

Is there a psychologist in the house? I also think the Democratic leadership -- office-holders, Super Delegates et al. -- are mainly fearful of what it might mean to them personally if a popular revolt broke out in Democratic ranks for structural change to the levers of power -- scattering the money-changers and driving them from the temple. Oh my Gawd! Democratic pharisees are kind of in league with the money-changers, and get their money from them, but how to turn back a revolt from below? Oh, yeah. The pusher for change must be a "socialist." A dreaded socialist. Actually, probably a Commie.

Why, what would happen, O my brethren, if equality actually broke out? Expensive furniture thrown from high windows, torches in the street, hot tar and a big basket of feathers? Bankers and corrupt corporations, ridden out on rails?

It's a turnoff, the fear of the Democratic establishment amplified by cable TV (which is a calvacade of corporations, after all). It's not entirely that Joe is old and seems it. It's that he's backward (or "moderate," if you insist). Joe Biden's actual promise is to take us back in time to an Obama/Biden "decent" era, which was actually to me the embodiment of a hesitant, good-ish gradualism that took pains not to piss off Wall Street. That ain't the restoration to me.

Fear of socialism among the age group most set to receive its benefits through Social Security and Medicare -- the blessings of help for the sometime helpless, delivered via social contract which required -- or should require -- the cooperation of the rich -- Failure to recognize the irony amounts to political malfeasance. I'm embarrassed for my immature juniors, the Boomers, and for the Democratic establishment.

Something's Happening Here

There's something happening here

What it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind

--Stephen A. Stills, Buffalo Springfield

True confession: I'm a radical at heart. It's a biblical radicalism. I learned from Jesus that upending the money-changers was a damn good idea (takes a righteous dude to pull that off, but Lord! the negative publicity!). Radicalism comes from the Latin word for root, radix, getting to the root cause of what ails you. The main premise of my radicalism (just like Jesus!): the love of money is the root of all evil.

But a long time ago, I became a regular Democrat, and not just any regular Democrat, loyal to my party through good times and gawdawful scandals, but an establishment Democrat with a party position to prove it. That status and responsibility diluted my stronger juices into a more pragmatic but weaker tea of incrementalism -- can't always have what we want and don't always get what we need. Just be patient. There's another election coming up in two years. 

Anand Giridharadas

So I actually heard myself one day advise a candidate not to go too far out, nor too far in (if you get my drift), because American conservatism has been dominant now since Reagan, and who wants to get beat to a pulp as a "liberal" Democrat, when that doesn't have to be an issue? Especially in my rural Southern district. (As a Democratic executive officer, I'm going to have to support whoever ends up as our presidential nominee, and that truth has given me the heebie-jeebies and the occasional panic-attack.)

What happened is that swerve into moderation made us sometimes unwilling participants in a system of cash, influence, and power, which was understood as the only way to thrive politically. We watched fellow Democrats go corrupt for money, and we winked. Because in a plutocracy -- which is what we've managed to allow -- money became the only way to play, so when the Clintons sold the Lincoln bedroom, they were just doing what everyone else had been doing, and when Obama hired the very economists whose plutocratic policies had taken us over the clift in 2008, why, he needed those Wall Street guys because he didn't know how the economy worked. Buying into the billionaires' headspace about finance and taxes and power, and how power is wielded and for whose benefit, has been a muddy rut for way too many contemporary Democrats for way too long. And Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar all continue to court that crowd. Didn't I hear that even Elizabeth Warren has decided to accept Super-PAC money. Buttigieg appears to be the billionaires' "top choice." 

None of that political expediency cuts it any more. Why would I decide to vote for the first time for more of the same?

"There are candidates who would leave undisturbed the opportunity to create wealth on that scale [the scale of Mike Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, etc.] and who encourage the private solution of public problems." (Anand Giridharadas, "The Billionaire Election")

Incrementalism. Smacks of being sold out.

But something is happening here that explains both the election of Twitterman almost 4 years ago and the movement behind Bernie Sanders right now, even bigger than 2 years ago. Resentment of wealthy elites among the MAGA crowd got twisted up with an undeniable racism unleashed by the rich demagogue who once got laughed at in public by a black man who should never have gotten into the White House. With Bernie Sanders (and Elizabeth Warren too), the rage is against the whole corporate structure of American life, against government and corporate policies that are written to keep the powerful in power.

"Your health insurance hasn’t somehow, mysteriously been made too expensive; your brick-and-mortar store hasn’t somehow, mysteriously been undercut. Someone did those things to you, probably by rigging the system to secure an undeserved advantage." (Anand Giridharadas, "The Billionaire Election")

The turnout of first-time voters in the Nevada caucuses is worth looking into -- fully half of the record turnout had not voted before. New voters also drove the record turn-out numbers in the recent New Hampshire primary. Rachel Bitecofer has been predicting this for months, the surging of new voters who want to throw over the establishment, scattering the money-changers from the temple, and don't we see it happening? A blossoming of anger (an emotion stronger than mere enthusiasm) at the very system of our inequality, and an unwillingness to fall in line with Democratic incrementalism.

Today a vocal chunk of the Democratic electorate is gravitating to a strikingly different conclusion: that America would actually be better off reducing its billionaire population through taxes and profit-trimming regulations.

Ballooning anti-billionaire sentiment is galvanizing billionaires [too]. Some have been motivated to go on television to cast their critics as naïve and un-American. Others donate to centrist candidates like Mr. Biden, Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who serve a cocktail of down-home incrementalism shaken with wealth defense. But it took a special billionaire — Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York — to find a more direct way to thwart ascendant progressives. He is seeking to buy the election.  (Anand Giridharadas, "The Billionaire Election")

Mr. Giridharadas was a guest on "AM Joy" this morning, saying stuff like what he wrote in the editorial linked above. The host of the show, the other guests -- all of whom were rationalizing the basic fungibile virtues of a Bloomberg candidacy -- became a little panicked at his warning that "Something's happening here," and little wonder since the major news media are actually (and sometimes unwittingly) guardians of that economic status quo, whether they admit it or not. Giridharadas wrote, "Do you trust a news media that sells advertisements to corporations owned by billionaires, and sometimes to billionaire candidates directly, to inform you properly about the level of power billionaires have and what to do about it?"

No. No, I do not.