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Here's How Democrats Can Beat Trump and the GOP in November
With less than a month to go before the November 5 election, Democrats should ignore the consulting profiteers and fully embrace popular policies.
Oct 13, 2024
Wouldn’t you think the Republican Party, that is as gung-ho for Empire and Genocide as the Democratic Party, but domestically is blatantly open about its policies against women, children, workers, the environment, climate crisis, public lands, public education, and fair share taxes for the wealthy, would be easy to defeat? Not when you see how the Dems, whose campaigns are controlled by corporate-conflicted political consultants using corporate campaign cash, keep making the election razor close.
In 1988, the formidable spouse of Senator Pat Moynihan—Elizabeth Moynihan—told me “Ralph, these consultants are destroying the Democratic Party,” right after she fired them and took over managing Pat’s last re-election campaign.
Elizabeth Moynihan’s observation is true now more than ever, as corporate money looms gigantically over all elections with no limits on how much these PACs can spend.
Still, with three and a half weeks before November 5th, the Party of the Donkey can lighten some of its self-imposed burdens and prevail in congressional races and the presidential race.
First, Bibi-Biden and Bibi-Blinken have to end their serfdom and stand up for American interests. Tell Netanyahu to stop dissembling, agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and open up Gaza to all those thousands of U.S.-funded humanitarian aid trucks with food, medicine, water, and other critical supplies. Tell him to open up occupied Gaza to American reporters—along with Israeli and other nations’ journalists—prohibited from independently reporting the realities of the genocidal destruction of that Palestinian enclave and its dying 2.3 million people. Otherwise, no more U.S. weapons of mass destruction, no more vetoes at the U.N., and no more arm-twisting other critical countries. These just and proper moves could be vote-getters in swing states.
Second, give the media vote-getting authentic commitments to benefit millions of voters. A serious commitment to a living wage would move millions of low-paid workers to vote.
Raise Social Security benefits, frozen for over 50 years. This would get the attention of 65 million elderly (See the Social Security 2100 Act, a bill introduced on July 12, 2023, by Congressman John B. Larson and Senator Richard Blumenthal).
Demand with specifics the raising of taxes on the wealthy. This taps into the 85% of the people backing such a decision.
Crack down on corporate crooks, with specific illustrations on how they harm daily lives and livelihoods. This issue comes in with heavy left-right support.
Respect the millions of midnight shift workers who keep our society going while we sleep. Campaign before midnight shifts at hospitals, factories, all-night stores, police, and fire stations.
The few Democratic operatives who approve the strategies, tactics, and messaging are notoriously tone-deaf, defiantly incommunicado to citizen group input—activists who know how, what, and when to communicate to all workers, consumers, patients, and parents, regardless of their labels. (For effective elaborations, see winningamerica.net).
The Dems have huge amounts of money and when used to pay for ads, often vacuous and irritatingly repetitive, these consulting profiteers reap 15% commissions. More of this money should be used for an advanced ground game of locating voters, persuading them, transporting them to the polls if need be, and festively celebrating with a snack or supper. Australians, where voting (for anyone) is a civic duty, are known to make voting a joyous social occasion.
Massively assailing Trump for his lawbreaking, his lies, his bigotry, his corruption, his delusions, his incitements to violence, voter suppression and precinct worker harassment does not seem to diminish support from his base. Why not concentrate laser-like on getting out more of the 80 or 90 million non-voters, instead of pushing off the ballot and harassing the small Green Party with frivolous suits and political bigotry?
Many of these non-voting eligible voters are low-wage workers. Listen to Rev. William Barber who says just increasing their vote by ten to fifteen percent from 2020 would win the election. Few people have interacted with as many impoverished Americans as has Rev. Barber. Even fewer can match the details and inspirations of his oratory. (See, breachrepairers.org).
The media covers the horse race—give them more horses. They cover the money raised—tell them you’re using it for people-to-people voter turnout behind explicit progressive mandates. The media covers spontaneous comments that magnify as faux pas—give them spontaneous statements that mean something—like increasing the number of federal cops on the corporate crime beat.
Or support the expanding interstate compact of states that gives the anti-democratic Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the national presidential vote (See, NationalPopularVote.com).
Or why not support more consumer cooperatives, or repeal handcuffs on union organizing and expression embodied by the notorious Taft-Hartley Act of 1947?
The media gets bored with the same old stump speech day after day. Give them some variety that invigorates a democratic society. Especially tell them ways you would empower the powerless people to overcome corporatism, apathy, indifference, and withdrawal from elections and politics. These could be short educational addresses on TV.
Above all, open up electoral campaigning to regular input by the citizenry and citizen groups from the grassroots to Washington, D.C. Drop the force fields around you, Nancy Pelosi, Gary Peters, Suzan DelBene, Pete Aguilar, Jaime Harrison, Et al. None of you are smarter than all of us. Ignoring that truism is why you will be needlessly sweating on election night. (See my book “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” and the report, “Crushing the GOP, 2022.”)
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After Gorging on Stock Buybacks for Years, Boeing Announces Mass Layoffs
"The corporate cure is always the same—lay off workers," said one critic. "Stock buybacks and layoffs are joined at the hip. It's time they were outlawed entirely."
Oct 12, 2024
The manufacturing giant Boeing, under the leadership of new CEO Kelly Ortberg, announced Friday that it will axe roughly 10% of its total workforce in the coming months, a move that drew attention to the company's massive spending on stock buybacks in recent years.
Boeing, which is currently facing a machinist strike, spent an estimated $68 billion on executive-enriching share repurchases and dividends between 2010 and 2019—spending that critics say refutes the company's claim that layoffs and inadequate worker compensation are necessary.
Les Leopold, executive director of the Labor Institute and author of Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It, told Common Dreams in an email that "Boeing is in trouble because it became a manufacturer of stock buybacks, not just planes."
"The corporate cure is always the same—lay off workers," Leopold added. "Stock buybacks and layoffs are joined at the hip. It's time they were outlawed entirely."
Leopold has urged Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, to campaign on the pledge that "no taxpayer money will go to corporations who lay off taxpayers and conduct stock buybacks." In 2022, Boeing received nearly $15 billion from contracts with the Pentagon.
"CEO Ortberg has an opportunity to do things differently instead of the same old tired labor relations threats used to intimidate and crush anyone that stands up to them."
Ortberg took over as Boeing's CEO in August following the former chief executive's departure—with a $45 million golden parachute—amid fresh safety concerns at the company after a door plug blew out of a Boeing plane mid-flight.
In a memo to employees on Friday, Ortberg—who stands to rake in $22 million in total compensation next year—announced Boeing will delay its new 777X jet and end production of its 767 freighters. Additionally, Ortberg wrote that "we must also reset our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and to a more focused set of priorities"—corporate-speak for mass layoffs.
"These reductions will include executives, managers, and employees," the CEO added. "We know these decisions will cause difficulty for you, your families, and our team, and I sincerely wish we could avoid taking them. However, the state of our business and our future recovery require tough actions."
The job cuts are expected to impact around 17,000 workers.
Ortberg's announcement came days after Boeing suspended contract negotiations with striking machinists, disparaging the union's demands as "far in excess of what can be accepted if we are to remain competitive as a business."
"The same company spent $68 billion on dividends and stock buybacks over the past decade and gave its last two CEOs multimillion-dollar golden parachutes," former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in response. "What's unreasonable is Boeing's greed."
Jon Holden, president of District 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers—which represents Boeing workers who went on strike a month ago—said in a statement Friday that the company's management "keeps walking away from the table" and "using the same old tired tactics of bargaining in the press."
"The path to resolve this strike begins at the bargaining table," said Holden. "An unwillingness to stay at the table only prolongs the strike. CEO Ortberg has an opportunity to do things differently instead of the same old tired labor relations threats used to intimidate and crush anyone that stands up to them."
"Our membership is too powerful for that and is standing on principles," Holden added. "Ultimately, it will be our membership that determines whether any negotiated contract offer is accepted. They want a resolution that is negotiated and addresses their needs. Get back to the bargaining table."
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UAW Chief Slams 'Job-Killer-in-Chief' Trump Ahead of Michigan Visit
"Kamala Harris has stood with labor," said Shawn Fain. "She's walked the walk. Donald Trump serves himself. He's always served himself."
Oct 10, 2024
The head of the largest U.S. autoworkers union on Thursday highlighted the yawning chasm between former President Donald Trump's campaign promises to protect the country's auto industry and the 2024 Republican nominee's White House record—which includes hundreds of thousands of lost manufacturing jobs.
Speaking on a call hosted by the campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain argued that "there is a stark contrast between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris."
"Kamala Harris has stood with labor," Fain said of the UAW-endorsed candidate. "She's walked the walk. Donald Trump serves himself. He's always served himself."
Taking aim at Trump's claims that he's the best choice for U.S. autoworkers and that he's "always had their back," Fain said:
Look at the Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant. [Trump] told workers there, "Don't sell your houses." The plant closed. He came to Warren, Michigan, a week ago or two. Again, wants to talk about how he cares about autoworkers. But we had [General Motors'] powertrain plant in Warren closed under his watch. He did nothing. Trump stood there in 2016 and promised that he wouldn't allow a single plant to close.
However, plant closures and offshoring increased during the Trump administration, during which domestic auto production plummeted from nearly 12.2 million units in 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, to under 8.2 million units in 2020, Trump's last full year in office, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. While Covid-19 affected that year's production, fewer than 10.9 million vehicles were manufactured domestically in pre-pandemic 2019.
Fain, who noted this trend, called Trump the "job-killer-in-chief."
The UAW chief also mocked reports that numerous attendees wearing "autoworkers for Trump" T-shirts at a Tuesday rally for the Republican in Detroit weren't actually autoworkers.
"It's pathetic. Everything he does is a con," Fain said of Trump.
Referring to the multibillionaire CEO of electric vehicle maker Tesla, Fain added that Trump "sits there and applauds Elon Musk for trying to fire striking workers, and they laugh about that."
"And that's why I said Donald Trump is a scab," the union leader added, using the term for nonunion workers who cross picket lines during strikes.
During last year's UAW strike for a fair contract, President Joe Biden made history by becoming the first-ever sitting U.S. president to join striking workers on a picket line. Four years earlier, Harris, then a U.S. senator from California running for president, walked a picket line with striking UAW workers in Reno, Nevada.
The Biden-Harris administration has often been called the most pro-labor presidency in modern history.
Fain's remarks came hours before Trump infuriated many Michiganders by telling local business owners at a Detroit rally that if Harris wins, the entire country will "end up being like Detroit"—which is in the midst of an economic revival.
Congressman Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), who represents the city,
admonished Trump to "keep Detroit and our people out of your mouth."
"Detroit is a city with a booming economy, diverse culture, and some of the best people in America," he said, adding that the heavily Democratic city "will elect Kamala Harris."
Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said Thursday: "Plain and simple, a second Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster for Michigan workers. His agenda will raise costs and kill jobs."
"When he was president," she added, "Trump gave tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of Michigan's working families, tanked our economy during the pandemic, and only helped the rich get richer."
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