We can only speculate why the Constitution’s Framers omitted a national recall in their lengthy deliberations in drafting the rules governing this young nation. They seem to have counted on a provision that a House impeachment and a Senate trial could oust a president. Somehow, they could not conceive of an autocratic or impaired president failing to uphold the Constitution, ruling a cowardly Congress, ignoring the courts, and crowning himself as the nation’s first lifetime dictator.

For starters, they obviously did not want a parliament or royalty to rule, nor voting by women, the property-less, and Native Americans. After all, how could the uneducated read or understand such ballot issues as budgets, taxes, war, corruption, property lines, gerrymandering, and the like? Besides, political leaders and officeholders recognized that voters might oust Senate and House members, Supreme Court judges.

Also, logistics of conducting a nationwide referendum or initiative was a factor, much less paying millions for it. Interestingly, it certainly hasn’t been a problem in electing a president in our 250-year history.

It also took a century before people recognized that state legislators failed to pass laws desperately needed. As an election expert on Ballotpedia’s website explained the origin of such oversight:

By the late 19th century, many citizens wanted to increase their check on representative government. Members of the populist and progressive movements were dissatisfied with the government; they felt that wealthy special interest groups controlled the government and that citizens had no power to break this control. A comprehensive platform of political reforms was proposed that included women’s suffrage, secret ballots, direct election of [legislative] senators, recall elections and primary elections.

The theory of the referendum process was that the individual was capable of enhancing the representative government. The populists—who believed citizens should rule the elected and not allow the elected to rule the people—and the progressives took advantage of methods that were already in place for amending state constitutions, and they began pushing state legislators to add an amendment that would allow for an initiative and popular referendum process.

Thus, the recall referendum/initiative system was born in those 19 states—but not for a president and other federal officials.

Soon, recalls took out mayors, judges, and two governors (North Dakota in 1921, California in 2003) and nearly California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. He won by 69.1 percent of the vote, having raised $70 million for media promotion. And he also campaigned around the state to “meet-and-greet” voters. The estimated cost to California taxpayers: $215 million. Last year, Newsom faced yet another recall by opponents who then failed to get the required 1,311,963 petition signatures in time to make the state ballot.

A presidential recall referendum would require a Constitutional Amendment by passage from Congress and state legislators—and approval by 38 states with a seven-year deadline to gather signatures. So prospects for expelling Trump do seem bleak. But all the 27 Amendments once had the same challenges and met them despite geographic distances and lacking today’s electronic communication systems.

But the majority of states passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) within the first year. Trump has three and a half years left to continue wreaking havoc on the American public and exchanging democracy for a dictatorship. If his first six months is any indication of peoples’ reaction to his rule, it brought at least five million angry protesters to the streets in a “No Kings” demonstrations against him a day before his 79th birthday. So consider what his continuing violations of the Constitution and democracy will do to destroy both during this term.

However, a new factor about election numbers can now foretell favorable outcomes if a recall movement gets started:

If the political marker of 3.5 percent of a nation’s voters opposes a dictator, the regime will fold, according to extensive long-term quantitative research noted recently by Harvard University professor Erica Chenoweth . America’s electorate was 154,000,000 in 2024, so 3.5 percent means it would take only 5.4 million voters to win a Constitutional Amendment referendum for recalling Trump.

Another factor is that far more millions would be voting in a Trump recall election than in 2024. For example, those five million No Kings protesters have family and friends who vote. So do those who couldn’t or wouldn’t participate. Then, add Trump’s social and healthcare victims affected by his “Big, Beautiful” budget-cutting bill he just signed into law. Like the 71, 258, 215 currently enrolled in Medicaid who will lose its benefits. Not to mention recipients’ families and friends. The 41 million on Trump’s chopping block for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) certainly would vote for a recall Amendment. So would the 73.9 million receiving Social Security benefits he is threatening. Include, too, the tens of thousands of federal employees (plus family/friends) who have just been fired/laid off by Trump’s hatchet man Elon Musk.

Multiply the total by 3.5 percent.

Republicans in Congress who voted for that bill because of Trumpian and donor threats can count that percentage. If they can’t or won’t, furious and outspoken constituents in town halls or at campaign rallies will awaken them in the months before the 2026 mid-term elections. So will public confrontations of state legislators.

In such a hostile constituent climate, it would seem to be fairly easy for them to ignore heavy pressure by Trump and donors to pass a recall Amendment. He will, of course, veto it, but Congress can override the veto with a two-thirds affirmative vote in both houses (House: 290; Senate: 67). Apply that 3.5 percent to those totals.

Another supportive factor for a recall Amendment is the historical precedent of success by people finally ridding their countries from years of repressive and rapacious rulers. The French did it with revolution and guillotine, beginning in 1789. Our revolution began brewing in 1775 and took eight years of war to free us from Britain’s mad King George III. Both bloody uprisings were inspired and patterned by the achievement of democracy and people’s rights, first won 800 years ago in England. That’s when its barons forced King John to apply the royal seal approving Magna Carta (the Great Charter) June 15, 1215 on Runnymede meadows.

That monumentally important document ended immunity for imperious, narcissistic kings under the centuries-old “Divine Right” policy, starting with the feckless King John’s tyrannical reign (1166-1216). Most of its 63 clauses set out the rights of subjects and kings, established British law, and influenced the authors of both the U.S. Constitution and France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

John was a pampered, favored youngest son of Henry II and one of four brothers. He inherited a fortune, vast taxable properties in England and whole sections of France. With a lascivious nature, he married twice and had numerous mistresses despite often being away with the army to fight the French from stealing his holdings. His early struggle to seize the throne revealed deviousness, murderous ambition, insecurity, paranoia, physical cowardice—and greed. As a king, he jailed opponents, bullied absolute loyalty from his officials and the army, stole lands from the nobility. Worst of all, he never ceased extorting excessive taxes from the elite, commoners, and the English church.

Sound like a president we know?

The bad years began for King John in 1209. He was briefly excommunicated for opposing Pope Innocent III’s choice of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury. He suspected the candidate’s involvement with the growing unrest of barons and the people. After an attempted assassination in 1212 in the 14th year of his reign of terror, John went after the barons he suspected of the deed. But they had banded together, began drafting Magna Carta (chiefly protecting themselves from future kings), and raised an army against him for a civil war.

Only fear of certain defeat by the barons and a near-empty treasury could have brought a humbled King John to use negotiation to escape Magna Carta’s clauses. He had no intention of obeying them—especially the security clause (61) permitting 25 barons to seize his property and “distrain” him if he disobeyed the charter. He even got the Pope to annul the document a month later. The war ended with John’s death from dysentery the following year. By 1225, Magna Carta was in force.

This extraordinary historical event could now be repeated almost exactly 810 years later, lacking only the same solution: a final uprising of the high and low classes to strip Trump of his office and fortunes by a recall Amendment. It’s not so wild a dream at all.

We don’t have the vast organizational obstacles of the 13th century that took 17 years to put Magna Carta in place. But we do have the same furious energy and zeal of King John’s outraged public to oust a dictator and save the Constitution and democracy.

Consider that some 500 national organizations exist—MoveOn, Indivisable, and SEIU to Win Without War, Greenpeace, Patriotic Millionaires, and ACLU—to set up a nationwide alliance for such a cause.

The speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of the recent No Kings protest against Trump’s dictatorial regime shows what’s possible when a coalition is galvanized for a great historical cause. Its organizers in the 50-50-1 group (“50 states, 50 protests, one movement”), American Opposition, and Indivisible linked 193 powerful progressive “partners” driven by a singleness of purpose: to depose Trump and his regime.

So why not a repeat of this astonishing logistical success for a national recall referendum? Millions of volunteers would be more than willing to knock on doors, do teach-ins and phone-banking, lead rallies and marches, design signs and flyers, write articles, stuff envelopes, send emails and other electronic “reach-outs,”—and contribute funds large and small for expenses.

Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people will only get worse if we do nothing in the next few weeks. Let’s get to it!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

The Supreme Court’s  unanimous ruling April 10, however, supported a lower court’s order that the Trump regime must facilitate Garcia’s “release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”  And to report “the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.” Part of that ruling, added by three justices , was providing Garcia with the U.S. Constitution’s due-process right to determine his innocence by trial. They dismissed Trump’s legal team’s two arguments as “plainly wrong.”

Added to the mix was El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, visiting Trump, who chimed in to state he didn’t “have the power to return him to the United States.” A preposterous claim for a dictator.

Such Trump-type arguments also fly in the face of presidential precedents set in American history, beginning with George Washington  in dealing with the Barbary pirates in the 1790s off the North African coast. They would capture merchant ships carrying American goods and imprison the crews unless “tributes” were paid by the young U.S. government.  Washington had learned his lesson. So early in his second term, he sent a three-man diplomatic delegation to negotiate tribute amounts to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli to successfully free 83 American sailors. Such bribery certainly was presidential interference in foreign-country affairs. In different ways, it still is.

How does that differ in principle from U.S. interference in foreign countries and Trump paying a $6 million tribute  to Bukele to imprison 238 men , mostly Venezuelans , all denied due process about gang membership? He plans to send more, even U.S. citizens .

A legal reprise of the Garcia case reveals why he never should have been among those—also denied due process—thus, illegally flown to El Salvador imprisonment.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was never a gang member in his native El Salvador or the U.S. In sworn testimony and documentary evidence given to a Maryland federal court, he and his family were constantly targeted for extortion by a Barrio-18 gang in El Salvador because of their successful food business in Los Nogales. When its leaders tried to recruit Kilmer’s older brother, the family sent him to relatives in Maryland and to eventual U.S. citizenship. When the gang then demanded their 16-year-old Kilmar or they would harm the entire family. They paid up—but sent him to the Maryland family to seek asylum from that gang.

Garcia was never in trouble in either country. He began working in construction with an eye to eventually joining the sheet-metal industry as a journeyman and joining its union. He was 24 when he decided to change jobs and in 2019 went to Home Depot seeking one. So did three suspects of MS-13 membership. The county police swooped in and collared all four, but in fairness never included Garcia in the arrest records.

Meantime, Garcia married a citizen with two children and a third on the way. His wife sued the government about the false arrest. The judge did heavy interrogation about criminal conditions in Nogales as justification for Garcia’s fears for his life from Barrio-18 retaliation. Strong evidence convinced the judge to bar his removal to El Salvador “due to a credible fear of persecution.”

The lawsuit triggered ICE’s attention, however. Its agents seized and detained Garcia for weeks to deport him through the “removal” procedure, but were stymied by the previous judge’s protection ruling. By that time, he applied for asylum and did the annual check-ins with immigration officials.

Interestingly in the Garcia case, for all the remarks about non-interference in El Salvador’s affairs, in April 2017 when Trump  was just inaugurated as president, he wangled the release from Egypt’s dictator president Abduel-Fattah el-Sissi’s of an Egyptian-born woman who became an American. She did three years of “confinement” on bogus charges of child abuse at her charity agency before finally being acquitted. Trump seemingly taking credit for her release, grandly chartered a U.S plane to Cairo to bring her home. A year later he was triumphant about winning release of three Americans  from North Korea.

Yet it was sour grapes from him in December 2022 when President Joe Biden wrested  national women’s basketball star Brittney Griner  in a prisoner exchange from a nine-year sentence in Russia for carrying a cannabis compound into the country. Or in August 2024 when Biden succeeded in getting three Americans—one was a Wall Street Journal reporter—released from Russia in another prisoner exchange.

Trump insinuated on his social media that cash  had been exchanged by Biden and added: “Our ‘negotiators’ are always an embarrassment to us!”

In other words, Trump was certainly well aware that foreign interventions for prisoners is nothing new to American presidents using either cash or President Teddy Roosevelt ‘s foreign policy of “speak softly, but carry a big stick,”

The Supreme Court’s  April 7 unanimous ruling that the Trump’s administration had to get Garcia’s release from El Salvador has been awakening the public about the laws protecting us individually and the three separate powers of Constitutional government. That Congress, not presidents, make the laws. The Supreme Court determines their constitutionality, and the president must “faithfully” carry out its orders.

In its handling of this case, the high court ruled that Trump’s administration must:  “comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with due process of law, including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings. It must also comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture.” The court mainly agreed with a previous U.S. District court ruling that the government must “facilitate” Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador. That judge had ordered Trump’s legal team to report daily about their progress.

The only news about Garcia, has been from the U.S. embassy  in El Salvador which on April 12 reported: “…Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center….He is alive and secure in that facility.”

Now, unlike Washington’s Day, the 1997 federal Leahy Law  forbids using taxpayer revenue for “assistance to foreign security forces that have credible allegations of human rights such as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, or rape.” A State Department report of 2023 cited El Salvador prisons’ for guards’ regular beatings of inmates and electric shock treatments, and other abuses.

Upon learning Trump’s people had done nothing about Garcia by April 15, that district judge ordered four of his officials “to provide documentation and answer questions under oath about what steps they had done to comply” with her previous order by April 28. Penalty for non-compliance would be a contempt of court ruling and fines or imprisonment. A Trump pardon would add yet another charge in impeachment proceedings and this time an ouster by a Senate trial.

Ignoring the rulings supporting Garcia’s Constitutional due-process rights and the power of the courts’ branch of government, Trump’s plan is more of the same—for all American citizens who also would be denied those rights. After all, he urged Bukele to build five more mega-prisons  (capacity: 40,000 ) to house them. He obviously expects American taxpayers to foot the bills for construction, staff salaries, and maintenance.

Moreover, his counterterrorism adviser  just announced that supporters of Garcia were aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists” and, thus, committing a federal crime?

That, of course, would include Supreme Court members, the judges involved in the Garcia opinions, his Maryland Senator, several House members —and eventually all who support Constitutional rights such as due-process trials in this country.

Since then, yet another instance of wrongful seizure for the El Salvador prison has come to light about a 20-year-old Venezuelan brought into the U.S. as a child. A Maryland federal judge’s opinion  on this asylum lawsuit was that it violated “a legally binding, court-approved settlement last year of a lawsuit against the summary deportation of migrants who arrive as children.”

On Inauguration day, Trump swore to obey the oath of office —“and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Unless a new Amendment is passed to limit due process to U.S. citizens or to delete it, that right is included for all residents of this country illegal or not. But his towering rage  at due-process appeared in late April both on his social media page and the next day in a White House press conference. It furnishes prime evidence for another impeachment—and this time a Senate trial for his ouster. Or, as in the case of former president Nixon facing that fate, key Republicans march to the Oval Office and successfully demand Trump resign.

Said he on record about the 21 million illegals he intends to deport:

“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take…200 years.” His false assumption is, of course, that in future all those kidnapped and dispatched to his five taxpayer-funded El Salvador prisons—including his political enemies—are “violent criminals and terrorists.”

Fortunately, the 4th District Appeals court just agreed unanimously to quash an emergency appeal by his administration against the contempt of court rulings for not returning the kidnapped and given due-process rights. The longtime (1983) Reagan-appointed judge, Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote the court’s ringing opinion about Trump’s snatching Garcia without those due-process rights. It also sets precedent to protect those Trump regards as “home-grown” enemies:

“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Image by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen.

President Trump’s latest hint of using the U.S. military to annex Greenland if its leaders and 55,772 (2025) violently disagree (anti-U.S demonstrations have begun). It’s also a predictor of his annexing plans for Canada’s 40.1 millions . Indeed, 85 percent of both countries in late March opposed his neo-colonization plan.

Considering that both have significant national debts for their size, both could certainly use the money. Canada’s deficit for FY 2024-25 is expected to be more C$60 billion . Removal of Denmark’s annual subsidy to Greenland would require at least US$564 million. Too, Denmark was generous enough never to charge the U.S. rent since 1951 for building the 150-person Pituffik Space base (formerly Thule Air base). And add a bonus of nearly 75 years of back rent with a few retroactive billion or two to Denmark for smoothing over Trump’s imperious rant :

“No, I never take military force off the table. But I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force. We have an obligation to protect the world. This is world peace, this is international security. And I have that obligation while I’m president. No, I don’t take anything off the table.”

Strategic chokepoint aside, Greenland’s other monumental attraction to the Trump regime is its significant mining resources for American corporations: coal, oil, gas, iron ore, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, graphite, olivine, cryolite, and marble. Not to mention the discoveries of uranium, thorium and the Earth’s largest deposits of rare-earth elements for technologic products such as yttrium, scandium, neodymium and dysprosium.

Canada also has a vast amount of similar resource reserves that could be rented without a single U.S. boot on the ground or dropping 2,000-ton bombs on those two targets. No more bloody casualties or billions worth of property and infrastructure damage that only war-lovers and munition-makers savor. The rental expense to the American taxpayer would be a fraction of yet another exploitive war.

Let’s consider other aspects of renting rather than annexing:

In an imitation of his admiration of the high-tariff, colonizing president William McKinley , Trump has turned to the forced annexation idea for Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and Panama. Somehow he overlooked the results of McKinley’s annexation of the Philippines ‘ small islands as a war prize from Spain in 1899. It set off a three-year guerilla insurrection—deaths: 4,200 out of 125,000 U.S. troops, 220,000 Filipinos—that cost taxpayers $14,775,395,348 (2025 values).

Annexing Canada is another matter. At 3.8 million square miles , it’s the world’s second largest country, currently with 40,126,723 people . Most polls show an overwhelming majority of Canadians don’t want to become the 51^st state no matter how much economic and political pressure the Trump administration applies.

Like the bare-knuckled deal he’s trying to force on Ukraine’s prime minister Volodymyr Zelinsky for past and present military aid and past: the U.S. would “control investments into Ukraine in projects including roads and railways, ports, mines, oil and gas and extraction of critical minerals.” Plus reap all the profits.

Indeed, in February when Trump began threating a 25 percent tariff on Canadian imports, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum responded by beefing up border security . Trump backed off with a “pause” in the tariff deadline. On the eve of April 2’s deadline, new prime minister Mark Carney declared if the U.S. tariffs went forward, Canada would “put in place retaliatory measures.”

Meantime, Congress was roiled by the Senate’s Democrat bill to block Trump’s tariffs altogether on Canada. Yet even if the House passed it, Trump is unlikely to sign it into law. But it’s the thought that counts because most Americans told many pollsters they opposed these enforced annexations. They seem to sense the bloody backlash and ruinous expense they will cause.

Now, with the national debt hovering at $36.22 trillion, how could the U.S. Treasury possibly pay rent for annexations? One source to tap is certainly foreign aid, too often used to bully or bribe recipient countries into supporting administration policies and strategies. Foreign aid’s latest disbursement totaled $71.9 billion . Out of it in 2024, distributions to be counted already as rent to potential annexed landlords are:

• $668,500 to Greenland

• $251,600 to Canada

• $74,700,000 to Mexico

• $10,300,000 to Panama

Another obvious source for rent money is the Pentagon, of course, which otherwise would have to enforce an occupation at far, far greater cost. Congress just voted it an allocation of $833 billion for FY 2025. And then there’s the State Department, awarded $18.47 billion. It perhaps could claw back the $2.22 billion “saved” when Trump approved the death of its USAID program (U.S. Agency for International Development).

Having enraged those countries with annexation plans, Trump would have to expect a hefty rental price from each. But the savings in blood, treasure, and reestablishing relationships would be well worth it.

The post Wouldn’t It Be Better, Cheaper Just to Rent Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and Panama? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

As Cheney put it after a speech at Duke University: “Those of us who believe in the defense of our democracy and the defense of our Constitution and the survival of our Republic have a duty in this election cycle to come together and to put those things above politics.”

But even more mind-blowing to us (and Democratic leaders) was that father Dick Cheney , president George W. Bush’s powerful, two-term vice president, supported her decision and also endorsed Harris. Trump, he said: “can never be trusted with power again.”

Moreover, the Cheneys’ endorsements say something far, far deeper about human relations in this fractious election crisis. It might lead to millions of men changing their minds about voting for a woman president—or any woman seeking public office. Smart and strong women have existed elsewhere in the world for centuries from Cleopatra and Golda Meir to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Or most men believing a vice presidency doesn’t qualify Harris for the White House, despite predecessors like Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. They, like Harris, were U.S. Senators and experienced on how the White House operates in handling foreign and domestic affairs great and small.

At the heart of male prejudice about strong and smart women’s competence for any political office seems to be the ancient cultural fear of being stripped of power by those perceived as inferiors.

Perhaps the only two times fear of such women dissipates and true equality begins is either at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or between proud fathers and those strong, smart daughters. For example, King Henry VIII and daughter Queen Elizabeth I and Pelosi’s father, Baltimore Mayor and House member Tommy D’Alesandro Jr., in wielding public power.  A true kinship of respect, political training, and love—and tough  decision-making—is the reality. It should overcome bias against women seeking public office.

Interestingly, Author Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s greatest authors (1804-1864) focused largely on this subject of foolish fears about strong and smart women.

Brought up in penury with two sisters by a young widowed mother, he knew economic and social chauvinism and trivialization of women firsthand, doled out by men of every class. He married an intellectual and emotional peer, and fathered two outspoken daughters. In college, he also appears to have studied the revolutionary ideas by Jean-Jacques Rousseau about equality at all levels.

Moreover, as the descendant of a harsh judge in the Salem witchcraft trials  of 1692-93, he probably would have agreed with author Virginia Woolf. She believed such women were hanged or set ablaze not for religious error, but because they threatened men’s desperate need to control other men, but, most of all, powerful and defiant women. Then, by labeling them witches. Today, it’s “bitches”.

To Hawthorne, such women were equal companions, not threats to men. He never viewed them as unimportant or as threatening Delilahs, but, rather, as men’s vital emotional, intellectual, and spiritual partners. As a writer, his mission seemed to be overcoming most men’s deep-rooted fears of the strong and smart. Yet to carry such a message in the literature of his day was a monumental undertaking.

He laid the fundamental cause at ending men’s monopoly on control and power. His novels and short stories were the first in this country to focus on the rigid second-class roles assigned women for life. Initially, he disguised this view in allegorical short stories. He finally threw that cloak aside with his 1844 masterpiece “Rappaccini’s Daughter” about the usual tragic result of male fears. The allegory was poison.

Rappaccini is a brilliant and famed botanist with an experimental garden of toxic plants tended by daughter Beatrice, now immune to their poisons and up for a university post in that field. She is spotted by Giovanni, an older student, from his boarding house balcony who is struck by her beauty as she feeds and waters the deadly garden. It becomes love at first sight for both. He enters the garden despite her warnings. Soon, however, he becomes frightened of losing domination expected of men over all women, powerful and brilliant though they be. Made immune to all the poisons, he accuses her of killing him. There may be no finer breakup line than Beatrice’s heartbroken:  “Was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?”

That allegoric lesson applies to most biased and fearful men when it comes to women and seeking public office. Put the case another way:

If they had daughters running for any position in the upcoming elections, wouldn’t they proudly tout them to friends, neighbors, work cohorts, and the cashier and line-mates at the supermarket? Maybe help finance their campaigns? Or put up yard or window signs and paste bumper stickers on their cars? Do phone banking? Canvass the neighborhood? And with any action, wouldn’t they insist their daughters were as capable for office as male opponents?

In other words, if fathers—and mothers,too—don’t fear powerful daughters, why fear smart, strong women candidates on November 5? They’re somebody’s daughters, too, and just as worthy of fair consideration as any male on the ballot.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Having then just departed from two years in Tulsa—he on the World, me, as a journalism professor—we were well aware of oil’s power and domination over Oklahoma, let alone the world. Because neither industries nor the military could last without oil—even before WWII—Allies and Axis nations then fought to seize and/or control the flow from Iran (650 billion barrels ) and pander for the rest from oil-rich Arab countries.

Today’s Department of Defense (DOD) requires at least an estimated annual 4.6 billion gallons of fuel  to cover its global military reach. Small wonder decades of Administrations and lawmakers have been unwilling, or downright frightened, to end the U.S. military’s dependence on the availability and prices of Mideast oil.

So from 2001 to at least 2019, wars in the Mideast and Asia have cost American taxpayers an estimated $6.4 trillion , not to mention millions of dead and wounded, environmental destruction, and millions from the Mideast seeking refuge in Europe. Not to count millions spent by the ferocious joint response of American oil producers and military contractors and their legendary use of election donations to influence both Congress and presidents. Add advertising “buys” to the mainstream-media—all vested interests as usual defending American (business) interests abroad.

Wars to Seize, Control Oil Supplies

The Pentagon’s insatiable fuel demands explain why the Bush Administration almost too quickly used 9/11 as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq. The real motive was more to “secure” its oil fields and production than to overthrow Saddam Hussain and destroy his nonexistent weapons-of-mass-destruction. It also explains why Iran—with its vast oil reserves—has been sanctioned as a U.S. enemy and is constantly under presidential and Pentagon threats ultimately to seize them as well.

As for Syria, the Pentagon has supported the Kurds’ separation of northern Syria to “help” protect its oil fields supposedly against possible reappearance of ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). That rationale has meant taxpayers unknowingly have spent millions to support 10 U.S. bases  (900 troops in Syria, 2,500 in Iraq ). They’ve only become aware of that factor because of recent rocket and drone attacks: 32 times in Iraq, 34 in Syria (70 casualties ) from anti-US militants allegedly supported by Iran.

The response seemingly has been a shocked “Why are our kids still there?”—and sitting ducks for local target practice. The official reason for U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria was the “enduring defeat” of ISIS . But that occurred five years ago. Those recent attacks resulted in three U.S. retaliatory air strikes  killing eight Iraqis, and an outraged Iraqi government (“…a clear violation of the coalition’s mission to combat [ISIS] on Iraqi soil”).

The bigger question now being raised, however, is whether the Administration and Pentagon even have a need for Mideast oil. This despite President Biden’s recent decision to permit $582 millions in weapon sales  to ingratiate this country once again to Saudi Arabia despite unneeded oil.

Or teaming earlier this month with Britain to use a blunderbuss against the Houthi “mosquito” guerillas attacking Red Sea shipping: Two massive retaliatory bombings by air and submarine of more than 28 mostly “militant” targets  along Yemen’s mountainous coast —and warnings of more to come  if the Houthis don’t stop. Never did the Biden Administration consider demanding shippers equip vessels with weapons and hiring “shot-gun” crews for protection. Nor are taxpayers likely to learn the raids’ cost from the Pentagon.

In today’s global uproar for a Gaza cease-fire, at least it’s now unlikely the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs or Biden will put American boots on the ground for Israel. They appear to be keeping their powder dry for the “pivot” to Asia, particularly China which will require massive shifts of personnel and war materiel from the Mideast. But quick exits from Vietnam and Afghanistan have demonstrated the Pentagon’s prowess in rapid-transfer logistics on short notice.

U.S. Is Now Top Global Producer of Oil and Natural Gas

The point is that the U.S. really is no longer dependent on Mideast oil. New drilling techniques such as fracking have made it possible to produce enough oil and gas domestically, as well as importing it abroad.

Millions of Americans probably are unaware that since 2014 the U.S. has become the world’s “top oil and natural gas liquids” producer  (2022: 19.1 million barrels per day).  It even leads Saudi Arabia and Russia.

To arrive at this point took Biden’s betrayal of millions of environmentally conscious voters of his March 2020 campaign promise  (“No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends.”). What followed has been his steady approval of 6,430 new permits  for oil/gas drilling on public lands. He also revealed that 9,000 permits  previously issued to companies have yet to be used.

Four key signals have been afoot for months that U.S. decision-makers are planning a Mideast exit after Israel has “cleared” Gaza of Palestinians. The Yemen bombings may be the last hurrah of U.S. meddling in the Mideast. Such an historic, earthshaking shift of policy and subsequent monumental move could be immediately ahead—possibly before the presidential election.

Another telling exit signal is new resistance by American taxpayers to the Armed Services budget (FY24: $841.1 billion ) and endless wars, just demonstrated by Congressional Republicans  opposed to Ukraine spending in FY2024 and/or the Pentagon’s never-ending budgetary increases. Or hiding expenses by its sixth audit failure . Among the expenses revealed by the Pentagon’s inspector-general’s report to Congress was failure to track more than $1 billion  of “highly sensitive and sophisticated equipment and weaponry” to Ukraine.

Too, the Yemen attack without the Constitutional requirement of notifying Congress first brought dozens of lawmakers to the Capitol steps to object, echoing Rep. Cori Bush’s online protest of: “The people do not want more of our taxpayer dollars going to endless wars and the killing of civilians. Stop the bombing and do better by us.”

The Pentagon seems impervious even to possible budget cuts from Congress, illustrated by its latest cliffhanging decision over its allocation and future supplemental appropriations. And with good reason. The House did pass the initial FY 2024 bill by a whisker (218-210 ), then, a reassured temporary resolution (395-95 ). The Senate soon followed (87-11 ). Even in the Yemen attack, Pentagon officials’ influence over Biden  is such that his knowing the nation’s overwhelming mood opposes any more Mideast wars, he failed to go immediately on TV to explain this massive action.

A third signal of a U.S. departure is Saudi Arabia’s replacement effort  by seeking new oil customers in Africa and Asia. No fools about the loss of a major customer, its visionary decision makers have been have been working on an Oil Demand Sustainability Program  to:

“…promote oil-based power generation, deploy petrol and diesel vehicles… work with a global auto manufacturer to make a cheap car, lobby against government subsidies for electric vehicles, and fast-track commercial supersonic air travel.”

Influential Media Calls for a Mideast Departure

A fourth indication of a U.S. pullout is that increasing recommendation by influential publications seemingly based on clues perceived from the Biden Administration and Pentagon.

For example, a November op-ed in Foreign Affairs  strongly suggests the Administration needs a course correction in the Mideast, a rapid withdrawal of the Armed Forces to let the locals handle their affairs.

Jason Brownlee , in the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft newsletter, claims the Administration’s “prolonged… deployment” in the Mideast has been “driven by policy inertia more than strategic necessity.” The White House: “should scrap, not reinforce, America’s outdated and unnecessarily provocative troop presence in Syria and Iraq.” His firsthand observations of Taliban rule since the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, he wrote, showed the country finally had “internal stability” because political violence “plummeted by 80%” in the first year.

Military expert William D. Hartung  added that fears of other great powers filling a withdrawal vacuum were “overblown.” That:

 A more restrained strategy would provide better defense per dollar spent while reducing the risk of being drawn into devastating and unnecessary wars. The outlines of such an approach should include taking a more realistic view of the military challenges posed by Russia and China; relying on allies to do more in defense of their own regions; [and]… paring back the U.S. overseas military presence, starting with a reduction in basing and troop levels in the Middle East.

In the face-off against the monumental challenge of an uninhabitable planet, TIME magazine’s Alejandro de la Garza  noted even two years ago that:

 …the military cannot maintain its globe spanning presence and become carbon neutral at the same time. A sustainable military will have to be smaller, with fewer bases, fewer troops to feed and clothe, and fewer ships and airplanes ferrying supplies to personnel from Guam to Germany.

Leaving the Mideast carries the benefit of loosening the rigid thinking Pentagon leaders fixed on plotting wars to secure Arab and Iranian oil. Shifting plans for the Pacific Rim—North Korea and China—just might transform the Armed Forces into being smaller, fewer, and better. Especially removing our troops as moving targets in Iraq and Syria when we no longer need its oil, nor Iran’s. Trading and diplomatic policies could then lead the way instead of expending any more blood and taxpayers’ treasure on that region of the world.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Houthis, Youtube screengrab from VOA.

When my husband and I were producing the pro-West Beirut (Lebanon) Daily Star, one of Yemen’s tyrannical kings was ruling from an elaborate barber’s chair. Its few exports were chiefly coffee, cotton, and hides, but also postage stamps for international collectors. One of its most infamous imports we interviewed was California’s outspoken and dramatic ex-patriot Bruce Conde Chalmers . He was a former U.S army intelligence specialist, an avid stamp collector and designer, who claimed royal Bourbon bloodlines, and then served as an advisor and soldier for the king.

He had just made Mideast headlines by tearing up his US passport on a charge of American “imperial exploitation” in the region. Yemen had “exported” him as a spy. A dozen other countries blocked him at airports except for Lebanon whose soft-hearted government let him live at the Beirut airport. Conde was stateless until the king relented, letting him return to his beloved Asir mountains rugged coastal chain (elevation: 2,000-12,000 ft. ) to live with the ferocious, puristic Shiite sect.

“Conde” had converted to Islam and was the first to tell us how that sect—today’s Houthis—fought royal corruption and repression on one hand and, on the other, the Saudis’ perpetual tries at border acquisitions. Indeed, the Houthis had been rebelling against royal impurities and the Saudis since the ninth century up to recently. The mountains were ideal for guerrilla training and hiding for their many military successes, enhanced in 1990 after a series of coups united north and south Yemen. They’re now said to control 80 percent of this feisty country.

We lost track of Conde who had moved to Spain for research and writing, then to Tangier, Morocco where he died in August 1992. He and hundreds of “Old Mideast hands” were right, of course, about the U.S imperialist alliances to control Mideast raw resources and covertly aid

’s eventual plan to eradicate Palestinians and/or drive them into the Sinai desert. Above all, he warned about ever tangling with Yemenis on the ground. We now know from the U.S.-aided Saudis that they are indestructible despite air attacks and coastal blockades on the Red Sea.

The U.S. allied with the Saudis because of its critical needs for oil and support for seizing Iraq’s vast reserves when it launched both Gulf and 9/11 wars. In quiet retaliation, Russia and Iran have since supplied the Houthis with drones, ballistic missiles, and helicopters to serve as “mosquito-coast” proxies against the U.S. and Israel. They knew those “gifts” to Yemen would also unnerve the Saudis, their acquisitive, bitter northern neighbor.

Attacks Resemble Somalis

The Houthis’ recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea is somewhat similar to the Somali pirates operating off Africa’s eastern waterways from 2005 to 2012 (212 boardings in 2011 alone). They suddenly stopped only to reappear last November and be caught after fleeing a targeted freighter. Somalis had received no such “gifts,” relying on personal weaponry (pistols, Kalashnikov rifles, light machine guns) and specialized only in ransom of ships and crews, not hijacking cargos or safe-passage bribes. The World Bank reported their take from 2005-12 was $400 million which cost the “world economy” an annual $18 billion.

By contrast, the Houthi mission has been political: to sink merchant ships traversing up the Red Sea and the Suez Canal carrying military materiél chiefly to Israel for its Gaza genocide of Palestinians. This maritime “inconvenience” is forcing shippers to spend two extra weeks, plus increasing significant fuel costs and insurance rates by having to sail around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and through Gibraltar to reach Mediterranean markets.

Both missions, however, are a derring-do resurrection of the 1785-1815 Barbary Pirate Wars along North Africa’s coast.

Now, piracy dares back to Phoenician trading days as a lucrative, if dangerous, profession, particularly after Columbus brought booty back to Spain from the New World. Thieves used small boats and their murderous crews to lay waiting just off southern Europe for subsequent ships with cargoes of stolen gold and other precious goods stripped from New World lands and people. These coastal highwaymen would come alongside a ship, board it, and greet the startled crew with: “daggers in each hand and a third in his mouth, which usually struck such terror in the foe that they cried out for quarter at once,” when Thomas Jefferson wrote about the Barbary brigands in 1786 as the ambassador to France.

Historically , the Barbary pirates were largely fierce Berber tribesmen joined by Turks drawn to adventure and profits, and Moslems driven from Spain. They were strung along the coasts of Spain and North Africa (today’s Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya). In collusion with Barbary State leaders, they controlled commercial traffic bound for Mediterranean ports by demanding annual “tribute” and “gifts” from shippers’ safe passage through Gibraltar to eastern port cities. Those refusing such extortion risked losing their ships, having sailors either ransomed (@ $1,200-2,920) or sold as slaves, often for pirate galleys.

Foreign businessmen shrugged off such extortion shrugged and factored it in as a business expense, along with paying for protection services by French, British or Portuguese navies . Not colonial America merchants, however, particularly after the Revolution when Britain barred such help. The French were caught up in their own revolution. Only the Portuguese navy remained, thanks to a friendly queen .

Jefferson Besieged by American Merchants

In Paris, Jefferson seemed to have taken the brunt of incensed American merchants’ complaints, increasing by the month. They apparently were not about to pay ship owners for cannons and rifles to protect the cargoes. Unless the pirates were wiped out, they argued, American commerce would be literally “dead in the water.”

He then tried in vain to enlist Italy, Portugal and “weaker naval powers” into a U.S. coalition to militarily wipe out the pirates and Barbary States. He fumed to friend James Monroe in Congress that American naval action sweeping the North African coast would put an end to the Barbary gangsters:

“ this will require a protecting force on the sea. Otherwise the smallest powers in Europe, every one which possesses a single ship of the line may dictate to us, and enforce their demands by captures on our commerce. Some naval force then is necessary if we mean to be commercial. Can we have a better occasion of beginning one?”

He also wrote John Adams, then ambassador to Britain, that he had four basic reasons for strongly suggesting to president Washington and Congress to resurrecting the Revolution’s navy to defend American business. They are still used today to justify U.S. wars and “temporary” occupations: justice, honor, global respect, and presidential power to coerce “delinquent members” of Congress into declaring wars.

However, the practical Adams initially opposed that action. “A war would cost ten times more than paying tribute,” he said . He also doubted whether taxpayers or Congress would approve starting a new navy just to protect businessmen’s profits in far-off lands.

Congress Takes Two Years to Resurrect the U.S. Navy

Adams’ Congressional colleagues agreed with him so tenaciously that it took two years of heated debates for spending over $45 million (in 2023 values) to build six 38-gun frigates and 10 galleys to resurrect the U.S. Navy largely on behalf of America’s businesses, as well as their financial backers, the shipbuilders and arms factories—and war lovers.

Undoubtedly, floor arguments initially opposed defending business interests: The new nation had just ended a nearly eight-year war with Britain at immense cost in blood and indebtedness and decommissioned its wartime navy. It had few tax dollars in the treasury so far to pay for a new navy—or army. And unpaid financiers and banks would balk at new loans for the government. True, French, British, and Portuguese kings and parliaments could order their navies to fight piracy, but in the U.S. only Congress had that power. Too, if businesses paid “shotguns” to protect goods in overland stagecoaches and wagons, let them pay their shippers for small arms, cannons, and gunners to drive off foreign hijackers.

The rebuttals involved the traditional pro-business views resting on growing the young nation’s economy: jobs, raw-material purchases by factories and stores, expansion of the country, national pride and respect abroad, and import-export trade of finished goods and agricultural products and livestock

In Jefferson’s day as well as Biden’s, enormous lobbying efforts and campaign donations by businesses and accompanying profiteers—banks and financiers, ship owners and builders, war lovers— obviously changed Congressional thinking. It was backed up by their public rallying cry of “Millions for Defense, Not one cent for Tribute” . And the Constitution’s approval in 1789 gave Congress power to punish pirates, declare war, to raise and support Armies, to provide and maintain a Navy, and regulate both.

So in the end, “business interests” won Congress’ vote for the Naval Act of 1794 (House: ; Senate: 30-0 ). President Washington signed it on March 27, authorizing a resurrected U.S. Navy and construction of those frigates and galleys.

By using 1805 as a reference year, total cost to taxpayers for waging the Barbary Wars from 1785-1815 has been estimated at $1 million ($27 billion in 2024). It covered passage protection, naval operations, and shipping disruptions.

Businesses Never Reimbursed Government and Taxpayers

Outside of lobbying and donation expenses, affected businesses apparently never reimbursed the government and taxpayers, something that Adams as president never demanded. He set the precedent for all future presidents.

The same result can be expected if Biden’s dealings with the Houthis’ shore-side batteries continue to follow Jefferson’s footsteps in dealing with the Barbary pirates: First, move in the “big sticks” (two carrier strike forces ) with an international coalition to increase strength and share costs under the business mantra of “freedom of navigation in the Red Sea region.”. Then, let the Marines lead the ground counterattacks in coastal Yemen’s mountains (presumably singing “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli”).

He’s already ordered Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on December 18 to announce the formation of another coalition-of-the-willing (interestingly called the Operation Prosperity Guardian ), claiming 10 nations have already joined to guarantee “security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden bolstering…prosperity.”

But, like Jefferson, that effort has begun to unravel immediately. Spain was miffed at not being consulted before inclusion and, instead, favored the European Union (EU) to run any anti-Houthi operation. French officials said its ships would remain under its command. Italy wants to act independently, and long-time ally Australia passed on membership.

Four days later, 31 American anti-war movements contacted Biden to “rule out” any military escalation in Yemen. Many Congressional Republicans want an end to military aid to the Russo-Ukrainian war, playing to Americans tired of blood-and-treasure wars lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. It’s shown today in the regular massive demonstrations against aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The group’s message to Biden pointed out:

“While these [Houthi] attacks are concerning, expanding the war into Yemen will not resolve them and instead may dramatically worsen the threats to commercial shipping both in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and other regional waterways….A full-blown open-ended regional war would be horrific and undoubtedly entail significant casualties to U.S. forces and civilian populations across the region…”

Knowing the demonstrations will only increase on this possible new invasion and bloodbath, Biden’s advisors might well follow John Adams’ view of never using a blunderbuss on a mosquito. Instead, let the destroyer gunners do target practice on Houthi attacks and munitions depots until, like the Somalians, they stop. Then, bill those businesses for services rendered.

The post Yemen’s Houthis Become Today’s Red Sea Version of the ‘Barbary Pirates’ appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Image by Roman Mager.

Aside from all the other challenges this country faces, we’re just been told a K-12 “math crisis” has erupted in U.S. public schools after the first two-year onslaught of the COVID pandemic. It’s left “average” students a half a year behind who have yet to catch up, according to a recent study by a coalition of eight major newsrooms (The Education Reporting Collaborative ).

Alarmed school officials around the country have already used millions in pandemic funds to put “math coaches” in their middle schools. Parents of the math gifted spent small fortunes either on math tutors or the rise of a significant cottage industry teaching math (“Group of 4-6, $40 per session; Private 1:1, $75” ), revealed on Google’s “math programs” website.

But you can bet such panic involves only math “smarties,” not most Americans who gave up generations ago on this subject when teachers blatantly wrote us off as “boneheads.” Most focused solely on the few whipsmart kids.

Americans have been warned almost every decade that when smarties’ scores drop, the nation’s future is at stake. When George Bush was president, the Math Now crash program was inaugurated to address poor teaching of K-to-college students. It was soon followed in 2006 by his Executive Order establishing a National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) to “strengthen” mathematics education. Two years later, they reported that “our national system for teaching math is broken and must be fixed if we are to maintain our [economic] competitive edge.”

Presumably, nothing much was done about their recommendations because a revised new bill in Congress (H.R. 1735) claims the nation will need at least a million math-smarties in the professions and trades able to:

“…use computational tools to do mathematical and statistical problem solving….Rapidly emerging fields, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing and quantum information, all rely on mathematical and statistical concepts, which are critical to prove under what circumstances an algorithm or experiment will work and when it will fail.”

Its key committee’s recent 36-0 OK for a floor vote will provide $10 million from 2024-28 to the National Science Foundation “to increase mathematics and statistical modeling education in elementary and secondary schools.” Meantime, Congress has hiked the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) budget to $1.38 billion.

All this financial aid comes just in time for school openings and the arrival of COVID’s second and more complex wave. It has already has closed schools in Kentucky and cancelled extra-curricular activities in Texas and Hawaii.

In other words, it’s the continuance of throwing millions of taxpayer dollars to the 1 percent of math elitists, somehow believing it will trickle down to the 99 percent of those considered boneheads.

At this point, the questions no one wants to ask is whether all that energy, attention, and taxpayer dollars is unfair to kids who are not math whizzes. Answer: You bet. Is it true that what is spent is never enough? Absolutely. Will the constantly changing of math teaching methods ever be spent on boneheads? Unfortunately, probably never unless boneheads begin teaching it in non-traditional ways. Interestingly, every new, mandated method devoted to struggling smarties arouses legions of traditionalist critics insisting math is being “dumbed down.”

As an Oregon State journalism professor I was continually shocked at the staggering flunk and “repeat” rates of liberal arts majors—including ours—required to take it for a degree. Wasn’t high school math sufficient? Too, if liberal- arts faculty had a 5 percent flunk rate, they could expect a communiqué from the dean to either improve teaching skills or else. The math faculty seemed exempt.

I had a spirited discussion with a young math instructor from another state university about those flunk rates and teaching skills. I asked about boneheads being a drag on any math teacher’s labors. “Yeah,” he conceded and sighed. When I pointed out that the speed factor from kindergarten to college seemed to kill interest and accuracy for most students, he looked at me as if I’d just arrived from planet Pluto. He’d never thought about that factor because math for him was easy, he admitted.

I said that I’d had math teachers whose teaching methods were like throwing kids in water and indifference to their struggle to survive. That too many taught at the speed of light. His gorge began to rise: “Look! I’m the lifeguard who pulls ‘em out of the water!” he grumbled.

“But why then do so many kids drown? Or come to hate and fear swimming?” I said.

His voice and exasperation rose. “Kids learn best out of frustration!”

“That’s not been their experience,” I said, remembering a Marine veteran I was advising who would have to take College Algebra for the fifth time. He burst into tears: “They say I’m not trying.”

The instructor snapped “But math is supposed to be hard!”

“Why?”

“Because something that’s easy isn’t worth much!”

Furthermore, he declared, math’s difficulties and complexities gave students a dose of reality. Kids needed to learn that survival is hard. Competitive. His eyes narrowed. The jaw tightened. Only the fittest deserved to survive in the rarified air he’d all but killed himself to breathe over the years.

I then sprung my key public-university question: vested interest and moneymaking courses. Weren’t repeaters financial “rainmakers” for the university (at $800 per term ) and state payments ($5,580 per 15 students = one full-time equivalent) for departments? That five sections of 30 students earned departments $44,800 each quarter term? We both knew some public universities had sections of 250 students, but not that departments were earning today’s national average FTE of $8,859 .

End of conversation. He strode away.

At an OSU faculty luncheon not long after, a professor of teaching grade-school arithmetic listened to my woeful tales of flunkouts. She smirked: “Well!! If they can’t pass College Algebra, they don’t belong in college.” I said most math and science majors in my classes could barely write, so they probably didn’t belong in college either.

“It’s not the same thing!” she snapped, reinforcing the intellectual elitism of math.

All the evidence does lead to the inescapable conclusion of a sacrosanct intellectual class system, supported through the ages by outspoken, militant, and biased math faculties and practitioners. Why else would they privately label those who insist they “can’t do math” with pejoratives such as “boneheads,” “turkeys,” “deadwood,” and “dummies.”

Worse, too many “boneheads” have willingly accepted that verdict for the rest of their lives without ever challenging how the subject is taught. Or that most math teachers excelled in the subject and still cannot abide “the slow.” We “boneheads” may even buy into the popular idea that we’re part of the right-brain demography of the creative and intuitive instead of possessing the left-brainer’s skills in analysis, verbal expression, and methodical thinking.

Yet we now know that all brains have those two halves, and that neither dominates, thanks to the 1970s research of the Nobel prize winner psychobiologist Roger W. Sperry . A 2013 test of his conclusions by a neuroscientist team proved him right. They used magnetic resonance imaging on 1,000 people and found that the two halves of the brain work together. As Healthline’s Ann Pietrangelo explained the phenomenon:

“Bundles of nerve fibers tie the two hemispheres together, creating an information highway. Although the two sides function differently, they work together and complement each other. You don’t use only one side of your brain at a time.” Consequently, for a “right-brainer” to cross into the left-brain takes a few minutes and vice-versa for “left-brainers” forced to use the right.

Meantime, Sperry’s research was followed by experiments at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Neuroscientist Earl Miller’s team expanded the left/right-brain phenomenon in attention-deficit disorders into front-brain, back-brain differences. Most important for most of us boneheads, he found survival reflexes (e.g., distractions)—were primary. They’re located in the back of the brain (the parietal cortex). Concentration comes from the front (prefrontal cortex). His tests on primates found:

“The electrical activity in these two areas began vibrating in synchrony as they signaled each other. But it was at different frequencies, almost like being at different spots on the radio dial. Sustaining concentration involved lower-frequency neuron activity. Distraction occurred at higher frequencies….Reflexive attention is a more primitive survival tool, while concentration is more advanced.”

So the more threatened we feel, the higher the electrical frequency waves of “fear-or-flight” sent by the parietal cortex. The frontal cortex shorts out from overload. That explains why kids born into surroundings and situations they perceived as threatening—dysfunctional home, dangerous neighborhood, hostile schoolmates and teachers, etc.— constantly protect themselves. How can they possibly concentrate on mathematics? And the more they fail, the more they continue to fail.

I can now personally attest that little has changed in most teachers’ attitudes toward boneheads.

Sensing a book defending them and waiving College Algebra for liberal arts majors to get degrees, I decided to audit that killer course at a community college (CC) to see what was going on. I soon learned CCs were the route taken by thousands to fulfill that college requirement (“It’s easier.” “It has better teachers.”). Some high schoolers take it before entering a four-year college or university. They’ve been advised not to “waste time, energy, and money” “cluttering up” their degree programs.

So off I went to register for Fall-quarter College Algebra at nearby River City Community College (the name has been changed).

I didn’t expect a placement test for College Algebra. It had four prerequisite courses—(none for graduation credit): Math 20, Math 30, Math 50, and Math 95. It was the same at state public universities, the clerk consoled me. Obviously, not only were these extra classes moneymakers, but designed to weed out the first-timer “deadwood” from College Algebra. Moreover, if students failed any of these four prereqs, they would have to repeat them.

Because it was years since I’d passed Algebra I in high school, I tested into Math 30. If I passed, it would be Math 50. If I passed that, I’d take Math 95, and College Algebra in subsequent quarters at Enormous State University.

In retrospect, the five courses indicated nothing had basically changed in math teaching or the prevalent indifference toward boneheads. The main failings to me of their instruction were: 1) speed in lectures and tests; 2) impatience, contempt, and ridicule of us plodders; 3) group work; 4) retention of material, and 5) textbooks largely written by math smarties for math smarties, never for boneheads—or women.

Speed still seems to be the chief obstacle for most from first-grade arithmetic to College Algebra. The teachers’ excuse was always having to stay on schedule with the units (“We have to move on”) even if many students fell by the wayside.

I’m convinced both “numbers alienation” and speed begin when a first-grade teacher like our Miss Johnson (not her real name) put the numbers “2 and 2” on the board, attached an addition sign at the left, and asked us to find the total with our “thinking caps” (our minds). Six-year-old Martin instantly announced the answer was “4.” If Miss Johnson had given the rest of us time, of course, we would have calculated the same number.

Quiet jealously followed when she rewarded him with a dazzling smile and compliment (“Wonderful, Martin!”). From then on, her principal focus was on Martin and two other speed demons always first with the answers and at the blackboard. Instead of a teacher going slowly and thoroughly so all students could build solid foundations on processes, the swift seemed preferred over us slowpokes. So a lot of us gave up through the grades.

Speed

Breakneck speed was the teaching pace in all five classes I took. In College Algebra, “Speed-Queen Kate” informed us in the first lecture that: “We’re going to go very fast. If you can’t keep up, consider retaking Math 50 or 95.” That attitude prevailed by too many tutors in math labs. Most plodders could do just as well if the meter wasn’t running. I recently learned that college officials have advised faculty to give Iraq/Afghanistan veterans extra time on exams. I doubt it will ever be granted to boneheads.

In professions where math is essential, speed is rarely a priority—unless it’s a medical emergency. Who would dare say: “Two-minute warning!” to a surgeon doing a delicate operation or pharmacists compounding prescriptions? Or a navigator calculating coordinates for a bomb run? An Internal Revenue Service clerk examining our taxes?

Ridicule

The second obstacle to math mastery is teacher ridicule, that soul-scaring, cruel weapon too often liberally wielded against those regarded as total and unreachable ignoramuses at every level of public education. Even kindergartners recognize the body language: A sigh of impatience. The smirk. The rolling or narrowing of eyes. Throwing up both arms in exasperation. Ignoring raised hands from those regarded as dumbbells.

I first encountered ridicule when Miss Johnson caught me using my fingers to count. Never mind that other cultures use an abacus, stones or twigs. My soul froze as she raised my offending pinkies and loudly announced that “some little girl isn’t using her thinking cap to solve the problem.” As Miller’s team deduced, my thinking cap was full of joys, woes, a dysfunctional family, and, from then on, Miss Johnson.

Public humiliation in our formative years usually shuts down learning to thousands, including those at neighboring desks. Many victims cry, slam a desk, or refuse to calculate anything. However, rebels like me soon recognized that though Teacher holds the power of the grade and passing, it’s only a temporary arrangement.

In Math 30, the no-nonsense, 30-40somethings working two jobs were not averse to issuing loud responses (“Didn’t you say there was no such thing as a dumb question?”). Or marching into administrative offices to voice them. They knew at CCs, the cash customers were almost always right.

Perhaps the worst instance of mass ridicule and contempt for student effort was our Math 50 instructor. One day he breezed in late, heaved four weeks of corrected homework on a side table under the blackboard. Then chalked a note above it saying “the school doesn’t pay me enough” to return our work on time. The five percent grade for homework—I and other boneheads often used six hours daily— indicated his disdain was universal for many teaching the prereqs.

Few other departments would permit such a deed, perhaps because of possible legal repercussions from appalled and litigious students. But by term’s end, nobody cared enough to confront him. Or spend energy and time complaining to the Dean about his cavalier attitude toward hardworking, cash customers.

Group Learning

Group work goes back to the nation’s founding with the Little Red Schoolhouse technique of older kids ordered to help younger ones. For at least 200 years, that system has been used successfully in dozens of other fields: political science, history, literature, the sciences, music, theater, and the like. It deepens and retains subject mastery, teaches teamwork and respect, and cultivates fellowship. One of my journalism teams had a group photo made after the class ended. Many made longtime friendships beyond graduation.

I was to learn there are good reason why groups don’t work in math. It’s a highly competitive, individualized, specialized subject unsuited for the Little Red Schoolhouse dynamic. Nevertheless, the current push for groups in math started in the late 1980s. Math educators and textbook publishers are now promoting it heavily.

My suspicion is that college and university department heads only decided to try group learning was to retain and relieve overwhelmed faculty and graduate assistants. They are forced to teach the proliferating sections of College Algebra and its prereqs because of that 100-level math graduation requirement. It permits an instructor of, say, 30 students to divide them into five-person groups. Instead of having to grade 30 assignments, it’s only six.

As expected, the system is getting mixed reviews. One study found the system doesn’t work unless the instructor matches skills by group. That breeds intellectual classism, of course. Boneheads get less respect, interest and attention from teachers lavishing it once again on the smarties. Moreover, what student wants the shame of being revealed to classmates as a bonehead by being grouped with other boneheads?

Most of those group researchers and supporters obviously have never been in a math group pulled together randomly.

Our Math 95 teacher grouped us in fives by “chair proximity.” A-students to recidivists. Forget the Little Red School communal spirit. We were not to move from one question to the next in our collective assignment until everyone “understood” each process. We were also admonished to be “respectful” of classmates’ collective contributions to those dozen questions.

Our group’s nemesis was Clarissa, a straight-A isolate furious at having to share her prowess with dimmer lights. We would lower her grade—especially any loafer riding her coat-tails—by sharing her A’s. It was unfair! We did have Jack the Loafer, but the rest of us kept up with her until Al and Mary disagreed with her calculations on one question—and were right. She was affronted enough to rework it twice—and seethe.

On the toughest question, Clarissa sped through it. We asked for a repeat (“slower, please”). She lost it. We got the deep sigh. The eye roll. The fists poised to pound the desk. “I’m NOT repeating it! If you guys didn’t get it the first time, tough toenails!” she barked. That brought the instructor running and my warning shot to him: “You stay out of this!” Clarissa jammed her things into a bookbag and stormed out. We four quietly finished the assignment (our loafer recording the results) and handed it in. We got a B on it, but no fellowship. No more group work was assigned afterward. I’m still convinced our experience is nationwide.

Retention

As for math retention, those who will never use the equation’s “slopes” or other processes again, usually relegate it to the brain’s black hole immediately after tests. Math has to be relevant or in regular use for mastery. True, those with natural photographic memories do have an edge. But several online lessons teach how to develop one. Sadly, retention lasts only until aging or trauma shrivels memory from white-matter disease or brain atrophy.

Too, much time spent away from math—summer vacation, term breaks, or a pandemic—needs resurrection by us non-math types when classes resume. It’s why hours of daily homework are vital.

Biased Textbooks

Some students in my classes were aided by textbook authors and illustrators seemingly catering to smarties chiefly because math reviewers govern publishers’ decisions. The plethora of colorful photos, cartoons, and sidebar “helps” were a sop to the “math challenged” to convince most of us that math was fun and exciting. That’s probably why the online CliffNotes presentations of processes must have millions of hits (including mine). Also, because clothing, hairstyles, and cars quickly date those images, it enables publishers to regularly issue new editions, yet another major expense ($34-$227 ) for repeaters.

Perhaps because men have always outnumbered women in math classes, authors still seem to assume neither boys nor men want to solve word problems involving girls and women. Our textbooks were still male-oriented: soccer-field dimensions, racecar rates, chemical mixtures, rockets, airlines, etc. One problem estimated weights and heights—of men. They never used cooking, wallpaper estimates, children’s needs, yard-good measurements, vacation costs, or mortality rates of men.

These unending “math crises”—especially in higher education—will be insoluble (and insufferable) until its officials waive the 100-level degree requirement for math by those unlikely to ever use its contents. But considering that course’s earning power and intellectual prestige, not even a mass demonstration at Homecoming against it—by thousands of math boneheads, parents, and bitter alumni—is liable to succeed. Perhaps only when pigs begin to fly.

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Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

President Biden is said to be in deep trouble with the youth and environmentalist voting bloc over breaking his 2020 campaign promise of “no more drilling on federal lands, period! Period, period, period!!” and failure to stop the completion of a natural-gas pipeline. Tens of thousands of them aim to end fossil fuels’ major and fatal role in global climate change caused chiefly by carbon dioxide emissions into Earth’s atmosphere.

Their outcries and unending opposition to Big Oil’s fossil-fuel operations have recently focused on two targets.

First is the approval in mid-March of drilling permits to ConocoPhillips on the Willow Project’s Indiana-size section of the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. Previous presidents approved Conoco’s leases since the 1990s. If ever developed, emission projections are for 9.2 million metric tons of annual carbon emissions.

The second perceived betrayal has been his agreement with House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy for permits to complete the $6.6 billion natural gas Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in West Virginia and Virginia. Despite their environmental nature, the permits have been artfully slipped into the critical debt-ceiling limit bill awaiting Biden’s signature to prevent the nation’s first default and inability to pay its bills. The completion of MVP would release 89 million metric tons of carbon, equal to emissions from 26 coal plants or 19 million cars.

However, all is not necessarily inevitable.

An official at Oil Change International (OCI) indicates Biden could redeem those projected losses, mostly by emphasizing his past and present positive environmental record of the last two years in the next 17 months to Election Day. OCI’s U.S. co-manager Allie Rosenbluth pointed out that:

President Biden must enforce a clean debt ceiling package that does not allow for any rollbacks to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other bedrock environmental laws. While his recent climate track record has been nothing short of disastrous, it is not too late for him to turn it around and hold true to his environmental justice campaign promises.

In fairness, his environmental credentials have been outstanding compared to his predecessors. But they are largely unknown or forgotten today by most voters. He and his aides and climate staff have amassed an undeniable climate record in the last two years.

It started in the final 2020 presidential debate, when Biden risked losing donors and major retaliation from the gas/oil industry by correctly predicting it would be eventually replaced by renewable energy. Moreover, if elected, he would “stop giving it federal subsidies ($20 billion annually ).” At least 45 House Democrats agreed as cosponsors of Oregon’s Earl Blumenauer’s supportive bill “End Oil and Gas Tax Subsidies Act of 2021 .” Filed on March 26, it was assigned that same day to the Ways and Means committee and never got to a floor vote. That may well change shortly with public awareness their taxes are subsidizing the industry charging them nearly $6 at the pump.

The first day in office, Biden authorized rejoining the Paris Agreement Treaty. A week later, he issued Executive Order 14008 setting up the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy. It would partner with his advising and policymaking Council on Environmental Quality, and use a National Climate Task Force for action to ensure every federal agency “prioritize acting on climate change.”

He then announced a goal of 50 percent of new cars and light trucks be “zero-emission vehicles” by 2030, and, later, 100 percent of medium and heavy-duty trucks by 2040. By April, when Republicans in Congress succeeded in passing a bill to end EPA protections of the Clean Water Act, Biden vetoed it.

Internationally, he joined 100 other leaders in September to sign U.S. participation in the Global Methane Pledge to reduce the world’s methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.

Last June, it was his Defense Production Act for a two-year tariff freeze on imported solar panels and heat pumps for homes, factories, and farms. Then, though Biden’s $2 trillion ambitious Build Back Better bill of September 2021 stalled in Congress ($555 billion for climate), it was revised as the Inflation Reduction Act and passed last August providing a historic $391 billion for clean energy and climate projects. By October, he was giving $2.8 billion to 20 battery companies agreeing to hiring practices of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

This year, Biden’s implemented other actions following his State of the Union blast in January at Big Oil’s stratospheric profits for 2022 (“outrageous”): Exxon : $56 billion; Shell: $42.3 billion; TotalEnergy: $36.2 billion; ConocoPhillips: $18.7 billion, etc.

With a FY2023 budget allocation of $44.9 billion for climate, he added the Justice40 Initiative a few weeks ago to revitalize President Clinton’s 1994 Executive Order (No. 12898) : environmental justice for minority and low-income people. Biden’s mandated goal is to deliver 40 percent of the federal government’s benefits — “clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, clean water, and other investments” —to low-income and minority communities suffering pollution. Nineteen federal agencies are involved in the initiative’s 470 programs. Not long after this, he announced a regulation requiring most fossil-fuel power companies to prepare for cutting 90 percent of gas emissions between 2035 and 2040.

Yet most of these actions are unknown to voters either ignoring or denying global-warming. They are highly unlikely to rise by the millions, like Vietnam war protesters, to demand half of the Pentagon’s allocations be spent on a “climate-protection war.” For them, it seems as if doing battle against an overwhelming foe either causes “inaction guilt,” “climate anxiety ” or is viewed as a lost cause. Or, shockingly, that the subject is boring.

Like it or not, it probably won’t be long before Biden and his climate teams shift attention to those behind the wheel pumping untold millions of carbon and other elements into the atmosphere. Gas and oil rationing will be an outrageous awakening to the climate war, particularly to diehard deniers. The right to drive is so deeply embedded in our culture that any impingement is akin to actions against the right to bear arms. Yet major rationing programs have been mandated twice in the late 1900s because of wars in Europe and the Mideast.

During World War II, rationing covered basic necessities of gas, food, and clothing. Millions were super-patriotic, but infuriated by ration books and stamps, the weekly four-gallon gas limit, and a maximum speed of 35. Most were well aware the rationing system was rife with cheating, bribery, extortion, the black market, but also with bureaucratic missteps at local, state, and federal levels.

Rationing returned in 1973-74 when the Mideast’s oil cartel (OPEC) —incensed about U.S. support of Israel against Egypt’s effort to recover its lost territory—set off a near year-long embargo of oil sales to this country. Because of the WWII disastrous experience, federal designers vowed to make rationing simpler, fairer—and far less costly in paper supplies.

Pump sales were by even and odd days based on the last digit of license-plate numbers. Yet it led to public fury about wasting gas in hunting stations flying green flags for gas, red for none, and refusal to answer their phones. Worse, it meant miles-long lines at stations, hours-long waits, and mayhem, according to the Smithsonian Magazine (“Fights broke out, and some station owners began carrying guns for self-protection”).

But based on Biden’s words and deeds and the increasing numbers of activists and their highly creative visibility, it’s obvious that a drastic decrease of motorists’ carbon emissions is ahead. Why else would EPA be busy calculating carbon emissions from gas-powered vehicles? It reported the typical passenger car and light pickup emitted not only 4.6 metric tons of carbon per year, but also methane (CH₄)and nitrous oxide (N₂O) from the tailpipe and hydrofluorocarbon emissions from leaking air conditioners. Both have higher global-warming numbers than carbon dioxide.

So Biden Administration’s climate-staffers have to be desperately seeking far better ways than old-fashioned overt rationing to cut our gas use and abuse.

For instance, why not consider a voluntary plan that for once actually uses a positive, yet practical, approach to bargain-hunters? Like offering a $1 per gallon deal for a weekly maximum of 10 gallons per vehicle. For a $10 annual membership fee, participants would receive a federal credit card designating them, say, to be a “Gold-Star Driver” or “Planet Protector.” The card could be used at any gas station whose home company receives governmental subsidies or tax breaks.

Profits lost at the pump by members would be reimbursed monthly to oil companies by the government. Its federal Task Force would monitor receipts submitted by gas stations for payouts of the difference between $1 and regular prices. Monitors would also detect violators of the weekly ration per vehicle by card number, license plate, purchase, and gallonage. Penalties? Cancellation of card, and a suggested $10,000 fine and three years in federal prison.

An Arco shift manager in Portland OR, Aaron Belanger, endorsed such a program, adding: “Make sure customers also have to show their driver’s licenses and insurance cards.” That would stop members from registering multiple cards with different names.

Reimbursements would be covered by the membership fee, but also a combination of those federal subsidies, a portion of the company’s tax breaks—and perhaps a Biden Executive Order for a percentage of its excess profits for the previous year. If 30 percent of the nation’s 243.4 million licensed drivers enroll, the government would earn an annual $730.2 membership fees; at 50 percent, $1.2 million.

The plan’s advantages are obvious and numerous.

For the environment:

+ decreasing carbon emissions

+ increasing motorists’ awareness of global warming

+ increasing volunteers to fight global warming

For the $1 member:

+ helping to fight global warming

+ decreasing in gas price ($1 per gallon)

+ decreasing maintenance needs and costs (oil changes, etc)

+ decreasing wear on tires

+ decreasing mileage by ganging errands and car pooling

+ decreasing wear on roads and highways

For the gas station:

+ increasing customers

+ ease in making change

+ decreasing bookkeeping, reports to company

+ Ends providing free coffee

For the gas/oil industry:

+ increasing customers

+ increasing profits by volume sales

+ federal reimbursements from the $1 “loss-leader”

+ federal monitoring eases bookkeeping, identifying and punishing violators

The $1 plan is scarcely the only one available, of course, to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Other cheaper and emission-free power sources are rapidly phasing out fossil-fuels, as Biden predicted. The auto industry’s major shift to electrical vehicles —320,00 sold in the US first quarter of 2023— and the “shattering growth ” of solar/wind power use, according to the International Energy Agency, are overtaking coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy.

A year ago, Biden favored doing a national climate emergency proclamation to deal with the increasing climate disasters in this country. He’s been faulted for not using it thus far. But a far more effective measure would be to issue an Executive Order declaring permits for both the Willow project and West Virginia’s Mountain Valley pipeline need further environmental reviews under the new Justice40 Initiative. That could take a few years.

In the meantime, Biden, his aides and climate teams are on the front lines, no matter what heavy artillery the industry and his opponents use in the 2024 election season. He and his staff do hear many environmentalists’ denunciations of “betrayal,” or cries for speedups on fighting climate change—but also an awakening public’s realization that “the planet is on fire!”

If a successful, non-violent movement requires only 3.5 of a country’s population (U.S. over 18: 9.1 million), maybe $1 gas would convince them to help put it out.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

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If Norfolk Southern (NS) railroad officials were smart about damage-control costs for their East Palestine chemical derailment in Ohio, their paramount priority should be immediate offers to buyout all affected houses at assessment value in a 25-mile radius of that February 3 freight train wreck.

So far only one NS buyout offer is known—but refused.

As each day goes by, so does the increasing health devastation from air, soil, and groundwater to the area’s furious residents. With soil, air, and water testing, and remediation—“people” concerns—given far less priority than profits, forced change may be closer than NS can imagine.

So company officials would be wise to finally practice what those from Occidental Chemical Corporation did to mitigate that world-famous, near-comparable, ruinously expensive, historic environmental disaster (1942-1995) at Love Canal in upstate New York . And it is still very much alive.

Love Canal, in fact, was to become the origin of the federal government’s Superfund act in 1980 addressing abandoned environmental waste dumps. Cost reimbursements by Occidental to New York and U.S taxpayers largely had to be made—under strict enforcement by the Department of Justice prosecutors and to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency).

From 1942 to 1952, Occidental subsidiary Hooker Electrochemical Company had offloaded and buried in clay thousands of drums containing nearly 22,000 tons of its toxic waste: 248 chemicals. Some were cancer-causing. Others were genetically damaging. Among them were dioxin, halogenated organics, pesticides, PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl “forever” substances), and chlorobenzene.

Occidental sold the canal property in 1953 for one dollar to the Niagara School Board and with core drilling showed board members chemical waste at the four-foot level. It also vainly battled for the land to be used in perpetuity as a park or for surface use only, certainly not a housing development, schools, and buildings. Moreover, its protective deed specifically warned about those buried chemicals in future sales:

“No claim, suit, action or demand of any nature whatsoever shall ever be made of the grantee, its successors or assigns, for injury to a person or persons, including death resulting therefrom, or loss of or damage to property caused by, in connection with or by reason of the presence of said industrial wastes.”

By the 1970s, the drums were leaking. Contents were migrating to surrounding soil and waterways, thanks to an “improperly installed” sewer system built by New York state in 1969. In 1972, the first complaints began about chemical odors. By 1977 it was watery-substance seepage into basements, backyards and onto a school’s playground.

Seepage had become a recognized and official health issue by May 1980. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) announced residents’ blood tests “showed chromosome damage [and]….they were at increased risk of cancer, reproductive problems, and genetic damage.” Immediate action by Occidental and EPA—as at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine— recommended evacuation of 950 families and the company’s next decision to buy nearly a thousand contaminated homes.

Occidental next asked state and federal governments for loans of taxpayer revenues to cover buyouts, ongoing inspections and remediation of air, groundwater, and contaminated soil—and, finally, fencing the 70-acre site. Five-year EPA inspections and “fixes” are still required.

Buyouts began in August 1978. The first 240 houses cost New York taxpayers $10 million (today’s value: $45,900,000) with reimbursements pending. The first 226 houses were demolished in 1982 with the remainder destroyed or refurbished by 2004 for development of Black Creek Village, another subdivision.

Occidental’s next major expense was $20 million dollars (today’s value: $60 million ) from a December 1983 class-action, a health-related lawsuit by 1,328 residents. But the bottom-line loss of $129,000,000 (today’s value: $381,840,000 ) came in late December 1995 in an out-of-court settlement to the Justice Department for the government’s cleanup costs. Though other lawsuits may still be pending, total cost to Occidental over 21 years has been $400 million (today’s value: $632,000,000).

So, unlike Norfolk Southern officials, Occidental leaders placed attention to people’s needs first, ahead of public image and testing and remediation of air, groundwater, and soil. They knew failure to settle up with the affected could become a national black-eye for the.

That infamous environmental case is a significant departure from how Norfolk Southern (NS) railroad has been handling its February 3 disaster in East Palestine and environs. It characterizes the industry’s nearly two centuries of contempt for people and businesses on trackage right-of-ways.

Judging from its current actions, NS officials seem to be using the railroad industry’s ancient playbook on causing wrecks: ignore victims, deny responsibility, stall for years on everything from damaged buildings and house buyouts and investigations to adequate remediation of the surrounding environment. Not to mention countersuing claimants, knowing it will cost a fortune, take a decade at least for a verdict—which if against railroads—can be appealed.

Besides, the current federal fine for a single safety violation has been only $225,455. The law, instead, should simply stipulate “covering all governments’ costs.”

The East Palestine disaster case is generally familiar to readers following initial media coverage, but not necessarily its crucial particulars of the last few weeks.

The event started about 9 p.m. on February 3 , when a NS freight train of 150 cars was heading through Ohio to Conway PA. Videos began showing a wheel on fire —attributed to an overheated wheel bearing —as it moved toward the Pennsylvania state line.

Suddenly, over 50 cars derailed at East Palestine, Ohio (pop.: 4,917 ). Twelve by then were on fire. That threatened 10 tanker cars carrying toxic chemicals and combustible materials (ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether). Five contained vinyl chloride gas which, if ignited, would explode and release cancer-causing dioxide.

Fires on the cars were so intense, they were beyond firefighters’ immediate response, but not NS and federal regulators. NS sent in a 30-person team to clear tracks for other trains , customary in wrecks. Meanwhile, chemicals from overturned tankers had begun leaking into nearby waterways, groundwater, storm drains, and air.

By morning, officialdom —Ohio Gov. Mike DeVine, EPA teams (Environmental Protection Agency), NS agents, and East Palestine’s sheriff and fire chief— huddled onsite to fret about the next action: setting those five cars of vinyl chloride gas on fire to prevent an explosion. Seemingly, only then did most think about the consequences to the people of East Palestine and environs.

Perhaps one of those decision-makers did remember the eerily similar circumstances in 2013 when an unattended runaway train carrying crude oil jumped the tracks causing the fire destroying the Quebec village of Lac-Megantic and killing 47. The BBC reported that all buildings and houses had to be razed and that “millions of litres of oil seeped into the soil and the nearby Chaudiere river.”

So the official “dump-and-ignite” date was made for February 6 by DeWine and the town’s fire chief. But at least rushing to issue an evacuation order February 4 and 5 alerting, they claimed, all in the one-by-two mile radius of the wreck. An estimated 5,000 fled.

One inducement was FEMA’s (Federal Emergency Management Agency) hand-delivered notice that NS would pay a million dollars for householders’ “temporary lodging, food, clothing, and other necessities” for six weeks if their houses needed decontaminating.

And an NS spokesman announced in mid-February that the company would be giving another payment for a “Community Giving Fund” to be managed by an East Palestine committee. He added that the Red Cross had been given $25,000 to set up immediate relief to residents.

Such payments were a pittance of NS’s $3.7 billion profit in 2022 and would be covered either by insurance or out of taxpayer revenues as a business writeoff for 2023.

The EPA “ordered  Norfolk Southern to identify and clean up contaminated soil and water, reimburse it for cleaning homes and businesses and attend public meetings and take other measures. If the company failed to complete those actions, the agency would ‘seek to compel Norfolk Southern to pay triple the cost’ of the work.”

NS then made the mistake of boasting about its responsible stance to an estimated 1,500 households for, say, $5,000 each to its small portion of evacuees. Those beyond that two-mile line would get nothing, they learned, setting off outrage from thousands.

These were the first of NS’ monumental series of mistakes starting just before the main event of February 6 when 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride from those five cars was poured into a trench and ignited. The explosion, the fire and its now-famous black cloud of 1.1 million pounds of dioxide fell over thousands of miles—including Pittsburgh to the north—and burned for days . It contaminated air, groundwater, and soil, including farm acreage for commercial crops and, thus, us consumers. Levels of dioxide in the soil at the wreck site itself later proved to be hundreds of times higher than federal cancer-risk thresholds.

Ohio’s Natural Resources Department reported finding 3,500 dead fish in area waterways, including the Ohio river, estimating the kill starting two days after the “controlled burn.” Pet owners in surrounding regions reported significant suffering and deaths.

Meantime, NS told EPA it would take care of testing houses and buildings for toxic residue. Perhaps EPA itself didn’t realize the railroad hired one of the legal defenders of the tobacco industry. CTEH (Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health) As the joint investigative team of ProPublica and The Guardian told readers about that company’s history:

“CTEH quickly became a go-to contractor for corporations responsible for industrial disasters. Its bread and butter is train crashes and derailments. The company has been accused repeatedly of downplaying health risks.

In since-deleted marketing on its website, CTEH once explained how the data it gathers about toxic chemicals can be used later to shield its clients from liability in cases brought by people who say they were harmed.”

For East Palestine householders, the team reported CTEH designed limited indoor tests. As to testing during the evacuation, though accompanied by EPA staffers, the CTEH teams swiftly visited houses using limited equipment. So they were unable to provide a complete study of the explosion’s many chemicals before pronouncing a house “clean” and speeding off to the next house.

Such “testing” enabled the fire chief on February 8 to lift the evacuation order because NS said the air and water testing showed houses and buildings were safe. Governor DeWine added that air quality samples were below “levels of concern.”

These lies were exposed when evacuees flocked back to their homes and instantly detected contamination by smell, touch, inhaling, and drinking tap water. CNN reported:

“The most common symptom among the nearly 170 people observed by a doctor was headache – 74% of the respondents. Sixty-four percent of respondents reported anxiety, 61% reported coughing, 58% reported fatigue/tiredness and 52% reported irritation/pain/burning of the skin.” Yet NS kept insisting air and drinking water were safe while claiming it had created a long-term medical compensation fund.

Still insisting tap water was safe, DeWine had East Palestine’s mayor, fire and police chief and others visit two households by February 17 to drink tap water and agree with him. He further vouched for EPA’s early tests and the agency’s continued collecting and testing water. Considering the spike in bottled water in the area, most residents were unconvinced.

Things for NS went downhill after that, especially for chief executive officer Alan Shaw and subordinates concerned about company costs, its image, their salaries, and investors. Stocks have dropped steadily from a 52-week high of $291.55 per share to $206 by mid-March.

Angry area residents invited NS executives to a town meeting on February 15 for answers from their $55 billion company about its physical and financial responsibilities to the area. Shaw signed off on the company statement refusing officers’ participation ostensibly because of concerns about their physical safety.

Though he then met privately with East Palestine officials, he was careful not to face East Palestinians at town meetings. Two weeks later he relented and sent an official to a raucous public meeting of frustrated and jeering residents (“Don’t lie to us!”) and walkouts. His man apologized profusely for the wreck, dodged questions about house payoffs, and pleaded: “ We’re going to do the right thing. We’re going to clean up the site.”

It didn’t help that former president Donald Trump showed up on February 22 with pallets of “Trump bottled water” and cleaning supplies to criticize the FEMA and EPA teams and the absence of president Biden in Ukraine. By then, even Trump’s greatest boosters in the region knew he was the one who had loosened rail-safety regulations causing the derailment.

Worse for NS, two days later famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich arrived in East Palestine in the first of three notable visits—February 24, March 2, 13. She brought legal and environmental experts to town hall meetings educating residents about their legal rights and to hear their problems, medical concerns to NS house buyouts—and gripes about EPA’s slowness, and that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had stalled for three weeks before visiting.

She told the media that people were “getting the total run-around” in what was a “classic cover-up” of an environmental disaster. “They have already lost everything and their future,” she said. But fury and the visits helped unite East Palestine against NS and disappointment in delayed responses by the government, particularly EPA.

The next disturbing event for Shaw and his team was a bipartisan Senate bill (The Railway Safety Act of 2023 ) to clean up industry practices, submitted March 16 by Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown and five cosponsors. Described by The Lever, it:

“…limits train lengths, requires two-person crews on freight trains, strengthens transparency requirements for hazmat trains, sets standards for infrastructure maintenance, and increases the maximum fines for safety violations.”

Unfortunately, the railroad industry for decades always has successfully “influenced” Congress to protect its interests. Shaw apparently figured nothing would change. Not even passage of yet another law nationalizing if taxpayers still had to pay the entire cost of wrecks. Currently, it has 200 lobbyists formerly with the government and, in the last two election campaigns, the industry donated $14 million to pro-rail candidates.

So when the Senate Environmental and Public Works committee invited him to testify March 9 about the company’s role in the derailment, he decided it was the perfect public forum to present NS’s formal apology to East Palestine and other affected areas and vow to “make it right” .

Besides, the day before he testified, heavy support came with the company’s “six-point plan” to “immediately enhance the safety of its operations.” It was an obvious attempt to stymie and stall the Senate bill by assuring the public and freight users that NS was mending its ways.

Plan contents involved increasing “hot bearing detectors” and reducing location spacing, plus developing an automated digital inspection program using artificial intelligence technology (AI), and to “support a strong safety culture.”

Shaw ignored immediate criticism that the points were “couched in vague, non-specific language” such as “evaluating” and “developing plans.” AI automation meant further slashing payroll, a point instantly understood and attacked by angry NS’s personnel.

Shaw’s misfortune intervened. Three hours before he was to testify, another NS train derailed near Piedmont, Alabama, dumping 30 cars off an embankment. None carried hazardous materials, officials insisted. And three weeks previously, 30 cars of a NS train derailed near Detroit, but the tanker with liquid chlorine remained upright, the media was told.

The Alabama derailment was followed by another NS freight train wreck at Springfield, Ohio of 212-cars, 50 more than at East Palestine. Though company officials denied tanker cars contained chemicals or other toxic materials, a shelter-in-place order was issued covering a 1,000-foot radius from the tracks.

Total NS derailments reported in the last 20 years: 3,397.

In the hearing, Shaw faced a buzz saw of questions by senators Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley. Would NS end its breakneck PSR (precision-scheduling railroading)? Would it guarantee seven paid sick leave to its 15,000 employees? Would stock-buybacks—$10 billion to wealthy investors—to boost stock’s value end before safety problems were solved? Would NS cover long-term health-care costs for East Palestinians? The media did not reveal whether Shaw was braced about adding a second crewman to trains or whether NS would follow Occidental’s path in buying up all contaminated houses and buildings and permanent remediation.

The CEO’s artful dodging and pleas (“everything is on the table” ) indicated answers to all such key questions was “no.” He knew Congressional payoffs would kill the railroad bill. And Biden seemed unlikely to double-cross NS with an Executive Order mandating specific safety changes or touch the buyback issue.

What Shaw, his subordinates, and stockholders couldn’t anticipate, however, was the state of Ohio’s filing a federal lawsuit March 14 against NS over its East Palestine wreck. The 58-count complaint covers violations of federal and Ohio laws about violations of hazardous waste, water and air pollution, and solid waste.

Another violation involving monumental expense for NS was Ohio’s Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. That meant reimbursement of current and future costs to the state. The action also would force NS into future soil and groundwater monitoring of “surrounding areas and beyond.”

Now, if Shaw and his cohorts then try to foist all those expenses onto American taxpayers with, say, the usual federal long-term loans, they could be denied by public-minded juries and judges. If defaulted, the Justice Department would sue NS either into bankruptcy or nationalizing operations.

Railway workers are for nationalization, says progressive writer John Nichols, citing public-takeover precedent from World War I. He quotes members of Railway Workers United, an inter-union of rank-and-file railroaders whose litany of their long-time complaints might be solved by public ownership:

“On-time performance is in the toilet, shipper complaints are at all-time highs. Passenger trains are chronically late, commuter services are threatened, and the rail industry is hostile to practically any passenger train expansion. The workforce has been decimated, as jobs have been eliminated, consolidated, and contracted out, ushering in a new previously unheard-of era where workers can neither be recruited nor retained. Locomotive, rail car, and infrastructure maintenance has been cut back. Health and safety has been put at risk. Morale is at an all-time low.”

Given NS’s track record, nationalization may be a remedy whose time has finally come if its profits are not used to pay all expenses for the East Palestine wreck. Of course, Shaw and his team could break the industry’s tradition and heed Occidental’s lessons about Love Canal and “pay up or else.” Occidental did not go bankrupt in accepting its moral and fiscal responsibilities to the public.

We, taxpayers, can hardly wait for NS’s decision.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Her predecessor, Republican Doug Ducey, in the last months of his regime was ramrodding containers into place on a 60’ strip of desert as part of former president Trump’s border wall. His executive-ordered crash project cost nearly $100 million to buy, truck in, bolt containers together and weld sheet metal over three-foot gaps from roller-coaster terrain.

A few days ago, a federal lawsuit now forces the state to remove them because they rest on federal land. Costs are estimated to be $70 million.

Previously, Hobbs has said she might move the containers and repurpose them as affordable housing. So she’s got the right idea. So have others. In the last two years the trend for buying used containers has increased for temporarily sheltering the homeless. They join tiny-house villages, RV and campsite communities, storage units, motels, and vacant factory and office buildings.

Too, the railroads are selling off their 50-foot boxcars which could double container capacity for “affordable” housing. A boxcar’s average age is 30 years, however, explaining why prices range from $2,000 to $4,000, half the cost of a container ($8,300 for 40-footers).

Hobbs even may be aware of a model for a container community: the two-year-old architectural prize-winning pair of three-floor temporary shelters for 232 of the homeless in Los Angeles’ Chinatown: the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village owned by Los Angeles county.

Looking like New Orleans’ balconied apartments, the orange and yellow shelters face each other on 60,000 square feet of the former LA sheriff’s parking lot. Built in less than six months for $57 million , workers stacked and bolted three floors of 66 containers together for the two main buildings. They overlook 20 one-story modular wooden housing units. Each end of the two buildings has wide staircases, and an exterior prefabricated elevator at each floor’s midpoint.

Interiors of the 135 square-foot rooms and 8.6-foot ceilings—including a bathroom — have four-panel vertical windows with blinds. Each room was drywalled and painted, followed by air-conditioner and heating units, a half-refrigerator and sink. Furnishings were monastic: a bed, table, microwave, and shelving. Landscaping is a grassy courtyard between the two buildings, raised planters of herbs, and a tree at each end of the turf.

A sizable modular administration building houses offices for intakes, case records, counseling and healthcare services, as well as a laundry, commercial kitchen, and dining room. It has 24-hour security. The only drawback is that the four-acres are contaminated requiring an onsite treatment plant to “manage” the soil underneath the complex.

Before apartment builders rush to apply the Solis model for expanding units with extra containers, a few caveats need to be weighed against bargain-basement cost, availability, and transport. Many containers have been found to be toxic , their plywood flooring prone to fires. Inside temperatures could reach 135ºF with an AC breakdown. Lifespan is 10 to 15 years even with regular maintenance.

So Hobbs can convert containers—probably for permanent, low-income housing—into a Solis-like suburb. Or buy and remodel boxcars (and cabooses) for the homeless. Both are a vast improvement over packed, vermin-infested, crime-ridden shelters and the inhumane outdoor measures taken by at least two major cities—LA and Portland, OR. They are beset by sidewalk squatters, tent encampments, and RV settlers, all drawn to the West Coast’s mild, year-round temperatures, and social services. Current homeless populations: LA, at least 40,000; Portland, 5,228 and 800 encampments.

They’re scarcely alone. Last year, 326,126 were homeless, New York City leading with 102,656 packed in shelters and uncounted thousands on streets or subways. All cities with a “homeless problem” are being pressured by complaints from owners of small and large downtown businesses about doorways blocked by transients, trash, and toileting. Echoing Malthus’ “final solution,” they want the homeless gone forever, driven to residential neighborhoods or beyond the city limits. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

In Los Angeles, the ACLU of Southern California issued a report last year about police and sheriff’s deputies first harassing the homeless, then bulldozing encampments and seizing belongings. If victims persisted in living on the streets, they were banished by threats of citations to the Mojave Desert near Lancaster and Palmdale in unincorporated, East Los Angeles County.

LA’s new mayor, Karen Bass declared at her inauguration that her “first act as mayor will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness.” Heavy emphasis was laid on sheltering 15,000 by the end of her first year. During her campaign, she mused to the Los Angeles Times: “There’s a big chunk of land in Palmdale and maybe we could create a village out there.” Her vice mayor added that LA owns “thousands of acres in Palmdale.”

Lancaster (pop: 176,892) is only nine miles down the highway from Palmdale (pop: 172,790), and the first to revolt against Bass (local newspaper headline: “Homeless ‘Invasion’ is coming”). Its outraged city council just voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency to protect it from “an incursion” of LA’s homeless. Palmdale’s council probably won’t be far behind.

Up in Portland meantime, its city council was voting to spend $27 million chiefly to fund Mayor Ted Wheeler’s resolution that within 18 months the city would set up three, two- to four-acre sanctioned campsites. Each would eventually contain 100 tents and 250 people and perhaps expansion to three additional sites. Local channel KGW’s Blair Best reported that: “Residents will have access to food, case managers and mental health and substance-abuse treatment, and…on-site and perimeter [neighborhood] security.” Some $750,000 is allocated for private-security forces in designated neighborhoods.

Once the campgrounds are open, Wheeler warned that like New York City, the police will do street sweeps and arrest the homeless refusing to leave unless they either agreed to use city shelters or moved to the camps—no matter what the Constitutional ramifications are. Multnomah County which encompasses Portland, spent $2 million , two years ago to distribute 22,700 tents and 69,514 tarps to the homeless. Under Wheeler’s policy, most probably will wind up in landfills.

A major factor in this tragic dilemma is the fury of many neighbors where these complexes and campsites are to be located. The chief complaint against the homeless aside from unsightliness is the alleged increases in crime, drug use, garbage, and hygiene. Most of all, it’s the suspicion that any kind of congregate housing lowers property values and steals their taxpayer dollars.

A middle-class Portland resident typified that stereotypic view: “I live in this neighborhood, and I think it’s a very nice neighborhood. I would not want to have a large group of homeless around here. I think you would have the crime go up, that’s the main thing.”

And a news release from the city of Lancaster addressed Mayor Bass’s plans for neighboring Palmdale:

A large homeless population in one area could lead to increased crime and safety concerns and potential damage to property values. This could be a major concern for residents and businesses in the area, and it’s an issue Lancaster has already been struggling to support with its existing unhoused population. There are also serious health concerns for the homeless population who would be moved from a climate ranging from 60-80 degrees annually to the high desert which experiences extreme weather highs and lows.

But this view of homeless communities is not necessarily true at all, considering that, say, sober houses instantly boot troublemakers and backsliding alcoholics/addicts from the premises. There’s rarely noise nor traffic congestion. Can that be said for fraternity and sorority houses in residential neighorhoods? Too, Solis-type facilities offer only temporary housing, social services, and security to move residents into productive lives.

Those experiencing eviction because of layoffs, business bankruptcies, or acquisitions can readily identify with the plight of the homeless in those settings. Fortunately, many speak up in their defense at public meetings or in neighborhood informational canvassing—or take the time and make the effort to reach out on their behalf.

CounterPunch writer Desiree Hellegers set such myth-makers straight a few days ago: “Never mind that the Pacific Northwest is choc-o-bloc with models of tent cities and tiny- house communities that are democratically run, generally with elected councils: Dignity Village, Right 2 Dream 2, SHARE-WHEEL, etc. None of them is perfect, but they are safer and infinitely more empowering, humane, healing, and effective, and less likely to violate the Geneva Conventions than what Wheeler & Co. have in mind.”

And a Los Angeles tiny-house resident reminded the fearful or judgmental about shelter living: “For people who get their noses up in the air, this can happen to anybody.” That’s certainly true for many of the 3.8 million living paycheck to paycheck and either are about to be evicted because the American Rescue Plan’s rent-moratorium has expired , or the 8.5 million behind on rent, as well as those facing significant rent increases. Add to those figures the 1.5 million estimated to lose their jobs because the Federal Reserve’s continuing interest-rate hikes mean small and large companies can’t afford to expand operations, nor are startups able to raise capital.

Perhaps it’s time to educate “NIMBYs” (“Not in My Backyard”) and the general public about who most of the homeless are in those enclosures by WPA-like posters (“We’ve Been Downsized or Evicted, But Are Leaving Shortly!”) spread around affected neighborhoods.

Facing the prospect of a nation of Hoovervilles drawing violent reactions from local residents, a frightened President Biden’s team just launched a plan to reduce homelessness by 25 percent in 2025: the All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness . Unfortunately, nothing was said about funding or what would happen to the remaining 75 percent.

That’s because the plan was just a heavily researched “blueprint” for state and local governments to use as models “for addressing homelessness in their communities.” Said Biden: “ it is not only getting people into housing, but also ensuring they have access to the support, services, and income that allow them to thrive.”

Forget any Executive Order to finance a New Deal for jobs and housing, as president Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) did to help solve the Great Depression of the 1930s.

At bottom, the major question involving the overall homeless situation is almost never asked because it involves the responsibility of corporate America: What good is housing if people lack jobs to make rent or mortgage payments? To say nothing of buying basics.

FDR’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) did both. It hired and trained 8.5 million of the unemployed for past and new federal programs. They ranged from infrastructure and environment to park systems and artists/writers projects. His FHA low-cost home-buying loans have housed 44 million since 1934, spurring massive house construction and providing capital for 4.8 million rental units—not counting residential care facilities, hospitals, and manufactured houses.

Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure program could have done the same. But he farmed it out to private interests. They might add and train a few thousand new employees, yet hardly on a WPA scale. If he were an FDR, he would have had the courage to shift part of the Pentagon’s FY2023 $858 billion budget allocation to civilians—as did Trump to spend more than $12 billion on his porous wall—to provide thousands of construction jobs and affordable housing for the homeless.

For the Pentagon, this tactic also might stifle increasing public opposition about its bloated, unaudited budget by showcasing its contribution to “domestic tranquility,” as the Constitution’s preamble puts it. Some $152 billion of next year’s funding—a 20 percent increase—goes for construction and veterans. That’s how those 750 overseas bases and at home were built by its engineers, equipment and supplies, and continue to be maintained. It doesn’t specify constructing what so the door is wide open to building affordable houses or rent-controlled apartment buildings for America’s homeless.

Using Trump’s rationale that his wall would defend the nation from an invasion of illegals, Biden now has precedent to declare such a neoWPA jobs-and-housing project would “provide for the common defense” of this nation and stop any domestic upheaval. After all, a major recession could trigger a massive uprising dwarfing today’s major strikes. So could climate-change migrations around the states.

As the Poor People’s Campaign co-chair Liz Theoharis reminds us: “In the coming years, movements dedicated to democracy and our economic flourishing need to invest time and resources in building permanently organized communities to help meet the daily needs of impacted Americans, while offering a sense of what democracy looks like in practice, up close and personal.”

To this, add the famous admonition to us by that man born into homelessness and persecution: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

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In my check of banana prices recently, one Oregon supermarket (Trader Joe’s) was still charging 19¢ each. Its neighborhood rival (Safeway) was charging 29¢. A gallon of gas at my neighborhood Astro station was $ 3.75 last August, and just dropped from $5.29 two weeks ago to yesterday’s $4.95.

Interest in those prices led to my investigation of July’s inflation rate of 8.5 percent. I also noticed inflation was suddenly hot on the evening news and on social media, especially against price controls. That wouldn’t be true unless millions of ordinary Americans have been loudly grousing about eye-popping price hikes at gas stations and meat sections at the grocers.

Reactions can only be imagined in watching Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell a few days ago warn us that its inflation fight to bring it down to 2 percent would require continuing high-interest rates and layoffs which will “bring some pain to households and businesses .” He certainly wasn’t alluding to billionaire households or Fortune 500 companies. Or that he and the Fed’s board of bankers were ever likely to resort to far less drastic, yet effective, remedies suggested recently by economist Richard D. Wolff in CounterPunch:

“Former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used rationing in the early 1940s. But precisely because such policies are less favorable to the employer class, they are only used rarely. The dubious achievement of President Joe Biden’s administration (and the complicit GOP) has been to speak and act as if QT [quantitative tightening] was the only existing policy to halt inflation.

[Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen’s and Biden’s past verbiage of “concern” about U.S. income and wealth inequalities might have acquired some teeth had a freeze of prices combined with wage increases been able to actually reduce those inequalities. That would have been an anti-inflationary policy doing double duty, reversing rather than exacerbating existing inequalities.”

One way to reverse profiteers’ greed-driven markups was President Richard Nixon’s successful 90-day price freeze in 1971-72 aided by the much-revised Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 (ESA) . It was designed to win him votes from the desperate and was initiated and generaled to quick passage by the House “dean” and Banking committee chair Wright Patman (D-TX). In 1970, Patman led colleagues in both Houses into passing an anti-inflation control bill into law (PL 91-151 ).

The best method to stop inflation instantly appears to be cutting profiteering off at the knees at the start of its upward movement issued by a presidential Executive Order (EO) to waylay greed. Profiteers are usually the real drivers of inflation because they set prices “from the top,” indirectly controlling both supply and demand for goods and services. Ultimately, their power controls our economy: the Federal Reserve Bank and member banks, Wall Street, most presidents, Congress, Corporate America, and fear-stricken candidates for any office.

Of all the presidential inflation-fighters, Nixon has to be a standout, reluctant or not. Once the outspoken, rigid opponent of price controls, he was forcibly converted to them by the wit, skill, and guile of Patman and his standing army of anti-inflation Senators and House members. They stood toe to toe after Nixon’s first election as inflation rates moved from 1968’s 4.27 percent to 5.84 in 1970.

Nixon seems to have deduced inflation as the coming chief issue for midterm voters in that the Vietnam war was winding down. As he once told economic advisors: “I’ve never seen anybody beaten on inflation in the United States. [But] I’ve seen many people beaten on unemployment.”

So whatever loathing millions had for him, his extraordinary political insights, opportunism, and inner drive seemed impotent in a faceoff with inflation and Patman’s equal endowments and good nature.

Nixon, the grocer’s son, was well aware of the profiteers’ third rail, and smart enough never to challenge it because of their monumental retaliatory powers. Patman, a scrappy cotton farmer’s son , wasn’t. As a young House member in 1932, his investigative skills, candor, and hatred of banks succeeded in driving Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon from office on impeachment charges of high crimes and misdemeanors (corruption).

Now, because the Federal Reserve and economic “royalty” have yet to arrest inflation, some of today’s article writers are raising danger flags about any thoughts or moves to resurrect Nixon’s four-year New Economic Policy (NEP): “Nixon Taught Us How Not to Fight Inflation ” and “How Nixon Destroyed the Dollar .”

Mainstream media owners fear retaliation from the tycoons who want no talk about the 90-day “Nixon Freeze” to reach the public because it was an instant and resounding success that probably cost them billions in sales of goods and services. They especially don’t want people to learn that the genesis for that success was the formidable Patman and his anti-inflation fighters in Congress. That may explain why their obedient Wall Street Journal published a contributor’s blunt letter basically saying: 1) Today’s “factory owners and shopkeepers” wouldn’t stand for a price freeze, and 2) “Controls got too complex and the program lasted too long.”

Millions of Americans suffering inflation’s hardships certainly would demand a 90-day price freeze, of course. But many economists and business historians would concede that reader’s second point: Congress and Nixon should have quit while they were ahead instead of sticking with NEP’s last two years of failure. NEP did get too complex and lasted too long, permitting bureaucracy to expand like algae and spawn inefficiency.

Authors of the recent AFL-CIO report Greedflation define that term as what happens “when companies increase prices to boost corporate profits and create windfall payouts for corporate CEOs.” Those profits are an eye-popping $ 2 trillion in this year’s second quarter for nonfinancial companies, according to the latest calculations by the U.S. Commerce Department. Moreover, profiteering is finally being unmasked as inflation’s chief cause and should be targeted and disciplined. Most consumers probably have suspected as much for centuries.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, says that retail prices for goods and services aren’t set by complex supply and demand factors, the usual inflation culprits: “[Prices] are egregiously manipulated by corporate giants that have achieved monopoly-level dominance over their markets.

Economic pundit Robert Reich agrees. He just pointed out in Inequality Media that today’s stagnant wages aren’t inflation’s cause. The average hourly wages are $10.93 and have barely budged enough to create consumer demand. He attributes inflation to “monopolistic corporations jacking up prices to maximize profits.” His antidote is a “windfall profits tax.”

Far tougher punishment has been suggested to policymakers by Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project. Citing the recent 235 percent profit increases by eight major oil companies, she noted:

“Megacorporations are a key driver of high prices—and we need bold action to rein them in….to attack concentrated corporate power immediately and aggressively across the board. That means levying excess profits taxes, ensuring big penalties for price-fixing, and resourcing enforcement agencies to prosecute price-gouging and other forms of corporate abuse. And it means banning large mergers, stock buybacks, and ‘payoffs for layoffs’ to help build durable market power for working people and consumers and level the playing field for small businesses and entrepreneurs.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and 19 co-sponsors are also pursuing profiteers with a “Sub-Task Force” in their pending Emergency Price Stabilization Act of 2022. It contains the subpoena power of corporations’ financial records to determine whether price fixing is done out of necessity or greed.

Profiteering is something undoubtedly learned by Nixon as a working-class California youngster laboring in the parental lemon grove and, later, at the family’s grocery/gas station. His career indicates he aspired early on to be a “have” instead of a “have-not” using the lawyer route. Aided by brains, drive, and ruthless ambition—a K-12 school and college leader with a flair for debate and theatre —he pushed open high society’s door and gave lip service to its values. That included the economic myth that wage increases always cause inflation, not sellers charging whatever the traffic will bear.

Back in the “Great Inflation” decade —1970-80—Nixon faced almost identical crises as Biden: funding a proxy war (Vietnam), high inflation rates (5.84% ), unemployment (6.1% ), low hourly wages ($1.45 ), sky-high rents charged by greedy and powerful landlords—and the electorate’s despair and growing fury. Opposition to price controls came in ear-splitting howls from small business owners and threats from profiteers. Not to mention influential economists like Nobel laureate Milton Friedman (“Wage and price controls destroy the system which organizes the economy”).

Using his seven months as a young lawyer for the New Deal’s Office of Price Administration (OPA) , Nixon claimed economic expertise. By February 1971, when his economic brain trusters were weighing solutions to inflation’s ravages and price controls came up, Nixon snapped: “[Controls] didn’t work even at the end of World War II. They will never work in peacetime…I’m not going to have wage and price controls!”

While he was campaigning for the presidency in 1968, so were Congressional incumbents like Patman listening to thousands of financially-strapped constituents demand Congress “do something” to stop spiraling prices and empty shelves at home. Nixon was focused on ending the Vietnam war honorably. Patman, Congress’ banking and financial expert, decided to use the duplicitous Nixon to “do something” far more important to most Americans than the war and perhaps win a landslide election into the bargain.

Now, Nixon was an expert in Congressional wars with presidents: five years in the House, two in the Senate, and eight as vice president under President Dwight Eisenhower. But he was no match for Patman’s 47 years as an expert on economic matters and generating bills into laws. So when Nixon had scarcely unpacked in the White House, Patman probably made sure Nixon knew he was leading a sizeable bipartisan movement in both houses to pass bills “doing something” about inflation.

The first bill—Patman’s Credit Control Act (PL 91-151)—passed before Christmas Eve 1969 and was on Nixon’s desk for signing. It stipulated: “Whenever the President determines that such action is necessary or appropriate for the purpose of preventing or controlling inflation generated by the extension of credit in an excessive volume” he could authorize the Federal Reserve Board to control credit interest rates. Nixon signed it unwillingly, informing Patman’s “army” his undying opposition to any controls—and would refuse to implement the law. That was good news to the Fed and the nation’s bankers, Wall Streeters, and profiteers.

Undeterred, but determined to prevent a financial crash before the 1972 midterms, Patman and his inflation-fighters went to work on a bill—the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 (ESA)—which led to what was to become known as “Nixon’s Shock” .

The bill was brief because the wily Patman and his colleagues planned to hide ESA as a Title II provision into a bill carefully chosen because of the likelihood it would be fast-tracked for a quick voice vote in both houses: the Defense Production Act Amendments. Even in 1970, lengthy Pentagon bills were rarely read or challenged in Congress. This bill’s Title I is concerned with changing accounting standards.

ESA’s Title II: 1) authorized the President to issue orders and regulations to keep “prices, rents, wages, and salaries” as they were on May 25, 1970 until the law’s expiration on February 28, 1971; 2) the President could “delegate the performance of any function…to such officers, departments, and agencies of the U.S. as he may deem appropriate;” 3) violators would be fined $5,000 for each proven offense; and 4) a court would issue a mandatory injunction against repeated violations. Though unstated, the law would be enforced by the IRS and the Department of Justice.

Nixon had to be furious. Administering it was hardly a job for a diehard capitalist who hated federal controls and regulations. Patman and his people were forcing him to sign a Pentagon bill into law which included controlling prices, rents, and wages, as well as punishing gougers in the housing, and mortgage industry that a House report had just excoriated.

If he carried out the bill’s authority, corporate leaders would regard him as a closet Communist or Socialist because profits would shrink dramatically. So would their donations for his reelection in 1974. Party leadership would provide only token support and funding for his campaign. On the other hand, an energetic anti-inflation effort could win votes from millions of Democratic and independent voters. It would offset significant losses from his Republican base. He might be regarded as a new Roosevelt.

Nixon may have shouted countless private expletives against Patman’s cleverness in instituting price controls, but he was a political pragmatist and vicious opponent, which had earned him the pejorative “Tricky Dick.” He gathered his economic advisors and political experts for help in developing an EO to show Americans why price controls don’t stop inflation. Some names are still familiar: Arthur Burns, Dick Cheney, John Connally, Milton Friedman, Paul McCracken, Peter Peterson, Donald Rumsfeld, George Shultz, Herbert Stein, Paul Volcker, and Caspar Weinberger.

Meanwhile, the supposedly fast-tracked Pentagon bill derailed in the House probably because it demanded transparency of Pentagon accounts. Warhawks rose to protect contracting secrets. During debate, it first set off extensive and heated testimony requiring members read the bill’s text. That revealed the piggybacked Title II’s ESA provision, triggering two days of Republican explosions and raucous calls for renaming the provision “Election Year Squeezeplay,” and “Devious Democratic Demagoguery.”

The bill’s defenders came armed, however, perhaps ready to suggest substituting “controls” for WWII ration books. If the Republicans were to argue it was unconstitutional for one branch of government to delegate “legislative power” to another, Patman’s group had a blockbuster response: Federal controls were backstopped by precedent in peacetimes by a string of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and Munn v. Illinois (1877) to U.S. v. Darby (1941). All were based on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (I, Section 8, Clause 3) empowering Congress to regulate prices “among the several States,” emergency or not.

The fiery debate took four days to pass the bill on August 15, 1970 and sent it two days later for Nixon’s signature to become PL 91-379. As both Nixon and Patman knew, a brouhaha in Congress drew national media coverage and exposed the issues—seemingly bad for the President, but good for Patman and his inflation fighters, and a hopeful sign to a public waiting for them both to “do something” about inflation’s seemingly unstoppable rise.

Boxed into a political corner by Patman, Nixon knew signing that bill would alienate major supporters: Big Business, Wall Street, the ruling class, profiteers, and the Republican National Committee. But as he emphasized to devastated political advisors and campaign staff about the impact on re-election chances in 1974: “I’ve never seen anybody beaten on inflation in the United States, [but] I’ve seen many people beaten on unemployment.”

Nixon used his acting background to look as if he were being forced into signing ESA into law on August 17, 1970, leaving him blameless in the eyes of supporters. Then, playing the last-ditch Republican conservative, he reportedly “issued a blistering attack ” on ESA after the signoff.

His remarks were left-footed because, despite the dire economic circumstances of the year for most Americans, he said he considered vetoing it because it didn’t “fit the economic conditions which exist today.” He held off because the Pentagon provisions were vital. Then came the declaration he would not “exercise the authority” the law provided for implementing controls. It was followed by a parting shot at Patman and his supporters: If Congress felt this strongly about price controls, it—not he—should “face up to its responsibilities and make them mandatory.”

He knew the logistics for creating another national bureaucracy to enforce controls wouldn’t be an overnight success. It would take months to be operational and certainly fail under an OPA-like bombardment of lawsuits, complaints about unfair rulings, staff bungling, and lack of enforcement energy by the IRS and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Nor would funding be secure. Given his vengeful nature, Nixon seems to have made a silent vow to get even with the smiling Patman on the same day next year. Patman became politician No. 16 on Nixon’s infamous Enemies List of 220.

Delegating the heavy lifting of ESA to his staff for that February 28 expiration date, Nixon may have encouraged foot-dragging and inefficiency. Seeing that deadline as an impossibility, Patman’s group submitted an extension to ESA in late November. They shifted the deadline to April Fool’s Day and hid it in a bill amending the Small Business Act’s funding. It sped to passage by a voice vote and a slow-boiling Nixon’s signature on December 17. He promptly announced he would not use it. So another Patman amendment to ESA moved the date to June 1, 1971.

Meeting fairly regularly with his advisors and aides in the next few months, Nixon had them working up a “surprise” for Patman—and the nation. As August 15^th approached, network radio and television airtime was requested for a historic address to the nation by the President. Even the super-popular Bonanza TV series and network radio was pre-empted. Obviously, Nixon was aiming to duplicate the chattiness of FDR’s famous Fireside Chats to the public.

That weekend, he huddled at Camp David with advisors for final changes in the content. On Sunday, he put the final touches on the EO fleshing out his directives. Then, came the speech of his lifetime, still called “the Nixon shock ” by economists specializing in inflation.

The 2,596 words were heavy with banner-headline news: ending the gold standard and cutting the federal budget by $4.7 billion to stabilize the dollar’s value, solving balance of payment problems, and a 10 percent surcharge on imports. But the most important passage started with:

“I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States for a period of 90 days. In addition, I call upon corporations to extend the wage-price freezes to all dividends.

I have today appointed a Cost of Living Council within the Government. I have directed this Council to work with leaders of labor and business to set up the proper mechanism for achieving continued price and wage stability after the 90-day freeze is over.

Let me emphasize two characteristics of this action: First, it is temporary. To put the strong, vigorous American economy into a permanent straitjacket would lock in unfairness; it would stifle the expansion of our free enterprise system.

And second, while the wage-price freeze will be backed by Government sanctions, if necessary, it will not be accompanied by the establishment of a huge price-control bureaucracy. 1 am relying on the voluntary cooperation of all Americans—each one of you: workers, employers, consumers— to make this freeze work.”

Next day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped to a gain if 32.93 points and posted a record-breaking one-day volume of 31,730,000 transactions. Initially, it was a hit with the public, judging from nationwide polls and leaders at Reynolds Metals, Dow Chemical, and Firestone, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The New York Times lead editorial rumbled:

“…we unhesitatingly applaud the boldness with which the president has moved on all economic fronts—and most especially his order for a ninety day freeze on prices and wages as a preliminary to a flexible policy for checking the runaway spiral that has eroded the purchasing power of all Americans and made American products increasingly uncompetitive in world markets.”

To friends and foes, the surprise freeze was a stopper. Nixon was finally going to go after price gougers—or so they thought. Patman’s reaction is not known, but it would be in character for a chuckle and a head shake at Nixon’s “revenge” backfiring by proving price controls would work at least until after the holidays. By then, profiteers would have figured out how to get around a permanent freeze.

Nixon’s debating skills were at their best perhaps when the uncomfortable post-speech questions arrived. To those asking him “but you’ve always opposed price controls,” Nixon’s response was: “Philosophically, I was still against wage-price controls, even though I was convinced that the objective reality of the economic situation forced me to impose them.” The reality of “objective reality” was getting re-elected in 1972, of course.

Facing ridicule over asking Americans to police themselves —and others—to avoid a $5,000 fine (soon to be $7,500 ) per violation. His OPA experience as a federal prosecutor of rationing violators and black marketers finally became valuable for responses.

Few critics were sharp enough to catch Nixon’s omission of controls on excess profits. He and his aides evidently had decided most of the audience would assume the request that corporations cooperate with interest and dividend controls also covered profits, particularly windfalls. The same omission was in the EO detailing the 90-day freeze rules.

Questions about windfall profits were now being raised so often in the next few weeks that Nixon and his advisors were finally forced to quash them publicly in another major nationwide address on October 7 updating freeze results. It was inserted far below his forced admission of overwhelming success in the first seven weeks of the 90-day freeze. He followed that by telling the audience they were now in the second of four phases of the NEP for the months ahead.

The broadcast opened with a nod to his freeze—for the benefit of voters:

“On the inflation front, I can report to you tonight that the wage-price freeze has been remarkably successful. As you heard on your evening news, the figures bear out that statement. Wholesale prices in September posted the biggest decline in five years. And the price of industrial commodities has gone down for the first time in seven years. The primary credit for the success of this first step in the fight against rising prices belongs to you; it belongs to the American people. It is you who have shown a willingness to cooperate in the campaign against inflation. It is you who have answered the call to put the public interest ahead of the special interest.”

That profits/windfalls weren’t given prominence had to come as a relief to Wall Street, the Fed, and banks. But after his paean to capitalism’s only purpose (greed), Nixon’s burial of that subject was unearthed near the end of his lengthy address:

“Many of my good friends in the field of politics have advised me that the only politically popular position to take is to be against profits. But let us recognize an unassailable fact of economic life. All Americans will benefit from more profits. More profits fuel the expansion which generates more jobs. More profits mean more investments, which will make our goods more competitive in America and in the world. And more profits mean there will be more tax revenues to pay for the programs that help people in need. That is why higher profits in the American economy would be good for every person in America.

***

“ ‘Windfall’ profits, however, as I will describe them, are quite another thing. When wages and other costs are held down by the Government, even though prices are also held down, circumstances could arise in some cases that might generate exorbitant profits; in other words, where someone will profit from the wage-price stabilization program. In the few cases where this happens, rather than tax such excess profits, the Price Commission’s policy will be that business should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer by cutting prices.”

The speech essentially marked the end of Nixon’s historic 90-day success using controls to battle inflation. It probably also played a role in his landslide re-election in 1972 against anti-war Sen. George (47.7 million vs. 29.2 million ). After that, his four-phase NEP became a downhill disaster both for the American economy and his political career.

It started with Nixon humbling himself shortly after that speech to request Congress support his proposed NEP bill extending and amending ESA to include this four-phase program. Undoubtedly with a twinkle, Patman in the House and John Sparkman in the Senate obliged, jointly introducing it on October 19. Controversy immediately erupted. Some of Nixon’s provisions were defeated and some of Patman’s group succeeded. Interestingly, of the 33 provisions in the final bill, only one controlling windfall survived. Sen. Fred Harris’ (politician No. 3 on Nixon’s list) entry said:

“In carrying out his authority…the President shall study and evaluate the relationship between excess profits, the stabilization of the economy, and the creation of new jobs. The results of such study shall be incorporated in the reports referred to in subsection (a) […”giving his assessment of the progress attained in achieving the purposes of this title.”]

Nixon had pledged that the NEP would not be “accompanied by the establishment of a huge price-control bureaucracy.” Yet until its phase-out in 1974, bureaucracy and operational expenses soon rivaled OPA’s, according to Council director John T. Dunlop. His estimate was at least $200 million (today’s $1.5 billion ) spent by 1973 alone.

At least its Price Commission initially had razor-sharp teeth in helping reduce inflation to 2 to 3 percent, Nixon’s goal for the freeze. It also tightened regulations on price-increase applications, froze prices on companies failing to report financials, annulled previous approvals to corporations such Continental Can, and ordered several others—Armco Steel, Champion Spark Plug, Simpson Timber, Textron, Woolworth’s—to lower prices or refund overcharges. The commission also teamed with the IRS to disallow business expenses involving wages and prices above NEP’s ceilings.

Consumer economist Michael Walden provides the obituary of price controls overstaying their purpose of stemming the tide of inflation at its start:

“The intent of the Nixon plan was to “cool off” the economy and purge high inflationary expectations from decision-making. Initial polls indicated the country backed the price and wage controls. And while the measured inflation rate was moderated for a while, the success didn’t last, even after a second round of controls was instituted. Within a couple of years, the inflation rate was higher than ever. Ultimately it would reach double digits (1971: 4.38% ; 1974: 11.04% ) three years in a row. It took a deep recession to bring the annual inflation rate back to the low single digits.”

Advisors to candidates in the coming election seasons would do well to consider lessons furnished by both Patman and Nixon in dealing with inflation’s primary cause. So do a pair of university economics professors—Isabella Weber and Mark Paul:

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, price controls have a rather successful history in the U.S. when used right, and, while not a magic bullet, they are a powerful tool to tame inflation and protect low- and middle-income Americans. This is particularly true when market power—be it from landlords, oil companies, or meat cartels—is at play.”

Above all, candidate advisors need to remember that Nixon initially stopped inflation cold for nearly two years using price controls—and got re-elected while doing it from 18.5 million more voters than Sen. George McGovern. And Patman’s brilliant legislative skills opened the door to challenge traditional tactics to fight inflation on the backs of suffering Americans. The two men did do something for them.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Image by History in HD.

In my check of banana prices recently, one Oregon supermarket (Trader Joe’s) was still charging 19¢ each. Its neighborhood rival (Safeway) was charging 29¢. A gallon of gas at my neighborhood Astro station was $ 3.75 last August, and just dropped from $5.29 two weeks ago to yesterday’s $4.95.

Interest in those prices led to my investigation of July’s inflation rate of 8.5 percent. I also noticed inflation was suddenly hot on the evening news and on social media, especially against price controls. That wouldn’t be true unless millions of ordinary Americans have been loudly grousing about eye-popping price hikes at gas stations and meat sections at the grocers.

Reactions can only be imagined in watching Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell a few days ago warn us that its inflation fight to bring it down to 2 percent would require continuing high-interest rates and layoffs which will “bring some pain to households and businesses .” He certainly wasn’t alluding to billionaire households or Fortune 500 companies. Or that he and the Fed’s board of bankers were ever likely to resort to far less drastic, yet effective, remedies suggested recently by economist Richard D. Wolff in CounterPunch:

“Former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used rationing in the early 1940s. But precisely because such policies are less favorable to the employer class, they are only used rarely. The dubious achievement of President Joe Biden’s administration (and the complicit GOP) has been to speak and act as if QT [quantitative tightening] was the only existing policy to halt inflation.

[Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen’s and Biden’s past verbiage of “concern” about U.S. income and wealth inequalities might have acquired some teeth had a freeze of prices combined with wage increases been able to actually reduce those inequalities. That would have been an anti-inflationary policy doing double duty, reversing rather than exacerbating existing inequalities.”

One way to reverse profiteers’ greed-driven markups was President Richard Nixon’s successful 90-day price freeze in 1971-72 aided by the much-revised Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 (ESA) . It was designed to win him votes from the desperate and was initiated and generaled to quick passage by the House “dean” and Banking committee chair Wright Patman (D-TX). In 1970, Patman led colleagues in both Houses into passing an anti-inflation control bill into law (PL 91-151 ).

The best method to stop inflation instantly appears to be cutting profiteering off at the knees at the start of its upward movement issued by a presidential Executive Order (EO) to waylay greed. Profiteers are usually the real drivers of inflation because they set prices “from the top,” indirectly controlling both supply and demand for goods and services. Ultimately, their power controls our economy: the Federal Reserve Bank and member banks, Wall Street, most presidents, Congress, Corporate America, and fear-stricken candidates for any office.

Of all the presidential inflation-fighters, Nixon has to be a standout, reluctant or not. Once the outspoken, rigid opponent of price controls, he was forcibly converted to them by the wit, skill, and guile of Patman and his standing army of anti-inflation Senators and House members. They stood toe to toe after Nixon’s first election as inflation rates moved from 1968’s 4.27 percent to 5.84 in 1970.

Nixon seems to have deduced inflation as the coming chief issue for midterm voters in that the Vietnam war was winding down. As he once told economic advisors: “I’ve never seen anybody beaten on inflation in the United States. [But] I’ve seen many people beaten on unemployment.”

So whatever loathing millions had for him, his extraordinary political insights, opportunism, and inner drive seemed impotent in a faceoff with inflation and Patman’s equal endowments and good nature.

Nixon, the grocer’s son, was well aware of the profiteers’ third rail, and smart enough never to challenge it because of their monumental retaliatory powers. Patman, a scrappy cotton farmer’s son , wasn’t. As a young House member in 1932, his investigative skills, candor, and hatred of banks succeeded in driving Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon from office on impeachment charges of high crimes and misdemeanors (corruption).

Now, because the Federal Reserve and economic “royalty” have yet to arrest inflation, some of today’s article writers are raising danger flags about any thoughts or moves to resurrect Nixon’s four-year New Economic Policy (NEP): “Nixon Taught Us How Not to Fight Inflation ” and “How Nixon Destroyed the Dollar .”

Mainstream media owners fear retaliation from the tycoons who want no talk about the 90-day “Nixon Freeze” to reach the public because it was an instant and resounding success that probably cost them billions in sales of goods and services. They especially don’t want people to learn that the genesis for that success was the formidable Patman and his anti-inflation fighters in Congress. That may explain why their obedient Wall Street Journal published a contributor’s blunt letter basically saying: 1) Today’s “factory owners and shopkeepers” wouldn’t stand for a price freeze, and 2) “Controls got too complex and the program lasted too long.”

Millions of Americans suffering inflation’s hardships certainly would demand a 90-day price freeze, of course. But many economists and business historians would concede that reader’s second point: Congress and Nixon should have quit while they were ahead instead of sticking with NEP’s last two years of failure. NEP did get too complex and lasted too long, permitting bureaucracy to expand like algae and spawn inefficiency.

Authors of the recent AFL-CIO report Greedflation define that term as what happens “when companies increase prices to boost corporate profits and create windfall payouts for corporate CEOs.” Those profits are an eye-popping $ 2 trillion in this year’s second quarter for nonfinancial companies, according to the latest calculations by the U.S. Commerce Department. Moreover, profiteering is finally being unmasked as inflation’s chief cause and should be targeted and disciplined. Most consumers probably have suspected as much for centuries.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, says that retail prices for goods and services aren’t set by complex supply and demand factors, the usual inflation culprits: “[Prices] are egregiously manipulated by corporate giants that have achieved monopoly-level dominance over their markets.

Economic pundit Robert Reich agrees. He just pointed out in Inequality Media that today’s stagnant wages aren’t inflation’s cause. The average hourly wages are $10.93 and have barely budged enough to create consumer demand. He attributes inflation to “monopolistic corporations jacking up prices to maximize profits.” His antidote is a “windfall profits tax.”

Far tougher punishment has been suggested to policymakers by Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project. Citing the recent 235 percent profit increases by eight major oil companies, she noted:

“Megacorporations are a key driver of high prices—and we need bold action to rein them in….to attack concentrated corporate power immediately and aggressively across the board. That means levying excess profits taxes, ensuring big penalties for price-fixing, and resourcing enforcement agencies to prosecute price-gouging and other forms of corporate abuse. And it means banning large mergers, stock buybacks, and ‘payoffs for layoffs’ to help build durable market power for working people and consumers and level the playing field for small businesses and entrepreneurs.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and 19 co-sponsors are also pursuing profiteers with a “Sub-Task Force” in their pending Emergency Price Stabilization Act of 2022. It contains the subpoena power of corporations’ financial records to determine whether price fixing is done out of necessity or greed.

Profiteering is something undoubtedly learned by Nixon as a working-class California youngster laboring in the parental lemon grove and, later, at the family’s grocery/gas station. His career indicates he aspired early on to be a “have” instead of a “have-not” using the lawyer route. Aided by brains, drive, and ruthless ambition—a K-12 school and college leader with a flair for debate and theatre —he pushed open high society’s door and gave lip service to its values. That included the economic myth that wage increases always cause inflation, not sellers charging whatever the traffic will bear.

Back in the “Great Inflation” decade —1970-80—Nixon faced almost identical crises as Biden: funding a proxy war (Vietnam), high inflation rates (5.84% ), unemployment (6.1% ), low hourly wages ($1.45 ), sky-high rents charged by greedy and powerful landlords—and the electorate’s despair and growing fury. Opposition to price controls came in ear-splitting howls from small business owners and threats from profiteers. Not to mention influential economists like Nobel laureate Milton Friedman (“Wage and price controls destroy the system which organizes the economy”).

Using his seven months as a young lawyer for the New Deal’s Office of Price Administration (OPA) , Nixon claimed economic expertise. By February 1971, when his economic brain trusters were weighing solutions to inflation’s ravages and price controls came up, Nixon snapped: “[Controls] didn’t work even at the end of World War II. They will never work in peacetime…I’m not going to have wage and price controls!”

While he was campaigning for the presidency in 1968, so were Congressional incumbents like Patman listening to thousands of financially-strapped constituents demand Congress “do something” to stop spiraling prices and empty shelves at home. Nixon was focused on ending the Vietnam war honorably. Patman, Congress’ banking and financial expert, decided to use the duplicitous Nixon to “do something” far more important to most Americans than the war and perhaps win a landslide election into the bargain.

Now, Nixon was an expert in Congressional wars with presidents: five years in the House, two in the Senate, and eight as vice president under President Dwight Eisenhower. But he was no match for Patman’s 47 years as an expert on economic matters and generating bills into laws. So when Nixon had scarcely unpacked in the White House, Patman probably made sure Nixon knew he was leading a sizeable bipartisan movement in both houses to pass bills “doing something” about inflation.

The first bill—Patman’s Credit Control Act (PL 91-151)—passed before Christmas Eve 1969 and was on Nixon’s desk for signing. It stipulated: “Whenever the President determines that such action is necessary or appropriate for the purpose of preventing or controlling inflation generated by the extension of credit in an excessive volume” he could authorize the Federal Reserve Board to control credit interest rates. Nixon signed it unwillingly, informing Patman’s “army” his undying opposition to any controls—and would refuse to implement the law. That was good news to the Fed and the nation’s bankers, Wall Streeters, and profiteers.

Undeterred, but determined to prevent a financial crash before the 1972 midterms, Patman and his inflation-fighters went to work on a bill—the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 (ESA)—which led to what was to become known as “Nixon’s Shock” .

The bill was brief because the wily Patman and his colleagues planned to hide ESA as a Title II provision into a bill carefully chosen because of the likelihood it would be fast-tracked for a quick voice vote in both houses: the Defense Production Act Amendments. Even in 1970, lengthy Pentagon bills were rarely read or challenged in Congress. This bill’s Title I is concerned with changing accounting standards.

ESA’s Title II: 1) authorized the President to issue orders and regulations to keep “prices, rents, wages, and salaries” as they were on May 25, 1970 until the law’s expiration on February 28, 1971; 2) the President could “delegate the performance of any function…to such officers, departments, and agencies of the U.S. as he may deem appropriate;” 3) violators would be fined $5,000 for each proven offense; and 4) a court would issue a mandatory injunction against repeated violations. Though unstated, the law would be enforced by the IRS and the Department of Justice.

Nixon had to be furious. Administering it was hardly a job for a diehard capitalist who hated federal controls and regulations. Patman and his people were forcing him to sign a Pentagon bill into law which included controlling prices, rents, and wages, as well as punishing gougers in the housing, and mortgage industry that a House report had just excoriated.

If he carried out the bill’s authority, corporate leaders would regard him as a closet Communist or Socialist because profits would shrink dramatically. So would their donations for his reelection in 1974. Party leadership would provide only token support and funding for his campaign. On the other hand, an energetic anti-inflation effort could win votes from millions of Democratic and independent voters. It would offset significant losses from his Republican base. He might be regarded as a new Roosevelt.

Nixon may have shouted countless private expletives against Patman’s cleverness in instituting price controls, but he was a political pragmatist and vicious opponent, which had earned him the pejorative “Tricky Dick.” He gathered his economic advisors and political experts for help in developing an EO to show Americans why price controls don’t stop inflation. Some names are still familiar: Arthur Burns, Dick Cheney, John Connally, Milton Friedman, Paul McCracken, Peter Peterson, Donald Rumsfeld, George Shultz, Herbert Stein, Paul Volcker, and Caspar Weinberger.

Meanwhile, the supposedly fast-tracked Pentagon bill derailed in the House probably because it demanded transparency of Pentagon accounts. Warhawks rose to protect contracting secrets. During debate, it first set off extensive and heated testimony requiring members read the bill’s text. That revealed the piggybacked Title II’s ESA provision, triggering two days of Republican explosions and raucous calls for renaming the provision “Election Year Squeezeplay,” and “Devious Democratic Demagoguery.”

The bill’s defenders came armed, however, perhaps ready to suggest substituting “controls” for WWII ration books. If the Republicans were to argue it was unconstitutional for one branch of government to delegate “legislative power” to another, Patman’s group had a blockbuster response: Federal controls were backstopped by precedent in peacetimes by a string of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and Munn v. Illinois (1877) to U.S. v. Darby (1941). All were based on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (I, Section 8, Clause 3) empowering Congress to regulate prices “among the several States,” emergency or not.

The fiery debate took four days to pass the bill on August 15, 1970 and sent it two days later for Nixon’s signature to become PL 91-379. As both Nixon and Patman knew, a brouhaha in Congress drew national media coverage and exposed the issues—seemingly bad for the President, but good for Patman and his inflation fighters, and a hopeful sign to a public waiting for them both to “do something” about inflation’s seemingly unstoppable rise.

Boxed into a political corner by Patman, Nixon knew signing that bill would alienate major supporters: Big Business, Wall Street, the ruling class, profiteers, and the Republican National Committee. But as he emphasized to devastated political advisors and campaign staff about the impact on re-election chances in 1974: “I’ve never seen anybody beaten on inflation in the United States, [but] I’ve seen many people beaten on unemployment.”

Nixon used his acting background to look as if he were being forced into signing ESA into law on August 17, 1970, leaving him blameless in the eyes of supporters. Then, playing the last-ditch Republican conservative, he reportedly “issued a blistering attack ” on ESA after the signoff.

His remarks were left-footed because, despite the dire economic circumstances of the year for most Americans, he said he considered vetoing it because it didn’t “fit the economic conditions which exist today.” He held off because the Pentagon provisions were vital. Then came the declaration he would not “exercise the authority” the law provided for implementing controls. It was followed by a parting shot at Patman and his supporters: If Congress felt this strongly about price controls, it—not he—should “face up to its responsibilities and make them mandatory.”

He knew the logistics for creating another national bureaucracy to enforce controls wouldn’t be an overnight success. It would take months to be operational and certainly fail under an OPA-like bombardment of lawsuits, complaints about unfair rulings, staff bungling, and lack of enforcement energy by the IRS and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Nor would funding be secure. Given his vengeful nature, Nixon seems to have made a silent vow to get even with the smiling Patman on the same day next year. Patman became politician No. 16 on Nixon’s infamous Enemies List of 220.

Delegating the heavy lifting of ESA to his staff for that February 28 expiration date, Nixon may have encouraged foot-dragging and inefficiency. Seeing that deadline as an impossibility, Patman’s group submitted an extension to ESA in late November. They shifted the deadline to April Fool’s Day and hid it in a bill amending the Small Business Act’s funding. It sped to passage by a voice vote and a slow-boiling Nixon’s signature on December 17. He promptly announced he would not use it. So another Patman amendment to ESA moved the date to June 1, 1971.

Meeting fairly regularly with his advisors and aides in the next few months, Nixon had them working up a “surprise” for Patman—and the nation. As August 15^th approached, network radio and television airtime was requested for a historic address to the nation by the President. Even the super-popular Bonanza TV series and network radio was pre-empted. Obviously, Nixon was aiming to duplicate the chattiness of FDR’s famous Fireside Chats to the public.

That weekend, he huddled at Camp David with advisors for final changes in the content. On Sunday, he put the final touches on the EO fleshing out his directives. Then, came the speech of his lifetime, still called “the Nixon shock ” by economists specializing in inflation.

The 2,596 words were heavy with banner-headline news: ending the gold standard and cutting the federal budget by $4.7 billion to stabilize the dollar’s value, solving balance of payment problems, and a 10 percent surcharge on imports. But the most important passage started with:

“I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States for a period of 90 days. In addition, I call upon corporations to extend the wage-price freezes to all dividends.

I have today appointed a Cost of Living Council within the Government. I have directed this Council to work with leaders of labor and business to set up the proper mechanism for achieving continued price and wage stability after the 90-day freeze is over.

Let me emphasize two characteristics of this action: First, it is temporary. To put the strong, vigorous American economy into a permanent straitjacket would lock in unfairness; it would stifle the expansion of our free enterprise system.

And second, while the wage-price freeze will be backed by Government sanctions, if necessary, it will not be accompanied by the establishment of a huge price-control bureaucracy. 1 am relying on the voluntary cooperation of all Americans—each one of you: workers, employers, consumers— to make this freeze work.”

Next day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped to a gain if 32.93 points and posted a record-breaking one-day volume of 31,730,000 transactions. Initially, it was a hit with the public, judging from nationwide polls and leaders at Reynolds Metals, Dow Chemical, and Firestone, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The New York Times lead editorial rumbled:

“…we unhesitatingly applaud the boldness with which the president has moved on all economic fronts—and most especially his order for a ninety day freeze on prices and wages as a preliminary to a flexible policy for checking the runaway spiral that has eroded the purchasing power of all Americans and made American products increasingly uncompetitive in world markets.”

To friends and foes, the surprise freeze was a stopper. Nixon was finally going to go after price gougers—or so they thought. Patman’s reaction is not known, but it would be in character for a chuckle and a head shake at Nixon’s “revenge” backfiring by proving price controls would work at least until after the holidays. By then, profiteers would have figured out how to get around a permanent freeze.

Nixon’s debating skills were at their best perhaps when the uncomfortable post-speech questions arrived. To those asking him “but you’ve always opposed price controls,” Nixon’s response was: “Philosophically, I was still against wage-price controls, even though I was convinced that the objective reality of the economic situation forced me to impose them.” The reality of “objective reality” was getting re-elected in 1972, of course.

Facing ridicule over asking Americans to police themselves —and others—to avoid a $5,000 fine (soon to be $7,500 ) per violation. His OPA experience as a federal prosecutor of rationing violators and black marketers finally became valuable for responses.

Few critics were sharp enough to catch Nixon’s omission of controls on excess profits. He and his aides evidently had decided most of the audience would assume the request that corporations cooperate with interest and dividend controls also covered profits, particularly windfalls. The same omission was in the EO detailing the 90-day freeze rules.

Questions about windfall profits were now being raised so often in the next few weeks that Nixon and his advisors were finally forced to quash them publicly in another major nationwide address on October 7 updating freeze results. It was inserted far below his forced admission of overwhelming success in the first seven weeks of the 90-day freeze. He followed that by telling the audience they were now in the second of four phases of the NEP for the months ahead.

The broadcast opened with a nod to his freeze—for the benefit of voters:

“On the inflation front, I can report to you tonight that the wage-price freeze has been remarkably successful. As you heard on your evening news, the figures bear out that statement. Wholesale prices in September posted the biggest decline in five years. And the price of industrial commodities has gone down for the first time in seven years. The primary credit for the success of this first step in the fight against rising prices belongs to you; it belongs to the American people. It is you who have shown a willingness to cooperate in the campaign against inflation. It is you who have answered the call to put the public interest ahead of the special interest.”

That profits/windfalls weren’t given prominence had to come as a relief to Wall Street, the Fed, and banks. But after his paean to capitalism’s only purpose (greed), Nixon’s burial of that subject was unearthed near the end of his lengthy address:

“Many of my good friends in the field of politics have advised me that the only politically popular position to take is to be against profits. But let us recognize an unassailable fact of economic life. All Americans will benefit from more profits. More profits fuel the expansion which generates more jobs. More profits mean more investments, which will make our goods more competitive in America and in the world. And more profits mean there will be more tax revenues to pay for the programs that help people in need. That is why higher profits in the American economy would be good for every person in America.

***

“ ‘Windfall’ profits, however, as I will describe them, are quite another thing. When wages and other costs are held down by the Government, even though prices are also held down, circumstances could arise in some cases that might generate exorbitant profits; in other words, where someone will profit from the wage-price stabilization program. In the few cases where this happens, rather than tax such excess profits, the Price Commission’s policy will be that business should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer by cutting prices.”

The speech essentially marked the end of Nixon’s historic 90-day success using controls to battle inflation. It probably also played a role in his landslide re-election in 1972 against anti-war Sen. George (47.7 million vs. 29.2 million ). After that, his four-phase NEP became a downhill disaster both for the American economy and his political career.

It started with Nixon humbling himself shortly after that speech to request Congress support his proposed NEP bill extending and amending ESA to include this four-phase program. Undoubtedly with a twinkle, Patman in the House and John Sparkman in the Senate obliged, jointly introducing it on October 19. Controversy immediately erupted. Some of Nixon’s provisions were defeated and some of Patman’s group succeeded. Interestingly, of the 33 provisions in the final bill, only one controlling windfall survived. Sen. Fred Harris’ (politician No. 3 on Nixon’s list) entry said:

“In carrying out his authority…the President shall study and evaluate the relationship between excess profits, the stabilization of the economy, and the creation of new jobs. The results of such study shall be incorporated in the reports referred to in subsection (a) […”giving his assessment of the progress attained in achieving the purposes of this title.”]

Nixon had pledged that the NEP would not be “accompanied by the establishment of a huge price-control bureaucracy.” Yet until its phase-out in 1974, bureaucracy and operational expenses soon rivaled OPA’s, according to Council director John T. Dunlop. His estimate was at least $200 million (today’s $1.5 billion ) spent by 1973 alone.

At least its Price Commission initially had razor-sharp teeth in helping reduce inflation to 2 to 3 percent, Nixon’s goal for the freeze. It also tightened regulations on price-increase applications, froze prices on companies failing to report financials, annulled previous approvals to corporations such Continental Can, and ordered several others—Armco Steel, Champion Spark Plug, Simpson Timber, Textron, Woolworth’s—to lower prices or refund overcharges. The commission also teamed with the IRS to disallow business expenses involving wages and prices above NEP’s ceilings.

Consumer economist Michael Walden provides the obituary of price controls overstaying their purpose of stemming the tide of inflation at its start:

“The intent of the Nixon plan was to “cool off” the economy and purge high inflationary expectations from decision-making. Initial polls indicated the country backed the price and wage controls. And while the measured inflation rate was moderated for a while, the success didn’t last, even after a second round of controls was instituted. Within a couple of years, the inflation rate was higher than ever. Ultimately it would reach double digits (1971: 4.38% ; 1974: 11.04% ) three years in a row. It took a deep recession to bring the annual inflation rate back to the low single digits.”

Advisors to candidates in the coming election seasons would do well to consider lessons furnished by both Patman and Nixon in dealing with inflation’s primary cause. So do a pair of university economics professors—Isabella Weber and Mark Paul:

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, price controls have a rather successful history in the U.S. when used right, and, while not a magic bullet, they are a powerful tool to tame inflation and protect low- and middle-income Americans. This is particularly true when market power—be it from landlords, oil companies, or meat cartels—is at play.”

Above all, candidate advisors need to remember that Nixon initially stopped inflation cold for nearly two years using price controls—and got re-elected while doing it from 18.5 million more voters than Sen. George McGovern. And Patman’s brilliant legislative skills opened the door to challenge traditional tactics to fight inflation on the backs of suffering Americans. The two men did do something for them.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

The post CEOs: Too Big to Jail? But Maybe Not Any More appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

President Biden just texted this long-time Bernie campaigner for the second time this month (“It would mean so much to me if you could make a $10 donation to the DNC (Democratic National Committee).” His tone was unctuous. Just like him. No mention of why. No straight-talk such as: “Rick Scott’s plan to raise taxes could happen if the GOP wins back control. Rush $10 to the DNC’s Red Alert Fund.”

At least DNC PAC flacks’ are bold and upfront with “URGENT” and imaginative missives filling my email and snail-mail boxes. Nothing hesitant or mealy-mouthed about their prose: “Horrible News : A record number of Democrats—more than THIRTY—have decided to retire…The math is NOT on our side.” Or: “If we don’t meet our goals [$102 million], we will have to CANCEL THESE ADS ”).

Given pundits such as Politico’s Steve Shepard and several major polls predicting a Republican midterm landslide into Congress, the party apparently is desperately scouring the nation for votes. On their lists are defectors such as the “turncoats,” the angries, those disgusted with DNC candidate choices—and “temporary Democrats” like me, stuck in Oregon’s closed primary system. We are the bane of county election officials because the day after voting for a worthy, non-DNC-approved candidate, we “Temp Dems” re-register to return to our home party (Independent, Green, Progressive, Working Family, etc.—or Republican).

Unfortunately for the DNC, we “Yellow Dog” Democrats stopped giving to the DNC or voting for its usual malleable presidential candidates after its shameful treatment in 2004 and 2016/2020 of Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders, respectively, to keep them off the ballot. Moreover, as a public relations professional, it seemed to me that with Biden’s recent poll ratings nose-diving to 33 percent  —and election cash beginning to dry up—extraordinary electioneering boldness is called for, especially in these terrifying times.

After Biden’s two years in office, I and millions of others have concluded he and his DNC handlers have little interest in us 99-percenters by failure to vigorously and regularly fight for our critical needs. They have him blistering their foreign enemies, but rarely our domestic enemies in Congress and Corporate America. He still comes off as a disingenuous senator using Congressional courtesies and people-pleasing to chase cash from big donors.

Bernie he’s not. Bernie genuinely believes in what he’s advocating whether it’s bills, speaking everywhere on talk shows and giant rallies, carrying picket signs, or skewering opponents. He’s authentic. Though a year older (80 ) than Joe, he seems to have five times the pep. Considering Joe’s poll numbers, he’s now seen by too many Democratic voters either as the DNC’s puppet or a friendly, vacuous, hot-air buffoon. Like Trump.

We activists noticed even in his vice-presidential days how super-cautious he was about not upstaging or offending Obama. Like Mike Pence, he also holds ironclad centrist beliefs about right-and-wrong morality and is careful never to stray too far into controversial issues. Today, that means taking sides in today’s crucial issues: environmental protections, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, enforcing voting rights, abortion, expanding Social Security and Medicare, long-term support for the poor and homeless, student loans, and union members’ strikes. Joe’s a life-long compromiser and well practiced in avoidance of controversial issues that could cost votes for the Democratic party.

When the DNC decision-makers had to pick a presidential candidate in 2020 among 25 contenders , many of us Bernie campaigners were furious when they obviously convinced all but Joe to quit t o show unity against Trump. It’s been a traditional party tactic. Granted, Joe had solid national political credentials: the Senate (36 years ), a two-time presidential candidate (1988, 2008 ), and was Obama’s affable two-term vice-president(2009-2017 ). He and Bernie had monumental political recognition around the country. His time had come for the party’s biggest reward for being its long-time obedient and faithful servant.

If he initially demurred about the inner-circle’s presidential offer—perhaps out of exhaustion or family concerns—it would appear they assured him their experts would do all the heavy lifting, from speechwriting and budget preparations to handling foreign and domestic policies, press conferences, and public appearances. Thanks to the COVID pandemic, Joe could lie low in his basement campaign office to avoid the virus and controversies as well as his usual verbal and social gaffs. His team seemed to handle almost everything in the campaign—as promised.

For example, they provided him with 90 promises for the campaign trail. Some were cynically drawn for that list: ending new fossil-fuel drilling on federal lands and rejoining the Paris climate agreement. We activists knew that most of those domestic promises ever became bills, they would never get out of Congressional committees for a floor vote. Key ones would offend big donors—the party’s and his. They counted on the “public forgetter” being endemic with most voters. Many are unaware of the Congressional process to make them law. Even if they were aware, few would be likely to hold him to those vows. But never those of us in powerful progressive movements.

So 71 of those 90 promises did stall in Congress. Luckily, among the 17 that passed were the American Rescue Plan and Infrastructure bill. But as the DNC circle correctly guessed, others  were of little interest to the average voter such as “leveraging allies to support 5G alternatives excluding China”; resuming ties with the Palestinian Authority; and restoring the White House’s office for global health security.

We were among millions who sensed Joe’s heart and soul were not in what he was touting. He rarely mentioned the domestic promises he opposed. Older voters and the young, politically savvy generation knew about former presidents Harry S. Truman who did loudly and firmly champion his causes (“Give ‘em Hell, Harry”) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) who “went to the mattress” for his New Deal during the Great Depression. Truman did railroad whistle-stops around the countryside. Both flayed greedy corporations or Congressional opponents for killing or blocking crucial legislation for the “99%”— especially FDR’s Social Security. President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) put the fear of God into Congressional colleagues and lobbyists to deliver Medicare, civil-rights laws, and other critical benefits for all Americans. He was a master at “godfathering” defiant colleagues into compliance by using low-growls and vise-like arm-twisting, to which the popular and powerful Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen (R-Il) could attest.

Joe’s half-hearted push for his own $3 trillion  Build Back Better bill (BBB) helped stall it so Republican lawmakers could slash it to $1.75 trillion and strip it of major offerings. Gone was free tuition at public colleges, extending the child tax credit, forcing Big Pharma to negotiate lower prescription prices for Medicare recipients and 80 percent coverage of glasses/hearing aids/dentures/implants Also omitted were paid family and medical leave , and fines for foot-dragging utility companies  over adopting clean energy systems.

Where were Joe’s fiery blasts against these deletions? He has yet to take Democratic opponents Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to the woodshed for supporting the filibuster blocking his agenda. Voters are also bound to weigh why his regime is so eager to spend us into another endless war, this one possibly nuclear against Russia . Why end federal help  for the ongoing pandemic? Why stall on canceling student loans ? And why not resurrect wartime price controls to stop inflation? These major worries aren’t going away for most voters.

Finally, in mid-March, the 98 members of the House Progressive Caucus, facing re-election in the midterms, ordered Joe to use his Executive Order powers  to do an immediate end-run around the Republican siege to restore the BBB’s provisions. Among them were fighting climate change, canceling student debt, lowering prescription prices, raising the minimum federal wages, and criminal-justice reforms. FDR signed 3,721Executive Orders, many for New Deal programs Congressional Republicans blocked. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren  warned and The Guardian’s Joan E. Grevein reported:

“Progressives warn that if Biden does not start signing more executive orders [he’s done 87 ], Democrats’ failure to follow through on many of their campaign promises will result in severely depressed voter turnout among their supporters in November, probably allowing Republicans to regain control of the House and Senate.”

Perhaps the last straw for us climate activists was his shocking hypocrisy in releasing new oil and gas leases  covering 144 acres in nine states and 80 million in the Gulf of Mexico for fracking by the global oil barons. Banning new drilling was one of his 90 promises. His DNC handlers may think this destruction action a non-issue for voters, but when millions of environmentalists exploded  over that betrayal, it drew vast public attention from the public about the rapid approach of the planet’s death.

The DNC’s Machiavellian movers-shakers have to have concluded Joe is a liability for Congressional candidates in the midterms and the 2024 presidential run. Better cut their losses now to warm up that  winning presidential candidate in the months ahead.

That means convincing Joe to step aside (reasons: age, health, family). It may not be hard. He may be relieved to pass the baton to someone stronger, tougher, younger, politically seasoned, and a former major Administration official. Someone who’s a household name and too familiar in foreign capitals—and scares Trump who fears strong, smart, and super-competent Someone who’s been in the DNC “inner circle,” whose presidential campaign loaned the party millions to help pay off part of Obama’s $47 million debt  from his 2012 re-election campaign.

Who else but Hillary Clinton?

The party does owe her such a “last hurrah.” Besides, she beat Trump by 2.9 million votes in the 2016 election, but not in the right electoral-college states (227-304). This despite her being detested by millions as a cold-hearted, calculating, super-ambitious warhawk.

When I asked a business owner the other day about that possibility, he shook his head and said “I think she’s too tired,” he said, indicating two failed presidential tries (Obama/Trump) and being New York’s two-term senator, and a powerful Secretary of State. “Who else have they got with her stupendous qualifications?” I asked. A shrug and silence. A thirtysomething Trader Joe cashier agreed Hillary was fully qualified, but “we want someone younger.” Like who? Again, a sigh, shrug, and silence.

Because I’ve been tracking Hillary’s political moves for the last two years, I argued she seems to be in good physical and emotional shape  for 74. She stays current on national and international events—especially the hot domestic issues that concern most Americans. Upgrading a résumé in her case is a clear sign of plans to return to public office. After all, she’s never let go of the nearly 69 million  who voted for her in 2016, and those thousands of fanatic campaigners from two presidential runs. Indeed, she has created an “alumni” organization  (Hillaryland).

For the last two years, she’s hosted a podcast talk show (You & Me Both with Hillary Clinton ) split into a celebrity interview and her responses to listeners’ letters, permitting her to comment about major news. Late last year, she and husband Bill did an online teaching stint about leadership on the private MasterClass White House series  (1.5 million subscribers @$180 annually). She’s co-authored a “thriller” novel, and her latest book (What Happened ) about the 2016 election will be in bookstores September 12. Plenty of time for 2024.

Hillary still knows how to generate media coverage. A few days ago, she wrote a New York Times op ed eulogy to Madeleine Albright , her predecessor as Secretary of State. And she just sued Trump to dismiss his recent lawsuit  charging her with “a racketeering conspiracy to propagate false claims about him and Russia” in the 2016 campaign. She’s claiming he waited over four years to file action, that it lacked validity, and was a political publicity stunt (benefitting both for 2024). She’s also picked up publicity—and gratitude from the DNC and midterm candidates—by endorsing some in critical key states such as Ohio . Nor has she been shy about revealing a positive test for COVID . Millions of American voters will identify . 

So she seems to be making careful preparations for cultivating the inner-circle’s nod for another run against Trump. Her weapons will be his monumental basket of high crimes and misdemeanors leading to two impeachments. He faces federal prison for approving the treasonous attempt to overthrow the Constitution and the Biden government to remain president that’s unfolding in the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack . In addition, a federal judge just ordered him to pay a $10,000-per- day fine  in New York for failure to turn over his company’s subpoenaed documents in a business fraud case. His weapons will still be her emails, misogamistic comments about her looks (not age; he’s 75 ), and misdeeds as Secretary of State. Unfortunately, most voters either don’t remember them or no longer care.

It’s doubtful the inner-circle will ever dictate policies to Hillary. Recognizing Americans are more concerned with domestic crises than global issues like the Ukraine/Russian war, she has a kit of remedies from earlier campaigns to prevent a major public explosion. One major help will be her kit of 41 policy proposals of which 38 looked like a Bernie platform. They involved everything from gun control and debt-free college to expanding Social Security/Medicare, low-cost housing, and voting rights. Though accused of being in the pockets of Wall Street and the Pentagon, her proposals included plans to reform both.

With her monumental credentials, expect that DNC inner-circle soon to be asking us: What’s not to like about replacing Joe with Hillary as our presidential candidate?

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

The post About Those RVs Parked in Your Neighborhood appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Barbara G. Ellis.

Amid the current unemployment statistics of 66.7 million filings since March—excluding the 1.3 million not looking for work—it clearly is no time for high school students to be invading the part-time adult workforce, perhaps even for gig labor. Because I’d been a high school teacher (Maine, Oregon) and at 15 held two part-time jobs, I certainly understood what this means for teenagers: Do not apply.

But then I read about Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) new bill (S. 4538 ) to help relieve youth unemployment by resurrecting the Great Depression’s famed CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). Recruits would be 16 or older, not just the 18-25 in the original men’s program. At the same time the AmeriCorps was announcing expansion plans to help the nation recover from the “economic and social impact” of COVID-19. This despite its parent agency, the 295,000 volunteer Corporation for National and Community Services (CNCS), barely escaping President Trump’s FY2021 budget snickersnee for the fourth year (“Funding community service and subsidizing the operation of non-profit organizations is outside the proper role of the Federal Government”).

The estimated 2.5 million 16-year-olds, usually high school juniors, would be eligible. Now, teaching them made me well aware of the timeless secret dread of becoming seniors and leaving the cocoon of life beyond school. Many were apprehensive about having to permanently join a workplace with “older” employees (i.e., those over 30) or college acceptances. But many finally were concerned about grades instead of looks, clothes, sex, popularity, clique expulsion, and as always, peer pressure to do wild things.

However, many of those fears would vanish if 16-year-olds knew they could spend the next year in the AmeriCorps or CCC—about which most knew nothing—and then return for the senior year. For such national service, the results would be college credits and scholarships. For instance, AmeriCorps offers end-of-service education awards of $6,345 —and basic “living allowances” ($9.43 per hour) for housing, food, and gas, depending on an assignment site’s cost of living. The new CCC would offer $15 per-hour wages and $5,500 at term’s end for continuing education.

Both service avenues also could cut the dropout rate significantly from the legal school-leaving age of 16. That sum represents a loss forever for a school district of an average $12,756 per student paid by a state rather than a temporary loss of the same funds for those joining the CCC or AmeriCorps for a year of national service.

The programs could be a superb fit for those high school juniors either terrified of becoming seniors or restless at home from 11th grade online classes because of COVID’s lightning spread of lifelong disabilities or death. If AmeriCorps expands to include 16-year-olds, these juniors could finally travel to other states and work with other teens.”

In researching both the AmeriCorps and Durbin’s bill, their purposes to help this country are excellent in filling crucial domestic needs. AmeriCorps has three branches: VISTA fights poverty; State and National provides healthcare, education, community building, and disaster relief; the National Civilian Community Corps responds to requests from non-profit organizations.

Durbin’s proposed CCC renewal program, like its predecessor, would cover dozens of environmental projects: tree planting, restoring waterways, protecting fish/wildlife, fixing campgrounds and trails. New ones would restore brownfield sites, create urban gardens and farms, build green schoolyards, and plant native grasslands. Unlike its predecessor, projects would be in recruits’ hometowns, which represents considerable cost savings and disciplinary headaches.

Ideally, these juniors would return to finish their senior year as far more mature and self-assured, disciplined, purposeful—the “serious student” prized by high school teachers.

Unfortunately, most teenagers probably find their lifestyles hobbled both organizations’ rules and regulations, especially constant monitoring of job performances and behaviors on and off duty—even use of social media and emails.

Durbin’s CCC repeats the tight, military discipline of the original 1930s program. Juniors would need physical capabilities for strenuous manual labor. Discharge would be immediate for absenteeism, poor performance, possession/use of illegal drugs, alcohol, and tobacco products, fighting, sexual harassment, theft, as well as undeclared arrests and convictions. Thus far, the bill has had no co-sponsors since its introduction on September 9 and awaits approval from the Senate Environment and Public Works committee to get a floor vote. It requires administration and implementation from the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, plus a five-year Congressional allocation of $55.8 billion.

AmeriCorps’ ultimate disciplinary policy also is buttressed by dismissal. Among prohibitions are absenteeism, profanity, poor personal hygiene, failure to obey dress codes on or off duty. It bars possession of weapons, sexual harassment, under-age possession/use of alcohol, tobacco products, and illegal drugs. It conducts random urine testing and room checks in the field, and monitors electronic communications for pornography, messages of disrespect, harassment, hate, and derogatory messages about AmeriCorps or fellow members. Moreover, each year its parent CNCS is totally dependent upon a Congressional for survival.

Yet all is not lost.

The pandemic’s economic impact on the nation’s public school districts has meant cutting more than a million K-12 jobs—not just faculty, but clerical staffs, custodians, cafeteria workers, groundskeepers, and library assistants. And whether schools are holding in-person or online classes, such personnel are vital to public school operations. In addition, next year district officials are anticipating a $1 trillion budgetary loss from decreased federal/state/local tax revenues because of COVID’s devastation to individuals and businesses. Labor costs for non-faculty positions cannot be maintained. But a volunteer force could come to the rescue.

What if those juniors looking for national service work were to fill those empty staff positions locally on an after-school and a weekend basis as a “School Service Corps”? It would not invade the part-time job field because work would-be volunteer. Instead, it would be a homegrown workforce inaugurated and administered by school district officials and school principals.

If juniors were fit enough to serve in the CCC or AmeriCorps, they certainly would be capable, for example, as groundskeepers in running snowplows in winter and mowers in fall and spring as well as maintaining athletic fields/floodlights, and parking lots. Not to mention overseeing trees, plants, and playgrounds.

Too, what junior could not answer phones or provide counter service, run errands, record incoming supplies and equipment, sort and deliver mail.

Custodial duties would involve deep-cleaning classrooms, offices, and lavatories and resupplying soap, towels, and toilet paper. Setting classroom desks and tables in place. Vacuuming. Tending heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. Washing and waxing floors. Cleaning windows and whiteboards. Hauling out garbage.

As for cafeteria service, most juniors know something about food preparation, serving, dishwashers—and cleanup. Library duty would involve book and periodical checkouts, providing information, shelving and repairing returned books, dusting, keeping periodicals current, setting up displays and meetings, and maintaining quiet.

For a school district, the only costs would be incorporating Corps members in healthcare and workman’s insurance. And because participants would still be in school, state per-student funding would continue. Discipline could be forgoing end-of-service rewards by dismissal.

Rewards could be a district’s arrangements with the state’s public colleges/universities and vocational schools for eight credit hours, free tuition for the first year, a certificate of achievement, and letter of recommendation to enhance career prospects. It also would enhance a lifetime résumé.

The intangible rewards for those juniors would be repaying in public service their 12 years of free public education, something also pleasing taxpayers whose dollars made it possible. Another intangible for School Service Corps members would be a deep appreciation of school operations, something few K-12 students care about. And that they played an integral part of the heavy lifting required in those critical operations. Another intangible benefit would be a developing sense of purpose and the responsibilities required in the adult world.

A School Service Corps would be a win-win proposition for juniors, school districts, local taxpayers, and the local community. The time for school district officials to launch it is now.

For the last five weekends, I and my dozen BLM sign-waving, curbside cohorts—mine now has an addenda (“Trump’s Latest Crime: Secret Police in PDX”)—do hour-long shifts on a traffic-heavy corner of Portland’s Holgate/Caesar Chavez Boulevards. We’re one of several groups dotting the city with our post located nearly five miles East from Trump’s notorious secret- police attack of “PDX.”

The covert arrival of President Trump’s private combat troops and deafening explosions of their munitions downtown are reflecting residential fury against him by passing drivers laying on horns in cars, trucks, and Tri-Met buses. They’re augmented by raised-fist gestures thrust through sunroofs and vigorous, supportive waves, two-fingered V’s, and thumbs-up gestures from passengers.

The nightly demonstrations by ordinary and peaceful Portlanders against police brutality to Blacks and, now, Trump’s stormtrooper bombardments and kidnappings have been ongoing for over 60 days. Thousands joined the mostly peaceful protesters after president Trump violated the presidential oath in June with an executive order  creating a federal-property “protection” force. “Why?” we veteran activists wondered. A gun-packing security detail already exists to guard the federal Justice Center, the center of downtown action.

For years, they have always trotted across the street for our non-violent environmental and political rallies, firmly ordering us elsewhere. And just as firmly, our leaders have reminded them we’re not on federal property, yet that’s exactly the spot the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment gives Americans the right of free speech and “peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Centuries of police violence against Blacks certainly constitutes grievances.

Before we could remind them that Trump and his retinue, Congress, the courts, and federal officers have sworn an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution, they would stride briskly back to the Center’s protective walls. They knew only too well that the Trump Administration has discarded the oath, but that many Portlanders and organizations regularly exercise their Constitutional rights on public-policy issues in City Council chambers, meetings of county/regional commissions, and neighborhood associations.

They now also know that despite Trump’s characterization of the City of Roses as a Mecca of “anarchists and agitators”  who “hate our country ” are lies. That any hint of dissent anywhere no matter the issue, is designed to overthrow him and his regime—and destroy every police department in the country. Freedom of assembly was to be wiped out instantly by federal forces if mayors and governors weren’t up to the job. He ordered Attorney General William Barr , to declare the continuing nationwide demonstrations about Black Lives Matter and defunding police were criminal violence?

Gleefully, he targeted Portland to be the guinea pig for repressive measures, not New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles because of their monumental number of activists. Other Democratic strongholds on his itinerary were Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Oakland, and Philadelphia. Political writer Juan Cole  warned of the frightening results:

“The [Portland] exercise also has the advantage for Trump of entrenching a new form of secret police and of turning federal agents into instruments of his authoritarianism.”

Trump’s motives have been attributed chiefly to winning re-election and a lifetime presidency by playing a John Wayne macho role to stop the rapid defection of his voting base , disastrous poll numbers (Biden, 52%; Trump, 40% ),  and scaring suburban voters  about the Portland situation into supporting his re-election. Attacking Portland is now seen as a device to distract American voters from his criminal negligence of COVID’s deadly harvest (July 27: 4,225,687 cases; 146,546 deaths ).

Prior to the July 4^th arrival of Trump’s combat troops, Portland reaction to Floyd’s May 25^th murder was largely peaceful. The initial response was a candlelight vigil by Blacks in North Portland on May 29 and another , July 17, on the Justice Center steps led by a Black City Council member. Downtown, a Floyd demonstration did start peacefully, but around 11 p.m. a group of the non-peaceful raced in and out of the Center lobby and set a fire.

As firefighters extinguished the blaze and police arrived, a few in the crowd suddenly turned hostile either toward firefighters and police, or, surprisingly, to the peaceable. Police quickly responded with flash-bang grenades and tear-gas supposedly to disperse the demonstrators, turning them into a massive crowd of screaming, coughing, panicking—and the vengeful.

Meantime, four hours of vandalism and street fires were already underway, marked by store-window smashings and lootings—sacking Apple and other high-end stores. The alternative tabloid Willamette Week reported that: “The looters were masked, but they appeared young and predominately white.” Hardly George Floyd avengers. Its lead photograph showed a smoke-shop employee imploring a group to leave. The three he addressed were in black hoodies, one with a black mask.

The upshot was an 8pm curfew, and increasing public anger at police overreaction. A new Oregon law  and U.S. District Court’s temporary restraining order banned tear gas “except for threats to public safety.” In mid-June, the City Council voted 3-1 to deduct nearly $16 million  from the police FY2020 allocation of $245 million  and shift it to other programs. The holdout and her advocates wanted $50 million  shifted.

Now, we long-time Portland activists recognize provocateur handiwork when we see it. The Justice Center fire, even though small, was an eerie reminder of Berlin in 1933 when Hitler’s provocateurs set Germany’s parliament building (the Reichstag ) afire, making him dictator the next day.

In the massive peaceful rallies and marches against the Iraq invasion and others, including the Occupy movement, we were invariably infiltrated by sniggering young people representing the Black Bloc movement. The Bloc seemed to operate in every major city with a heavy Democratic registration. Their assigned mission seemed to be convincing the American public that our demonstrations were violent and subversive.

Knowing media coverage always focuses on the visual (“If it bleeds, it leads”), right after a rally or march, focus was on smashed store and car windows, fires in garbage cans and newspaper boxes and on streets. We always got blamed one way or another (“If you guys would knock off that stuff, this wouldn’t happen.”) The Bloc avoided union and environmental events, especially the anti-Trump Women’s March the day after his inauguration. These were boring, or risked union fists, or women’s confrontations (blows from picket signs and purses).

Black Bloc-ers in Portland seemed to be mostly young thrill-seekers and hoodlums delighted to be recruited by paid provocateurs and their paymasters. Dressed in gothic-black outfits, black hankies concealing faces, they had exceptional hit-run skills for property damage and starting fights. Once, two dozen marching behind some of us tried to turn our huge march off its route with shouts of “On to the freeway!” Behind them were riot cops with batons at the ready and paddy wagons that chased them, presumably, to I-5.

It got so bad that demonstration leaders finally designated two dozen uniformed (yellow vests) march-monitors to “ease” Bloc-ers from our ranks. Back in  2012, an exasperated political columnist Chris Hedges  called the Bloc, Occupy’s “cancer…. a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”

Before Trump’s henchmen arrived to rekindle the dying embers of “unrest” in early July, the Council voted to bar any cooperation between police and Trump’s dragoons. Yet the Police Bureau welcomed, housed, and assisted their brother officers, knowing they all have qualified immunity from any criminal actions?

As Trump’s stormtroopers charged into the Center area, they seemed to believe they were to flatten another Fallujah. They hit protesters with barrages of crowd-control munitions and ferocious baton beatings. One burst of “impact munitions,” blew open a protester’s skull and hovered near death. Troops cruised streets in Enterprise rental vehicles  and randomly kidnapped people, hooded and petrified them so they would spread their tales of terror on social media, and to family, friends, work cohorts. The intent, of course, was to make public suppression easy in Portland—and all of Trump’s other targets.

My photographer/writer friend Mike Hastie dodged tear gas canisters, flash-bang grenades, pepperspray balls, and rubber bullets, to record the overwhelming firepower and violence of Trump’s troops. He emailed me:

“Since Trump called in the Feds, the turmoil and violence has escalated. We all know what Trump is doing: The Feds are baiting the demonstrators, and when they react to the [secret] police violence, Fox News is there to convince the American people that the demonstrators are the bad guys, and the police are the good guys…. The Feds and the [Fox] News want to shape public opinion that these violent protests are being committed by mobs of anarchists and thugs.[and] convince people all over the nation that the Federal Government is protecting us from violent dissent….The Feds don’t know this town so they think they can control the tens of thousands of activists who live in Portland….If there is more overwhelming violence against protesters, and more people get injured, or possibly killed, the call from social media will bring out 50,000 people to the streets….When you factor in COVID-19, and the extreme stress people are feeling from economic insecurity, the emotional cocktail is frightening.”

He was right. The attack backfired almost immediately.

Protesters started a counter-attack which for some reason focused on breaching the hastily built 10-foot, reinforced chain-linked fence ringing the Center. A pair were using an electric saw to cut it down. Instantly, Trump’s troops rushed from the Center to defend the fence only to be pelted with a shower of objects from “tight-knit groups,” he said. Others resorted to shouting taunts, chanting, ear-splitting music, and bared teeth and were met by a steadly stream of “tear gas and projectiles, along with flash-bang grenades.” Two Portland police officers told The Portland Tribune’s Nick Budick  privately that

“…a small, organized group of anarchist-identifying agitators have set more than a hundred fires downtown. This subgroup of protestors also is firing large fireworks and using slingshots to launch ball bearings, frozen water bottles and containers of urine and feces, all deliberate and repeated attempts to injure officers.”

Hastie’s prediction that thousands of ordinary Portlanders—especially activists’ parents—enraged by the actions of Trump’s cops, donned COVID masks and came downtown. To protect themselves, he reported many wore helmets and knee pads, carried gas masks, umbrellas, and plywood shields to ward off projectiles.

A “Wall of Moms ” separated Trump’s Praetorians from demonstrators under the credo of “protecting peaceful citizens’ right to protest.” A “PDX Dad Pod” armed with leaf blowers, showed up to push away tear gas clouds. Considering serious accidents caused by kicking away grenades and canisters—or picking them up to “return fire—hockey sticks have come into play. A tall, naked young woman  stepped from the protesters to stupefy a line of troops, daring them to suppress her. And for 10 minutes they held their fire as the “Naked Athena” performed seductive ballet-yoga poses  (standing, lying down, sitting legs open). She drew a few pepper balls near her feet after they awakened and retreated. But when Mayor Ted Wheeler attempted a Q & A with booing protesters asking where he’d been hiding all this time, they were all tear gassed.

Worse, these counter-attacks have now played into the hands of Trump’s advisers and puppetmasters. A reaction was what they wanted to be able to claim they were restoring order. Aside from knowing exhaustion and injuries eventually wear out the most intrepid of freedom fighters, they’ve assumed Trump will be able to perform as a tough-as-nails, law-and-order neoMussolini—and be re-elected. They count on Americans’ “forgetters” about this suppression “exercise” though 13 major polls reported Trump’s disapproval rating averaged 58%  by July 27.

Historically, violence has always escalated into counter-violence and massacres or Iraq’s ISIS would never have existed. Before the Portland standoff in results in deaths and ruinous expense to federal and local governments, it’s time for a major change in our tactics if redress for centuries of injustice to Blacks and police brutality is to be achieved and Constitutional rights preserved for all of us.

The tactic is an 8-10 p.m. Friday sit-down en masse (while observing social distancing and carrying backpacks of medical supplies) in the three public parks adjacent to the Justice Center. Defiant chants would be replaced by patriotic and rebellious songs interspersed with the 8:46 minutes  of silence for George Floyd’s death, and ending with a bell. Alumni of the non-violent Civil Rights movement can organize this action and continue it until the day before the election. As the lunch-counter sit-downs quickly spread to 13 states, so can this tactic in all the cities Trump has threatened.

It requires steely commitment, extraordinary bravery, and repressing instincts to retaliate. But where used, it has always instantly, clearly and visually separated the oppressed from the oppressors, the peaceful from the violent (troops, provocateurs, thrillseekers). The non-violence aspect should attract thousands of participants, including families. And like the “Naked Athena,” it should surprise and confuse Trump’s combat troops into holding their fire. Best of all, Trump will come across as a pistol-packing, fat bully attempting to overthrow a democratic republic.

To paraphrase the song “Sit-Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” from a Broadway musical, the spectacle of a First Amendment sit-down guarantees a national and global audience. It should “rock (and capsize) Trump’s boat” by November. If a picture is worth a thousand words, newspaper photos of past sit-downs taught millions how to speak Truth to Power.

In this country, the first, and most famous, sit-downs involved the Firestone and GM strikes of 1936-37  in Ohio and Michigan. They were basically over pay cuts, work hours, layoffs, assembly-line speedups—and unionization. The first started on the night shift of January 29, 1936 in Firestone’s truck-tire department at its Akron Plant No. 1. Employees vigorously objected to the suspension without pay of a cohort responding to the company spy’s fist with a knock-out blow. They shut down the assembly line and locked themselves inside the plant. When a sympathetic sit-down loomed in Plant No. 2, Firestone officials quickly re-instated the employee with retroactive wages.

That action ignited February’s sit-downs over pay at nearby plants of B.F. Goodrich and Goodyear. Frightened by union recognition and pay demands, Goodrich owners settled February 9 after only two days. But Goodyear officials laid off 70 employees and dealt with protests from the remaining 137 employees by firing them all. The newly formed United Rubber Workers union rushed in to referee reactions. Goodyear officials hung tough for 33 days in one of Ohio’s worst winters, but mounting production losses forced owners to settle on March 21 by reinstating the fired and curtailing speedups. Result: Demands mostly met, subsequently leading to 52  more sit-down strikes in Akron up to January.

Those successes spread nearly 250 miles north  to 136,000 General Motors  autoworkers in its 17 plants, starting in its Flint, Michigan Fisher body factory. Demands were unionization and ending long hours, low pay, hearing losses, dangerous conditions, and unfair, instant firings. Fisher became the sit-downs’ poster child because instead of using traditional picket lines that could be penetrated by police, scabs, and delivery trucks, strikers locked down the plant and occupied it for 44 days.

The costs to GM were astronomical: 280,000 unbuilt vehicles because parts divisions were idled, terrible publicity and consumer boycotts—particularly after it shut off heat in -16ºF weather. So did newsreels showing women shivering on picket lines, families making food and water deliveries—and heavy pressure from President Franklin Roosevelt to settle. They did on February 11. Result: United Auto Worker recognition, many demands met, including a 5¢ raise.

That success triggered an unexpected sit-down strike 16 days later in Detroit. It was staged by 108 mostly young, low-paid (25¢ per hour) women sales clerks at one of F.W. Woolworth ’s chain of 2,000 dime stores in five countries. Demands ranged from unionizing and a 10¢ raise to 8-hour days and 50¢ meals at their famous lunch counters. They stunned millions of customers and newspaper readers which revealed the shocking low wages, long hours, and management’s rigid regimentation. Help came immediately from national union pickets, food and clothing from families, friends, loyal customers—and that bad publicity. New York’s Retail Clerks union threatened a boycott of every store in the state and the Hotel union warned a national boycott. Woolworth caved seven days later. Result: Sales clerks in all of Detroit’s Woolworth stores received most of the benefits demanded by its “working girls” which, years later, have progressed to equal-pay laws.

Meanwhile, employers around the country were apoplectic about the rise and defiance of the workingclass whose “cheeky” demands cut profits significantly. They were especially terrified about their dwindling power caused by unions . One labor historian  commented:

“The sit-down wave also provoked an intense public debate over whether it was morally right to occupy the capitalists’ property and about which set of rights is more important, human rights or property rights.”

Company owners fought back with table-pounding, media outcries and lawsuits charging that sit-downers were seizing property illegally. That argument was countered by historical-precedent defenses: American revolutionaries in 1773 dumping $1.1 million dollars of British-owned tea  (2020 values ) in Boston harbor, and the 1776 theft of Britain’s 13 colonies and other crown lands. Result: U.S. independence.

Without doubt, the most life-threatening sit-ins in this country were the Blacks’ 1960 civil-rights protests in general and, in particular, demands to integrate public places such as restaurants , libraries, hotels, beaches, movie theaters, and bus travel. A silent sit-down started on February 1, 1960 at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro NC. Four sit-down trained black college students were denied service and refused to leave. When they returned to sit next day, white customers and outsiders jostled, jeered, taunted, and pelted them with food. Using Gandhi’s non-violence and silence tactic, they refused to react.

Heavy national coverage awakened and outraged millions over segregation in public places. That sit-in spread to 55 cities in 13 states and inspired a host of demonstrations to ban discrimination of everything from public places and facilities to employment and university and public school admissions. Result: The Civil Rights Act ‘s enactment, July 2, 1964, and also the business world’s recognized that billions in profits would be earned from Black customers.

Outside of the U.S., India’s Mahatma Gandhi ’s inventive non-violent sit-downs were awakening the world of the downtrodden to seek seemingly impossible goals. From the 1920s on, his was wresting independence from Britain. His people suffered more than two centuries of British cultural and suppression—and massacres.

India had been occupied, exploited, humiliated, and controlled physically and economically by generations of English officials and colonial descendants. The country’s history of bloody and unsuccessful revolts taught Gandhi and his followers that a military revolt was not only impossible, but casualties and costs would be overwhelming. A deeply spiritual man in a deeply spiritual country, he concluded that non-violent non-cooperation (“satyagraha”), combined with sit-downs would sabotage the “gears” to British “machinery.” Add their ruinous expenses of conducting WWII while still trying to rule the unruly with hints of granting independence.

He knew photographs of the British Army’s efforts to break the sit-downs would make them look like sadistic brutes they were. And breaking the post-war promise of spreading democracy around the world—except for India—would brand Britain as a lying, hypocritic nation. The sit-downs intensified. Result: Independence on August 15, 1947.

Gandhi’s tactic spread around the world. It saved Prague  from slaughter in 1968 when 20 years of Soviet Union iron rule over Czechoslovakia began evaporating because of liberal reforms by First Secretary Alexander Dubcek. Moscow dispatched some 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops, backed up by 5,000 tanks, to discipline him and his defiant people.

With no army to speak of, Czech leaders quickly decided to use a Gandhian non-violent sit-down. It would present the invaders with a massive and powerful show of silent resistance that would plague the Soviet occupation. Thousands packed St. Wenceslas Square on August 20 just as the troops and tanks rolled into the city. Soldiers stopped pummeling the first sit-down rows out of exhaustion. Result: Though it took another 20 years for the Czechs to gain freedom, this sit-down spirit inspired and ultimately prevailed.

These classic examples of sit-downs absolutely confounded corporations,  political tyrants, and militarists because they were robbed of using the usual repressive tools of firings or firepower. Sit-downs worked.

And they’ll work in cities like Portland where Trump is threatening to send in 75,000  secret police to smash dissidents and the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee to Americans of free speech and to peaceably assemble to demand grievances be redressed.

Many renown political writers today are pointing out that governmental leaders—federal/state/municipal—are more afraid of losing donors in this election year than their constituents, as well as their oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Our only real power against the Trump regime, says CounterPunch’s Paul Street, is for millions of us to “take to the streets .” As he put it:

“We must fight this rogue fascist regime in the streets, the workplaces, the fields, the public assemblies, the local and federal plazas, the parks, the financial districts, in every public and private space that matters. But that must only be our dress rehearsal. We must then graduate to take on the entire, richly bipartisan social order that produced this rogue fascist shit-hole presidency in the first place.”

That being so, how about peaceful Portlanders packing the three parks near the Justice Center with sit-downers to inspire those in other cities to help rock and capsize the Trumpian boat this November?