How to turn a win for the people into a pile of sh__

You can’t make this up.

NC was recently awarded $750 million over the next 18 years in the multi-state settlement against Johnson & Johnson and 3 leading drug distributors for their role in the opioid epidemic, a settlement which the NC Attorney General Josh Stein played a major role in negotiating.  The funds are intended to be used strictly for addiction recovery and treatment in each of the state’s 100 counties.

Scammers and opportunists, with ties to the Republican party, which controls most of the county governments in the state, have sniffed out a money grab. Robin Hayes – the Republican former state lawmaker, Congressman, and chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party – who was pardoned by Donald Trump for his role at the center of the biggest bribery scandal in modern state history - and some partners formed a group called Bridge to 100 that seeks to connect local county governments and faith-based rehabilitation groups in its network.

The group is very ambitious – the “100” in the name is from its goal to expand to all 100 counties (because each is eligible for its own share of settlement funds). For this venture, Hayes has also named Daniel Williford to the “Bridge” board. Williford is a former Salisbury businessman who was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison for running a multi-million-dollar Ponzi scheme. Williford’s prison sentence only formally ended last November.

The other big red flag at Bridge to 100 is that the exclusively faith-based treatments offered by most of its rehabilitation centers simply do not work. They use the 12-step approach to treating addiction, meaning they do not use medications.

“Addiction recovery has been studied by medical science for a very long time. While religious faith may offer spiritual comfort patients recovering from addiction, the evidence is clear that treatment including medication (known as “Medication-Assisted Treatment,” or MAT), paired with professional counseling, is by far the most effective route. Much like in sex education, an “abstinence-only” approach simply does not work for most people.” (Carolina Forward, January 30, 2023)

Evidence indicates  that “approximately 90% of addiction patients who undergo a detox and then drug abstinence program will return to using within 6-12 months. With standard, proven medication (as well as ongoing therapy), as few as half will return to using drugs. And yet, Robin Hayes’ Bridge to 100 group has mostly chosen not to partner with established addiction recovery clinics that provide medication and therapy, but rather a number of fly-by-night groups that seem to ignore the standard of care for addiction recovery in lieu of sectarian evangelism."

One way to convince people that government can’t work is to take every opportunity to make sure it doesn’t (and if you can make a quick buck in the process, that’s gravy.) Check out the party of “NO” in the US House of Representatives. Was the faux battle over electing a Speaker of the House merely a clown show to support the Republican mantra that government is the problem, not the solution to the crises our country faces? If it looks like sh__ and smells like sh__, do we have to taste it to be sure?

Bits and pieces - January 28, 2023

 

The Fed Mandate (and how it changed under neoliberalism)

There is a “raging” debate over the role of the Federal Reserve in fighting inflation. What both sides of this debate assume is that fighting inflation is part of the Fed’s job: that the Fed has a “dual mandate”—maximum employment and price stability—and that in situations like these, with prices spiking for a range of goods and services, the Fed is supposed to take steps to tighten financial conditions with a view toward constraining the demand for goods and services. But this assumption reflects a widespread misunderstanding.

Congress did not design the Fed to minimize price increases as a general matter. Instead, it gave the Fed a single mission—promoting monetary expansion at a rate consistent with full capacity utilization in the economy over the long run. In fact, when the Fed was established, Congress was concerned primarily with deflation, a monetary problem that can trigger deep recessions; legislators hoped that the Fed could address this problem by stimulating bank lending and preventing economic contractions …. Congress, in other words, designed the Fed to keep the economy growing, not slow it down for the sake of stable prices in the short-to-medium term. …

Raising interest rates to sap aggregate demand merely to prevent price indices from rising above a certain annual target is at odds with the Fed’s mandate. … despite what we have witnessed over the past several decades, the Fed is not designed to serve as an all-purpose manager of macroeconomic cycles. This idea, which has its roots in the 1980s and the “Volcker shock,” is the product of a global consensus among economists and central bankers about the proper role of central bankers (one that is consistent with the statutory mandates of many other central banks, for example, the ECB). But not only was this sort of central banking not what Congress had in mind, it runs contrary to the stated goal of the Fed – creating the conditions for full capacity utilization in the economy.

And, since research shows that economies perform better at modestly higher inflation rates (see my earlier post, Hold the presses, 1/7/2023) setting the goal of 2% inflation is diametrically opposed to the original mandate of the Fed. When did change this occur? In the 1980s at the onset of runaway inequality. The connection should be obvious, but as they say, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

 

The Racial Wealth Gap

The economic struggle continues for Black Americans decades after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, according to NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.

“From voting rights and police reform to the ongoing fight for economic justice, there is much work left to be done to fully realize Dr. King’s dream. Today, the racial wealth gap in America continues to be the single greatest barrier to realizing Dr. King’s dream,” Johnson said Sunday ahead of the King holiday.

Forbes reported that middle-class Black families back in 1968 had an average household wealth of about $6,600 compared to about $71,000 for white middle-class households, adjusted for inflation.

By 2016, the Brookings Institution pegged Black family net worth at $17,150 compared to $171,000 for their white counterparts. Income disparity isn’t the only issue. White families tend to have greater wealth than Black families with similar income levels.

“Two households can have the same income, but the household with fewer expenses, or with more accumulated wealth from past income or inheritances, will have more wealth,” the report stated. Intergenerational wealth is one key difference. White families receive much larger inheritances on average than Black families.”

At the same time, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has highlighted the systemic racial inequalities that continue to keep Black Americans at the economic periphery.

Speaking at an event honoring King in 2022, Yellen said, “From Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to the present day, our economy has never worked fairly for Black Americans -- or, really, for any American of color.”

Johnson called on elected officials to pass student debt relief legislation as a tool to address the wealth gap. The Congressional Black Caucus has framed the student debt disparity as “a racial and economic justice issue,” urging the Biden administration to implement a “broad-based” approach to the $1.7 trillion student loan debt crisis. Black borrowers are burdened with a disproportionately high amount of federal student debt.

 

Bernie Sanders on Pharma

“Five of the largest US pharma firms totaled $80 billion in profits last year, but millions of Americans can’t afford medicine.

“In Canada and other major countries the same medications manufactured by the same companies, sold in the same bottles are available for a fraction of the price that we pay in the United States.

“There is no rational reason why the HIV treatment Biktarvy costs $45,540 per year in the U.S but only $7,500 per year in France. Or why a weekly dose of the autoimmune medicine Enbrel costs $1,762 in the U.S. but just $300 in Canada. Or why a vial of insulin costs $98.70 in the U.S., but just $11 in Germany.

Well maybe no “rational” reason Bernie, but it’s not hard to figure out what brought this about and why it continues.

“Over the past 25 years, the pharmaceutical industry has spent $8.5 billion on lobbying and over $745 million on campaign contributions to buy politicians. Incredibly, last year, the drug companies hired over 1,700 lobbyists including the former congressional leaders of both major political parties – over 3 pharmaceutical industry lobbyists for every Member of Congress.

 

How the racists respond to fair redistricting – “It’s always about race”

Commenting on the Mobile, Alabama mayor’s plan to annex predominantly white areas west of the city, which could bring in 26,000 new residents, once again diluting Black voting strength and undoing the progress made toward a city council map that fairly reflects the demographics of this majority-Black city, Jim Flowers, director of All Saints Episcopal Church noted, “the white city council members consistently say that it’s not about race. But if you’re in the public life in the U.S., it is always about race – always.”

 

It's not the guns, it's us

Like many of my fellow Americans, when I woke up Tuesday morning to the reports of another horrific mass murder in California, there was little emotional response, no feeling that “we’ve got to do something, anything, to stop this slaughter.” I, like too many others, have become desensitized, numbed by what has become an all-too-common event.

“We’re still trying to understand exactly what happened and why, but it’s just incredibly, incredibly tragic,” said state Sen. Josh Becker, who represents the area. Tragic yes; unexpected, no.

By the next day the political response was focusing, as it always does after these tragedies, on gun control. But wait a minute, doesn’t California, which has seen 3 mass shootings in the last week or so, have a mandatory waiting period for the purchase of firearms? Doesn’t the state ban assault rifles? Didn’t the legislature adopt a “red flag” law that allows guns to be seized from people believed to be a threat to themselves or others? And haven’t California voters overwhelmingly approved limiting the number of bullets allowed in a gun’s magazine? And yet …

Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally in favor of gun control. In my perfect world, we wouldn’t even allow guns for hunting. At least against a hunter with a bow and arrow, the deer would have a chance. But we don’t live in that perfect world. We live in the United States of America, where violence is accepted as the solution to all problems, in many cases the only solution. It’s a fact, as H Rap Brown quipped, that “violence is as American as cherry pie”.

Think about it. The country was settled by violence, as the English immigrants did all they could to exterminate the native peoples and expropriate their land, rounding up the few that weren’t killed and forcing them onto reservations (later making movies about how the savages were killed by the heroic cavalry coming to the rescue of peaceful white farmers).

The US grew into a powerful industrial society by forcefully enslaving millions of Africans and exploiting their labor. What is more violent than slavery? And, country expanded its borders by waging war against its neighbor to the south, referring to Manifest Destiny as its justification. It’s okay to kill when God’s on your side.

American society has glorified war during its entire history. Many of its early leaders where military heroes; its national anthem is about a war – “and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” The statutes of its heroes, more often than not, are of generals (until recently even Confederate generals, who were traitors to the Union).

Although it managed to avoid having a large standing army until just after WW II (due in large part to very weak neighbors and two oceans), it relied on a growing internal force to “keep the peace” domestically by applying the violence of the state to protect the interests of the wealthy. And, since WW II, it has maintained the world’s largest military, with a budget greater than combined total of the next 11 largest military budgets in the world.

Today, the US government spends the American people’s hard-earned money to extend Its military reach to every corner of the world so that it can take out (the nice way to say kill) those forces (that is, human beings) it deems the enemy almost anywhere (along with an occasional wedding party), while at the same time condemning other countries that have used force just outside their borders claiming it is necessary to guarantee their national security.

Our “civilization” continues to glorify war and gratuitous violence. Its media is filled to the brim with violence, celebrating death and destruction in too many ways to even count. Go to the movies, watch TV, play video games, etc., it’s all the same. And it’s been that way all of my 80 years on this planet, although it seems to be even more pervasive today than it was when I was a kid.

Our society’s response to problems and conflicts, both home and abroad is violence. Even when dealing with social problems in a supposedly non-violent way, we use violent terms, an example being the War on Poverty. Is it any wonder that ordinary Americans, particularly in time of personal crises see violence, even random violence, as the normal response.

To “protect” our citizens at home we have a militarized police force, generously funded with resources, not to help people, but to kill them (or, in a gentler form of violence, to lock them in cages). And kill people they do. The year 2022 was the deadliest year on record in the United States for fatalities at the hands of law enforcement. According to the Washington Post’s police shootings database law enforcement officers shot and killed 1,096 people last year. As I write, the news is filled with reports of another murder by the people who are supposed to protect us.  These generously fund police departments are actually occupying armies, using their resources to keep people in line, especially poor people of color whose needs are not being funded.

Case and point. While there is no end to funding for more police and more weapons, universal healthcare can wait (forever?). The governor of California reported that, while visiting a man in the hospital, whose leg had been shattered by the gunfire during the latest mass shooting, he was informed that the victim was hoping to leave quickly to avoid high medical bills. The patient’s mother and son arrived later and told Gov. Newsom they were "worried he's going to lose his job at a warehouse the next day unless he can go back to work."

So there we have it. As our country and the world face the interrelated crises of global warming, runaway inequality, the COVID pandemic (and who knows how many more are waiting in the wings), a real threat of escalation to nuclear war, and the attacks from the extreme right on democracy, instead of devoting the resources needed to provide for the people of our country and our larger community, the world, we are pumping just under $1,000,000,000,000 (that’s one trillion) into the military and billions more into the police.

Until we can begin to deal with the violence that permeates our society, gun control will have only minor effects on the murder rates (both mass and individual) in the US. The glorification of violence and guns in the US has resulted firearms becoming the #1 cause of death among children 1-19 years of age. One more aspect of the policrisis we face.

Bits and Pieces - 1-20-2023

 From the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft Symposium

“Have US military programs made African countries less safe?”

“There is no question that the United States needs to re-evaluate its overly militaristic approach to Africa, and to cease its support for endless war in places like Somalia.” 

“It is equally important to scrutinize U.S. support for civil society programming on the topic of CVE — “countering violent extremism” — which has had a number of negative effects. First, the U.S. government’s preoccupation with questions of security and terrorism has redirected donor funding away from issues of pressing concern to people on the continent (social welfare, education, development, jobs, etc.). Second, U.S.-backed civil society programming on CVE normalizes new forms of policing.”

“U.S. counterterrorism in Africa has failed. It was evident from the earliest post-9/11 days that the war on terror was seeding what it sought to eliminate. The Pentagon funded and trained soldiers who violated human rights, corrupted public service and mounted coups. Counter-terror support repurposed African regional organizations as military coalitions.”

“What should be done differently? Perhaps, one could start with examining the consequences of the preoccupation with locating and eliminating threats to U.S. interests. A thorough analysis of these consequences, intended and unintended, might lead to a reassessment of U.S. security-counterterrorism programs in Africa.”

“Both globally and in Africa … counterterrorism has proved both ineffective and counterproductive for U.S. security. For the countries identified as threats, the toll in lives and livelihoods has been high. To address the causes of violence and insecurity, U.S. policymakers and citizens should give up the illusion of U.S. global leadership.”

One after another, the symposium’s speakers focused on the failures of U.S. policy which relies entirely on the military and the violent suppression of those it deems “the enemy” of U.S. interests. The pattern is replicated at home. The War on Drugs, mass incarceration, the expansion and militarization of the police are motivated by the same approach to the effects of racism and poverty in the good old US of A.

 

And from The Intercept

“AT A WIDELY anticipated summit hosted by the Biden administration in Washington, D.C., last month, African leaders called for more support from the U.S. government for counterterrorism efforts on the continent. Aware that the Biden administration has woken up to the geostrategic significance of Africa in the context of Russia’s war with Ukraine, a number of the heads of state in attendance approached the gathering as a political marketplace in which loyalties are bought and sold. All signs indicate that elite pacts in the name of “security” will continue to dominate U.S.-Africa relations, with ordinary people caught in the crosshairs of newly emboldened U.S.-trained security forces.”

“The speeches delivered by each of these leaders poignantly illustrated what some might refer to as “empire by invitation,” wherein ostensibly sovereign leaders reproduce colonial power relations by inviting a more expansive role for imperial actors in their own affairs.”

“The overarching message was that economic desperation and political frustration should be understood as threats that call primarily for one kind of solution: containment, and, if necessary, the use of violent force. None of the speakers on the Peace, Security, and Governance panel acknowledged that, particularly since the establishment of AFRICOM, the U.S. has in many ways contributed to the very instability it claims to want to solve, with the rise of al-Shabab in the aftermath of the 2006 U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia a case in point.”

Pax Americana? Can the U.S. military accomplish what the Roman legions and the British Navy were unable to? Can the U.S. prevent the ultimate disintegration of Its “Empire of Liberty” with the wonderful weapons that technology is providing, or will the costs of empire and the challenge of nations not burdened by those costs, be too much?

 

Quotable Quotes

Philip Roth

“You can’t write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.”

From the New Yorker

“As the baffling and then burlesque and then baroquely burlesque affair enveloping General Petraeus and his friends, of both sexes, fell upon us like another hurricane last week, it seemed to confirm once again Philip Roth’s fifty-year-old assertion.

“The Petraeus story rapidly expanded, novella-like, into a kind of “Fifty Shades of Khaki.” First came the news that the hero of the surge had been surging with his biographer, a woman who, as a quick scan of her book-tour appearances suggests, was not only fabulously appealing but also more or less openly italicizing her attachment to the General.

“Then it came out that she had been sending notes to another female admirer of the General, which were threatening or, perhaps, merely catty. Then it came out that an F.B.I. agent who admired the second admirer, to whom he had sent a photo of himself shirtless, which may have been meant to entice or may have been entirely wholesome, had sprung to her defense by launching an investigation into the affair, which he leaked to Republican congressmen. 

Then it came out that a second general, in Afghanistan, had been corresponding with camp follower No. 2 in a way that some people said was “flirtatious.” The national-security establishment suddenly seemed like “Couples” with epaulettes.”

 

And at home, from Public Citizen (slightly edited for brevity)

“Pharmaceutical giant Moderna is threatening to more than quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine. (Pfizer has already made similar noise.)” This despite the fact that:

·         Development of the vaccine was actually done in partnership with the federal government (NIH) and almost entirely funded by American taxpayers, to the tune of some $1.7 billion.

·         The U.S. government has been paying the company $26.36 per dose for millions and millions of doses, even though it costs the company less than $3 per dose to manufacture

·         As a result, Moderna — a company with just three employees as recently as 2013 — made more than $19 billion in *profits* over just the past two years.

·         Yet Moderna’s CEO, Stéphane Bancel, whose personal net worth is estimated at $6.3 billion, wants to jack the price up to as much as $130 per dose.

The rationale of big Pharma is simple. They have an opportunity to amass huge profits from a public health crisis, and they intend to milk it for all it’s worth. And if they didn’t some other corporate entity would come along and do it, since exploitation is the basic logic of our economic system.

As the Woody Guthrie song goes “some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.” But in either case, you’ve been robbed!

Note that the Republicans are right; there is a real crime wave in this country over the past few years, and nobody is doing anything about it. But as usual they are pointing the guns in the wrong direction.  From dodging taxes to outright wage theft, to destroying the environment to buying politicians (I could go on, but I really have other things to do), it is the uber-rich who have been stealing from us, ordinary working Americans, in an even more egregious fashion than usual. 

 

Bits and Pieces - 01-11-2023

A New Year: The Same Old Story

Massive supplies of military weapons to Ukraine to “bleed Russia dry”; massive US/NATO naval exercises in the Pacific and an effective end to the One China policy; continued support for the Saudi war in Yemen; the final demise of the nuclear deal with Iran; massive increase in the Pentagon budget at home. And all of this overwhelmingly supported by forces across the political spectrum, with the exception of a few wingnuts on the right and an even smaller number of progressives on the left.

So as the Pentagon is set to receive a mind-boggling $858 billion for missiles, warships, drones, and bombs, we can’t find a measly $12 billion to slash poverty for the nation’s neediest children and their families? And forget money to deal with crises in the Global South, which immediately threaten the lives of millions of our fellow human beings, who have had no role in producing the policrises threatening us all.

Is there a pattern here, or am I just paranoid? Are the US and its allies across the pond resorting to tried-and-true reliance on military force in a desperate attempt to maintain hegemony? Isn’t that how empires in decline react? And isn’t it a very dangerous response at a time when both the declining empire and its rival(s) possess enough weapons to destroy each other and the rest of humanity?

 

From Richard (RJ) Eskow

“Vote, but don’t kid yourself.  Despite what the cliché says, it’s not immoral to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. You could give a sick person a seat, for example, or move people away from the crashing waves. But the real goal is to save people’s lives, not just make them a little less uncomfortable as the catastrophe unfolds. That means getting them on the lifeboats — or, better yet, steering the boat away from the iceberg before a collision becomes unavoidable. 

We have to save ourselves. That means taking the helm, not just hoping for a smarter captain next time.”

 

And more from Richard

“The pandemic is just one reason why the average American lifespan got shorter again this year. Lifespans were getting shorter even before the pandemic. That doesn’t seem to upset the people in charge much, either. After all, the people in their circles are living as long as ever.

The takeaway? Some people are more expendable than others. It must be that “just in time” management we’ve heard so much about, where you don’t store any more of your raw materials than you think you’ll need.

Don’t think of it as death; think of it as inventory reduction.”

 

Time to get tough on Crime from Inequality.org

“Walmart CEO Doug McMillon wants lawmakers to get tough on crime. McMillon told CNBC last month that lenient sentences have shoplifting theft “higher than what it has historically been.” All this theft, he adds, may force Walmart to raise prices.

But FBI and National Retail Federation data, notes a Popular Information analysis, show no new pilfering tsunami. What is rising: Walmart quarterly revenue, up 9 percent in last year’s third quarter. Also doing quite nicely: CEO McMillon’s annual paycheck. The latest figures put his total pay at $25.7 million, well over 1,000 times the typical Walmart worker take-home.

So is McMillon just blowing pure smoke over a crime wave at Walmart? Not exactly. Walmart is seeing a crime wave. McMillon just has the wrong criminals in mind. Since 2000, Good Jobs First stats  reveal, Walmart has had to shell out $1.55 billion in penalties for cheating employees on the wage-and-hour front.”

While corporate crime is definitely on the rise, new data from the police department in my home town of Wilmington, NC shows that street crime in our neck of the woods is DOWN.

So instead of arming the police with the latest military weapons, let’s arm regulators and the IRS with the tools they need to fight this real crime wave.

And from Bernie Sanders

“The most important economic and political issues facing this country are the extraordinary levels of income and wealth inequality, the rapidly growing concentration of ownership, the long-term decline of the American middle class and the evolution of this country into oligarchy.”

(And, I would add, the control of the media and the political process by that concentrated wealth.)

Hold the presses: Some mainstream economists are questioning the Fed's inflation goal of 2%

You saw it here first. 

Some mainstream economists, and I emphasize the fact that it is only a small percentage, are now questioning the Fed and other banks’ target of keeping inflation at or below 2%. Why? Because of the “distributional effect” if my reading of the latest from Adam Tooze is correct. 

Tooze points out that while the wage/price spiral which may have been a major factor in previous periods of high inflation, the weakness of labor today makes that conflict irrelevant to inflation But important as that point is, the more important question is why in 2023 we are still talking about a situation half a century ago. 

What we most urgently need is not so much a revival of conflict theories (basically labor versus capital) of inflation that might have been appropriate to the 1970s and 1980s. What we need is an adequate model of inflation and policy-making under conditions prevailing in 2023, of extreme asymmetry of bargaining power, deadlocked democratic politics and a consequent lack of social contestation, even when real wages are taking a painful hit. Wherever we stand on the politics of organized labor, it is incumbent on us to at least register the novelty of our situation, today. 

 And from Meyerson On Tap: “The motivation for operating macro policy with low inflation targets is to establish price stability as the main goal of monetary policy ….. The operating assumption is that other macroeconomic policy goals—including economic growth, maximum employment, and overall macro stability—can be most effectively achieved when price stability is recognized as the first priority.” 

But, as Robert Pollin and Hanae Bouazza point out, “Research shows that economies perform better at modestly higher inflation rates.” These researchers amassed data from 1960 to 2021, for all 130 countries reported by the World Bank with populations over four million people. This data shows that average real GDP growth rates for countries experiencing less that 2.5 % inflation was significantly lower than that for countries experiencing 2.5-5% inflation (3.2% growth vs 4.1%). The gap was even greater between those with 2.5% or less inflation and those who had inflation rates between 5% and 10% (3.2% growth vs 4.7%) 

 When Pollin and Bouazza narrowed their sample to the 35 wealthiest countries, similar gaps were found and the same was true when they focused down to the US alone. So much for the myth that low inflation rates promote economic growth. 

 Now one has to assume that the people running the Fed have access to the same data, so the question is, why do the Fed and other central banks keep doubling down on the goal of keeping inflation under 2%? The answer, and I’m sure you already guessed it, can be found in who the central banks represent and who benefits from lower inflation rates. 

Creditors and those with lots of cash (liquidity). Could it be that one of the drivers of runaway inequality is very low inflation rates? Could it be that one of the drivers of financialization is very low rates of inflation? Could it be that the debt crises in countries of the Global South are related to low inflation rates in the US and Western Europe? And will the higher interest rates in order to restore low inflation result in a second blow to the countries of the Global South? 

If that’s not an indictment of the whole capitalist system, I don’t know what is?