Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 27 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 27 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

The Right Believes It Has the Supreme Court Votes to Overturn Labor Law

[In These Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-22-2024]

 “The foundational 1935 labor law protecting workers is unconstitutional, according to major corporations and right-wing zealots who believe they have enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn it. In the latest sign that anti-union forces will doggedly press the matter, a federal judge for the Northern District of Texas enjoined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing any allegations of employer violations of workers’ rights. The National Review hailed the decision as ​’A Welcome Blow to the NLRB.’ This is after Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a similar injunction against the NLRB before the Western District of Texas in July. Both cases will work their way up to the Fifth Circuit Court, which has served as an expressway to steer anti-regulatory legal appeals to the Supreme Court ever since Trump packed it with right-wing ideologues. ‘I don’t think a lot of labor folks are focused on this right now,’ says Stephen Lerner, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. … ‘This is the culmination of a 50-year anti-union agenda.’… But, in trying to repeal all the rights and protections workers gained during the New Deal, including the limited protections that workers currently enjoy for organizing and engaging in collective bargaining, killing the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) would also mean the lifting of a host of restrictions on unions’ ability to carry out solidarity activism and effective economic sanctions. Are unions prepared for a return to ​’the law of the jungle?'”

MASTER PLAN Bonus: How Democrats Lost The Courts

[The Lever, October 22, 2024]

In this exclusive Master Plan bonus episode, David Sirota interviews former Senate Leader Tom Daschle, who led Democrats’ fight against George W. Bush’s plan to pack the federal courts with conservative judges — and paid the ultimate political price.

Daschle’s success stalling Republicans’ judicial picks in the Senate made him a prime target of the master planners — so they had him ousted from Congress and filled his South Dakota Senate seat with their own corporate candidate.

Sirota and Daschle discuss the Federalist Society’s influence in transforming the judicial nomination process into an ideological purity test. They also weigh in on the last major campaign finance legislation — the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 — and whether similar reforms could even be possible in post-Citizens United America.

MASTER PLAN Bonus: The Federalist Society’s “Pipeline For Power”

[The Lever, October 22, 2024]

DAVID SIROTA: ...To understand the roots of the Federalist Society, we spoke with Lisa Graves. She worked in the Department of Justice and on the Senate Judiciary committee and is now the founder of True North Research, a dark money watchdog organization. We heard from Graves briefly in Episode 7, but wanted to share the extended interview she did with producer Laura Krantz. Their conversation began with an overview of the four men who have been integral to the success of the Federalist Society: Ed Meese, C. Boyden Gray, Jay Sekulow, and Leonard Leo.

LISA GRAVES: Ed Meese was there near the beginning of the Federalist Society when it was created in 1981 as I mentioned, and Meese had served as Attorney General under Ronald Reagan. And he is certainly considered one of the fathers, or, you know, godfathers, in essence, of The Federalist Society from that period, and has been active in it throughout this, you know, these past 40 years, in a variety of ways. C. Boyden Gray, the highest role that he had in government was as White House Counsel for George Herbert Walker Bush. He helped select Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court to replace the great civil rights leader, Thurgood Marshall — he was someone who had an active opposition to civil rights or, you know, core civil rights laws. 

Thomas had served in the Reagan administration in the EEOC in a way that many people in civil rights community consider to be destructive, not supportive of that institution. And C. Boyden Gray had a had a key role in that as White House Counsel, but he also had a role in the selection of David Souter to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that is the nomination and confirmation of a judge who, you know, is considered to be a Republican or having Republican roots, but he was not sufficiently doctrinaire.

When George W. Bush became president, C. Boyden Gray was not White House Counsel during that period, but he was operating on the outside, and he was seemingly determined to help make sure that, you know, ideologues were put on the bench. And so from the outside of the administration, he launched a thing called the Committee for Justice, CFJ, which was an attack machine to attack the Democrats for opposing any of these Bush nominees who were at the circuit court level, largely drawn from the ranks of The Federalist Society….

... in many ways, this so-called movement that The Federalist Society has been at the helm of was in part in reaction to Brown v. Board of Education, and whether they were going to try to justify it or not, along with opposition to the Roe v. Wade decision, which was built on a really important case called Griswold v. Connecticut, which recognized a right to autonomy in reproductive decisions that states could not limit, for example, women from accessing contraception. And so there's a whole host of decisions by the court in the 20th century, including decisions affirming major public policies like social security and programs to, you know, protect labor rights and more, and the Federalist Society and Leo and these men have you know worked for years to try to undo those precedents by, in part, by this appointment process of personnel being policy….

LISA GRAVES: The Powell Memo expressly targets the courts as a lever of power… Lewis Powell [was] a lawyer for the tobacco industry, he had been instrumental in trying to prevent the federal government from regulating tobacco, despite the fact that the tobacco industry knew full well that its products caused cancer... He also had been a lawyer advising the city of Richmond, as it was contending with Brown v. Board of Education. And though he wasn't the most outspoken of the white segregationists at that time, he helped put forward policies to pave the way for white kids to attend, you know, private institutions in order to not be subject to racial integration.

And in Powell's memo, of the things he wrote was that businesses needed to play a more active role in influencing Congress, in influencing universities and influencing the courts. And he singled out the courts as a particularly important lever of power. And then just 10 years later, The Federalist Society was created. A number of institutions or entities were created in the aftermath of the Powell Memo — the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council … there was a concerted effort over the next 10 years to implement the Powell Memo through creating these entities ... and infusing them with cash from sort of proto-billionaires ... to advance an alternate vision for our constitution….

... one of the things that happened was that Leonard Leo became actively involved in trying to destroy the role of the American Bar Association in evaluating potential judicial nominees for the federal bench….

...the Bush administration basically outsourced the pre-selection process to the Federalist Society to Leonard Leo, and they were involved. I know for a fact that they were involved in 2001 in contacting potential circuit court nominees and asking them how they voted. Did they vote for George W. Bush or not? As a precondition, for the Federalist Society recommending them for circuit judgeship….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 20 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 20 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

MASTER PLAN, Ep 10: The Master Planners’ Heist Of The Century

[The Lever, October 15, 2024]

By 2010, the master planners had firmly gained the upper hand. Their victory in Citizens United allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, giving business interests unprecedented power in politics. But the master planners’ onslaught wasn’t quite over. In this episode, we show how they embarked on a bold heist to crack the vault protecting democracy itself. It’s the heist story of the century, in three acts.

First, the schemers needed to take out the security cameras: The disclosure laws that in some instances still required the names of big-money donors to be reported. In a perverse act of mental gymnastics, petrochemical tycoon Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity sought to eliminate these laws by weaponizing a 1950s ruling that had protected civil rights activists in the Jim Crow South.

In the second part of the heist, the schemers went after the last remaining cops on the beat. They manufactured a scandal at the IRS, the country’s last remaining campaign finance regulators, over the targeting of so-called “social welfare” nonprofits — many of which were fronts for dark money groups.

Finally, the master planners needed a getaway plan, a way to prevent prosecutors from coming after them as they made off with the loot. They found their opportunity with the appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

As high-profile bribery and corruption convictions fell, the message was clear: The system is rigged, and political officials are ready to play for pay.

 Key findings referenced in this episode include:

• See the evidence from the case in which a Virginia jury convicted former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen for accepting $175,000 in gifts and loans from a businessman — including a $10,000 white leather coat, shopping sprees, use of a Ferrari, and a $6,500 Rolex.
• In the 2016 case McDonnell v. United States, a wave of amicus briefs flooded the Supreme Court attacking the legality of the anti-bribery laws used to convict the former Virginia governor. Chief Justice John Roberts cited these briefs as evidence of “bipartisanship,” but they mostly came from influential figures in the money and politics sphere, including corporate lobbyists and Federalist Society members like John Ashcroft and Ted Olson. Other notable supporters filing briefs included Christian Right attorney Jay Sekulow and Citizens United mastermind James Bopp Jr. Even Justice Lewis F. Powell’s former corporate law firm joined in, representing a coalition of elite business owners.
• Indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ lawyers recently filed their first motion to dismiss the bribery and fraud charges lodged against him, heavily relying on Supreme Court rulings that have weakened anti-corruption laws. The motion points to overturned convictions in corruption cases discussed in this episode, including those of McDonnell, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, small-town mayor James Snyder, and New York power broker Sheldon Silver.
• Read law professor Zephyr Teachout’s article on how both liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court have expressed skepticism about anti-corruption law, narrowing the definition of corruption and limiting public power.

Over half of African nations spend more on interest rates to creditors than public health: Report 

[Down to Earth, via Naked Capitalism 10-19-2024]

Mehrsa Baradaran, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America (New York, W.W. Norton, 2024)

p50

In 1970, the G-77 unveiled its plan for a "New International Economic Order," which advocated for self-determination for each country and the fair distribution of world resources. Among other things, the G-77, OPEC, and other coalitions of the Global South demanded autonomy to sell—or not to sell—to transnational corporations that had become permanent fixtures in their nations and in their politics. The proposals included imposing trade barriers to keep foreign investors out, a practice that was routine among most of the Western nations, including the United States during the era of Bretton Woods. Small nations could not build their economies without atriffs and capital controls, which allowed native industries to grow without having to compete with better resourced nations. Their main area of concern was with the power of transnational corporations including the multinational coal, copper, and diamond miners, and their political influence.

The dilemma for Western nations after the age of formal empire was ideological and material. They could not maintain economic dominance if former colonies became sovereign democratic nations, and they couldn't use brute force to maintain that dominance without abandoning their democratic principles. It was this challenge, not Keynesianism or communism, whose ideal solution was neoliberalism.

Controlling the resources of former colonies in the absence of political domination was a delicate diplomatic maneuver—one that the members of the [Mont Pelerin Society] were well equipped to handle. In the 1950s and 1960s, MPS debates started focusing on such issues as the uneasy relationship between national sovereignty and international trade and the growing threat that revolt represented….

P 52
While the Global South imagined a future different from the past, the noeliberals worked painstakingly toward a future that was similar to the past—or as close as possible The basic feature of that plan was to counteract rising national power of the former colonies by undercutting the power of all states to regulate corporations. Neo- liberal intellectuals began fighting against the very idea of sovereignty itself. Speaking at The Hague about the future of international in 1955, founding MPS member Wilhelm Röpke noted that "to diminish national sovereignty is most emphatically one of the urgent needs of our time."" The neoliberals sought a new international economic order, one very different from the G-77's bid for a flattening of the trade hierarchy among nations; this néoliberal world order would instead seek to augment the power of corporations and capital over that of national governments….

P60
…To Hayek, all state action, especially toward "international cooperation," was indistinguishable from serfdom. He favored the total privatization of industry, removing Bretton Woods barriers, and—although MPS members disagreed vehemently on this last part—a new monetary order, which would be based on either purely private money or a, floating exchange rate of currencies. Hayek's system would free capital to be invested worldwide, weakening state social safety-net spending but maintaining the economic strength of the Global North, given its vast capital advantage. If the new "sovereign" nations wished to build their native industries, they could apply for a "development loan" from the IMF and World Bank. Experts from these NGOs would then offer "technical assistance" to the new governments to help them tighten their budgets and promote trade.

Just as politicians in the United States adopted neoliberal ideas to perpetuate the domestic racial order, the Western powers overall adopted neoliberal ideas to tame independence movements and launder their own efforts to continue subjugating the Global South….

Poorest countries in worst financial shape since 2006, World Bank says 

[Al Jazeera, via Naked Capitalism 10-16-2024]

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 13 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 13 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

America Is Lying to Itself About the Cost of Disasters 

Zoë Schlanger, October 5, 2024 [The Atlantic]

...This mismatch, between catastrophes the government has budgeted for and the actual toll of overlapping or supersize disasters, keeps happening—after Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Florence. Almost every year now, FEMA is hitting the same limits, Carlos Martín, who studies disaster mitigation and recovery for the Brookings Institution, told me. Disaster budgets are calculated to past events, but “that’s just not going to be adequate” as events grow more frequent and intense. Over time, the U.S. has been spending more and more money on disasters in an ad hoc way, outside its main disaster budget, according to Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Climate School….

The U.S. is facing a growing number of billion-dollar disasters, fueled both by climate change and by increased development in high-risk places. This one could cost up to $34 billion, Moody’s Analytics estimated. Plus, the country is simply declaring more disasters over time in part because of “shifting political expectations surrounding the federal role in relief and recovery,” according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution….

...A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that every dollar of disaster preparedness saves communities $13 in damages, cleanup costs, and economic impacts. But since 2018, the government has set aside just 6 percent of the total of its post-disaster grant spending to go toward pre-disaster mitigation….

Meanwhile, costs of these disasters are likely to balloon further because of gaps in insurance. In places such as California, Louisiana, and Florida, insurers are pulling out or raising premiums so high that people can’t afford them, because their business model cannot support the current risks posed by more frequent or intense disasters. So states and the federal government are already taking on greater risks as insurers of last resort. The National Flood Insurance Program, for instance, writes more than 95 percent of the residential flood policies in the United States, according to an estimate from the University of Pennsylvania. But the people who hold those policies are almost all along the coasts, in specially designated flood zones. Inland flooding such as Helene brought doesn’t necessarily conform to those hazard maps; less than 1 percent of the homeowners in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where the city of Asheville was badly hit, had flood insurance….

But some of these measures, such as adopting stronger building codes, tend to be unpopular with the states that hold the authority to change them. “There is a sort of quiet tension between states and the federal government in terms of how to do this,” Schlegelmilch said. The way things work right now, states and local governments would likely end up shouldering more of the cost of preparing for disasters. But they know the federal government will help fund recovery.
Plus, spending money on disaster recovery helps win elected officials votes in the next election. “The amount of funding you bring in has a very strong correlation to votes—how many you get, how many you lose,” Schlegelmilch said. But the same cannot be said for preparedness, which has virtually no correlation with votes. 

[TW: “a sort of quiet tension between states and the federal government,” which the rich are exacerbating by their lavish funding of the stridently anti-government conservative and libertarian movements, and, more importantly the corruption of the judiciary so that it provides judicial legitimacy and bite to these anti-government ideas and policies, as in Loper-Bright. As tragic as these disasters are, progressives should be planning beforehand how to use the inevitable public clamor for disaster relief as climate change worsens, and direct that clamor against the anti-government conservative and libertarian movements that are the root cause of unprepardeness. As Stoller writes below: “we are entering a world beset by climate change, which will require a different political order [but] the bulk of our leadership class is still in thrall to a finance-friendly model of industrial fragility.]

What Happens if a Hurricane Smashes Tampa?

Matt Stoller, October 08, 2024 [BIG]

...All of that is a way of saying that hurricanes are really dangerous, and involve massive sums of money and important questions of market power and shortages. And that’s especially true today, with our monopolized and thus fragile supply chains. For instance, when North Carolina got hit with immense rain from Hurricane Helene a few weeks ago, it killed hundreds of people, and also knocked out a mine making 90% of the key pure quartz on which the semiconductor industry depends. To take another example, the American Hospital Association has already asked the President to declare a national emergency due to a shortage of IV fluids as a result of the disaster….

((One factory about 35 miles east of Ashville supplied 60% of the nation’s IV fluids...))

….So what’s the right approach to addressing the resulting crisis?

The response will require more state capacity. Clearly there’s search and rescue and immediate crisis response, which requires a lot more funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). We’re going to need a permanently larger FEMA, since climate change has dramatically increased the pace of natural disasters. The government should probably just rebuild and then make all cell phone service free in the area for the next two months, and find a way of extending Medicaid to everyone so no one has to deal with billing. Or they could just temporarily nationalize hospitals.

What we can learn from the Covid crisis and the CARES Act is that we should immediately be sending resources to individuals and small businesses in the area. A quick disbursal of cash to everyone in the region, as well as a revival of the Paycheck Protection Program for small business loan/grants, would help people afford basic necessities, and keep businesses alive. Bank regulators should also freeze credit reporting and student debt payments for people in affected counties.

Given the potential crisis of Florida property values and all the financing attached to those, we need to think about bank solvencies. To address the possibility of a financial crisis, Congress should stop working through the Federal Reserve, which is too focused on helping private equity and large banks and far too opaque. Instead, the government should structure a new public bank called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It should be run by the FDIC, and be allowed to use the Fed balance sheet for loans, which would all be publicly posted.

We can also learn some lessons from the post-Katrina moment, as well as what happened during Covid, and the CARES Act. What we can learn from Katrina is that it’s important to do as much within the government as possible, instead of through contractors….

... we are entering a world beset by climate change, which will require a different political order. Last July, I wrote a piece on how we are forgetting the lessons from Covid. We are still highly dependent on China, and the fragility of our supply chains hasn’t improved. And that’s because, while there are some good policymakers in positions of authority like Lina Khan and Rohit Chopra, the bulk of our leadership class is still in thrall to a finance-friendly model of industrial fragility. And this dynamic is as much an ideological problem as anything else….

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 6 2024

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 6 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Kamala Harris’s Wall Street charm offensive begins to pay off 

[Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-04-2024]

“Two finance executives close to Harris said she had reassured them that she could appoint new officials to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission who would take a less aggressive stance than current respective chairs Gary Gensler and Lina Khan.”

Rev. William Barber II demands focus on poverty, proposes debate format to 'put facts out'

James Powel, October 3, 2024 [USA TODAY, via Common Dreams]

As the nation reviewed the vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Tuesday night, Rev. William J. Barber II noticed one group of people missing from the conversation: the poor.

The founder of Repairers of the Breach, The Poor People's Campaign and the Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale told USA TODAY in an interview Wednesday that the presidential race, and by extension the vice presidential debate, was not revealing solutions for the nearly 38 million people living in poverty in the country….

Progressives Must Act Now to Shape Kamala Harris’s White House

Jeff Hauser, Kenny Stancil October 2, 2024 [American Prospect]

Now is the time for progressives to weigh in on jobs that don’t require Senate confirmation….

...But beyond independent agencies and the Cabinet, there are many influential White House positions for which Senate confirmation is not required. Harris has no excuse for not taking her best swings here. In the same vein, progressives have no excuse for not advocating for the best possible nominees—and preparing to register disapproval if warranted.

As a general principle, Harris should appoint individuals who have a demonstrated commitment to furthering the public interest, rather than entrenching corporate power or seeking personal advancement. This means appointees’ résumés should reflect careers spent advocating for the common good—including experience in federal, state, or local governments as well as other public-sector or nonprofit work—as opposed to careers spent working on behalf of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and other nerve centers of corporate America. Moreover, given the need for an all-of-government approach to solving our myriad and overlapping crises, the people Harris names should also have the ability to creatively leverage available power to drive change.

What follows is a brief overview of key jobs and some lessons on what to look for—and look out for.