Who’s A Bigger Threat To Democracy – Immigrants, Or Billionaires?
07-20-2024 ~ Don’t be distracted by the anti-immigrant rhetoric this election. The real impact on democracy comes from moneyed elites.
When President Joe Biden said in a phone call to MSNBC’s Morning Joe recently, “I’m getting so frustrated with the elites… the elites of the party. I don’t care what the millionaires think,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote that, “It was the first time any modern president has admitted that the elites of the party are the millionaires (and billionaires) who fund it.”
While Biden’s comments were in reference to the movement to oust him from the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, it was an important admission about who really wields power in our democracy.
We may think of elections in terms of one person, one vote. But, not only do undemocratic structures such as the electoral college dilute our votes, the money that elites flaunt places a hefty thumb on the scales of who represents us. Yet, we hear more about the threat of, say, immigrants than the threat of billionaires, to our democracy.
Billionaires have tried very hard to buy influence and political power. For example, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg donated $20 million toward efforts to reelect Biden this year alone. Four years ago, Bloomberg spent a whopping $1 billion in just four months in an attempt to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. In a testament to the fact that we have a modicum of democratic accountability left within the system as it stands, he failed spectacularly, as others have often done. Voters seem to have a distaste for electing the ultra-rich but have yet to disavow the de facto proxies that their money helps elect.
While billionaires remain influential within the Democratic Party, the last election for which spending records exist shows that moneyed elites overwhelmingly prefer the Republican Party. The nation’s 465 wealthiest people collectively donated $881 million to influence the 2022 midterm elections, most of it to the GOP. Read more
Is The Food Industry Concealing Possible Destruction Of The Tropics From The Public?
07-21-2024 ~ Millions of tons of palm oil are ‘missing’ from Big Food’s deforestation-free claims.
Palm oil is one of the most used vegetable oils in the world and is found in a large variety of packaged products, from shampoos and lipstick to cookies and frozen pizza. Unfortunately, the production of palm oil has been linked to severe environmental and social costs, including significant rainforest destruction and human rights abuses, particularly in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, which together account for around 85 percent of global exports.
In the United States, out of the seven commodities that were linked to forest destruction, palm oil was the most “significant contributor” to deforestation, according to a March 2024 report. This report by Trase, a “data-driven transparency initiative,” is based on an analysis of figures from October 2021 to November 2023. “[T]he United States’ direct imports of seven forest risk commodities… [are] exposed to at least 122,800 hectares of tropical and subtropical deforestation. This is an area comparable in size to the city of Los Angeles,” states the report.
If any part of the palm oil supply chain is linked to the destruction of rainforests and peatlands or human rights abuses, the product is known as Conflict Palm Oil.
According to a May 2024 report by my organization, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), palm oil is increasingly being used “as an animal feed additive,” however, “much of the international trade in palm oil-based animal feed is obscured for consumers and other stakeholders.”. This lack of transparency raises questions about the actual role of the world’s largest palm oil traders in deforestation and social conflict.
Responding to this crisis and bowing to consumer and stakeholder pressure, many companies have adopted the “No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation” (NDPE) policy to ensure responsible production. This corporate pledge is meant to prevent further deforestation, safeguard “High Conservation Value” (HCV) areas, eliminate new development on peatlands, and protect Indigenous communities.
Hidden Palm Oil in Animal Feed
Palm oil is found in many foods and household products, but it’s also used in animal feed, especially for dairy cows, and ends up in products like milk, cheese, ice cream, and chocolate. Because it is an indirect ingredient, it is known as “embedded palm oil”—often hidden and not included in companies’ deforestation-free commitments. An analysis of 2022 data by RAN revealed that palm oil-based animal feed was the largest category of palm oil products imported to the United States. Read more
How Powerful Are The Remaining Royals?
07-20-2024 ~ Most royal families continue to face a decline in relevance, yet their ongoing efforts to adapt means they cannot be discounted entirely.
Recently appointed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged his loyalty to British King Charles III on July 6, 2024, continuing a tradition that dates back centuries. However, since the leadership role taken by Prime Minister David Lloyd George in World War I, the monarchy’s political influence has become progressively ceremonial and even more precarious since the death of the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
This trend is not unique to the UK; in recent centuries, the role of royalty in politics has declined considerably worldwide. As political ideals began challenging royal authority in Europe, European colonial powers began to undermine their authority overseas. The strain of World War I helped cause several European monarchies to collapse, and World War II diminished their numbers further. After, the Soviet Union and the U.S. divided Europe along ideological lines and sought to impose their communist and liberal democratic ideals elsewhere, and the remaining monarchs faced accelerating marginalization.
Today, fewer than 30 royal families are politically active on a national scale. Some, like Japan’s and the UK’s, trace their lineages back more than a millennium, while Belgium’s is less than 200 years old. Several have adapted by reducing political power while maintaining cultural and financial relevance, while others have retained their strong political control. Their various methods and circumstances make it difficult to determine where royals may endure, collapse, or return.
Alongside the UK, the royals of Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands have all seen their powers become largely ceremonial. Smaller European monarchical states like Andorra and the Vatican City are not hereditary, while Luxembourg, Monaco, and Liechtenstein are—though only the latter two still wield tangible power. Read more
Sex Workers In Chile Continue To Face The Consequences Of COVID-19 Without Government Assistance
A little over a year ago, WHO declared the end of the COVID-19 health emergency. The pandemic had disastrous consequences for workers, especially those in the informal sector. According to a World Bank report, the last five years will reflect the lowest figures for economic growth in the last 30 years: 40 percent of low-income countries will remain poorer than they were before the pandemic.
In Chile, 2 million jobs were lost during the pandemic. A report by the Economics Institute of the Catholic University of Chile indicates that the employment rate could only recover to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2026.
In this context, informal sector workers face an unaccounted crisis: the non-recognition of their work leaves them outside the ambit of adequate public policies for their recovery. As part of this sector, sex workers face the great limbo of the legal status of sex work in Chile: it is not prohibited, but it is not recognized as work either. Persecution is concentrated in the places where it is practiced. Herminda González, president of Fundación Margen, tells me that this option leaves only one option for the workers: the streets. From that place, the Fundación provides the assistance that the State does not provide.
The Solidarity Fund
During the quarantine, Herminda and Nancy Gutierréz (Margen’s spokesperson) took advantage of the early morning darkness to sneak into the Foundation’s headquarters, where they distributed boxes of food for the sex workers. “We did it because we knew the girls were waiting,” says Herminda. “And if it wasn’t us, who was going to do it? Only the people help the people.”
As the pandemic progressed, they decided to design protocols for safe sex. “Along with condoms, we distributed masks and latex gloves,” because, despite the restrictions, the work did not stop. “There were colleagues who earned a lot of money during the pandemic,” because obviously, the risk increased the value of the services. However, in any situation that meant not being able to work, the girls were completely unprotected, as they were not covered by any of the government schemes designed to protect workers recognized as such.
“Many of the sex workers support their families; they are mothers, daughters,” Gonzalez tells me. In the absence of the state—which only donated food to the foundation during the entire pandemic—“the aunts,” as the younger workers affectionately call the foundation’s leaders, decided to create a solidarity fund for sex workers, where allies and close clients made donations that allowed them to survive the pandemic crisis.
The Solidarity Fund is still active and is used to support sex workers during the hardest times of the year, including when it is time to buy school supplies, for example. Read more
Tariffs Don’t Protect Jobs. Don’t Be Fooled.
07-11-2024 ~ Both Trump and Biden imposed high tariffs on imported products made in China and other countries. Those impositions broke with and departed from the previous half century’s policies favoring “free trade” (less or minimal government intervention in international markets). Free trade policies facilitated “globalization,” the euphemism for the post-1970 surge in U.S. corporations’ investing abroad: producing and distributing there, re-locating operations there, and merging with foreign enterprises there. Presidents before Trump had insisted that free trade plus globalization best served U.S. interests. Both Democratic and Republican administrations had enthusiastically endorsed that insistence. Dutifully performing ideological support duties, they stressed how globalization’s benefits to U.S. corporations would “trickle down” to the rest of us. Globalizing U.S. corporations used portions of their profits to reward both parties with donations and other electoral and lobbying supports.
Our last two Presidents reversed that position. Against free trade they favored multiple government interventions in international trade, especially imposing and raising tariffs. Instead of advocating free trade and globalization, they promoted economic nationalism. Like their predecessors, Trump and Biden depended on financial support from corporate America as well as votes from the employee class. Many U.S. corporations and those they enriched had shifted their profit expectations in response to the competition they faced from new, powerful non-U.S. firms. The latter had emerged during the free-trade/globalization conditions after 1970, above all in China. U.S. firms increasingly welcomed or demanded protection from those competitors. Accordingly, they financed changes in the political winds and shifts in “public opinion” toward economic nationalism.
Trump and Biden thus endorsed pro-tariff policies that protected many corporations’ profits. Those policies also appealed to those for whom economic nationalism offered ideological comforts. For example, many in the United States grasped the relative decline of the United States and its G7 allies in the global economy and the relative rise of China and its BRICS allies. They welcomed an aggressive counteraction in the forms of tariff and trade wars. Both corporations (including mass media) and their subservient politicians worked to build popular and voter support. That was needed to pass the tax, budget, subsidy, tariff, and other laws that would realize the shift to economic nationalism. A key argument held that “tariffs protect jobs.” A political struggle pitted the defenders of “free trade” against those demanding “protection.” Over the last decade, those defenders have been losing. Read more
French Elections: What The Global Left Should Learn About Defeating The Far-Right
07-11-204 ~ A united left is a formidable opponent that cannot only halt the surge of neo-fascism, but can also offer a positive and inspiring vision for the future.
Far-right forces have gained ground across Europe, particularly in Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In fact, the Netherlands has a new government, a coalition between far right and right, and the far right came first in the first-round of France’s snap election. But fearful of the prospect of a neo-fascist and xenophobic party in government, French voters came out in record numbers and rallied not behind Ensemble—the centrist coalition led by President Emmanuel Macron—but behind the coalition of left forces calling themselves the New Popular Front (NFP), delivering in the end a blow to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) which had made historic gains in the first round and topped the poll with 33.15 percent of the votes cast. NFP came in first in the run-off election, with 188 seats, but falling short of majority.
France’s snap parliamentary election results help us to make sense of the surge of the far right and offer valuable lessons for the left all over the world, including the U.S. where a centrist democrat and a wannabe dictator face off in November.
First, it is crystal clear that the main reason for the rise of Europe’s far right, authoritarian, and ethnonationalist forces is the status quo of neoliberal capitalism. The neoliberal counterrevolution that begun in the early 1980s and undermined every aspect of the social democracy model that had characterized European political economy since the end of the Second World War has unleashed utterly dangerous political forces that envision a return to a golden era of traditional values built around the idea of the nation by fomenting incessant and socially destructive change.
True to its actual aims and intent, neoliberalism has exacerbated capitalism’s tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer, reduced the well-being of the population through mass privatization and commercialization of public services, hijacked democracy, decreased the overall functionality of state agencies, and created a condition of permanent insecurity. Moreover, powerful global economic governance institutions—namely, the unholy trinity of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization—took control of the world economy and became instrumental in the spreading of neoliberalism by shaping and influencing the policies of national governments. It is under these conditions that ethnonationalism, racism, and neofascism resurfaced in Europe, and in fact all over the world.
In France, the rise of the far right coincided with President François Mitterand’s turn to austerity in the 1980s as his government fell prey to the monetarist-neoliberal ideology of the Anglo-Saxon world. Once Mitterand made his infamous neoliberal turn, the rest of the social democratic regimes in southern Europe (Greece under Andreas Papandreou, Italy under Bettino Craxi, Spain under Felipe Gonzalez, and Portugal under Mario Soares) tagged along, and the eclipse of progressivism was underway. Read more