nichols, John

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https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-march-11-2022/

3/11 covid crims, ---- profiteers bk nichols

trump was going to do mask mandate but MM stopped b/c it was off freedom brand

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an 6 25

Donald Trump suffered a major setback during his first presidency when Democrats flipped the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms and enjoyed a net gain of 41 seats. Now, with Trump serving a nonconsecutive second term, Democrats are looking to the 2026 midterms and hoping for another blue wave.

But The Nation's John Nichols, in an article published on June 9, stresses that for Democrats, the path to defeating Trumpism doesn't start in 2026 — it starts with the elections being held this year.

In 2025, elections range from gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to special elections in the U.S. House of Representatives to state legislature races. In Philadelphia, progressive Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner is almost certain to win a third term after defeating a primary challenger by double digits.

"Trump’s approval ratings have tanked, and protests over his administration’s attacks on science, health care, immigrants, judges, and anyone else who gets in his way take place nearly every day," Nichols observes. "While the turn against Trump and Trumpism is glaringly evident, it is equally evident that this president is a master of self-deception. And while Trump has a history of denying election results, Republicans won't be able to spin their way out of serious electoral setbacks if they come in 2025."

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Nichols continues, "In Virginia, where Republicans won every statewide race in 2021, control of the House of Delegates is up for grabs. If Democrats win there as part of a broader sweep of New Jersey and the rest of the country's odd-year election map, it will send a devastating message to the (Trump) Administration."

In New Jersey, Democrats and Republicans haven't chosen their gubernatorial candidates yet. Many New Jersey Democrats are feeling bullish about Rep. Mike Sherrill (D-New Jersey), believing she could be quite competitive against GOP gubernatorial hopeful Jack Cittarelli (who Trump has endorsed even though he was critical of Trump in the past).

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Democrats have already settled on former Rep. Abigail Spanberger as their 2025 gubernatorial nominee.

"Virginia Democrats know what’s at stake," Nichols explains. "For the first time since 2013, they united behind a single gubernatorial candidate, former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, before the state's spring primary. And for the first time in decades, the party has fielded candidates in all 100 races for the (Virginia) State House of Delegates. One of the reasons for this is a concerted organizing effort by Dr. Fergie Reid Jr., a retired physician and the son of Dr. William Ferguson Reid, the pioneering civil rights activist who in 1967 unseated a segregationist to become Virginia’s first Black delegate since Reconstruction."

Nichols adds, "The senior Reid turned 100 in March and urged Virginia Democrats to honor his longevity by filling ballot lines in every legislative contest. But it was more than nostalgia that helped them achieve a full slate. As Reid Jr. told the Virginia Mercury, 'Virginia is the first opportunity for really any state in the United States to answer back to what’s going on in Washington right now. It's going to send a big, loud message to the rest of the country and to the world that not everybody in America is with Trump.'"

Nichols describes Virginia and New Jersey as "the most important electoral dominoes in 2025."

"If they fall to the Democrats, and if other contests this November follow suit," Nichols observes, "that could significantly boost Democratic recruitment, fundraising, and organizing prospects in the 2026 midterm races for control of Congress."

*Read John Nichols' full article for The Nation at this link.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/inflation-2656762251/

no lnx twt

Bernie Sanders is right: 'Corporate greed' and 'price-gouging' are driving inflation

Alex Henderson February 21, 2022

Liberal economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column, has been arguing that President Joe Biden needs to do a much better job selling the positive aspects of the U.S. economy — unemployment way down from what it was in 2020, millions of new jobs added — while speaking candidly and frankly about inflation. It’s no secret that prices for a variety of items have been soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A key factor in the pandemic-era inflation problem, many economists have said, is the supply chain. Because of the pandemic, goods have a harder time getting from Point A to Point B. But TheNation’s John Nichols, in an article published on February 21, argues that a major factor with inflation — one that isn’t being discussed enough — is corporate greed and price-gouging.

Liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, according to Nichols, “put the pieces together” when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell appeared before the Senate Banking Committee in January.

“They’re raising prices because they can, and they’re not being competed down,” Warren told Powell during that hearing. “You know, market concentration has allowed giant corporations to hide behind claims of increased costs to fatten their profit margins. So, the consumer pays more both because the corporation faces higher costs and because, as you put it, because the corporation can increase prices. The reason I raise this is that higher prices have many causes, and we can’t overlook the role that concentrated corporate power has played in creating the conditions for price gouging.”

Warren, according to Nichols, “made the vital connection that all Democrats should be making as debates about the causes of inflation heat up.”

Nichols writes, “Instead of letting Wall Street apologists create the impression that inflation is simply the result of supply chain kinks and pent-up consumer demand after two years of pandemic lockdowns, and instead of letting Republicans suggest that federal and state investments in health care and housing are the problem, Democrats should be speaking like Warren — and like former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner.”

On February 17, Turner tweeted, “It’s not ‘inflation,’ it’s price-gouging. Exxon and other Big Oil corporations are price-gouging us at the gas pump. Grocery chains are making record profits price-gouging us at the register. Corporations are bleeding working people dry. Enough.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has also slammed corporations for “price gouging” and “corporate greed” during the pandemic.

Sanders and Warren have much in common but have their differences as well. While Sanders considers himself a “democratic socialist” along the lines of left-wing politicians in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Warren has described herself as a “capitalist to my bones” — and the Massachusetts Democrat has emphasized that while free market capitalism needs robust competition to be healthy, many corporations have done everything they can to avoid competition and become monopolies.

“There are still plenty of Democrats who are cautious about calling out corporate greed,” Nichols observes. “A failure to be blunt about profiteering leaves a void that will ill serve their party in 2022.”

Nichols continues, “History makes it clear that midterm elections are tough for the party that controls the White House and Congress. Voters take out their frustrations on those who are in positions of power. And that is doubly true in moments of economic turbulence, as Jimmy Carter and the Democrats learned in 1978, as Ronald Reagan and the Republicans learned in 1986, as Barack Obama and the Democrats learned in 2010.”

Nichols recalls that in the 1934 midterms, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s willingness to call out corporations served him well.

“Throughout 1934, FDR never let up when it came to calling out speculators, monopolists, and price gougers,” Nichols explains. “He promised that New Deal Democrats with increased congressional majorities would hold the bad actors to account. Voters approved. In November, they gave Democrats nine more seats in the House and nine more in the Senate, where the party achieved a rare supermajority.”

Nichols wraps up his article by emphasizing that Democrats should pay close attention to what Sanders has been saying about inflation.

The Vermont senator tweeted, “The problem is not that a low-income worker got a 50 cent raise two weeks ago and a $1400 check last year. The problem is that corporations are using ‘inflation’ as an excuse to jack up prices so that they can make record-breaking profits to enrich CEOs and wealthy shareholders.”

Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers

Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis

by John Nichols

furious denunciation of America’s coronavirus criminals

Hundreds of thousands of deaths were caused not by the vicissitudes of nature but by the callous and opportunistic decisions of powerful people, as revealed here by John Nichols.

On March 10, 2020, president Donald Trump told a nation worried about a novel coronavirus, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” It has since been estimated that had Trump simply taken the same steps as other G7 countries, 40 percent fewer Americans would have died.

And it was not just the president. His inner circle, including Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, downplayed the crisis and mishandled the response. Cabinet members such as Betsy DeVos and Mike Pompeo undermined public safety at home and abroad to advance their agendas. Senators Ron Johnson and Mitch McConnell, governors Kristi Noem and Andrew Cuomo, judges such as Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Rebecca Bradley all promulgated public policies that led to suffering and death. Meanwhile, profiteer Pfizer (and anti-government propagandists such as Grover Norquist) fed at the public trough, while the billionaire Jeff Bezos added pandemic profits to a grotesquely bloated fortune.

John Nichols closes with a call for a version of the Pecora Commission, which took aim at what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the “speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, and profiteering” that stoked the Depression. There must be accountability.