Opinion

America remains in the grip of an existential democracy crisis: Donald Trump's Republican-fascists and their movement are on the march, winning victory after victory while the Democrats and the "resistance" are hunkered down, doing little if anything to fight back.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Loving thy neighbor and serving the poor are the foundations of what it means to be a faithful Christian. For more than and 200 years, this "Christian nation" has failed in that calling. Back when Haiti gained independence from the French in 1804, John Adams wanted to recognize Haiti as an independent country. He hoped to open trade with the newly formed government, but Thomas Jefferson refused, out of fear that American slaves would start to see themselves as equal. In the modern era, any new immigration laws created either by Democrats or Republicans over the last 50 years always finds a way to ignore the needs and requests of the Haitian people. Apparently, Haiti is too poor and too Black for America to love and to serve. The church has failed Haiti, the politicians have failed Haiti and America has failed Haiti.

This article first appeared in Salon.

It is historically ignorant to describe Joe Biden as a failed president, which hasn't stopped pundits from trying. From MSNBC to New York Magazine, the view has emerged that if Biden's package of infrastructure and spending bills falls flat, it will be his political death sentence. Centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are depicted as holding the president's very career in their hands. By refusing to support filibuster repeal, and then throwing up roadblocks to his proposed $3.5 trillion spending package, they are seemingly making it impossible for Biden to get anything done at all.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Taxing the rich doesn't just entail closing tax loopholes and instituting a new wealth tax. It also means ensuring they pay what they owe in the first place — and that means boosting the Internal Revenue Service's funding.

The richest 1 percent of Americans evade $163 billion every year in taxes. How do they get away with it? Because the IRS doesn't have the tools and resources available to audit these wealthy tax cheats.

I love the word "neurodiversity." "Neurodiversity" — which refers to the idea that some conditions viewed as developmental disorders are actually normal variations in the brain — exists to de-stigmatize autism and spread awareness that some neurological differences can be normal and healthy. My favorite thing about that word, though, is how it implies that there are a great many ways life shapes each distinct neurological type. Like a lot of others with autism, I tend to develop obsessive interests about which I insatiably acquire extensive, detailed knowledge. Worlds have changed because certain interests have caught fire within specific autistic minds.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

In case you missed it, on Monday, Republicans in the narrowly divided U.S. Senate voted to block the approval of new borrowing intended to pay for old debt that they're complicit in racking up.

While entirely unsurprising, the GOP's united front on the debt ceiling is the most transparent kind of political cynicism.

Just over a week ago, the company that calls itself the Cyber Ninjas announced the results of its supposed "audit" of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, the state's major population center. Their findings were disappointing to hardcore Trump conspiracy theorists: Joe Biden's margin of victory actually increased by 99 votes, and there was no finding of systemic errors or election fraud.

This article first appeared in Salon.

A common point in centrist and conservative spaces is that academia has a liberal bias. This charge is levied most often at the social sciences. The logic is easy to follow. There is universal agreement that professors in the social sciences are liberal and vote Democratic. Moreover, it is in social science departments (sociology, anthropology, gender studies and the like) where ideas that challenge inequality are produced. You rarely see a sociologist or someone from African-American studies making claims conservatives find agreeable.

So this must mean their activities are biased. It must mean their research confirms liberal ideas about society, and their teaching will be about indoctrinating students into a liberal worldview. Right? No.

There was a curious hypocrisy in the Senate and House Armed Services Committee grilling of Pentagon brass this week – taking glee in apparent criticism of the White House of Joe Biden, but attacking for disagreeing with that of Donald Trump.

These were the hearings that earned headlines because Republican senators were pressing on gaps between public statements by Biden (or Trump before him) and his generals about whether they were all lined up in support of total withdrawal from Afghanistan. What emerged was that the Pentagon had advised both presidents to keep 2,500 troops longer – until Kabul fell and it became obvious that we needed an emergency effort that airlifted 120,000 Americans and Afghan allies out of the country.

In the 1960s, President Johnson waged one of the most consequential battles in US history: The Great Society. It was a package of legislative reforms that would touch almost every aspect of American life, from healthcare to civil rights to education. Headlines were admirably clear. The New York Daily News: LBJ'S BLUEPRINT: Billions for Schools; Aged; Medicare & War on Poverty. The Los Angeles Times: "LBJ's 'GOOD FIGHT': Pledges War on Hate, Poverty." The Times covered the philosophy underlying it: "President urges new federalism to 'enrich' life" and "Johnson Pledges Great Society; Will Visit 4 Needy Areas Today."

In this coverage, Johnson was described as an agent — a passionate one — engaged in an ideological, even visionary, battle. What Johnson was fighting for was clearly delineated: alleviating poverty, investing in schools and enriching American life. The societal circumstances that merited this battle were also identified. The country needed to be rebuilt. Both individuals and communities were vulnerable.

JD Vance is an author, former Wall Street trader and current senate candidate in Ohio. He was a guest on Tucker Carlson's white-power hour. He railed against people he doesn't like. "The basic way this works is that the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Harvard University endowment — these are fundamentally cancers on American society, but they pretend to be charities, and so they benefit from preferential tax

He continued: "Why don't we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to the people who've had their lives destroyed by their radical open borders agenda?"

Climate campaigners on Friday responded to Sen. Joe Manchin's unrelenting obstruction of his own party's efforts to spend $3.5 trillion to combat the climate crisis and make other major social investments by accusing the right-wing West Virginia Democrat of doing the fossil fuel industry's bidding, and drawing attention to the "modern-day coal baron's" staggering conflicts of interest.

Manchin—Senate Democrats' 50th and potentially decisive vote on the pending Build Back Better and bipartisan infrastructure bills—admitted Thursday that he planned to pass legislation containing at least $25 billion in potential fossil fuel subsidies and then torpedo the more ambitious $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package funding robust investments in climate solutions.

President Joe Biden met with the House Democratic caucus on Friday and confirmed what had already become clear the previous night: Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have failed in their plan this week.

Multiple reports confirmed that the president's message was clear. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August isn't going to pass the House until there's a deal within the Democratic Party on the reconciliation bill — which includes a slew of tax increases and social program spending that progressives are demanding.