Author Archives: Sheila

About That “Abundance” Agenda

My middle son lived in Manhattan for ten years before relocating to Amsterdam, and during his tenure in the Big Apple he sprinkled numerous conversations with complaints (okay, rants) about the excessive costs of the city’s infrastructure. He couldn’t understand why other countries could extend their subway systems and railways at a fraction of America’s cost, and could complete projects far more rapidly.  He loved New York, but the glaring and costly inefficiency offended him.

I had no wisdom to impart. I didn’t know–and was unable to speculate– why a subway extension in the U.S. cost so much more–and took so much longer– than similar projects in other countries.

Until very recently, I was equally unaware of the policy war centered on something called  the abundance agenda, which turned out–despite what I still consider a weird label–to be an argument over that same question: why can’t America build things anymore?

As an article from The Atlantic explained:

The abundance agenda is a collection of policy reforms designed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure and for government bureaucracy to work. Despite its cheerful name and earnest intention to find win-win solutions, the abundance agenda contains a radical critique of the past half century of American government. On top of that—and this is what has set off clanging alarms on the left—it is a direct attack on the constellation of activist organizations, often called “the groups,” that control progressive politics and have significant influence over the Democratic Party.

The article documented national examples that dovetailed with my son’s complaints. For example, the amount of time that elapsed between Biden’s signing of his infrastructure bill and actual construction meant that voters hadn’t seen the effects of that legislation by the next election.

A massive law had been enacted, yet Americans did not notice any difference, because indeed, very little had changed. Biden had anticipated, after quickly signing his infrastructure bill and then two more big laws pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into manufacturing and energy, that he would spend the rest of his presidency cutting ribbons at gleaming new bridges and plants. But only a fraction of the funds Biden had authorized were spent before he began his reelection campaign, and of those, hardly any yielded concrete results.

Only 58 of the “nationwide” electric-vehicle-charging stations were in service; completion dates for most road projects was mid-2027. Rural broadband access to had connected zero customers.

Policy wonks began to ask the same questions my son had asked. What was going on? American government used to construct engineering miracles like the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge ahead of schedule and under budget– Medicare had become available less than a year after it passed, but the Affordable Care Act’s exchange took nearly four years. And an embarrassing question: Why was everything slower, more expensive, and more dysfunctional in states and cities controlled by Democrats?

The policy wonks concluded that, over the years, a web of laws and regulations has turned any attempt to build public infrastructure into an expensive, agonizing nightmare. But removing excess regulations is highly controversial, because the limitations on building and government were largely imposed by interest groups that believed them necessary– interest groups that have dominated the Democratic Party for the last half century, and who saw their task as preventing an alliance of government, Big Business and Big Labor from subordinating the needs of citizens. They wanted to prevent the government from doing harm– but too often, they ended up preventing it from doing anything at all.

The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, is an example. Passed in 1969, the law required the government to undertake environmental-impact studies before authorizing major projects and created elaborate legal hurdles to navigate.

Activist groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund saw NEPA as a potent tool to stop Washington (and, through state-level copycat laws, state and local governments) from building harmful projects. They pursued an energetic legal strategy to expand the law’s reach, turning it into a suffocating weapon against development. Over time, the environmental-impact statements required to start a project have ballooned from about 10 pages to hundreds; the process now takes more than four years on average to complete.

The article has many more examples, but the issue is so contentious because it isn’t “either/or”–it requires policymakers to find the mean between extremes. How much regulation is needed to safeguard the environment, or protect against government overreach–and how much is too much?

If and when we elect lawmakers who actually care about governing, it’s an issue they need to address.

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Don’t Let The Light Go Out

These are dark days for those of us who follow the news. Most of us need reassurance that we can do something–that we can make at least a modest contribution to what I’ve called the Resistance, that we can join with the millions of other Americans who are appalled and frightened by the insanity of the Trump administration.

In these difficult and challenging times, I read a lot of the pundits and pollsters and “wise men” who write for legacy media and issue Substack letters, and while I find many of them to be thought-provoking and analytically helpful, it is rare to read a column or essay that gives me hope and encourages activism.

On the other hand, although I’m embarrassed to admit it, I often do react positively to the lyrics of a song. (It’s especially embarrassing because I mostly listen when I’m on the treadmill, trying to keep my aging body moving..)

As my grandchildren will attest, my musical preferences are firmly anchored in the past. I know very few of the famous vocalists who came after the Rat Pack, my favorite songs from musical theater tend to be from oldies-and-goodies like “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Kiss Me Kate,” and I have a special fondness for the folk music of the 60s and 70s. While I’m sure more contemporary compositions also have life lessons to share, I’ve missed them.

These admissions are by way of explaining why I found a Peter Paul and Mary song so relevant to our times. I was grinding out my minutes on the treadmill by listening to folk songs when “Light One Candle” came into the rotation. Those of you who share my age cohort probably remember the lyrics. It began:

… Light one candle for the Maccabee children
Give thanks that their light didn’t die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied

… Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
And light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peacemaker’s time is at hand

And then the chorus–an admonition for our time if there ever was one:

… Don’t let the light go out!
It’s lasted for so many years
Don’t let the light go out!
Let it shine through our love and our tears

… Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never become our own foe
And light one candle for those who are suff’ring
Pain we learned so long ago

… Light one candle for all we believe in
Let anger not tear us apart!
Light one candle to bind us together
With peace as the song in our heart

… What is the memory that’s valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
What’s the commitment to those who have died
When we cry out they’ve not died in vain

… We have come this far, always believing
That justice will somehow prevail
This is the burning, this is the promise
And this is why we will not fail

I know that many people are giving up and choosing to leave the United States right now. Scientists are being wooed by countries that still respect empirical reality; businesspeople are opting for countries where the rule of law protects commerce; growing numbers of retirees are becoming expats in places that combine warmth with fiscal stability and rational governance.

It is, after all, a difficult time to be a patriotic American.

But millions of us can “light a candle and ensure that justice prevails.” We can take to the streets in large numbers, peacefully demonstrating our commitment to the Constitution, to the vision of America that so many have died to protect.  We can all participate in “No Kings Day,” June 14th, for example.

Indivisible and a huge coalition of pro-democracy partner organizations are planning a nationwide day of defiance on Flag Day (June 14). The protests are set to take place during Donald Trump’s grotesque military parade in Washington, D.C. Instead of allowing this military parade to be the center of national attention, activists will make national protest the story of America that day.  Alongside local organizers, partners, and leaders from across the pro-democracy and pro-worker movements, activists across the country will come together for marches, rallies, and demonstrations to reject the corrupt, authoritarian politics currently defiling the United States.

From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, citizens will be taking action to reject Trump’s demented authoritarianism, to show the world that a united population is refusing to be ruled by a would-be monarch.

Participants will light a (metaphorical) candle. It mustn’t be the last.

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Economics And The Rule Of Law

One of the multiple failures of the not-very-bright people who are currently running/ruining our government is their inability to connect the dots, to understand that when they set out to undermine X, the consequences of that assault aren’t just limited to X. We live in a complex and interrelated world, and failure to understand those complexities can lead to unanticipated damage.

The Trump administration consistently displays enormous ignorance of the way the world actually works. That ignorance–that disdain for pesky things like expertise and evidence–is particularly evident in Trump’s approach to economic policy. It isn’t just his insane belief in tariffs (a belief shared by no economist, conservative or liberal). It isn’t just his echoing of longstanding Republican insistence that tax cuts for “job creators” will grow the economy–despite ample evidence to the contrary. (Of course, even if those tax cuts don’t lead to economic growth, they do lead to the growth of generous political contributions…)

It isn’t even the GOP’s failure to understand the dire economic and civic consequences of further impoverishing citizens who are already struggling in order to fatten the wallets of the already wealthy, a failure once again demonstrated by Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

The most dangerous failure to connect the dots is the less-noted but even more consequential failure to understand the economic importance of the rule of law, or to recognize how Trump’s assaults on the law will dramatically and inevitably undermine the nation’s economy.

I’ve previously explained why widespread obedience to the rule of law is an essential underpinning of liberty and civic equality–why it is at the very basis of what I call “the American Idea.” But it is equally important to understand why the nation’s economic health is absolutely dependent upon a government that respects the rule of law.

Trump’s autocratic attacks on–and utter disregard for– the rule of law are a direct threat to the willingness of foreign investors to buy and hold American  stocks and bonds. When those investors see Trump and his administration unilaterally defaulting on contracts, arbitrarily withholding funds that have been properly and legally appropriated, ignoring court decisions and attacking judges, deporting people without even the pretense of due process–while at the same time providing special treatment for donors, favored companies, and White immigrants– those investors re-think the safety of their investments.

Why should we care?

Among other things, foreign investors inject capital for increased production and economic expansion. They create new employment opportunities and facilitate technology transfer. Foreign investors often bring in advanced technologies and expertise, fostering innovation and boosting productivity in local industries. When foreign businesses generate profits, they contribute to U.S. tax revenues, providing American government with resources to fund public services.

That investment is at risk. As one economist put it,

The erosion of the rule of law under Trump can have enormous economic significance for a foreign government, investor, or company with stakes in our economy. They now know that the U.S. government may ignore its contracts with them or decide not to enforce their agreements with others when it serves the political or personal interests of the president. That’s the way the world works in the kleptocratic dictatorships in Russia and Venezuela, and virtually no one invests in their stocks and bonds.

By following their lead, Trump and his apprentices risk devastating capital flight that could leave many of our leading financial institutions insolvent. In addition to his deeply destructive tariffs, Trump’s sweeping campaign against the rule of law in the United States has raised the economic stakes from a rocky business cycle to a potential financial and economic meltdown with terrible consequences.

America’s respect for the rule of law is the reason foreign investors have felt safe parking their money here, and all Americans have benefitted from our role as a safe place in the global economy.

Anyone who has taken Economics 101 understands that the rule of law is fundamental to business and investment. It creates the predictable, stable, and fair environment that economic activity depends upon. Without predictability and stability,
businesses and investors are unable to make long-term plans and commitments. Unless laws governing commerce are clear and consistently enforced– and not subject to arbitrary changes– companies can’t assess risks and returns.

You would think the Republicans who fancy themselves protectors of private property and capital would understand that it is the rule of law that protects that private property from seizure or infringement, and that investors–foreign or domestic– are highly unlikely to put money into an economy where assets can be seized or destroyed without due process.

When the GOP was a party, and not a cult, it understood that.

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The Victim Card

Along with the dread I feel with every Trumpian assault on the Constitution and rule of law is a constant, nagging question: how can the MAGA base ignore the threats to their own liberties and livelihoods? How can they look at this pathetic, corrupt,  mentally-ill man and his bizarre collection of incompetents and conspiracy theorists and say “Yes! Those are the people I want in charge of the economy and country?”

I’m not the only person who has mulled over that question, and–while there is never one simple answer to a complicated reality–I’m pretty sure that grievance (along with a healthy dose of ignorance) is a major factor. By “grievance,” of course, I mean the extensive racism encouraged by the Christian Nationalists who constantly play the victim card.

White Christian Nationalists are constantly told by their leaders and pastors that this country was supposed to be theirs by right–that America was supposed to be a Christian nation. Not just any Christians, of course–White male fundamentalist Christians. MAGA’s devotion to Trump is rooted in his permission to hate those “others” who have infringed upon their rights, upon his obvious agreement that equal treatment for Brown and Black folks, Jews, Muslims  and “uppity” women constitutes discrimination against White Christian males and simply cannot be tolerated.

What the MAGA base supports is the administration’s frantic efforts to stamp out DEI and purge official websites of evidence that non-Christian, non-White, non-male individuals have served the country with distinction. MAGA applauds the replacement of competent minority folks with embarrassing and grossly unfit Whites. It cheers the assaults on education, and especially Trump’s attacks on the universities that turn out those hated and increasingly diverse “elites.”

The irony is visible to anyone not in the cult. The aggrieved Whites who used to complain that women and minorities were “playing the victim card” are the ones now playing victim. 

A recent article in The New Republic gives the game away, reporting on the first meeting of Trump’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the Federal Government.” As the article noted,

Those attending didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that no evidence of such widespread bias exists. That’s because they weren’t there to solve a problem but to create one. The Task Force claimed to be standing up for “religious liberty,” but its real goal is to amplify the persecution complex of the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist allies and base—and then to use groundless claims of religious discrimination as the basis for the suppression of dissent.

Lest we miss the real purpose of this charade, an incident the following week illuminated the fact that–as the article put it–“the Trump administration has zero interest in promoting “religious liberty.”

As the Reverend William Barber and other faith leaders opposed to Republican budget cuts gathered to pray at the Capitol Rotunda, they were swiftly surrounded by Capitol Police officers, one wearing a “crime scene” vest. The press was expelled from the building, and the pastors were arrested.

You would think that a Task Force concerned with anti-Christian bias would take an interest. But the administration appears to have nothing to say. The problem for the Reverend Barber and his fellow pastors is that they would seem to be the wrong kind of Christians. Right-wing pastor Sean Feucht has “filled the US Capitol Rotunda with worship time and time again for the last 4 years,” in his own words, and yet he has never been arrested or detained. He, apparently, is the right kind of Christian.

As most sentient Americans know–and as the article pointed out– attacks on Christians in the U.S. are infrequent– unlike attacks on other religious groups. Assaults on Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs have always been far more numerous, and their incidence has climbed dramatically during the Trump years. “The Task Force’s exclusive focus on Christian victims exposes its rhetoric about defending “religious liberty” as transparently insincere.”

As the essay points out, for members of the MAGA cult, “anti-Christian bias” is indistinguishable from efforts to protect individual rights against discrimination by people who identify as Christian. In other words, efforts to prevent these particular “Christians” from discriminating against people of whom they disapprove is labeled anti-Christian bias. To MAGA, “religious freedom” now means “privilege for conservative Christians alone, including the freedom to harass or discriminate.”

Equality before the law is seen as anti-Christian.

When Christian Nationalists are prevented from dictating the terms of the civic culture, they consider themselves victims. And so long as Trump feeds their perceptions of victimhood, so long as he supports their theocratic aspirations, nothing will shake their loyalty.

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The Fine Print

As Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (more accurately called the MAGA Murder Bill) is winding its way through the compliant and spineless “public servants” (note quotation marks) in the House and Senate, a great deal of the public’s attention will be focused on the bill’s main thrust, which is to rob the poor to further enrich the obscenely wealthy. In order to achieve that goal, the GOP–which used to portray itself as the party of “fiscal sanity”–proposes to add 3.6 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next ten years.

But the overall cruelty of the measure shouldn’t preclude a look at the fine print–the nasty culture-war provisions that Republicans in Congress slipped in, in hopes that discussions of the major elements would shield them from view. Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect recently listed several of them. 

Perhaps the most egregious is an effort to cripple the courts. A provision would prohibit any funding from being used to carry out court orders holding executive branch officials in contempt. It would enable Trump and his officials to defy court orders at will. It is almost certainly unconstitutional—but then, so are most of the actions of this appalling administration.

The bill protects the tax preparation industry by repealing the Direct File measure sponsored by the Biden administration. That program allowed taxpayers to save money by using a free IRS tool to file their tax returns, relieving them of the need to pay commercial tax preparers.

The bill also adds to MAGA’s savage attacks on migrants, adding $45 billion for construction of immigration jails. (This is more than 13 times ICE’s current detention budget.) In addition to the money, the provision would allow for the indefinite detention of immigrant children, and would charge families $3,500 to reunite with a child who arrived alone at the border. Asylum seekers will have to pay an “application fee” of at least $1,000. (Because people fleeing horrific circumstances are presumably flush?)

Just in case some non-profit organizations in civil society have the nerve to criticise our would-be king, the reconciliation bill gives the administration the power to label nonprofits as “terrorist-supporting organizations,” a designation that can be used to terminate their tax status. Giving the administration such authority would be an open invitation to our demented autocrat to suppress the free speech and activism of climate and civil liberties organizations, among others.

Other bits of “fine print” more directly support the major goal of the bill: protecting the extremely wealthy against efforts to get them to pay their fair share of taxes–basically, exempting the rich from paying their dues to the country that made their accumulation of wealth possible. As Kuttner reports, the bill would gut an Estate Tax that is already massively favorable to the top 1%..

As if the current exemptions were not enough, the bill raises the no-tax floor to a staggering $15 million for single people and $30 million for couples in 2026. So a couple could leave $29.99 million to their heirs, tax-free. As recently as 2001, 2.1 percent of estates paid some tax. With this change, the percentage falls to less than 0.08 percent.

There’s much more. The bill weakens the Child Tax Credit, by lowering the eligibility income threshold. Millions of children will suddenly become ineligible. It expands school vouchers–continuing the GOP effort to destroy public education and shift tax dollars to religious institutions, in violation of the First Amendment. It includes what Kuttner calls “Stealth Cuts’ to the Affordable Care Act, with a provision that will increase out-of-pocket costs and make insurance more expensive.

And speaking of despicable: One bit of fine print supports gun silencers. “Buried deep in the bill is a provision that repeals the $200 excise tax on the sale of gun silencers, which have no lawful purpose other than concealing shootings.”

Several of these measures ought not survive the rules governing the budget reconciliation progress, which require that measures in a reconciliation bill be limited to budget and spending. Under those rules, ordinary legislation is not permissible. Kuttner notes that the Senate rules on germaneness are tighter than those in the House, “thanks to the Byrd Rule, which holds that “extraneous” matters may not be included in a budget bill.” Given the cravenness of the Republican Senators, those rules are a thin reed, but we can hope…

The real merit of the “Big Beautiful Bill” is educational. It is a road-map, an “up-front” admission of where MAGA Republicans want to take America. Like Project 2025, it is a candid statement of purpose, an acknowledgement of their determination to remake the United States into a medieval  country characterized by corruption, chaos and cruelty.

We can’t let that happen.

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