The Declaration at 250

By Nick Paleologos

Two hundred and fifty years ago this summer, we declared our independence from Great Britain. We were so furious at the increasingly crazy behavior of the “Mad King” that out of a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind” we asked Thomas Jefferson to compose a list of the grievances that drove us to the separation. Here are just a few of the charges Jefferson leveled at King George III.

*He has obstructed the administration of justice.

*He has made judges dependent on his will alone.

*He has sent swarms of officers to harass our people.

*He has cut off our trade with all parts of the world.

*He has imposed taxes on us without our consent.

*He has deprived us of a trial by jury and transported us overseas for pretended offenses.

*He has destroyed the lives of our people.

*He has incited domestic insurrections.

*His every act of cruelty and deceit defines him as a tyrant, unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

That was 250 years ago. 

This consequential anniversary of Jefferson’s greatest gift to America – an occasion for joyous celebration – has instead become a solemn summer of reflection during which his masterpiece is in dire need of an update. Sadly, the list of Jefferson’s grievances must now be expanded to include the deplorable offences of our own Mad King, Donald J. Trump.

*He has enriched himself and his family by accepting billions of dollars from foreign countries, multi-national corporations, their CEOs, and countless, unrepentant, convicted fraudsters -- who he has also pardoned.

*He has appointed judges who have ruled that: corporations are people, money is speech, abortion is murder, discrimination is legal, and the president is above the law.

*He has sent federal troops into American cities where they wreaked havoc and murdered two innocent citizens - who he then defamed.

*He has shielded pedophiles and their accomplices from accountability while dismissing the righteous demands of their abused victims.

*He has turned the Justice Department against his political opponents with countless, meritless and malicious prosecutions.

*He has bulldozed the White House.

*He has pardoned 1,600 convicted insurrectionists.

*He has “nullified” the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.

*He has imposed arbitrary tariffs without congressional approval.

*He has betrayed a brave American ally after it was brutally invaded by Russia.

*He has publicly and unapologetically disparaged our most loyal allies.

*He has threatened to “take over” Gaza, Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, and to “destroy” Iranian civilization.

*He has murdered unarmed non-combatants on the open seas and killed 160 innocent children in an Iranian girls’ school.

*He has fired thousands of decent civil servants and crippled key public agencies. 

*He has defied lawful orders from federal courts.

*He has ruthlessly attacked the press, media, colleges, law firms, and judges.

*He has forced his name and face upon our currency and public buildings.

*He has polluted the public discourse with a stream of endless, irresponsible, defamatory, and incendiary lies, and with juvenile overnight social media posts which are utterly unbecoming of the leader of a great nation.

Therefore, in honor of the sacred text we celebrate this summer, there is no more appropriate tribute we can offer than to remember and revive Jefferson’s righteous indignation and rededicate ourselves to the principles he codified. 

As the Founders did then, we must once again appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the virtue of our intention to permanently sever all political connections to this current president and to the malignant philosophy he so proudly espouses. To this worthy end, we mutually pledge our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

 

PROJECT 2029

A Ten Point Plan for Populist Democrats.

 

Fix the rigged tax system. 

*Scrap the cap on SS (payroll) taxes. Rich must Social Security tax on all income. 

*Tax wealth at same rate as work. Equalize capital gains & income tax rates.

*Stop the generational transfer of income inequality. Reform estate taxes.

*End stock buybacks. Lower the CEO-to-average-worker salary ratio.

 

A healthy capitalist democracy depends on fair markets with fair rules. Tax policy is not just about raising revenue. It is about maintaining public trust in America. If citizens conclude that the most powerful people operate under a different set of rules, the damage will extend far beyond the federal budget. A tax system that is widely viewed as rigged weakens both our economy and our democracy. 

 

No taxation without representation. Four million American citizens living in Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia pay federal taxes but have no voting members in Congress. Extend statehood to DC and Puerto Rico.

 

One person, one vote. The Voting Rights Act must be permanently restored to: 

*Eliminate partisan and racial gerrymandering;

*Remove arbitrary barriers to voting; 

*Regulate the influence of money on elections; and 

*Enforce strict penalties for any interference with the process of free and fair elections.

 

Term limits for all federal elected offices.

Thanks for your service. Time to give someone else a chance.

 

Abolish the filibuster. Except in very rare instances, the majority should decide all votes in the US Senate.

 

Abolish the Electoral College. Whoever wins the popular vote should become President.

 

End Supreme Court Corruption. Justices should be subject to term limits and a strict, transparent and enforceable code of ethics. 

 

Codify Roe v Wade. Our bodies. Our choice.

 

Medicare for all. Nobody should go bankrupt because they got sick.

 

Universal background checks. Stop crazy people from getting guns.

 

 

THE INSURANCE THAT WASN’T

Heads They Win. Tails We Lose.

By Nick Paleologos

Chubb is the largest publicly traded property & casualty insurance company in the world. According to Forbes Magazine, Chubb made $4 billion in profit last year on sales of just under $33 billion.  For many years, our little theatre company paid for what’s known as “business interruption” insurance – which is when you get shut down by a “civil authority” because of a disaster beyond your control. You know, like a deadly, once-in-a-century worldwide pandemic.

Our annual premiums contributed to Chubb’s 12% profit margin in 2019, and to the $3.9 billion in profits the year before, and to the $3.8 billion in profits the year before that. So imagine our disappointment when, after making the first and only claim under our policy, we received a letter outlining the many and varied reasons why Chubb didn’t have to pay us a dime. Did I mention that Chubb has assets worth $168 billion? Well, they do.

The New York Times just ran a story about how arts and cultural organizations like ours are getting steamrollered by huge, profitable insurance companies like Chubb -- with a hefty assist from their GOP cronies in congress. Damon Vocke -- a lawyer who represents insurance companies – said about Covid19 claims: “This is not something that ought to be foisted upon a private sector industry…” 

Foisted? Insurance companies are literally in the risk business, much like Wall Street. It is what they do. Yet somehow whenever they guess wrong, it’s always the policyholders, workers, or better still the taxpayers who take it on the chin. If you want to know why the GOP is headed for an epic defeat in November, this is it.

For decades, a small, smug society of self-described “risk takers” have justified keeping the lion’s share of America’s economic upside for themselves because, to hear them tell it, they bear the burden of all the downside. Oh really? The vast majority of us now understand that the so-called “risk-takers” are in fact taking no risks at all. Indeed when disaster strikes, we are the ones who lose our jobs, our homes, our pensions, and our children’s futures. So when a pandemic hits, Chubb pockets our premiums while we twist slowly in the wind. Just like when the mortgage market collapsed, the banks received a trillion dollar bailout while the rest of us lost everything we had.

Or how about when the government shovels trillions of dollars in zero interest loans to big corporations, while charging 8% to struggling students and their parents for loans that (unlike corporate loans) can’t even be erased in bankruptcy. Whose idea was that? I think you know.

For Wall Street and the insurance companies, America has become a “heads I win, tails you lose” country. Here on Main Street, we get pay cuts, or lose our jobs, or our loved ones die from Covid19, while on Wall Street their stock goes up. Which brings me back to Chubb and the effort to get insurance companies to pay claims like ours. 

Chubb CEO, Evan Greenberg, has vowed to “fight this tooth and nail”.  Did I mention that Evan Greenberg’s total annual compensation – which our premiums helped pay for – is $20,357,484?  Well, it is. 

His appalling attitude is representative of the country in which he and the top one-tenth of one percent live. They feel so entitled to the American Economic Apartheid they have created, that they’ve shamelessly abandoned their responsibilities as corporate citizens.

Thanks to Covid19, the unmitigated ugliness of it all has been laid bare. And make no mistake about it. The reckoning is coming.

2020 And The Rise Of Democratic Capitalism

Can we please clear up one thing right now? Next year’s election is not about socialism versus capitalism. It’s about democratic capitalism versus republican capitalism. Nothing better illustrates the difference than Liz Warren’s brilliantly conceived ultra-millionaires tax. It is by far the most interesting policy proposal of this nascent 2020 presidential campaign. In a nutshell, she proposes that the richest one-tenth of one percent of Americans should pay an additional two cents in taxes for every dollar they have – with the first fifty million dollars of their net worth being exempt from the tax. No I’m not kidding. That’s two cents on the dollar with the first $50 million free from any additional taxation. This simple, straightforward proposal would generate nearly $3 trillion in new revenue over the next decade.

Still, within literally seconds there were howls of protest from the Boo-Hoo Billionaires Brigade and their paid apologists whining about what an intolerable burden this would be for them. Socialism, they screamed! Which tells you all you need to know about who we are dealing with here: the greediest pigs on the planet.

Unfortunately for our country, these porcine plutocrats have been running things for practically ever and the results are miserable. Look around. The stock market is high. Productivity is higher. Unemployment is low. Yet most Americans are anxiety ridden wrecks living paycheck to paycheck under crushing debt because their wages have been flat since Ted Turner launched CNN. Where did all the wealth we created go? Unless you’ve been living under a rock since the Great Recession of 2008, you already know the answer. It went to that filthy rich sliver of the population who are now calling Liz Warren a socialist.

You want to know why AOC and the House freshman class of 2019 are so popular? Because for the first time since Watergate, voters are finally woke to the fact that republican capitalism is a no rules, no holds barred, free-for-all shit show that has been rigged for the super rich for years at the expense of everybody else. Admittedly, it took an unapologetic crook in the White House to focus the mind. But make no mistake about it. The country is focused right now. And the old “socialism” trope that failed in 1935 against Social Security, failed in 1965 against Medicare, and failed in 2008 against Obamacare, is going down spectacularly again in 2020.  For nearly a century, with overwhelming popular support, democratic capitalism has included two fundamental American values: fairness and compassion. Republican capitalism has no use for either. But don’t take my word for it. Gallup has been polling these same issues for decades. The numbers speak for themselves. The fact that policies central to democratic capitalism -- which are consistently supported by a substantial majority of Americans -- can’t seem to find their way into law is the result of a broken political system, not a divided electorate.

Gore Vidal famously defined capitalism (the republican variety) as, “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.” Which brings me back to the new crop democrats who are finding their voices and their footing this year. People, I’m begging you. If you must have a label for a country with a living minimum wage, health care and higher education for all, fair taxes and a clean environment, please just call it “compassionate capitalism” or “democratic capitalism.” Then let Trump’s GOP squabble over which concept they hate the most: compassion or democracy.

Oh How Far The GOP Has Fallen

From President Abraham Lincoln's Message to Congress

---December 3, 1861

"...there is one point to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above labor, in the structure of government. Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Consent Of The Governed

By Nick Paleologos

June 27, 2017

As we prepare to celebrate the 4^th of July, we keep being told that as a country we are hopelessly divided, polarized and siloed. That we are getting exactly what we what we want – indeed what we voted for. But the dirty little secret is this: our system is badly broken. It routinely gives us exactly the opposite of what we want. The simple, documentable truth is that Americans are remarkably unified on most key public policy issues – and have been for decades. Here are just a few examples:

Universal Healthcare

For the past sixteen years (half under a republican president and half under a democrat) the Gallup Poll asked Americans the same question -- eighteen different times:

Do you think it’s the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage, or is that not the responsibility of the federal government?

If you average America’s responses since 2000, it’s not even close: 

57% - Yes, healthcare is a federal government responsibility.

40% - No, healthcare is not a federal government responsibility.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Americans are increasingly aware that universal healthcare is a fact of life in Austria, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and even Croatia – for crying out loud. So the arguments that it’s too expensive, or that it can’t be done, or that we are deeply divided on the subject, are all just plain false.

Universal College Education

Last summer, in the heat of the presidential campaign, CNBC reported on a poll asking Americans the following question:

Would you support or oppose making tuition at public colleges and universities free for anyone who wants to attend?

62% - Support free public colleges

35% - Oppose free public colleges

This result should not be a surprise to anyone. Eight million fathers of Baby Boomers built the Great American Middle Class on the back of the GI Bill. We tried this idea already. It worked like a charm. And pretty much everybody knows it.

Universal Background Checks

Here again, the Gallup Poll has asked the same question eleven times over the last twenty-five years and America’s answer, on average, has been remarkably consistent:

In general, do you think the laws governing the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now:

58% - More Strict gun laws

32% - Same gun laws

 9% - Less Strict gun laws

Back in the fall of 2015, Gallup asked this question:

Would you favor or oppose a law, which would require universal background checks for all gun purchases in the U.S. using a centralized database across all 50 states?

86% - Favor background checks

12% - Oppose background checks

Call me crazy but that doesn’t look very polarized to me.

Social Security & Medicare

In 2015, on the 50^th anniversary of these two laws, the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a national survey asking Americans which government programs were very important to them.

Social Security (83%) and Medicare (77%) topped the list – followed closely by: Federal School Aid (75%); the Military (73%); College Loans (64%); and Medicaid (63%). Yet we keep being told that all but the military are “controversial” government spending programs. Go figure.

Tax Cuts For The Rich

Finally, the Gallup Poll asked this question no less than nineteen times in the last twenty-five years:

Tell me if you think upper income people are paying their FAIR SHARE in federal taxes, paying TOO MUCH, or paying TOO LITTLE?

This, on average, is how America has responded since 1992:

65% - Rich people pay TOO LITTLE

22% - Rich people pay their FAIR SHARE

10% - Rich people pay TOO MUCH

Americans clearly understand that the two most recent tax cuts for the rich (under Reagan & GW Bush) were the cause of, and not the cure for, massive annual deficits and an exploding national debt. Yet despite America’s sustained opposition to tax laws that consistently favor the rich at the expense of the working poor and middle class, ever more noxious tax cut proposals just keep on coming.

We are told that America is hopelessly divided on the bread and butter issues. That’s not true.

We are told that we can’t afford the country we want.  That’s not true.

Two of our last three presidents got the job after losing the election, most recently by a whopping three million votes.

When the policies most of us want, don’t become law, and the candidates most of us voted for don’t become president, the time is ripe to re-read that document we venerate on July 4^th -- especially that second sentence about governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed:

“That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…”

AARP Takes Aim At GOP

Amazon: Doing Well By Doing Good

What's America Worth To You?

Can You Spare A Quarter For Your Country?

By Nick Paleologos

  

I grew up in Woburn Massachusetts. My grandfather settled there from Greece in the early 1900’s. He labored in one of those tanneries the city became famous for. Our sports teams are still called the Woburn Tanners.

It was mostly immigrants who did that work because stripping animal hides and transferring them by hand - one at a time - into a series of increasingly toxic open baths was the best job they could get. Every day, “Papou” left his modest home on Conn Street, walked a few blocks, donned his “protective” apron and rubber gloves, then inhaled poisonous chromium-sulfate fumes from dawn till dusk.  

And not once did he ever complain about paying taxes to his adopted country.

Donald Trump on the other hand is a billionaire. He loves billionaires. His cabinet is lousy with them. You know what most of these billionaires have in common – besides not having to sweat the price of gas?

They can’t stop complaining about the taxes they pay to their country. 

They are among the richest people on the planet and all they can do is whine incessantly about how rough it is to make a buck in America with a personal tax rate of 39% for billionaires and 35% for corporations – even though not one of these chronic cry babies have ever paid anything close to those tax rates.

You would think they’d have the common decency of my immigrant grandfather and shut up about it already. But they just can’t help themselves. Whenever America says it wants universal healthcare or higher education, we get the same answer. Our country can’t afford it. Which begs the obvious question. How much is your country worth to you? Or put another way, how much are you willing to pay for the stuff you want in the country you say you love?

In 2015, total personal income in America was $15.45 trillion. And that’s with the average person’s wages being essentially flat for the last thirty years. US Corporate profits that same year were $6.44 trillion. That totals nearly $22 trillion and includes everybody – Main Street, Wall Street, and everyone in between. So if we all kicked in a quarter for every dollar of earnings and profits in 2015, our country would have had revenue of $5.5 trillion. The entire federal budget in 2015 was $3.8 trillion.

In other words, if we cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25% and cut the top personal income tax rate from 39% to 25% - and everybody actually paid their 25 cents on the dollar - we could afford everything the country currently does for its citizens, and still have a $1.7 trillion surplus left over -- every year.  

But wait, you say. It's not fair for Joe Six Pack to pay the same tax rate as Richie Rich -- because the basic costs of living take a much bigger bite out of Joe than Richie. And you are right. So here's how we fix that. The first $75,000 of everybody's income should be federal tax free. That shouldn't be a big problem since the top 20% in America already pay 87% of individual federal income taxes. By the way, that ought to tell you something, since few if any of them are paying the top rate now.

So you see if we all paid just a quarter on every dollar we earned (over $75,000 per year) there would be no need for any deductions at all; we'd have a massive annual budget surplus immediately; our country would be debt free in just over a decade; Social Security would be solvent for all time; Medicare could be extended to every citizen from birth; and we'd still be spending more on our military than the next ten largest countries combined. In short, we’d have a country that can keep us safe and secure, guarantee our healthcare and education, and treat us fairly so that every citizen can have the opportunity to be the most that they can be.

My immigrant grandfather was happy to pay for that country. Are you?

Hillary's popular vote victory margin is 2,708,632 - and counting...

Where have I heard that before?

Cast of HAMILTON Speaks Truth to VP-Elect Mike Pence

Who's The Turkey Now?

Eating Crow on Thanksgiving 

by Nick Paleologos

A week ago tonight, when the reality of what was actually happening started to sink in, I got a call from my daughter. She was crying. And I felt awful. She’s one of three millennials in our family. I had been confidently predicting that America would not let her down.

Boy was I ever was wrong.

Back in August I imagined a future in which Donald Trump, after losing this election, would take the worst of his backers and skulk off to a fringe (but lucrative) corner of our country – leaving the rest of his rational right-leaning supporters (including many members of my own family) sitting around Thanksgiving tables all over America wondering what the heck just happened.

Instead, Donald Trump is now the 45^th President of the United States and I’m the one asking that question. Only twice in the last 125 years have the voters’ picked one candidate for president, and ended up with the other. In 2000, Al Gore beat George W. Bush by a half million votes, and lost. This year, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by more than a million votes. She also lost. I’m not supposed to complain about these outcomes because after all, rules are rules. If I still had a sense of humor, I’d say the election was rigged - by Alexander Hamilton in 1789.

But this isn’t about the Electoral College. It’s about my oldest daughter.

“President” Trump is a very tough pill for her to swallow because his victory flies in the face of everything we’ve ever taught her about decency, civility, empathy and tolerance. Even worse, many people she loves – who themselves have sisters or daughters – voted for a guy who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals because “When you’re a star, you can do anything.”

People she admires – who pride themselves on their patriotism – voted for a guy who never served this country, who unapologetically disrespected a Gold Star Family, and who publicly ridiculed a decorated Vietnam War veteran and POW.

Maybe there is no rational explanation for why one out of every four Trump voters readily admitted that their candidate was unqualified to be president, yet voted for him anyway.

But even with that, Trump barely bested Mitt Romney's vote total from four years ago. So how then to explain, without crushing my daughter’s faith in democracy, that a guy who is a million votes less popular than Hillary Clinton, is now President of the United States?

For starters, we need to take a long hard look in the mirror. It certainly is true that – as between Clinton and Trump this year – a clear majority supported Hillary for president. But under our system, that (plus four bucks) will get you a grande café mocha at Starbucks. Of all people, Hillary should have known that.

So how does she manage to lose (albeit barely) Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and maybe Michigan? Let’s start with Hillary’s first significant decision as the Democratic nominee: her choice for Vice-President. Don’t get me wrong. I like Tim Kaine. But America’s middle class is hurting. Big time. In eight short years, the federal budget surplus and booming economy that Bill Clinton handed over to the GOP in 2000 (the year Bush became president after the voters chose Gore) deteriorated into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That’s what deregulation, dumb wars, and welfare-for-the-rich gave us.

Yet even as Obama slowly and methodically dug us out from under the Republican rubble, the crooks who caused it walked away with all the money. Millions of democratic voters who lost their jobs, homes and pensions watched with increasing anger as tax dollars meant to help them went instead to the very people who screwed them.

If you’re the Democratic nominee who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from this corrupt crowd, you damn well better pick a running mate who can speak convincingly to the pain they caused.

Bernie Sanders spoke to that pain. Elizabeth Warren spoke to that pain. But Hillary simply lacked the boldness to pick either one of them. As a result, this election was reduced to a choice between Trump’s sexism and Clinton’s emails. Is there any doubt now that if Bernie were on the ticket, Hillary would have won the Electoral College in addition to the popular vote? I don’t think so.

In the end, her caution killed her.

Did she trade on her celebrity to earn obscene speaking fees from institutions I can’t stand? Yes. Did she make a bad (but not illegal) call using a private email server? Yes and she owned up to, and apologized for it – many times. Has anyone, anywhere – republican or democrat – found anything wrong about her handling of Benghazi? Absolutely not.

At the end of the day, she is a woman who - over the course of a distinguished public career - has been accused of everything and convicted of nothing. On her worst day, her public behavior has been infinitely more honorable than his.

So this is what I told my daughter.

The good news is that the American people did in fact chose the classier, more qualified candidate. The bad news is that our system gave us the other guy.

Unfortunately, Hillary spent her entire campaign relentlessly hammering home a single message: Trump is a despicable human being. Congratulations. Mission accomplished. What she failed to do was to give voice to the justifiable rage of middle class Democrats who filled football stadiums for Bernie Sanders.

The result? President Donald Trump.

Does his election mean the end of the world as we know it? No.

Trump’s first act as President-Elect was to change Steve Bannon’s official title from Racist Fearmonger to Senior White House Advisor. Not a great start.

On the other hand, in his first exclusive interview with 60 Minutes, the priorities he outlined to Leslie Stahl included: huge infrastructure spending; preserving the popular elements of the Affordable Care Act; and avoiding costly, stupid wars. If you closed your eyes, it sounded an awful lot like a third Obama term.

I’ve closely watched and grossly underestimated this guy for the past two years. He cares about one thing. Ratings. He wants to be popular. Squeaking out a late-night Electoral College victory will never cut it for The Trumpster. Being President of a country in which Hillary Clinton is over a million votes more popular than he is, must kill him. Only one thing will satisfy him now - convincingly winning the popular vote that he lost so embarrassingly in 2016. He’s now got four years to make that happen.

Taking health care away from 20 million people won’t get him those votes. Sending American boys into Syria won’t get him those votes. Privatizing social security, cutting taxes on the rich, and letting Wall Street run wild, won’t get him those votes. Continuing to disrespect women and minorities won’t get him those votes.

So maybe, just maybe, the folks who should be worried are Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Because if we’ve learned anything about the President-Elect, we know he cares about one thing, and one thing only – Donald J. Trump. And his breathtaking narcissism may end up being unexpectedly good news for Democrats. We’ll see.

In the meantime, as I eat my crow this Thanksgiving, I don’t want to hear anything more about the Comey letter. The numbers speak for themselves. Trump didn’t win this election. Hillary lost it. And the only question left is this.

What will he do with her mandate?