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It’s hard for any of us to buck the conventional wisdom that downplays mass layoffs and extols billionaires, but the Ohio Democrat is doing just that.
When I recently learned that Senator Sherrod Brown (D, OH) had reissued his 2019 essay, called “Wall Street’s War on Workers: Stock Buybacks,” I was shocked. My new book is called Wall Street’s War on Workers, and also focuses in part on the job-destructive impact of stock buybacks.
Who stole what from whom?
Senator Brown didn’t know about my book, his essay was written before I started my book, and despite deep research I did not see his essay until two weeks ago. So, I was surprised, but I immediately understood why we both adopted the same big picture framework to understand the economy, and similar language to share our understanding with working people.
To keep my job, I don’t have to run against Wall Street’s cash. But Sherrod Brown is taking a risk, maybe a big risk.
As a labor educator, I’ve found that the big-picture framework is as important, maybe even more important, than facts and figures. In our complex world, problems hit working people from all angles — job insecurity, job loss, the high costs of housing, discrimination, kids who can’t afford to move out, and on and on. To make sense of this mosaic, a framework helps hold the pieces together. In our educational program we see clearly that working people are hungry for a coherent explanation that connects the dots. And without a compelling alternative, the pressing need for frameworks can lead towards conspiracy theories.
Brown and I are using the Wall Street War on Workers big picture framework for four reasons.
Clearly, Brown does not believe that Ohio working people are fixated on anti-wokeness and blinded by racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. He understands that working people of all shades and colors are much more interested in maintaining their livelihoods than railing against wokeism. My book provides compelling data that also shows increasing working-class liberalism, not illiberalism, on hot-button issues like immigration, gay rights, and racism. Ohio’s embrace of a constitutional amendment in 2023 that wrote abortion access into the state’s constitution confirms Brown’s intuitions and my findings.
It's one thing, however, for a labor educator to use the “Wall Street’s War on Workers” framework. To keep my job, I don’t have to run against Wall Street’s cash. But Sherrod Brown is taking a risk, maybe a big risk. And he’s not running away from the challenge or being mealy-mouthed about how Wall Street is ripping off the working class.
His carefully documented essays show how big financial firms pressure corporations to hold down wages, please Wall Street through mass layoffs, and use stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street at the expense of working people. Recently, he has put out a statement called “Taking on Wall Street and Housing,” which has a great deal in common with my February 28th newsletter, “Wall Street to Working-Class Homebuyers: Fuggeddaboutdit!”
Here are a few of Brown’s passages that highlight his (our!) big picture framework.
Why aren’t the Democrats learning more from Brown?
It seems like a no-brainer for the Democrats to use the Wall Street framework to reconnect to the working-class folks they have lost and are losing. In the research for my book, it became clear that about 15-20 million Republican and Republican-leaning white working-class voters are socially liberal. It is political malpractice to write them off.
It seems like a no-brainer for the Democrats to use the Wall Street framework to reconnect to the working-class folks they have lost and are losing.
A major part of the problem is that many Democrats believe there’s nothing much that can be done about mass layoffs – that layoffs are the inevitable result of the unstoppable forces of new technologies and global trade. It’s as if even liberal politicians don’t want to look too closely at how the deregulation of Wall Street, aided and abetted by both political parties since the 1980s, has enriched Wall Street at the expense of working people, and especially at the expense of job stability. It’s far easier to blame AI and the like.
Clearly, the effort to create new jobs via infrastructure bills is far less controversial. In those bills, the government provides major subsidies for corporations while opening up new job possibilities for working people. Win-win!
But those investments won’t stop the Wall Street-induced mass layoffs that are ripping through the economy each and every day. Nor are there any real brakes being placed on Wall Street’s use of job-destructive stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts to enrich the wealthy. Win-lose!
Unfortunately, there may also be baser motives at play. The richer Wall Street becomes, the more it can influence politics through donations and lobbying. Some politicians, it seems, also have their eyes out for lucrative jobs after leaving office as a Wall Street lobbyists or private equity/hedge fund operatives.
Upton Sinclair identified this problem as he ran for the governor of California in 1934. In his book, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked,” he famously wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
It’s hard for any of us to buck the conventional wisdom that downplays mass layoffs and extols billionaires. But Sherrod Brown is doing just that. If he beats the odds again in 2024 and wins, the Democratic Party should follow his lead.
For working people to gain the stable jobs and decent incomes they truly deserve, Wall Street needs to be reined in…and soon.
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
When I recently learned that Senator Sherrod Brown (D, OH) had reissued his 2019 essay, called “Wall Street’s War on Workers: Stock Buybacks,” I was shocked. My new book is called Wall Street’s War on Workers, and also focuses in part on the job-destructive impact of stock buybacks.
Who stole what from whom?
Senator Brown didn’t know about my book, his essay was written before I started my book, and despite deep research I did not see his essay until two weeks ago. So, I was surprised, but I immediately understood why we both adopted the same big picture framework to understand the economy, and similar language to share our understanding with working people.
To keep my job, I don’t have to run against Wall Street’s cash. But Sherrod Brown is taking a risk, maybe a big risk.
As a labor educator, I’ve found that the big-picture framework is as important, maybe even more important, than facts and figures. In our complex world, problems hit working people from all angles — job insecurity, job loss, the high costs of housing, discrimination, kids who can’t afford to move out, and on and on. To make sense of this mosaic, a framework helps hold the pieces together. In our educational program we see clearly that working people are hungry for a coherent explanation that connects the dots. And without a compelling alternative, the pressing need for frameworks can lead towards conspiracy theories.
Brown and I are using the Wall Street War on Workers big picture framework for four reasons.
Clearly, Brown does not believe that Ohio working people are fixated on anti-wokeness and blinded by racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. He understands that working people of all shades and colors are much more interested in maintaining their livelihoods than railing against wokeism. My book provides compelling data that also shows increasing working-class liberalism, not illiberalism, on hot-button issues like immigration, gay rights, and racism. Ohio’s embrace of a constitutional amendment in 2023 that wrote abortion access into the state’s constitution confirms Brown’s intuitions and my findings.
It's one thing, however, for a labor educator to use the “Wall Street’s War on Workers” framework. To keep my job, I don’t have to run against Wall Street’s cash. But Sherrod Brown is taking a risk, maybe a big risk. And he’s not running away from the challenge or being mealy-mouthed about how Wall Street is ripping off the working class.
His carefully documented essays show how big financial firms pressure corporations to hold down wages, please Wall Street through mass layoffs, and use stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street at the expense of working people. Recently, he has put out a statement called “Taking on Wall Street and Housing,” which has a great deal in common with my February 28th newsletter, “Wall Street to Working-Class Homebuyers: Fuggeddaboutdit!”
Here are a few of Brown’s passages that highlight his (our!) big picture framework.
Why aren’t the Democrats learning more from Brown?
It seems like a no-brainer for the Democrats to use the Wall Street framework to reconnect to the working-class folks they have lost and are losing. In the research for my book, it became clear that about 15-20 million Republican and Republican-leaning white working-class voters are socially liberal. It is political malpractice to write them off.
It seems like a no-brainer for the Democrats to use the Wall Street framework to reconnect to the working-class folks they have lost and are losing.
A major part of the problem is that many Democrats believe there’s nothing much that can be done about mass layoffs – that layoffs are the inevitable result of the unstoppable forces of new technologies and global trade. It’s as if even liberal politicians don’t want to look too closely at how the deregulation of Wall Street, aided and abetted by both political parties since the 1980s, has enriched Wall Street at the expense of working people, and especially at the expense of job stability. It’s far easier to blame AI and the like.
Clearly, the effort to create new jobs via infrastructure bills is far less controversial. In those bills, the government provides major subsidies for corporations while opening up new job possibilities for working people. Win-win!
But those investments won’t stop the Wall Street-induced mass layoffs that are ripping through the economy each and every day. Nor are there any real brakes being placed on Wall Street’s use of job-destructive stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts to enrich the wealthy. Win-lose!
Unfortunately, there may also be baser motives at play. The richer Wall Street becomes, the more it can influence politics through donations and lobbying. Some politicians, it seems, also have their eyes out for lucrative jobs after leaving office as a Wall Street lobbyists or private equity/hedge fund operatives.
Upton Sinclair identified this problem as he ran for the governor of California in 1934. In his book, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked,” he famously wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
It’s hard for any of us to buck the conventional wisdom that downplays mass layoffs and extols billionaires. But Sherrod Brown is doing just that. If he beats the odds again in 2024 and wins, the Democratic Party should follow his lead.
For working people to gain the stable jobs and decent incomes they truly deserve, Wall Street needs to be reined in…and soon.
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
When I recently learned that Senator Sherrod Brown (D, OH) had reissued his 2019 essay, called “Wall Street’s War on Workers: Stock Buybacks,” I was shocked. My new book is called Wall Street’s War on Workers, and also focuses in part on the job-destructive impact of stock buybacks.
Who stole what from whom?
Senator Brown didn’t know about my book, his essay was written before I started my book, and despite deep research I did not see his essay until two weeks ago. So, I was surprised, but I immediately understood why we both adopted the same big picture framework to understand the economy, and similar language to share our understanding with working people.
To keep my job, I don’t have to run against Wall Street’s cash. But Sherrod Brown is taking a risk, maybe a big risk.
As a labor educator, I’ve found that the big-picture framework is as important, maybe even more important, than facts and figures. In our complex world, problems hit working people from all angles — job insecurity, job loss, the high costs of housing, discrimination, kids who can’t afford to move out, and on and on. To make sense of this mosaic, a framework helps hold the pieces together. In our educational program we see clearly that working people are hungry for a coherent explanation that connects the dots. And without a compelling alternative, the pressing need for frameworks can lead towards conspiracy theories.
Brown and I are using the Wall Street War on Workers big picture framework for four reasons.
Clearly, Brown does not believe that Ohio working people are fixated on anti-wokeness and blinded by racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. He understands that working people of all shades and colors are much more interested in maintaining their livelihoods than railing against wokeism. My book provides compelling data that also shows increasing working-class liberalism, not illiberalism, on hot-button issues like immigration, gay rights, and racism. Ohio’s embrace of a constitutional amendment in 2023 that wrote abortion access into the state’s constitution confirms Brown’s intuitions and my findings.
It's one thing, however, for a labor educator to use the “Wall Street’s War on Workers” framework. To keep my job, I don’t have to run against Wall Street’s cash. But Sherrod Brown is taking a risk, maybe a big risk. And he’s not running away from the challenge or being mealy-mouthed about how Wall Street is ripping off the working class.
His carefully documented essays show how big financial firms pressure corporations to hold down wages, please Wall Street through mass layoffs, and use stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street at the expense of working people. Recently, he has put out a statement called “Taking on Wall Street and Housing,” which has a great deal in common with my February 28th newsletter, “Wall Street to Working-Class Homebuyers: Fuggeddaboutdit!”
Here are a few of Brown’s passages that highlight his (our!) big picture framework.
Why aren’t the Democrats learning more from Brown?
It seems like a no-brainer for the Democrats to use the Wall Street framework to reconnect to the working-class folks they have lost and are losing. In the research for my book, it became clear that about 15-20 million Republican and Republican-leaning white working-class voters are socially liberal. It is political malpractice to write them off.
It seems like a no-brainer for the Democrats to use the Wall Street framework to reconnect to the working-class folks they have lost and are losing.
A major part of the problem is that many Democrats believe there’s nothing much that can be done about mass layoffs – that layoffs are the inevitable result of the unstoppable forces of new technologies and global trade. It’s as if even liberal politicians don’t want to look too closely at how the deregulation of Wall Street, aided and abetted by both political parties since the 1980s, has enriched Wall Street at the expense of working people, and especially at the expense of job stability. It’s far easier to blame AI and the like.
Clearly, the effort to create new jobs via infrastructure bills is far less controversial. In those bills, the government provides major subsidies for corporations while opening up new job possibilities for working people. Win-win!
But those investments won’t stop the Wall Street-induced mass layoffs that are ripping through the economy each and every day. Nor are there any real brakes being placed on Wall Street’s use of job-destructive stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts to enrich the wealthy. Win-lose!
Unfortunately, there may also be baser motives at play. The richer Wall Street becomes, the more it can influence politics through donations and lobbying. Some politicians, it seems, also have their eyes out for lucrative jobs after leaving office as a Wall Street lobbyists or private equity/hedge fund operatives.
Upton Sinclair identified this problem as he ran for the governor of California in 1934. In his book, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked,” he famously wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
It’s hard for any of us to buck the conventional wisdom that downplays mass layoffs and extols billionaires. But Sherrod Brown is doing just that. If he beats the odds again in 2024 and wins, the Democratic Party should follow his lead.
For working people to gain the stable jobs and decent incomes they truly deserve, Wall Street needs to be reined in…and soon.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions."
As Republican President-elect Donald Trump prepares to further accelerate already near-record liquefied natural gas exports after taking office next week, a report published Friday details how soaring U.S. foreign LNG sales are "causing price volatility and environmental and safety risks for American families in addition to granting geopolitical advantages to the Chinese government."
The report, Strategic Implications of U.S. LNG Exports, was published by the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and offers a "comprehensive analysis of the impact of the natural gas export boom from the advent of fracking through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and provides insight into how the tidal wave of U.S. exports in the global market is altering regional and domestic security environments."
According to a summary of the publication:
The United States is the world's leading producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Over the past decade, affordable U.S. LNG exports have facilitated a global shift from coal and mitigated the geopolitical risks of fossil fuel imports from Russia and the Middle East. Today, U.S. LNG plays a critical role in diversifying global energy supplies and reducing reliance on adversarial energy suppliers. However, rising global dependence on natural gas is creating new vulnerabilities, including pricing fluctuations, shipping route bottlenecks, and inherent health, safety, and environmental hazards. The U.S. also faces geopolitical challenges related to the LNG trade, including China's stockpiling and resale of cheap U.S. LNG exports to advance its renewable energy industry and expand its global influence.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions," the report states.
American Security Project CEO Matthew Wallin said in a statement that "action needs to be taken to ensure Americans are insulated from global price shocks, the impacts of climate change, and new health and safety risks."
"Our country must also do more to protect its interests from geopolitical rivals like China that subsidize their growth and influence by reselling cheap U.S. LNG at higher spot prices," Wallin asserted. "U.S. LNG has often been depicted as a transition fuel, and our country must ensure that it continues working towards that transition to clean sources instead of becoming dependent on yet another vulnerable fuel source."
Critics have
warned that LNG actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Despite President Joe Biden's 2024 pause on LNG export permit applications, his administration has presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects. Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged that approving more LNG exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase pollution, and exacerbate the climate crisis.
In addition to promising to roll back Biden's recent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, Trump—who has nominated a bevy of fossil fuel proponents for his Cabinet—is expected to further increase LNG production and exports.
A separate report published Friday by Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen examined 14 proposed LNG export terminals that the Trump administration is expected to fast-track, creating 510 million metric tons of climate pollution–"equivalent to the annual emissions of 135 new coal plants."
While campaigning for president, Trump vowed to "frack, frack, frack; and drill, baby, drill." This, as fossil fuel interests poured $75 million into his campaign coffers, according to The New York Times.
"This research reveals the disturbing reality of an LNG export boom under a second Trump term," Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia said in a statement referring to her group's new report. "This reality will cement higher energy prices for Americans and push the world into even more devastating climate disasters. The incoming administration is poised to haphazardly greenlight LNG exports that are clearly intended to put profit over people."
"Academics will make careers out of writing about past atrocities while ignoring the ones happening in real time," said one critic.
In what one observer decried as an "absolutely shameful" rebuff of American Historical Association members' overwhelming approval of a resolution condemning Israel's annihilation of education infrastructure in Gaza, the elected council of the nation's oldest learned society on Thursday vetoed the measure over a claimed technicality.
AHA members voted 428-88 earlier this month in favor of a resolution opposing Israeli scholasticide—defined by United Nations experts as the "systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention, or killing of teachers, students, and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure"—during the 15-month assault on the Gaza Strip.
However, the AHA's 16-member elected council voted 11-4 with one abstention to reject the measure, according to Inside Higher Ed, which noted that the panel "could have accepted the resolution or sent it to the organization's roughly 10,450 members for a vote."
While the council said in a statement that it "deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza," it determined that the resolution does not comply with the AHA's constitution and bylaws "because it lies outside the scope of the association's mission and purpose."
Council member and University of Oklahoma history professor Anne Hyde told Inside Higher Ed that she voted to veto the resolution "to protect the AHA's reputation as an unbiased historical actor," adding that the Gaza war "is not settled history, so we're not clear what happened or who to blame or when it began even, so it isn't something that a professional organization should be commenting on yet."
However, Van Gosse, a co-chair and founder of Historians for Peace and Democracy—the resolution's author—told the outlet that "we are extremely shocked by this decision," which "overturns the democratic decision" of members' "landslide vote."
Lake Forest College history professor Rudi Batzell said on social media: "Shame on the AHA leadership for vetoing the scholasticide in Gaza resolution. Members voted overwhelmingly to support, and the resolution was written so narrowly and so carefully to meet exactly this kind of procedural objection. Craven."
The AHA council's veto follows last week's move by the Modern Language Association executive council, as Common Dreams reported, to block members of the preeminent U.S. professional group for scholars of language and literature from voting on a resolution supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
"Israel chose not to go to war simply against Hamas, but has instead waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people," Sanders wrote.
With a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel set to go into effect as soon as Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement Friday saying that he's please the Israeli security cabinet has signed off on the agreement, but highlighted the approved deal "is essentially the same agreement that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his extremist government rejected in May of last year."
"More than 10,000 people have died since that proposal was presented, and the suffering of the hostages and innocent people in Gaza only deepened," he wrote.
On Wednesday, President Biden announced the breakthrough, saying “this is the ceasefire agreement I introduced last spring."
What's more, the independent senator from Vermont said that Americans must "grapple with our role in this dark chapter." The U.S. government, he said, "allowed this mass atrocity to continue by providing an endless supply of weapons to Netanyahu and failing to exert meaningful leverage."
The U.S. has provided Israel with at least $17.9 billion in military aid to its ally in the Middle East since October 2023, when Israel's military campaign in Gaza commenced following an attack by Hamas on Israel. In early January the State Department informed Congress of a planned $8 billion arms sale.
Local health officials in Gaza say the death toll in the enclave stands at over 46,000. However, a recently published peer-reviewed analysis estimates that Israel's assault on Gaza had actually killed 64,260 people—mostly civilian men, women, and children—have been killed between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024—a figure significantly higher than the official one reported by the enclave's health ministry.
Multiple human rights organizations have said that Israel's conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide or acts of genocide, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The body has also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged crimes against humanity,
In his Friday remarks, Sanders called Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "barbaric" and stated that Israel "clearly had the right to defend itself against Hamas."
However, he said, "Israel chose not to go to war simply against Hamas, but has instead waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people."