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greed
If Joe Biden Doesn't Intervene to Stop Mass Layoffs at John Deere, Who Will?
The president should let Deere know that they can’t continue to receive taxpayer money if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico.
Jun 12, 2024
The greed of the John Deere company is giving President Biden the perfect opportunity to win back working-class voters. All he needs to do is put up a major fight to stop Deere from shipping U.S. jobs to Mexico.
Really, the company should be renamed “Greed R Us.” Amid layoffs totaling approximately 1,000 U.S. workers in Illinois and Iowa, the company has posted $10 billion in profits in the 2023 fiscal year and paid its CEO $26.7 million.
But the real motivation for Deere to can workers and flee to Mexico is to finance $12.2 billion in stock buybacks. What are stock buybacks? A way to boost the price of the company’s shares—a blatant form of stock manipulation that was illegal until deregulated by the Reagan Administration.
Come on Joe, go to bat for these workers.
Stock buybacks are a quick and easy way to shovel corporate money straight into the pockets of the company's largest shareholders, mostly hedge funds and other Wall Street entities, and to the top officers who receive most of their compensation in stock incentives. When the company rushes into the market and buys back its shares—as listed below—ka ching! The stock price goes up and the biggest shareholders get richer and richer. But it takes a lot of U.S. layoffs to pay for these buybacks over the last two years alone:
- April 30, 2024: $1.1 billion
- January 31, 2024: $1.3 billion
- October 31, 2023: $2.6 billion
- July 31, 2023: $2.1 billion
- April 30, 2023: $1.3 billion
- January 31, 2023: $1.3 billion
- October 31, 2022: $1.2 billion
- July 31, 2022: $1.3 billion
- Total: $12.2 billion
It’s time for Biden to take a page from the Trump playbook. Trump stopped the Carrier Air Conditioning company from moving to Mexico in 2017. Polling shows that Trump’s effort was extremely popular. Even a third of those who voted for Hillary Clinton had a more favorable view of Trump after he pressured Carrier to keep 800 jobs in Indiana.
Why did Carrier give in? As its president said, “I was born at night but it wasn’t last night. I also know that about 10 percent of our revenue comes from the U.S. government.”
If they want to lay off workers, it must be voluntary. The company should offer pay and benefit packages so that workers agree to leave. Clearly, Deere has more than enough money, given what they're pumping out in stock buybacks.
John Deere also gets considerable revenue from Federal contracts. Its website boasts, “John Deere manufactures every kind of power generating, land moving, base building, grass cutting, people transporting equipment you can imagine through AFNAF, DLA and GSA contracts.”
Biden should let Deere know that they can’t continue to receive taxpayer money if they ship taxpayer-funded jobs to Mexico. He might even threaten to use the Defense Production Act to prevent the move. He should pressure them to accept a “no compulsory layoff” agreement. If they want to lay off workers, it must be voluntary. The company should offer pay and benefit packages so that workers agree to leave. Clearly, Deere has more than enough money, given what they're pumping out in stock buybacks.
Come on Joe, go to bat for these workers. Put the heat on John Deere and show the working class that you’re tougher than Trump when it comes to saving American jobs.
Your election and the future of our democracy may depend upon it.
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His Lips to God's Ears: Tired of Winning
"Donald Trump realizes that recent financial judgments against him are losses, not wins. But, like a desperate gambler, he plays on, believing that delays in future judgments will win him the presidency again."
Mar 31, 2024
Back when many in the media found it unthinkable that Donald Trump would win the U.S. presidency, he told a cheering crowd of thousands that he and they would win so much they'd "get tired of winning."
It's happening in front of our eyes. Dull, fat, exhausted, and confused, Trump is the embodiment of his prediction. He's tired of winning.
But he can't stop playing. He realizes that recent financial judgments against him are losses, not wins. But, like a desperate gambler, he plays on, believing that delays in future judgments will win him the presidency again. And by dictatorial fiat, he will make all charges disappear.
I kept People magazine's Decade In Review from the 80s. My children were born then, so it was history. Donald Trump is on the cover, and the movie Wall Street is quoted - "Greed is good!" That became the battle cry of a new generation of business leaders who defied old moral norms. Winning was no longer everything but the only thing, to quote UCLA coach Red Saunders (later attributed to Vince Lombard.) Restraint was weakness. Unbridled ambition was rewarded and revered.
Forty years on, Bernie Sander's disgusted "Enough is enough!" answered that excess and became so popular it resonates, still, across our political divide. But in 2016, it was Trump who won the White House - not Bernie and not Hilary, despite winning two million more popular votes. It was a bitter spectacle for many of us to see "Greed is good!" become the organizing principle of our country's policies, foreign and domestic, overt and covert. It was, and is, testament to the spell of TV celebrity that so many Americans, frightened by changes that seem beyond our control - mass migration, climate catastrophe, vanishing wealth, toxic pollution in our neighborhoods, sexual changes in the new generation – believed that a fabulously wealthy white man could restore their supremacy under the old order. Trump clothed himself in that belief and added to it a promise of national religious salvation, invoking a Bible he can't even quote. But believers believed in his belief, and trusted a biblically righteous president to stop climate change, end the emergent changes in the biological binary order, and end what Catholic AM radio host Mother Angelica daily decried to listeners as "the Holocaust of abortion."
Following Mitch McConnell's refusal to allow Obama to appoint a Supreme Court justice, Trump obediently filled the empty positions with judges who reliably overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump was proven godly, as was the GOP. His personal promiscuity and dishonesty were also proof: God can do good with the most flawed of human beings. Trump's persistent ubiquity in the media marketplace makes him seem a kind of secular saint, an immortal in the pantheon of our celebrity-worshipping culture. The marketplace can't resist Trump. He sells. He's a long-running soap opera, an adrenalin rush. Here I am writing about him, though I've resisted doing so for a long time. Because, in fact, I'd really rather ignore him.
But I can't. Because he and his followers are now devoted to replacing our country's imperfect democracy with a repressive dictatorship that would outlast him and require great suffering to dislodge.
The tragic irony now seems to be that the only person with a direct connection to Trump who can stop Trump is Trump. While the American people voting in overwhelming numbers may yet rise up to stop his self-described winning streak, even his wife appears to have little power in their partnership. She warned us sartorially, long ago, that she really doesn't care. She may care more, now that the money that keeps her comfortable - and her son safe – dwindles. I remember the sad spectacle, during the 2016 campaign, of a nude photo from her past. It was unearthed supposedly to show us a norm that would be violated by a Trump presidency. For me, it served primarily as an unpleasant but telling glimpse into her rationale for becoming the third Mrs. Trump. Surely marriage to a wealthy and powerful man was security against ever having to be exploited – including by herself, in desperation – again. To me, her First Lady photos of public reverence show how deeply she aspired to being a Madonna, a faithful wife and loving mother. Donald Trump provided that. Whatever consequences she faces now, of having married him, he first appeared to her as a savior.
Wishing this man would go away – as many of us, Republican and Democrat, do – inspires deeply uncomfortable and ghoulish thinking. And perilous: we instinctively know that wishing harm on another is poisonous, and brings harm to us. One of the most painful things about the spectacle of Trump's exhaustion, and his followers' gradual disillusionment, or furious denial, is the effort it takes to obey the moral imperative of not wishing him ill. He spreads his exhaustion like a pandemic.
I am aware that many religious Americans believe a God-fearing dictator could better secure our nation's future than a president obeying the Constitutional oath to protect religious freedom and preserve equal rights. They think a president serving a dogmatic, Omnipotent Deity would attract that Deity's help in eradicating our national problems. If this required reward and punishment, so be it. The dictator could do, to whomever did not get in line, "whatever the hell they want."
To the religiously fearful, I would point out the godly government, including Christian ones, are dangerous. Hitler was a Catholic but saw no problem with genocide. In fact, his religious views may have sanctified his resolve to kill Jews, homosexuals, and their sympathizers. The Rwandan massacre saw Christian neighbors, friends, and relatives commit mass-murder on one another, due to tribal hatred fomented for years by popular radio hosts. In Uganda and the Congo, the Lord's Resistance Army employed rape, torture, murder, and child soldiers forcibly recruited to commit atrocities, all towards the stated goal of establishing the Ten Commandments as the supreme law of the land. Stalin was an atheist, but Putin isn't. Yet his publicly observed Russian Orthodox Christianity seems no obstacle to poisoning, impoverishing, imprisoning, starving, and killing political opponents. In Ukraine, his Russian soldiers kill Ukrainian ones who bear the image of Jesus' mother, Mary, on their uniforms. Which nation is the Christian God's favorite?
Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboys Industries, the most successful gang recovery program in the world, bases his work in the inclusive and unconditional love taught by Jesus of Nazareth. If your God inspires to you to fear, dominate, hate or kill, Boyle writes, you've got the "wrong God."
Realizing that one may have "the wrong God" is usually something that takes place in private conscience or an affirming community. But when your God wants you to kill, torture, impoverish, and imprison your fellow human beings, "wrong God" must be publicly pointed out. And, in a democracy, voted down.
I believe in a God of mercy. Could it be that mercy is allowing Trump to be proven right, by his own prediction? And that exhaustion might show him how so much winning missed the mark?
I do not envy him his remorse for the sorrow he sowed for the nation and his family. The cosmic circumstances of anyone's birth are a mystery, and Donald Trump's father was, by all accounts, terrifying. Donald seemed to want to be different: more charming, more generous, more loved than feared. But he succumbed to "Greed is good," and winning to vanquish his demons. To stay on top, he had to reward and punish. And he did, with mercurial approval and disdain stemming from a chaotic refusal to self-examine. His children's various mothers, except for Barron's, are invisible. Ivana is six feet under the Bedminster golf course, a source of much mirth from our late night wags. To me it is sad blasphemy in a world where even the poorest of the poor generally seek reverence for their loved ones' earthly remains.
Tired of winning: his lips to God's ears.
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Tonight, Biden Must Vow to Go Even Further to Combat Corporate Greed
Instead of telling Americans the economy is great — which many won’t believe — he must tell them the truth: that most of the economic gains haven’t been felt by average working people because the gains have been going to the top.
Mar 07, 2024
President Biden is addressing the country tonight in his State of the Union address. Here’s some free advice about what he should say about the economy — which is the issue most voters care most about.
Instead of telling Americans the economy is great — which many won’t believe — he must tell them the truth: that most of the economic gains haven’t been felt by average working people because the gains have been going to the top.
Biden should denounce the greed and political corruption that have caused this.
He should explain that the biggest change in America over the last four decades — lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of many working people — has nothing to do with “wokeness,” immigration, critical race theory, transgender kids, the “deep state,” or any other Republican boogeymen.
It’s been a huge upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth.
The nation’s economy has seen massive gains, but the income and wealth of the bottom 80 percent of America have barely budged while the income and wealth of the richest Americans have exploded.
This change didn’t happen because of the so-called “invisible hand” of the free market.
The nation’s economy has seen massive gains, but the income and wealth of the bottom 80 percent of America have barely budged while the income and wealth of the richest Americans have exploded.
It happened because of policy decisions pushed by the monied interests — decisions that deregulated Wall Street, allowed corporations to bash unions and monopolize their industries, opened the American economy to Chinese imports, let pharmaceutical companies charge exorbitant prices, cut taxes on the rich and bailed out the biggest banks while saddling working people with student debt and medical debt.
In Biden’s first term he reversed much of this. He negotiated lower drug prices, funded infrastructure that will create good jobs, forgave some student debt, attacked monopolies, and protected workers’ rights to organize. He even walked a picket line.
But Biden needs to tell Americans that in his second term, he’ll go even further.
Mr. President, tell us:
You’ll stop CEOs from raking in a record-breaking 350 times the pay of average workers. You’ll support legislation linking the rate of taxes a corporation pays to the ratio of its CEO pay to average worker pay.
You’ll enforce the antitrust laws against grocery chains and food processors that have kept food prices high.
You’ll make it illegal for hedge fund and private equity managers to buy up houses to drive up rents when average Americans can barely afford to keep a roof over their heads.
You’ll stop big banks and credit card companies from adding junk fees and charging usurious interest payments approaching 30 percent.
You’ll prevent monopolies like Amazon from hurting small businesses and firing their workers for unionizing.
You’ll raise taxes on the rich and lower them on average working Americans.
You’ll end corporate welfare — the special tax loopholes, bank bailouts, unconditional subsidies, loan guarantees, and no-bid contracts that have lined the pockets of the wealthy.
And you’ll stop big corporations from pouring money into politics to keep the corporate welfare flowing. You’ll get big money out of politics with legislation that prevents federal contractors (20 percent of big companies) from making political contributions.
And you’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who know the difference between money and speech, between corporations and people.
Let Republicans criticize corporate “wokeness.” You’re taking on corporate greed.
Let Republicans obsess about critical race theory and abortion. You’ll protect the freedom of speech of Americans, and their freedom to decide when and whether to have children.
Let Republicans rail against transgender kids. You’re focusing on how obscenely unfair and unequal America has become.
Let Republicans try to divide Americans into warring factions so we don’t look upward and see where the wealth and power have really gone. You’ll pull us together to get that wealth and power back for the people.
You wouldn’t be the first Democratic president to do something like this. On the eve of his 1936 reelection, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the American people that in his first term of office:We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
FDR won by a landslide.
Give ’em hell, Joe.
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