Trump continues far-right appeals as details of Michigan plot emerge

Eric London

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/12/pers-o12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

In the days since Michigan authorities and federal prosecutors announced the arrest of 13 people in a plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, President Donald Trump and his inner circle have intensified their appeals to the fascist right.

While the plot was centered in Michigan, new information has surfaced making clear the plotters were involved in a far broader and ongoing national conspiracy. The criminal complaint filed last Thursday explained that the Michigan conspirators engaged in a plan to “take violent action against multiple state governments.”

The conspirators clearly felt they were acting with the support of the White House. Even after the plot was revealed, Trump denounced Whitmer for “complaining” and “crying” about the threat to kidnap and kill her. On Saturday, Trump impersonated Mussolini by giving a speech from the White House balcony in which he ranted to a small audience about the imminent danger that the country will be taken over by “socialists” and “communists.”
In a clear signal to his far-right supporters, the Trump campaign this weekend announced that the president’s son, Eric Trump, will give a rally at a gun shop in New Hudson, Michigan, a few miles from Milford and Waterford Townships, where two of the 13 fascist plotters were arrested. The campaign also announced that Vice President Pence will attend a rally Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, another center of militia activity.

It was in Grand Rapids where two of the Michigan conspirators, Michael and William Null, appeared at an anti-lockdown protest this summer and were photographed alongside Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, a leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), a fascist network of police founded by prominent Trump supporter and former Maricopa, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Leaf was named CSPOA’s “Sheriff of the Year” in 2016.

Leaf declared on Thursday that the plotters may have just been planning a “citizens’ arrest” of Whitmer, making clear he thought their actions were justified. Leaf had previously refused to enforce restrictions on businesses mandated by state regulations.

Mike Shirkey, Republican majority leader of the Michigan State Senate, reportedly walked up to the gallery of the state legislature in April to greet the fascists—including at least one of the men arrested last week—who had brought their assault rifles inside the building to threaten legislators.

Isolated media reports from earlier this year also raise many questions about the role of Trump campaign officials and big money donors in supporting the anti-lockdown protests that served as a means for the militia conspirators to plan their putsch.

Three groups that provided funding for the anti-lockdown protests, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, the Michigan Freedom Fund and the Convention of States Project, have close ties to leading Trump backers, including MCC founder Meshawn Maddock, an advisor to Trump’s campaign and a leader of the group “Women for Trump.”

Greg McNeilly, a longtime advisor to the billionaire DeVos family, leads the Michigan Freedom Fund. Betsy DeVos is Trump’s Education Secretary. Her brother, Erik Prince, is the former CEO of the mercenary firm Blackwater (now known as Xe) and a close collaborator with former Trump advisor Steven Bannon and Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr. The Convention of States Project is funded by the billionaire Mercer family. It has close ties to leading Trump immigration official Ken Cuccinelli and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and is led by Eric O’Keefe, a close advisor to the Koch family.

More details are also emerging about the connections of the arrested conspirators with other militia groups across the country. One of the militiamen, Barry Croft, was a prominent member of the fascist Three Percenters and Patriot Movement. National Public Radio referred to him as “a visible figure” who “made waves as an unknown who tried to streamline national leadership of the Three Percent” and aimed to obtain “a senior role in the movement,” based on interviews with anonymous militia leaders.

Two of the conspirators, Daniel Harris and Joseph Morrison, were in the Marine Corps—Harris from 2014 to 2019 and Morrison in the reserves from 2015 until last Thursday, the day of his arraignment. Harris was deployed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, a known center of fascist cell activity.

The more that details emerge as to the seriousness of the conspiracy, the more noticeable are the media’s and Democratic Party’s efforts to downplay the plot.

At a public event Saturday in Pennsylvania, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden vaguely referenced the possibility of “chicanery” in the November 3 election. In an indication of how sensitive ruling circles are to bringing attention to Trump’s conspiracy, Biden was forced to walk back his comments hours later, saying he only meant to stress that he would respect the outcome if he lost. Biden said voters “should not pay attention” to Trump’s threats to “influence and scare people from voting.”

In an interview yesterday with Governor Whitmer, CBS’s Margaret Brennan implied that Whitmer herself was to blame for provoking the fascist plot: “Governor, these are your constituents. How do you, in your state, unify things? I know you’re talking about the president and rhetoric, but what do you do to deal with this?” Whitmer responded by saying she wanted to work with all Michiganders, even those who oppose her.

The relative silence of the media and the Democratic Party stands in stark contrast to the howls of indignation from the Democratic Party establishment over the baseless claim that Russia stole the 2016 election for Trump with a few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads. In advancing the interests of the military-intelligence apparatus, the Democrats are ruthless. But when it comes to safeguarding the most basic democratic rights, the Democrats are terrified of doing anything that will spark broader social opposition.

With the election just over three weeks away, Trump is pressing ahead with his own conspiracies to remain in power regardless of the outcome of the vote. He is counting on support from Wall Street, which backs his policy of “herd immunity,” along with fascistic forces within the police, immigration and military-intelligence apparatus. Trump calculates, moreover, that the Democratic Party is so terrified of opposition in the working class that it will accept a Trump coup rather than risk a social explosion.

But even if the Democrats, with the support of the military and intelligence agencies, prevent Trump from staying in power after the election, this will not alter the basic trajectory of American politics.

Whatever the outcome of the November election crisis, the tendencies revealed in recent weeks will only intensify. If Trump is defeated, his supporters will believe their candidate was “stabbed in the back,” justifying a further turn to the right. Armed militias will be normalized as a new element in the American political landscape.

The working class cannot wait passively for events to unfold. It must intervene into this crisis with its own program. The fight against the Trump administration and the resort of the ruling class to dictatorship and fascistic conspiracies must be countered through the development of an independent movement of the working class for socialism.

The Sickness Is The System - Prof. Richard Wolff Interview

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T_Xm4k3cvM&ab_channel=TheMajorityReportw%2FSamSeder

Teachers Left Out of School Reopening Discussion—Even on the Left

ARI PAUL

https://fair.org/home/teachers-left-out-of-school-reopening-discussion-even-on-the-left/

A recent interview in Jacobin (9/19/20) with two scientists put forth a rather controversial case against government interventions to stop the spread of Covid-19. In the interview, Harvard medical professor Martin Kulldorff asserted, “Children and young adults have minimal risk, and there is no scientific or public health rationale to close daycare centers, schools or colleges,” while Harvard biologist Katherine Yih said, “I don’t think it’s wise or warranted to keep society locked down until vaccines become available.”

The article caused quite a bit of chatter among the magazine’s readers. One issue that stood out in the piece for many unionists is the knock against school closures. Said Kulldorff:


Good education is not only important for academic achievement and financial well-being; it is also critical for the mental and physical health of children and into their subsequent adulthood. Kids have minimal risk from this virus, and it is sad that we are sacrificing our children instead of properly protecting the elderly and other high-risk groups.

While FAIR (9/25/20) has already addressed the question of the risk faced by children, it’s also perplexing that a socialist magazine would skip over the worker-led movements that have brought us these closings, delays and remote learning during this pandemic. This is the latest iteration of something this writer has noted (FAIR.org, 5/28/20): Coverage of the issue of reopening schools downplays the risk faced by teachers and other adult staffers, and far too often ignores education unions as sources.

At the K–12 level, most notably, the Chicago Teachers Union threatened to strike in response to what it viewed was an unsafe reopening plan, forcing the city to go full remote. Los Angeles schools went to full remote, with the administration working closely with the teachers union. In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers threatened to strike, and then pulled back after the city announced a delay in reopening;however, teachers around the city continue to organize with what they see are unsafe conditions. And it should be pointed out that such struggles to push for full-remote schooling until health concerns can be met come not just from teachers; in New York City, the UFT (and the principals’ union) was supported by the union of cafeteria workers.

New York City school workers have reason to be worried: This spring, at least 74 Department of Education workers died from Covid-19.

Then there is higher education. Reopening has been problematic, to be sure, as the University of North Carolina was forced to end in-person education after an outbreak. At the University of Michigan, a coalition of graduate student workers, dining workers and other campus workers have mobilized for safety around reopening. Faculty there say the administration has not been open around specifics of reopening, where there rumors that donation money influenced the decision to go in-person this fall.

Benjamin Balthaser, an associate professor of English at Indiana University at South Bend, said in an email:


Universities, with their quarantine dorms, their testing regimes, their glossy brochures on hand-washing, have totally failed, with many campuses now closed or on lock-down after massive Covid spikes. This proves the lie at the center of the interview: that somehow populations can be separated, that management is an effective strategy and that workers will not bear the brunt. Already over 60 university workers have died, just this summer, and tens of thousands have been sickened, many with lingering and chronic conditions after they are “well.” If this is a pro-worker policy, I would hate to see what being against them would look like.

Nobody is happy about closing campuses and schools. Schools workers are pushing for full remote learning until school buildings are safe, but far too often there is the insinuation that these workers are doing this at the expense of students and parents. This is a false conflict, often created by anti-union propaganda. A great many teachers are also parents who would like to see their children in school, and juggle the complexity of remote learning while also managing their families at home.

More than that, the unsafe reopening of schools could spread the virus beyond the school buildings themselves. In cities, teachers and schools workers often ride public transportation to and from work. And there is research showing children can spread the virus to adults. In this sense, union concern of school reopening isn’t just about the union’s membership, but the public at large.


Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves (Twitter, 9/21/20) called the Jacobin interview “Malthusian drivel” and “practically Trumpian.”

Other critics have taken the interview to task on the scientific argument about reopening the economy. Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves called the argument “Trumpian” and “Malthusian” in a series of posts on Twitter (9/21/20), and pointed out that while Sweden didn’t lockdown its economy, many other countries did lockdown and had much better results with Covid-19. And it should go without saying that just because Sweden enacts a policy doesn’t mean it would roll in the United States with the same results. Sweden is a social democracy where the government could manage response to the crisis. One can’t say this about the United States.

Jacobin’s interview pointed to real injustice, which is that while many white-collar workers have the option to work remotely, many blue-collar workers are forced to be exposed to the virus. But the jump to the solution that all workers should be exposed to the same risk is perplexing, and insinuates that the blame for this inequality is on “professional class” workers like teachers, who have been able to stay home, while blue-collar workers have often remained on the front-lines, or, if not, lost their wages over lost work. This is pitting the working class against itself, due to a crisis that capitalist government can simply not offer workers fairness in response to the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. Teachers are workers, and schools and campuses are worksites for dining workers, bus drivers, maintenance workers, janitors and clerical workers, all of whom imperiled by unsafe schools reopening.

It is depressingly common for education unions to be treated unfairly in the corporate US press. Suffice it to say, Jacobin should strive to do better than that low standard.

Socialism’s Increasing Popularity Doesn’t Bring Media Out of McCarthy Era

JOSHUA CHO




https://fair.org/home/socialisms-increasing-popularity-doesnt-bring-media-out-of-mccarthy-era/

Ever since the Great Recession in 2008, and accelerating with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, there has been a resurgence of popularity and interest in socialism in the US, and an increasing skepticism of capitalism. A 2019 Pew poll (6/25/19) reported that 42% of respondents had a favorable view of socialism, with particular sympathy shown among people who are Black (65%), Latino (52%), have family incomes below $30,000 (50%) or are between the ages of 18-29 (50%). In a 2019 Gallup survey (12/18/19), 38% saw socialism positively—more than the 34% who identify as conservatives (Gallup, 7/27/20). Gallup (11/25/19) noted that Millennials were especially attracted to socialism, with slightly more viewing socialism positively than capitalism.

Democrats across the country view socialism more positively than capitalism, with a large majority willing to vote for a socialist as president. Despite questions of what the term “socialism” means to Americans, this growing interest has provoked articles decrying the “problem” that socialism doesn’t freak out Democratic voters the way it does other Americans (Slate, 2/24/20). The Columbia Journalism Review (5/8/18) noticed that while “the radical left in the US has felt invigorated in recent years,” it still hasn’t “earned left-wing voices column inches in most mainstream outlets,” with coverage limited to being “about those voices, rather than by them.”

Looking at the representation of socialism among the hundreds of pundits in corporate media, one can be forgiven for almost thinking socialist pundits don’t exist.

The New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig appears to be the only pundit employed by corporate media who both explicitly identifies as a “socialist” and makes arguments for some form of socialism in the US (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

Laurence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s Last Word, identifies as a “practical European socialist,” and argues that “we’re all socialists now,” because even Bill O’Reilly is in favor of “socialist programs” like Social Security and Medicare. The MSNBC host claims to “embrace” the label in order to “counterbalance” the excessive influence of McCarthyism in the US (LA Times, 3/16/13), but it’s difficult to discern a distinctly socialist perspective in his commentary.


Straightforward advocacy of socialism is something you very rarely see in corporate media (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

The Hill’s Krystal Ball (2/17/19), cohost of the show Rising, criticized Trump’s remarks claiming that “America will never be a socialist country” for presenting the false dichotomy of “smash-and-grab capitalism” or “what’s happening in Venezuela.” The class-conscious commentator described Sanders and other democratic socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “messengers for a compelling message with an actual vision.” Although she seems not to explicitly embrace the “socialist” label like Bruenig or O’Donnell, it may be fair to describe her as a democratic socialist pundit, because she often speaks favorably of the ideology, and provides a friendly platform to socialists on her show.

It appears corporate media give some degree of space for pundits to call for replacing capitalism with a new system, so long as they don’t identify themselves or that new system as “socialist.” Times columnist Michelle Alexander hasn’t explicitly identified as a socialist, but has argued (6/8/20) that “transforming our economic systems” is necessary to achieve “racial justice” and a “secure and thriving democracy,” while approvingly citing figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller and Paul Robeson, all of whom argued that the US “must move toward some form of socialism.” The Post’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel also hasn’t called herself a socialist, but has argued (12/10/19) that “capitalism is broken,” and that we need a “new system to better serve the common good,” without describing this new system as “socialism.”

Although CNN’s Van Jones was involved in the early 1990s with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a defunct Maoist Bay Area group, since 2000 or so, he’s identified with the “green capitalist” movement instead (Green America, Fall/2007).

“Socialism” itself is a very contested term, and many self-described socialists may not consider some or all of these pundits to be genuine socialists. Conservatism is also a broad range of ideologies, not all of which are consistent with each other, which also has self-identified conservatives who denounce others as unworthy or inconsistent with the label (New York Times, 1/14/15; The Hill, 12/16/19). Conservative audiences are not expected to approve of all pundits who identify as conservatives, or who speak favorably of conservatism. Likewise, while some socialists may be unsatisfied with these figures, it is still significant that there are pundits who embrace being labeled a “socialist” and explicitly call for alternatives to capitalism within the US.

Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó has remarked that “socialist” figures like Ocasio-Cortez would be considered social democrats in his own country (New Yorker, 6/10/20). The Times’ Paul Krugman (2/13/20) is no socialist, but he has criticized Bernie Sanders for presenting himself as a “socialist,” rather than a “social democrat,” making himself “an easy target for right-wing smears.”


It’s more common to see criticism of capitalism (New York Times, 12/4/17)—but still not very common.

One can find criticisms of capitalism in corporate media, but that is ideologically consistent with liberals or progressives who call for government intervention to deal with market failures. Columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg (12/4/17), who noted that “capitalism looks like the god that failed” to young people because of the “increasingly oligarchic nature of our economy,” and the Times’ Nicholas Kristof (5/23/20), who condemned “dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers and socialism for the rich,” are critics of capitalism in corporate media who aren’t necessarily calling for socialism.

Other pundits have normalized socialism by claiming it already exists in a limited form, because they conflate all government spending on social programs with socialism—not advocating for socialism so much as claiming that it already exists in the US. Thus the Times’ Roger Cohen (3/8/19) and the Post’s Catherine Rampell (3/21/19) argue that “Europe” demonstrates how “socialism and the free market are compatible,” and dismiss the capitalist/socialist dichotomy as not being a “meaningful binary,” because “all modern countries have elements of capitalism and socialism.” These pundits make arguments similar to O’Donnell’s, defending a socialism that’s hard to distinguish from liberalism, though without identifying with the label as O’Donnell does.

A few other commentators have praised socialism and defended figures who identify as socialists. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes defended Bernie Sanders from McCarthyite criticisms, and praised the Democratic Socialists of America. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle has made remarks on-air that appear to defend democratic socialism, in addition to explaining why it is a more desirable alternative to communism (NBC News, 2/27/20). The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson has written several columns urging Democrats to embrace the party’s more progressive base (7/2/18, 7/1/19), and described “democratic socialism” as something that is “perfectly appropriate” for Ocasio-Cortez’s district, in addition to endorsing (1/15/15) Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for “economic equality”—which King suggested could be called “democratic socialism” (In These Times, 1/15/18).

Like Hayes and Ruhle, Times’ columnists like Jamelle Bouie and Farhad Manjoo have published numerous columns that appear to praise socialism or policies associated with socialists, but that appears to be the farthest they can go, as neither of them have ever embraced the label (New York Times, 2/6/19, 2/14/19, 10/22/19, 3/11/20).



“Open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” writes the Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne (2/10/19)—but it’s still not a normal part of our media conversation.

When socialism or socialists are discussed favorably, or at least not adversely, it’s often in opposition to revolutionary socialist ideologies like Marxism-Leninism (the official ideology of around 20% of the world’s population, and of the US’s greatest geopolitical rival). Democratic socialism is often contrasted with socialist states of the Global South, whether Communist countries like China or Vietnam, or multi-party systems like Venezuela or Nicaragua, which are frequently presented by even the left-most pundits as justifiable targets of imperialism. Instead, wealthy, predominantly white Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Norway are often upheld as the preferable socialist ideal (New York Times, 4/27/19).

Although the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. (2/10/19) argued that Trump and the Republican Party’s attempts to tar all Democrats as “socialist” and antithetical to “American values” will fail because “open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” it’s quite clear that McCarthyism is still constricting political discourse in the US. While socialism is being discussed more often, there’s a huge disparity between its acceptance among the US population and the representation of socialists among pundits at the biggest news outlets in the country. There are almost no pundits employed in corporate media who feel comfortable openly identifying as a socialist and calling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that corporate media outlets owned by oligarchs and the investor class are hostile to socialism, but when socialist pundits are virtually nonexistent at these agenda-setting outlets, despite 76% of Democrats being willing to vote for a socialist, it’s clear that these institutions are intended to propagandize the US population into accepting the status quo. Even when politicians and policies often described as “socialist” are presented in a positive light, the fact that these journalists are uncomfortable embracing the label is evidence that McCarthyism still exercises a formidable restraint on the US political imagination and discourse.

Can Donald Trump Kill And Win?

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Donald Trump boasted in 2016. He thought his almost unlimited bravado, bombast, and dominance of any situation allowed him to get away with figurative murder.

Since then, the president’s Fifth Avenue principle has been repeatedly tested – most notably by the Access Hollywood tape, Robert Mueller’s findings that Trump obstructed justice and his campaign aides cooperated with Russia, overt racism, quid pro quo to the president of Ukraine, and impeachment – yet some 40% of American voters have stuck by him notwithstanding.

That’s all he’s needed. And for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, he’s counting on them to preserve his presidency after November 3rd.

They’ve stuck by him even as more than 210,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, one of the world’s highest death rates – due in part to Trump initially downplaying its dangers, then refusing responsibility for it, promoting quack remedies for it, muzzling government experts on it, pushing states to reopen despite it, and discouraging people from wearing masks.

They’ve stuck by him even after he turned the White House into a hotspot for the virus, even after he caught it himself, and even after asserting just days ago that it’s less lethal than the flu. A recent nonpartisan study concluded that Trump’s blatant disinformation has been the largest driver of Covid misinformation in the world.

They’ve stuck by him even as more than 11 million Americans have lost their jobs, 40 million risk eviction from their homes, 14 million have lost health insurance, and one out of seven small businesses has permanently shuttered. Yet Trump cut off talks on economic relief (he’s now backtracking a bit), and is pushing the supreme court to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would cause 20 million more to lose health insurance.

Trump is in effect standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, killing off tens of thousands of Americans. Yet here we are, just a few weeks before the election, and his supporters haven’t budged. The latest polls show him with 40% to 43% of voters, while Joe Biden has a bare majority.

But the most egregious test of Trump’s Fifth Avenue principle is still to come. He is counting on his supporters to keep him in power even after he loses the popular vote.

He’s ready to claim that mail-in ballots, made necessary by the pandemic, are rife with “fraud like you’ve never seen”, as he alleged during his debate with Biden – although it’s been shown that Americans are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud.

With such allegations he’ll probably dispute election results in any Republican-led state which he loses by a small margin, such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.

Then he’ll rely on the House of Representatives to put him over the top.

“We are going to be counting ballots for the next two years,” Trump warned at a recent Pennsylvania rally, noting: “We have the advantage if we go back to Congress. I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per state”.

He was referring to the 12th amendment to the Constitution, which provides that if state electors deadlock or can’t agree on a president, the decision goes to the House, where each of the nation’s 50 states get one vote.

Because small Republican-dominated states like Alaska (with one House member, a Republican) would have the same clout as large Democratic states like California (with 52 House members, 45 of whom are Democrats), Trump does have the advantage right now: 26 state delegations in the House are controlled by Republicans and 22 by Democrats. Two – Pennsylvania and Michigan – are essentially tied.

But he won’t necessarily retain that advantage. The decision would be made by lawmakers elected in November, who will be sworn in on 3 January – three days before they will convene to decide the winner of the election.

Which is why the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is focusing on races that could tip the balance of state delegations – not just in Pennsylvania and Michigan but any others within reach.

“It’s sad we have to have to plan this way,” she said last week, “but it’s what we must do to ensure the election is not stolen.”

Trump’s Fifth Avenue principle has kept him in power for almost four years of death and mayhem that would have doomed the presidencies of anyone else. But as a former New Yorker he should know that Fifth Avenue ends at the Harlem River, at 142nd Street. The end is near.

Thanks for reading,

Robert Reich

Waiting for a vaccine: Killing for inequality

Dean Baker

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2020/10/11/waiting-for-a-vaccine-killing-for-inequality/


I have been harping on the fact that it is very likely China will be mass producing and distributing a vaccine at least a month, and quite possibly several months, before the United States. This should make people very angry.

Even a month’s delay is likely to mean tens of thousands of avoidable deaths and hundreds of thousands of avoidable infections. And, it adds a month to the time period before we can get back to living normal lives. Of course, the delay could end up being many months, since we still have no idea how the clinical trials will turn out for the leading U.S. contenders.

We are in the situation where we can be waiting several months for a vaccine, after one has already been demonstrated to be safe and effective, because the Trump administration opted to pursue a route of patent monopoly research, as opposed to open-source collaborative research. If Trump had gone the latter route, as soon as China, or anyone, had a vaccine, everyone would have a vaccine, or at least everyone able to manufacture it.

Patent Monopoly Financing Versus Open Source

Since people seem to find the alternative to Trump’s patent monopoly approach confusing, let me outline it simply, so that people can see what is at issue. As it turned out, Trump quite explicitly turned the development of a vaccine into a race. He created “Operation Warp Speed,” to which he committed more than $10 billion of public funds. This effort is supposed to develop both vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus.

The funding takes a variety of forms. Several companies received some upfront funding, but are relying primarily on advance purchase agreements for an effective vaccine. For example, Pfizer signed a contract that commits the government to buying 100 million doses for $1.95 billion ($19.50 per shot), if it has a successful vaccine.

By contrast, Moderna relied largely on upfront funding, getting $483 million for its pre-clinical research and phase 1 and 2 trials, and then another $472 million to cover the cost of its phase 3 trials. Incredibly, after largely picking up Moderna’s development costs, the government is also allowing Moderna to have a patent monopoly on its vaccine. This means it will effectively be paying Moderna twice, first with the direct funding then a second time by allowing it to charge monopoly prices on its vaccine.

This nationalistic patent monopoly route was the one Trump choose to pursue. It should be mentioned there was little visible opposition from leading Democrats in Congress.

But, we could have taken a different route. We could have looked to pool research, not just nationally, but internationally. This would mean that all research findings would be posted on the web as soon as practical and that any patents would be placed in the public domain so that everyone could take advantage of them.

We were actually seeing this sort of cooperation in the early days of the pandemic, which allowed scientists to gain an understanding of the virus more quickly than if we had followed the path of patent monopoly supported research. This path of cooperation could have continued, if Operation Warp Speed had been structured differently. Instead of paying for the research costs of a company like Moderna, and then telling them they could get a patent monopoly so that they could charge whatever they want, we could have made the condition of the funding that all its findings would be fully public and patents would be in the public domain.

Since some folks have a hard time understanding what incentive Moderna would have if they weren’t getting a patent monopoly, let me explain: they would be getting paid.

Just as most of us work for money, not patent monopolies, Moderna and other drug companies developing vaccines or treatments would be getting paid directly for their research. Their incentive would be that they presumably want to continue to get paid. If they went two or three months and had nothing to show, then they would not continue to get paid.

This is the idea of working for money. I thought that most economists were familiar with it, but when it comes to financing drug research, they seem to view it as an alien concept.[1]

Anyhow, if we committed $10 billion for open research, presumably we would want comparable commitments (adjusted for size and wealth) from other countries. For example, Germany, which has an economy that is roughly one fifth the size of the U.S. economy, would be expected to commit to paying $2 billion to support open research. China would also be expected to make a commitment that was comparable relative to its GDP, although as a much poorer country (on a per person basis), perhaps the commitment would only be half as large relative to its economy.

If we had leadership in the United States that was committed to pursuing a path of open research, then presumably it would be possible to quickly work out a deal that countries were reasonably satisfied with. It doesn’t matter that a deal may not make everyone perfectly happy. Lots of things are happening in the pandemic and the response that are far from perfectly fair. Such is life.

Anyhow, in this world of open research, if it turned out that China’s vaccines were showing more promise earlier than the ones developed by Pfizer and Moderna and other U.S. companies, we would be able to manufacture and mass distribute their vaccines, as soon as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved them. No one would need permission from China since the research was open, anyone could manufacture the vaccines who had the capability.

Just to be clear, using a Chinese vaccine does not mean accepting China’s safety standards. The FDA would make its own determination of a vaccine’s safety and effectiveness based on the data from the clinical trials. If it could not be confident that the data supported approval, then it would not be granted, just as is the case with any domestic vaccine or drug.

If we had gone this route, if the Chinese vaccines are shown to be safe and effective before the vaccines developed by U.S. companies, we would not be left waiting. If China, or any other country had a vaccine, we would as well. This system still leaves a problem for developing countries who lack manufacturing capabilities, but at least intellectual property concerns would not be preventing people from getting a vaccine or treatment.

Open Research and Inequality

It is hard to understand how, not just mainstream Democrats, but even progressive leaders like Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, were not pushing for an open research response to the pandemic. This almost certainly would have given us a vaccine more quickly.

However, an open research approach to the pandemic also could have been a very important model for biomedical research more generally. If we went a route of financing research upfront and putting all patents in the public domain, it could save us $400 billion a year on prescription drug spending. This comes to more than $3,000 per household. It is more than twice the size of the Trump tax cut. This is real money.

Patent monopolies also have a lot to do with inequality. We are often told that technology is a big part of the story of upward redistribution over the last four decades. While this story is frequently exaggerated, insofar as it is true, it is because we have designed patent and copyright laws so that some people can get very rich at the expense of everyone else. Bill Gates would still be working for a living if the government did not give Microsoft patent and copyright monopolies on its software.

It is more than a bit bizarre that political figures who devote so much effort to combatting inequality look the other way when we design a pandemic health care research plan that both slows research progress and gives more money to those at the top.

It’s fine to have progressive taxes, but it is even better to structure the market so that we don’t have so much inequality in the first place. If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity since its 1968 peak, it would be $24 an hour today. That would be a hugely different world.

While it would be great if we could raise the minimum wage to $24 an hour, we can’t do that without changing many of the rules that allow so much income to be redistributed upward. The current system of patents and copyrights is a really big part of that story. In the case of the pandemic, it is not just leading to inequality, it is also costing people’s health and their lives. Progressives should be paying attention.

[1] I discuss in chapter 5 of Rigged how this sort of system can be structured in a more systematic way (it’s free). But in the context of dealing with the pandemic emergency, the arrangements would have to be somewhat ad hoc, as is already the case with Operation Warp Speed.

This is how our opponents will try to win

Message from Sunrise



To keep us divided, our opponents say the Green New Deal can only win in some parts of the country. They try to divide us with racist dog-whistle politics, say we don't "understand" one another, or that we have nothing in common. This November, we have a chance to prove them wrong.

We are supporting Green New Deal champions from the orchard-filled plains of southwestern Michigan, to the saltwater bays of the Puget Sound in Washington.



Jon Hoadley is running for Congress in southwest Michigan because his district has seen the consequences of an oil economy. Kalamazoo, a city in Hoadley's district, experienced the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history in 2011. But Hoadley’s opponent, Fred Upton, has taken well over $2 million from fossil fuel companies since being in office and has failed in every way to transition our economy away from oil.

Jon Hoadley is running on a Green New Deal, and despite being in one of the most conservative areas in Michigan, this race is neck and neck.

Can you join me and other young people to flip a seat from red to blue in the “bible belt” of the Midwest by calling voters in southwest Michigan tomorrow, October 12th?


Thousands of miles to the West is another battleground for the Green New Deal. Beth Doglio is running for Congress in Washington state on a bold vision for a Green New Deal because her state is on fire. Over 600,000 acres have burned in Washington this past year, putting the urgency of the climate crisis on center stage.

But this fight isn’t anything new for Beth. Before she ever ran for elected office, she stopped seven coal export terminals from being built in Washington. Then as a state legislator, she passed landmark legislation to eliminate fossil fuels from utilities, cut food waste, and increase funding for public transit.

Will you help Beth Doglio, an environmental justice activist who successfully fought off major fossil fuel projects, by calling voters in Washington this Tuesday, October 13th?

It’s up to us to unite -- rural, urban, and in-between -- and build a country that works for all of us. These two races could become historic examples of the movement for a Green New Deal and provide the next Congress with a mandate for action.

But we won’t win unless you join us. Every call matters.