If there are any limits to a president’s power, it wasn’t evident from Donald Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.

In that speech, the first before lawmakers of Trump’s second term, the president declared vast accomplishments during the brief six weeks of his presidency. He claimed to have “brought back free speech” to the country. He declared that there were only two sexes, “male and female.” He reminded the audience that he had unilaterally renamed an international body of water as well as the country’s tallest mountain.

“Our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again,” Trump asserted.

The extravagant claims appear to match Trump’s view of the presidency – one virtually kinglike in its unilateral power.

It’s true that the U.S. Constitution’s crucial section about the executive branch, Article 2, does not grant the president unlimited power. But it does make this figure the sole “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States.”

This monopoly on the use of force is one way Trump could support his 2019 claim that he can do “whatever I want as President.”

Before Trump’s speech, protesters outside had taken issue with Trump’s wielding of such unchecked power. One protester’s sign said, “We the People don’t want false kings in our house.”

With those words, she echoed a concern about presidential power that originated more than 200 years ago.

Remnants of the monarchy

When the Constitution was written, many people – from those who drafted the document to those who read it – believed that endowing the president with such powers was dangerous.

Ratified after a lot of huffing and puffing, on May 29, 1790, by rather nervous citizens, the text of the Constitution had stirred many controversies.

It wasn’t just the oftentimes vague language, which includes head-scratchers such as the very preamble, “We the People of the United States.” Nor was the discomfort due solely to the document’s jarring brevity – at 4,543 words, the U.S. Constitution is the shortest written Constitution of any major nation in the world.

No, what made that document especially problematic, to borrow from John Adams, was that it provided for “a monarchical Republick, or if you will a limited Monarchy.”

Adams would eventually become the nation’s second president in 1797. Even though he was a staunch supporter of the Constitution, he was honest enough to take a hard look over the political layout of the new nation. And what he found were remnants of the British monarchy and traces of a king whose unchecked abuses had led the Colonists to demand their independence in the first place.

“The Name of President,” Adams couldn’t help concluding in a letter to prominent Massachusetts lawyer William Tudor, “does not alter the Nature of his office nor diminish the Regal Authorities and Powers which appear clearly in the Writing.”

While Adams was only somewhat uncomfortable, as a historian of the early republic I can stress that other observers at the time were downright appalled.

In a 1787 article published in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, “An Old Whig” – identity unknown – wrote, “The office of President of the United States appears to me to be clothed with such powers as are dangerous.”

As the commander in chief of the Army, the American president “is in reality to be a king as much a King as the King of Great Britain, and a King too of the worst kind – an elective King.”

Consequently, as the author of this article resolved, “I shall despair of any happiness in the United States” until this office is “reduced to a lower pitch of power.”

‘Subjects of a military king’

Concern over a commander in chief declaring martial law, no matter the legality of the measure, was similarly on the minds of the Americans who had read the Constitution.

In 1788, a patriot who went under the pseudonym of “Philadelphiensis” – real name, Benjamin Workman – issued a sweeping warning. Should the president decide to impose martial law, “your character of free citizens” would be “changed to that of the subjects of a military king.”

A president turned military king could “wantonly inflict the most disgraceful punishment on a peaceable citizen,” the piece continued, “under pretence of disobedience, or the smallest neglect of militia duty.”

Another power given to the president was also universally considered extremely dangerous: that of granting pardons to individuals guilty of treason.

Maryland Attorney General Luther Martin reasoned that the treason most likely to take place was “that in which the president himself might be engaged.” What the president would do, Martin wrote, would be “to secure from punishment the creatures of his ambition, the associates and abettors of his treasonable practices, by granting them pardons.”

George Mason, who participated in the Constitutional Convention and also drafted Virginia’s state Constitution, foresaw a gloomy scenario. He shivered at the idea of a president who would “screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt.”

Choosing ‘villains or fools’

The framers did limit executive power in one significant way: The president of the United States is subject to impeachment and, upon conviction of treason or other high crimes, removal from office.

But in the meantime, the president may enact irreparable damage.

The Constitution was finally ratified – but only begrudgingly by the American citizens, who feared a president’s abuse of power. More persuasive than the legal restraints placed on the office, the belief that the people would choose their leader wisely tipped the scale toward approval.

Delegate John Dickinson asked a rhetorical question: “Will a virtuous and sensible people chuse villains or fools for their officers?”

Also, 18th-century common sense deemed it improbable that a person without virtue and magnanimity would run for the nation’s highest office. Americans’ faith in their first president, the upstanding George Washington, helped convince them that all would end well and their Constitution would be sufficient to protect the republic.

The Federalist Papers, the 85 essays written to persuade voters to support ratification, were suffused with this optimism.

People “of the character marked out for that of the President of the United States” were widely available, said the Federalist #67.

“It will not be too strong to say,” reads Federalist #68, “that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.”

Government of laws?

Adams wasn’t so optimistic. He wavered. And then he flipped the issue on its head.

“There must be a positive Passion for the public good … established in the Minds of the People,” he had written in a 1776 letter, “or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real liberty.”

After almost 250 years of uninterrupted republican life, Americans are used to thinking that their nation is secured by checks and balances. As Adams kept repeating, America aims at becoming “a government of laws, and not of men.”

Americans, in other words, have long believed it is their institutions that make the nation. But the opposite is true: The people are the soul and the conscience of the republic.

Everything, in the end, boils down to the character of these people and the control they assert over who becomes their most important leader.

Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

IMAGE: President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Trump 2.0 can be described as a kakistocracy – a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.

Let’s process that.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party have made dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives a core part of their political platform, claiming these programs undermine merit and lower standards. Yet, when it comes to their own appointments, qualifications and competence take a backseat to blind loyalty and political convenience. WTF?

The contradiction couldn’t be clearer: while they rail against DEI as a threat to excellence, they openly embrace mediocrity when it serves their own interests.

Trump’s first term was a case study in this hypocrisy. He repeatedly filled key government positions with individuals who had no business being there. Betsy DeVos, a billionaire donor with no experience in public education, was put in charge of the Department of Education. Rick Perry, who once pledged to eliminate the Department of Energy, was placed in charge of it—only to later admit he didn’t fully understand its function. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon with no background in housing policy, was appointed to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The problem wasn’t just incompetence—it was an intentional disregard for expertise in favor of ideological alignment. Trump sought appointees who would be loyal to him personally, rather than those who had the knowledge and skills to effectively lead their respective departments. This trend continued in his judicial appointments, where qualifications took a backseat to political allegiance, resulting in the nomination of judges deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association.

Now, for Trump 2.0, his potential cabinet picks reveal the same troubling pattern:

• Marco Rubio, Secretary of State – A career politician with no foreign policy leadership experience. Lacks deep diplomatic experience; more of a legislator than a negotiator.
• Kash Patel, F.B.I. Director – Has never served in a senior law enforcement position or led a large investigative agency.  Mr. Patel is a right-wing operative who has vowed to use the position to exact revenge on Mr. Trump’s adversaries.
• Pam Bondi, Attorney General – A former Florida attorney general with ties to Trump’s legal battles. Faced scrutiny for dropping a Trump University fraud investigation after receiving a $25,000 donation from Trump’s foundation.
• Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary – A Fox News host with military experience but no Pentagon leadership background. Unlike past Defense Secretaries, he has never held a senior military or civilian leadership role in the Department of Defense.
• Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary – A governor with no direct national security experience.
• Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Labor Secretary – A former congresswoman with limited labor policy experience.
• John Ratcliffe, CIA Director – A former congressman with a history of politicizing intelligence.
• Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence – A former Democratic congresswoman with a controversial record on foreign policy.
• Mehmet Oz, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator – A TV doctor known for promoting dubious medical treatments.
• Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator – A politician with a record of voting against environmental protections.
• Elise Stefanik, UN Ambassador – A Trump loyalist with little foreign policy experience.
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS Secretary – A vaccine skeptic with no public health credentials.
• Doug Burgum, Interior Secretary – A governor with strong fossil fuel industry ties.
• Doug Collins, Veterans Affairs Secretary – A former congressman with military chaplain experience but no VA leadership background.
• Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary – A hedge fund billionaire with financial conflicts of interest.
• Brooke Rollins, Agriculture Secretary – A conservative think tank executive with no agricultural policy background.
• Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary – A Wall Street executive facing potential conflicts of interest.
• Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary – A reality TV star turned congressman with no transportation policy experience.

The lineup underscores the blatant hypocrisy at play. The GOP’s claim that DEI threatens meritocracy is a smokescreen for their real objective: consolidating power and rewarding loyalty over competence. If Republicans were truly concerned about merit, they would demand expertise in governance—not just fealty to Trump.

You got played, MAGA. You elected the Keystone cops – the gang that couldn’t shoot straight!

Predicting the winner of a U.S. Presidential election is especially hard in this election year. The candidates are running close to 50-50 and voters are highly polarized. The two candidates have extremely different views of what is the Common Good.

So we choose not to make a prediction.

However, we want to vote. If this was an election in Australia, we would have to vote or pay a fee for not voting.  Furthermore, we would have to rank our candidate preferences if there are three or more candidates.

But we are American citizens. Also, we are largely independent voters.  We aren’t one-issue voter although this would make it easy.  For example, what if we cared only about abortion and voted for the candidate who favors abortion rights for women. We really want to consider all the policy differences between the two candidates.  

How can we do that?

Let’s imagine the economic, social and political outcomes that are likely to follow from each candidate being elected.

Our best step is to list the outcomes that we expect to follow with each candidate if elected. We stand ready to revise our views.  In fact, we invite you, the reader, to look at the two lists.  Feel free to add missing outcomes.

You can send your revised list to us >>  info (at) fixcapitalism dot com >>

Here are our initial lists:

What will happen if Trump wins the 2024 Presidency?

1. Economic chaos as higher prices result from Trump’s rising tariffs and irrational trade policies
2. Cutbacks and/or elimination of Social Security, Medicare, and the possible repeal of Obamacare
3. Social chaos with increased violence towards minorities, workers, and union organizers
4. Political arrests targeting opponents (Trump has also said anyone criticizing the Supreme Court should be jailed)
5. Government appointments not based on merit but ideology (existing government employees will be purged unless they are loyal to Trump)
6. Fewer dependable allies from abroad as NATO(and the EU) is abandoned; China becomes stronger as Taiwan is abandoned
7. Russian power increases as Ukraine is left to itself; US pivots to possible war against Iran
8. Climate problems worsen – pollution regulations are eliminated; drilling allowed in National Parks
9. Polarization and hatred worsen as “remigration” and forced deportation is scaled up
10. Leadership focuses on past grievances – including personal vendettas against people who didn’t support Trump
11. Possibility of mental deterioration of Trump after election – leading to the installation of JD Vance as President
12. Women lose their reproductive rights, and other civil rights as well
13. More tax cuts for the rich and corporate interests, leading to further deficits (military programs to increase at the expense of everything else)
14. Increase in Christian Nationalism and intolerance for other faiths
15. Implementation of Project 2025 and abandonment of constitutional boundaries

What will happen if Harris wins the Presidency?

1. Lower prices as Inflation continues to fall; corporate price-gouging is dissuaded
2. Major job creation with new factories and new investments in renewabletechnologies
3. Higher taxes on the super-rich and corporate profits to support better health and education – this funds Social Security and eliminates austerity measures
4. Strong dependable allies abroad – NATO is supported to create a better, secure future
5. More progress in controlling climate problems – investment in renewables and battery technologies
6. Her international experience will further peacemaking to reduce international disputes
7. Union support instead of opposition and more worker benefits including a higher minimum wage
8. Less polarization and more goodwill amongst the general population; opposition to the culture wars
9. Leadership is younger and motivating for younger generations
10. Women’s rights are secured nationally and across states; abortion rights are strengthened
11.  Church and state are kept separate and America avoids a decline into Christian Nationalism by embracing a culture of respect
12.  Increased regional investments in Latin America to encourage residents to remain in their home countries
13. Support for a two-state solution regarding Israel and Palestine
14. Support for  job-creation through small business and start-up incentives
15. Corporates and billionaires pay a fairer share of taxes

Does this comparison of likely outcomes help you choose your candidate?

ASK: Which candidate is working for the Common Good? Which candiadte is working for the future wellbeing of our children?  Which candidate has demonstrated a commitment to justice?

May the best candidate win.

Has capitalism taken us over the cliff? And why can’t we stop?

Marjorie Kelly‘s most recent book, Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises is one of the most important explanations of how wealth and power have created an unlivable world and sacrificed the future for the greed of a few.

Why aren’t the SDGs working? Why can’t our politicians do the right thing?

The first answer: wealth supremacy.

Wealth supremacy is defined as the cultural and political processes and attitudes by which persons of wealth accumulate and maintain prestige, privileges, and power that others lack.

The impact of wealth supremacy is everywhere.  Kelly explains:

It’s about status, in a culture where the wealthy are revered as the possessors of godlike powers. It’s about influence, including the power to control philanthropy. It’s about political and legal power-including the power to finance candidates, to influence lawmaking through lobbying, and to escape the justice system that ensnares those without wealth.

(And, in case you were wondering, Kelly shows us the link between wealth supremacy and white supremacy).

The second answer: capital bias.

Capital bias is defined as the idea of making as much money as possible, which primarily benefits those who are already wealthy.

Kelly explains that this bias is present in the systems and institutions that allow money to wield significant influence. Capital represents the active side of wealth. It’s the money that’s expected to keep growing endlessly. Capital is what drives wealth, and it does this through various means like making profits, setting the rules of accounting, and blurring the line between speculation and investment.

When you put wealth supremacy and capital bias together, you have the “DNA of our capital-centric economic system.” These intertwined biases shape how the system operates, grows, and sustains itself. The goal is to keep the rich at the top, safe and comfortable, and capital bias is the way they achieve this. Capital bias is the essence of the system, and this system is what we call capitalism.

The Root Cause of the Polycrisis

Kelly shows us that systemic wealth extraction has become “the deep force sapping the resilience of our society, driving, exacerbating, or profiting from the largest crises of our day.”

The interconnected world of systemic risks–climate change, biodiversity loss, deepening inequality, and rising authoritarianism are converging into what’s being called a polycrisis.  Kelly explains that while ecological overshoot is one root cause of the polycrisis, equally implicated is financial overshoot: the accumulation of too much financial wealth, even as the system remains intent on a limitless more. US financial assets are five times the size of GDP, a ballooning since the 1950s, when assets and GDP were roughly equal in size.

Kelly spells out the connections:

The long rise of irresponsible consumption has been driven by the corporate drive to maximize profits. Our efforts to tackle climate change have been blocked by the misdirection of fossil fuel companies and the capture of politics by monied interests.

As a global food crisis has unfolded, corporations have been out there using inflation to hide outsized price increases.? The white working class, left adrift by the loss of good jobs, finds its anger misdirected into racial and misogynistic hatred by the conservative forces determined to retain or reinstate the social order governed by wealth, by men, by whites.

Many of us don’t fully grasp how the complex, obscure, mathematical rules and norms of our extractive system lie behind these crises. It’s rarely explained to us how expanding pools of great wealth create and rely upon the precarity and indebtedness of the rest of us. Instead, our culture tends to view “wealth creation” as benign and wonderful. This bias toward wealth makes it difficult for us to digest the warnings of economists that the world is awash in far too much financial capital, just as the atmosphere is awash in too much carbon.

Naming the Disease that Ails Us

Kelly’s expose shows us the way out: the first step must be to name the disease, to in see how wealth supremacy lies at the very core of our economic system, and our mental map of reality itself.  The narratives we are taught perpetuate wealth supremacy – Kelly calls theme the myths of wealth supremacy.

The relentless financialization of everything leads to the decimation of workers, as capital drives labor income – and labor itself–out of the economy. She adds: Even more frightening is how the hard right, fueled by plutocratic dark money, now seeks to eradicate democracy in its quest to keep powering the machine that supports … the “unseen ruling class.”

The 7 Myths of Wealth Supremacy

Kelly maps out the seven myths of wealth supremacy—the bias that institutionalizes infinite extraction of wealth by and for the wealthy and is the hidden force behind the polycrisis:

1. The Myth of Maximizing—No amount of wealth is ever enough.
2. The Myth of Fiduciary Duty—Corporate managers’ most sacred duty is to expand capital.
3. The Myth of Corporate Governance—Corporate membership must be reserved for capital alone.
4. The Myth of the Income Statement—Income to capital must always be increased, while income to labor must always be decreased.
5. The Myth of Materiality—Profit—that is, material gain-alone is real, while social and environmental damages are not.
6. The Myth of Takings—The first duty of government must be the protection of private property.
7. The Myth of the Free Market—There should be no limits on the sphere of influence of corporations and capital.

Kelly’s explanation of how these myths block us from doing the right thing for the future is a tremendous contribution to the growing debate around regeneration, and a regenerative economy.  Kelly and Ted Howard defined the democratic economy in their book The Making of a Democratic Economy:

A democratic economy is an economy of the people, by the people, and for the people. It’s an economy that, in its fundamental design, aims to meet the essential needs of all of us, balance human consumption with the regenerative capacity of the earth, respond to the voices and concerns of regular people, and share prosperity without regard to race, gender, national origin, or wealth. At the core of a democratic economy is the Common Good, in keeping with the founding aims of democracy in politics.

The Steps towards a Democratic Economy

SO what must be done?  Kelly offers a blueprint for the shift we need:

1. Breaking the Trance: We Participate in System Change
   When We Change Our Minds
2. Pranks, New Naming, and Other Subversive Acts: Helping Others to Awaken
3. The Democratic Economy: Imagining Its Design, Seeing Its Models Demonstrated
4. Democratizing Finance: Pathways Toward a Next System of Capital
5. Beginning Where You Live: Building Community Wealth

Each of these steps is explored in detail in her magnificent book!

I’m especially struck by Kelly’s clear explanation of the differing visions we see in the politics of our time, not just in the US.  Here’s Kelly again:

“In the economic world envisioned by neoliberals, the rights-bearing citizens are corporations and investors. Democracy is about protecting human rights and the rights of nature.”

Which one do you choose?

Repurposing the Corporation

In our book on regeneration, we argue that the corporation is obsolete. Kelly agrees. Here’s her take on what needs to happen:

The challenge is to envision, and create, private enterprises and investing processes that remove capital bias. Enterprises may still be profit making; that’s an imperative of staying in business. What is dangerous, … is the unfettered aim of profit maximizing.

There’s much, much more.  We’re running out of time, and Kelly’s timely book is a force for the change we so desperately need.

About Marjorie Kelly

Marjorie Kelly is a Distinguished Senior Fellow with The Democracy Collaborative and has authored several books before this one, including The Making of a Democratic Economy with Ted Howard, Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, and The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy

Kelly argues instead for the democratization of ownership: public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more. And she sketches the outlines of a nonextractive capitalism that would be subordinate to the public interest. This is an ambitious reimagining of the very foundations of our economy and society.

Kelly and her colleagues at The Democracy Collaborative played a pivotal role in advising and designing the launch of the Fund for Employee Ownership, now hosted at the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland. Originally consisting of a network of three worker-owned firms, the fund has expanded to include four new firms through conversions. Additionally, Kelly co-authored research on the role of capital in scaling up employee ownership and conducted research and convening on the model of 50 employee-owned firms that are also B Corporations, which she terms “next-generation enterprises.” Jay Coen Gilbert credits Kelly with inspiring the creation of the B Movement of B Corporations through her book “The Divine Right of Capital.” Prior to her current role, she served as a Fellow at the Tellus Institute and co-founded and served as president of Business Ethics magazine.

GET the BOOK >> Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises

Christian Sarkar is the co-author (with Philip Kotler and Enrico Foglia) of REGENERATION: The Future of Community in a Permacrisis World – IDEA BITE PRESS (May, 2023)

The real goal of billionaire-funded Social Security rhetoric is to prevent the public from drawing a connection between Social Security’s finances, the working-class retirement crisis, and the ludicrous amounts of wealth held by America’s billionaires.

Consider the billionaire.

I’m not talking about people who were born into wealth; they have their own issues. Let us specifically consider the so-called “self-made” wealthy person, the driven CEO or investor. He (and it is almost always a “he” in our society) is likely to share some characteristics with other billionaires and members of his cohort. Social science and simple observation tell us that these powerful figures are more likely than other people to be:

●greedy

●addicted to making money (which is psychologically distinct from greed)

●obsessed with making money, which leads to bad behavior

●surprisingly worried about the money they have

●less empathetic and more self-interested than other people

●breakers of certain laws and social norms

●less charitable on a percentage basis

●very politically influential

●and, determined to cut Social Security.

About that last item: While there may be exceptions here and there, the billionaire class overall is overwhelmingly opposed to Social Security. Most wealthy people would, in fact, like to see its benefits slashed. A 2013 study compared the political opinions of the wealthy with those of voters as a whole and found “major disagreement” between the two groups regarding Social Security. Among all voters, there was a 46 percent gap in favor of expanding its benefits rather than cutting them. The wealthy had the opposite take; they favored cuts, rather than expansion, by a gap of 33 percent.

The tax question surely accounts for some of the billionaires’ antipathy toward Social Security but, even so, their feelings seem to run unusually high on the subject.

Strikingly, the richer someone was, the likelier they were to want Social Security cuts. Each additional $10 million in personal wealth added measurably to the desire for Social Security cuts. The authors note that “this finding may help explain why cutting these popular programs has remained on the political agenda.”

Ya thinks?

Billionaires pay for think tanks and news outlets which fill the airways with lurid talk about the program’s costs. Billionaires and corporate CEOS have more political influence than any other part of society. That’s why, despite the outcome of the recent ‘debt ceiling’ crisis, they still represent an existential threat to Social Security.

Distraction

The real goal of billionaire-funded Social Security rhetoric is to prevent the public from drawing a connection between Social Security’s finances, the working-class retirement crisis, and the ludicrous amounts of wealth held by America’s billionaires.

We are supposed to be horrified, for example, by the gap between Social Security’s income ($1.244 trillion for this year) and its cash outlays ($1.237 trillion). We are not supposed to notice that Michael Bloomberg’s wealth gain since September of last year ($17.7 billion*) would cover almost the entire 2023 shortfall of $22 billion all by itself, or that the entire amount could be recouped by throwing in Bill Gates’ gains during the same period.

That’s right: the nine-month income of two billionaires alone would erase Social Security’s entire actuarial imbalance for a full year. (And 2022 was a bad year for billionaires; “bad,” of course, being a very relative term.)

A trillion-plus dollars sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But the personal wealth of just ten Americans would cover Social Security’s entire budget for an entire year. Not that it would, at least under current law. The law dictates that Social Security’s costs be covered by a payroll tax levied for that purpose alone. But a wealth tax, or something like it, could be a popular option if the program faces a real funding crisis.

There are already sound proposals to “scrap the cap” on income that is taxed for Social Security, and to include investment and other sources of income in that tax. Billionaires would face a tax hike under these proposals, although their total taxes would still be well below mid-20^thcentury norms.

The tax question surely accounts for some of the billionaires’ antipathy toward Social Security but, even so, their feelings seem to run unusually high on the subject.

What They Say

The billionaires’ vituperation toward Social Security can be seen in Elon Musk’s ill-informed tweet about it (which The Intercept’s Jon Schwarzably dissected). It can be found in CEO conclaves like “Fix the Debt,” where the heads of corporations like JetBlue, Bridgestone, and Microsoft, as well as government largesse recipients like Honeywell, GE, Boeing, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs assembled to attack programs “entitlements.”

It oozes through op-eds like this one from predatory billionaire Steve Schwarzman, who magnanimously promised to “share the pain” of financial sacrifice with elderly Social Security recipients living on a few hundred dollars a month. (5.5 million seniors reportedly faced food insecurity in 2021; Schwarzman “took home a record $1.27 billion for 2022”.)

The goal is to frame Social Security cuts in false, technocratic terms as the inevitable outcome of simple arithmetic. They want it to look as if the decision to cut benefits made itself. That way, they leave no fingerprints on the corpse of retirement security.

It’s reflected in Mitt Romney’s bitter words at a 2012 fundraiser, when he told a roomful of fellow rich people that “they”—it’s always “they,” not “us”—”they believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, that they are entitled: to health care, to food, to housing, you name it.”

Added Romney, “That’s an entitlement.”

Most of all, it can be seen in works of the late billionaire Peter G. Peterson, a conservative hedge funder and former Nixon cabinet member who lavished money on politicians from both parties in pursuit of his curious obsession: to reduce government spending, with a special focus on cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The foundation, astroturf groups, and think tanks Peterson created have worked for decades to elevate the national debt above all other policymaking concerns, regardless of the effect on working Americans, with a special focus on cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The goal is to frame Social Security cuts in false, technocratic terms as the inevitable outcome of simple arithmetic. They want it to look as if the decision to cut benefits made itself. That way, they leave no fingerprints on the corpse of retirement security.

Why They Hate

But why? Why do the ultra-wealthy hate Social Security so much? It’s not just self-interest, although there is certainly that. The answer lies in the anthropology, as well as the accountancy, of the billionaire class. Social Security represents everything the typical billionaire loathes, including community, solidarity, and the empowerment of the working class.

Social Security isn’t charity, and that galls them. Social Security is run for working people – people who know they have earned those benefits.

Billionaire CEOs belong to a group whose membership is earned through obsession, greed, competitiveness, and lack of empathy. It is a population self-selected for sociopathy and work-life imbalance. It’s hard to make a billion dollars without cheating people, and it’s hard to cheat people when you see them – really see them, through the eyes of understanding and emotion. That’s why someone like Schwarzman can equate his own “sacrifice” (of what, a fifth or sixth yacht?) with the suffering of an ailing grandmother trying to get by on $75 per week.

It’s impossible to bargain with them by telling them they already have enough money to live like an emperor. At that level, money works the way social media likes work for some other people: it doesn’t affect their lives in any material way, but it boosts their sense of worth and validation. That’s why they’ll never quit. That’s why they’ll never say, “I have enough.” There is always someone else who is gaining on them every time they stop to eat, sleep, make love, express an emotion …

Sure, they’ll write a check to charity from time to time. That’s good for the ego. It brings applause, praise, black-tie dinners, and fawning requests for more money. But Social Security isn’t charity, and that galls them. Social Security is run for working people – people who know they have earned those benefits. Pay a tax, with no effusive speeches or stroking of the ego for America’s 0.001 percent? The idea offends their sense of self-importance.

This is why they love to hear politicians like Alan Simpson insult Social Security recipients by calling them “greedy geezers.” They think they’ve won life’s race. People who have lived other kinds of lives – filled, perhaps, with love and kindness rather than competition and exploitation – are losers to them. In their minds, people like that are nothing. For them to ask anything of the wealthy is, well, impudence.

Controlling the Discourse

Unfortunately, the billionaire class increasingly controls US news outlets. Their obsession has warped the national discourse for decades. It has wormed its way into the media ecosystem, as billionaire-funded think tanks, lobbying groups, and politicians flood the airwaves and newspapers with false talking points about the “unaffordability” of such programs. “Both Medicare and Social Security are going broke and taking a larger share of the budget in the process,” ABC’s Martha Raddatz once told the national audience for a vice presidential debate. (Neither half of that statement is true.)

Their obsession is reflected in a news industry that has been increasingly centralized under billionaire control. Media elites sometimes sounded like jilted lovers when they reported that neither party pushed for Social Security or Medicare cuts in the debt ceiling deal.

The Washington Post, which often channels billionaire views on Social Security, ran a must-read article under the headline, “How a billionaires boys’ club came to dominate the public square.” As Michael Scherer and Sarah Ellison note,

“Technological change and the fortunes it created have given a vanishingly small club of massively wealthy individuals the ability to play arbiter, moderator and bankroller of not only the information that feeds the nation’s discourse but also the architecture that undergirds it.”

The billionaires’ obsession is also reflected at non-profit outlets like NPR—which, despite the word “public” in its name, relies heavily on corporate and billionaire donors for survival.

Dialing for Dollars

What the billionaires say, usually goes. “… (E)conomic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” a 2014 study found, “while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

Things have only gotten worse since then. Billionaires poured nearly $1 billion ($881,000,000) into the last round of congressional elections. How does this affect policy? Politicians who carry out the wishes of billionaires, corporate CEOs, and lobbyists raise more money, of course. But there is also a process of acculturation, where elected officials become so steeped in the world of elite consensus that they come to believe in it themselves.

Consider, for example, the infamous slide deck which advised incoming Congressional Democrats to spend four hours a day on “call time” and one hour per day on “strategic outreach,” both of which involve raising money for their next campaign. Imagine spending four to five hours a day calling people who despise Social Security, and it soon becomes clear that only a miracle has protected Social Security so far—and miracles don’t last forever.

It would be a mistake to assume that the recent “debt ceiling deal” means that Social Security is safe.

Unless you’re a candidate with mass support like Bernie Sanders, campaign fundraising requires constant immersion in the anti-Social Security mindset of the ultra-wealthy—which, when combined with the GOP’s longstanding hostility to the program, means that the people who make our laws are steeped in a worldview that considers “entitlement programs” expensive and superfluous.

That’s why it would be a mistake to assume that the recent “debt ceiling deal” means that Social Security is safe. Neither party wanted to take the unpopular step of calling for benefit cuts in this round of negotiations. But the billionaires and corporations who drive our political system won’t stop trying. That’s how they got where they are; by persisting until they win.

Previous attempts to cut Social Security have come in the form of ‘bipartisan commissions’ whose role was to obscure the process and shield both parties from blame. (Mitt Romney’s TRUST Act would follow the same playbook, as would other billionaire-backed proposals.) The White House has correctly called these commissions “death panels,” which may be one reason why billionaires primarily contributed to Republican candidates in the last election cycle. But public opinion must be mobilized to prevent any further softening of President Biden’s position on Social Security, before the billionaires let their money do the talking in the 2024 race.

Because, when it comes to money in politics, Bob Dylan’s words hold true: money doesn’t talk, it swears.

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a freelance writer. Much of his work can be found on eskow.substack.com. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media. He is a senior advisor with Social Security Works.

This article was licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

In our book – REGENERATION: The Future of Community in a Permacrisis World, we point out that in the US today, we see that our politicians can’t even stand up to the NRA, let alone address climate collapse.  Instead, they distract us with culture wars and fake controversy – banning books, and literally canceling democracy via gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Shouldn’t our governments be promoting the Common Good?  Isn’t that the definition of regenerative governance?  Here’s a citizen’s checklist we compiled – does your government check the boxes?

If you were to grade your elected government officials against their support  for the Common Good, you might get a better idea if they really care about you and your children’s children.

Christian Sarkar, Philip Kotler, and Enrico Foglia are the co-founders of The Regenerative Marketing Institute, and the joint authors of REGENERATION: The Future of Community in a Permacrisis World.

Could organizations use artificial intelligence language models such as ChatGPT to induce voters to behave in specific ways?

Sen. Josh Hawley asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this question in a May 16, 2023, U.S. Senate hearing on artificial intelligence. Altman replied that he was indeed concerned that some people might use language models to manipulate, persuade and engage in one-on-one interactions with voters.

Altman did not elaborate, but he might have had something like this scenario in mind. Imagine that soon, political technologists develop a machine called Clogger – a political campaign in a black box. Clogger relentlessly pursues just one objective: to maximize the chances that its candidate – the campaign that buys the services of Clogger Inc. – prevails in an election.

While platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube use forms of AI to get users to spend more time on their sites, Clogger’s AI would have a different objective: to change people’s voting behavior.

How Clogger would work

As a political scientist and a legal scholar who study the intersection of technology and democracy, we believe that something like Clogger could use automation to dramatically increase the scale and potentially the effectiveness of behavior manipulation and microtargeting techniques that political campaigns have used since the early 2000s. Just as advertisers use your browsing and social media history to individually target commercial and political ads now, Clogger would pay attention to you – and hundreds of millions of other voters – individually.

It would offer three advances over the current state-of-the-art algorithmic behavior manipulation. First, its language model would generate messages — texts, social media and email, perhaps including images and videos — tailored to you personally. Whereas advertisers strategically place a relatively small number of ads, language models such as ChatGPT can generate countless unique messages for you personally – and millions for others – over the course of a campaign.

Second, Clogger would use a technique called reinforcement learning to generate a succession of messages that become increasingly more likely to change your vote. Reinforcement learning is a machine-learning, trial-and-error approach in which the computer takes actions and gets feedback about which work better in order to learn how to accomplish an objective. Machines that can play Go, Chess and many video games better than any human have used reinforcement learning.

Third, over the course of a campaign, Clogger’s messages could evolve in order to take into account your responses to the machine’s prior dispatches and what it has learned about changing others’ minds. Clogger would be able to carry on dynamic “conversations” with you – and millions of other people – over time. Clogger’s messages would be similar to ads that follow you across different websites and social media.

The nature of AI

Three more features – or bugs – are worth noting.

First, the messages that Clogger sends may or may not be political in content. The machine’s only goal is to maximize vote share, and it would likely devise strategies for achieving this goal that no human campaigner would have thought of.

One possibility is sending likely opponent voters information about nonpolitical passions that they have in sports or entertainment to bury the political messaging they receive. Another possibility is sending off-putting messages – for example incontinence advertisements – timed to coincide with opponents’ messaging. And another is manipulating voters’ social media friend groups to give the sense that their social circles support its candidate.

Second, Clogger has no regard for truth. Indeed, it has no way of knowing what is true or false. Language model “hallucinations” are not a problem for this machine because its objective is to change your vote, not to provide accurate information.

Third, because it is a black box type of artificial intelligence, people would have no way to know what strategies it uses.

Clogocracy

If the Republican presidential campaign were to deploy Clogger in 2024, the Democratic campaign would likely be compelled to respond in kind, perhaps with a similar machine. Call it Dogger. If the campaign managers thought that these machines were effective, the presidential contest might well come down to Clogger vs. Dogger, and the winner would be the client of the more effective machine.

Political scientists and pundits would have much to say about why one or the other AI prevailed, but likely no one would really know. The president will have been elected not because his or her policy proposals or political ideas persuaded more Americans, but because he or she had the more effective AI. The content that won the day would have come from an AI focused solely on victory, with no political ideas of its own, rather than from candidates or parties.

In this very important sense, a machine would have won the election rather than a person. The election would no longer be democratic, even though all of the ordinary activities of democracy – the speeches, the ads, the messages, the voting and the counting of votes – will have occurred.

The AI-elected president could then go one of two ways. He or she could use the mantle of election to pursue Republican or Democratic party policies. But because the party ideas may have had little to do with why people voted the way that they did – Clogger and Dogger don’t care about policy views – the president’s actions would not necessarily reflect the will of the voters. Voters would have been manipulated by the AI rather than freely choosing their political leaders and policies.

Another path is for the president to pursue the messages, behaviors and policies that the machine predicts will maximize the chances of reelection. On this path, the president would have no particular platform or agenda beyond maintaining power. The president’s actions, guided by Clogger, would be those most likely to manipulate voters rather than serve their genuine interests or even the president’s own ideology.

Avoiding Clogocracy

It would be possible to avoid AI election manipulation if candidates, campaigns and consultants all forswore the use of such political AI. We believe that is unlikely. If politically effective black boxes were developed, the temptation to use them would be almost irresistible. Indeed, political consultants might well see using these tools as required by their professional responsibility to help their candidates win. And once one candidate uses such an effective tool, the opponents could hardly be expected to resist by disarming unilaterally.

Enhanced privacy protection would help. Clogger would depend on access to vast amounts of personal data in order to target individuals, craft messages tailored to persuade or manipulate them, and track and retarget them over the course of a campaign. Every bit of that information that companies or policymakers deny the machine would make it less effective.

Another solution lies with elections commissions. They could try to ban or severely regulate these machines. There’s a fierce debate about whether such “replicant” speech, even if it’s political in nature, can be regulated. The U.S.’s extreme free speech tradition leads many leading academics to say it cannot.

But there is no reason to automatically extend the First Amendment’s protection to the product of these machines. The nation might well choose to give machines rights, but that should be a decision grounded in the challenges of today, not the misplaced assumption that James Madison’s views in 1789 were intended to apply to AI.

European Union regulators are moving in this direction. Policymakers revised the European Parliament’s draft of its Artificial Intelligence Act to designate “AI systems to influence voters in campaigns” as “high risk” and subject to regulatory scrutiny.

One constitutionally safer, if smaller, step, already adopted in part by European internet regulators and in California, is to prohibit bots from passing themselves off as people. For example, regulation might require that campaign messages come with disclaimers when the content they contain is generated by machines rather than humans.

This would be like the advertising disclaimer requirements – “Paid for by the Sam Jones for Congress Committee” – but modified to reflect its AI origin: “This AI-generated ad was paid for by the Sam Jones for Congress Committee.” A stronger version could require: “This AI-generated message is being sent to you by the Sam Jones for Congress Committee because Clogger has predicted that doing so will increase your chances of voting for Sam Jones by 0.0002%.” At the very least, we believe voters deserve to know when it is a bot speaking to them, and they should know why, as well.

The possibility of a system like Clogger shows that the path toward human collective disempowerment may not require some superhuman artificial general intelligence. It might just require overeager campaigners and consultants who have powerful new tools that can effectively push millions of people’s many buttons.

Archon Fung, Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government, Harvard Kennedy School and Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. IMAGE: Eric Smalley, TCUS; Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr; Taymaz Valley/Flickr, CC BY-ND

“The MAGA House is more interested in sweeping any corruption amongst their ranks under the rug and performing political stunts against the Biden administration than they are doing anything constructive,” said one critic.

Government watchdog groups on Monday blasted plans by U.S. House Republicans to gut an independent, nonpartisan ethics office that was established 15 years ago to review allegations of misconduct against members of the chamber and their staffers.

The GOP is set to have a narrow House majority once new members are sworn in on Tuesday. The party’s proposed changes to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) were among various controversial policies included in the rules package for the 118th Congress that was unveiled late Sunday.

As Politico‘s Nicholas Wu summarized on Twitter, the Republican proposals “would effectively sack most of the Democratic-appointed board members by instituting term limits and make it much harder to hire staff.”

in the House Republican Rules package – a provision tucked into its section on the Office of Congressional Ethics would effectively sack most of the Democratic-appointed board members by instituting term limits and make it much harder to hire staff https://t.co/FqaG3nhQLI pic.twitter.com/Hl9Kpzbmet

— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) January 2, 2023

Wu was among the political observers and ethics experts who pointed out that the changes would likely make it harder to investigate U.S. Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), who was caught lying about his education, employment history, and religious background. Although Democrats have called for Santos to step aside over his campaign trail lies and the Republican Nassau County district attorney has launched an investigation into him, the incoming congressman is still expected to take office on Tuesday.

The 1st thing the GOP is planning to do when they vote on their rules package is gut Congressional ethics oversight I call it the Santos protection package—it would cut off one important avenue for investigating him Call your GOP rep (if you have) to object 2022253121 https://t.co/cFuPED77ns — Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) January 2, 2023

Kyle Herrig, president of the group Accountable.US, noted in a statement that the move could help not only Santos but also members such as Republican Congressman Jim Jordan (Ohio), who—along with GOP Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), and Scott Perry (Texas)—was referred to the House Committee on Ethics for ignoring a subpoena from the select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“It’s telling that one of the very first actions of the incoming MAGA Republican-led House will be to kneecap a bipartisan office that oversees congressional ethics,” said Herrig. “This is about protecting their ethically challenged members like fraudster George Santos or January 6 subpoena-defying Jim Jordan from accountability—or perhaps in anticipation of a new wave of corruption allegations and ethics violations from other MAGA extremists.”

“There is certainly no good reason to make it easier for members to get away with ethics violations, which only invites bad behavior,” he added. “It sends a clear message that the MAGA House is more interested in sweeping any corruption amongst their ranks under the rug and performing political stunts against the Biden administration than they are doing anything constructive on behalf of the American people.”

This is a big deal: when the new Congress convenes tomorrow, the incoming Republican majority is set to vote on a rules package gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics.

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) January 2, 2023

When Republicans tried to gut it in 2017, they backed down after significant public outrage.

We can do that again.

Call your member of Congress at 202-224-3121 and tell them not to attack the Office of Congressional Ethics.

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) January 2, 2023

Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman highlighted in a statement that “OCE is a bipartisan ethics office that helps monitor and report on ethics issues involving members of Congress, and frequently makes its recommendations to the House Ethics Committee on a unanimous vote. It has a proven track record of enhancing transparency and enforcement of ethics rules and has gained widespread support among the American public.”

“These are measures that will render the ethics office ineffectual and which no member, from either party, should support,” Holman said of the GOP’s proposed changes. “Today’s Republican Party is rife with ethical transgressions. And it is now trying to make it much harder to hold members of Congress accountable to the standards of decency we expect.”

Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Original here >> Jessica Corbett is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Full Bio >

How did you decide to run for office and what makes your campaign different?

Unfortunately, our political world is not in sync with reality – especially when it comes to the concerns people have with the impact of fires, floods, draught, and the unbearable temperatures that are coming. Instead, we see a dismissal of climate science and an intentional obfuscation of facts to slow the adoption of legislation to fight climate change.

We’ve created  a psychological climate of eco-anxiety for the young. I know this because I have three children.

When Caterina Chinnici [the candidate running for president of the Sicilian Assembly] asked me to run on her ticket, I refused at first, but my children and my husband both convinced me to run.  My campaign is about regeneration, and I believe it is truly the only way forward.

What do you mean by regeneration?

My understanding of regeneration is based on what we learned from COVID. As you know, COVID destroyed our tourist economy in Sicily.  Now, with Sicilian families in trouble and our planet in danger, we cannot simply go through another cynical cycle of politics.  What this means that we must rethink the very idea of “left” versus “right” and come together to solve problems.

We have to act. For our children and our children’s children.

Last year, when I was councilor for economic actives of the Municipality of Palermo, the Mayor and I invited the Regenerative Marketing Institute to Palermo; we wanted to learn about different approaches to community regeneration which went beyond the sustainability and circular-economy paradigms which sound good on paper, but achieve little in terms of actually stopping our climate crisis.

We also learned that the climate crisis is also an economic crisis and a social crisis. In a polycrisis world, we cannot focus on one issue at the expense of another.  The real shift is what we do to move from an economy of exploitation and extraction to a regenerative economy.  Nature must become a priority. Or we will no longer have an island to live on.

We must ask ourselves – is politics making our world better or worse?  Our communities?  Our future…  If the answer is no, then we must make the shift to regeneration.

Can you give us some details?

We use a metaphor based on the olive tree – which is a familiar one for us in the Mediterranean:

What we call the “tree of regeneration” is simply an olive tree which connects the community together, from the foundation or roots – based on tolerance, rights, and justice, to the three fruits we hold dear: family, honest work, and nature.  Our communities are connected – and how we treat the weak is a measure of our strength.

How would we act if we were truly serious about doing something about the climate crisis?

Would we keep doing what we’ve been doing?  Paying lip-service to the Planet and little else?

Why are you using comics in your campaign?  

How do we get young people to listen to our vision?

By including them in the vision-making process.

But first we must explain what we stand for in a way that attracts attention, and our comics do that for sure.

How did you come up with all the answers?

That’s it. We don’t have the answers.  But we Sicilians do have a spirit to solve problems.  That’s why Sicily has survived for over the centuries.

I’m not saying the left has all the answers either. But in Italy, the parties on the right were until recently telling their constituents to cut the South loose – that we didn’t belong to Italy. And now they’ve shifted from south-bashing to immigrant-bashing.  The reality is we need to all work on finding solutions, not polarizing people with hate.

Our vision is not division.  It’s regeneration.

To young we say: bring us your ideas.  We hear you!

Let’s see together what we can do to regenerate Sicily.  I invite your readers to learn more at cettinamartorana.it.

Thanks.  

INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN SARKAR