You can't deliver solutions without power

As we approach the November midterms it should be increasingly clear that to effect the transformative change the American people seem desperate for, can only be achieved through a power shift.

Matt Chase illustration for Foreign Policy

Before I begin, my attention was drawn yesterday by a subscriber to an outstanding post by This Will Hold which is linked below:

Update: Third Whistleblower—Israel, the Stolen 2024 Election, and the Epstein Files

There is absolutely no question that this piece does a phenomenal job of making the case that there are serious doubts about the validity of the 2024 election. In this respect, I would urge every one of my readers to read this long but very important piece, which brings together investigative work that is both detailed, comprehensive and compelling. It brings into question whether we can trust election results, indeed whether they have been manipulated for decades.

I have been aware of these claims and the research that’s been going on in particular since the Democrats lost the 2024 election. I have not tied my flag to this mast for one good reason. We are operating in a rigged system, one in which, tragically, Democrats are complicit. Let me be very clear: the aim of my assessment here is not to cast doubt on the excellent investigative work, but rather to focus on the institutional rupture that has brought us to this point.

My simple question is, if we assume that all the research proves beyond reasonable doubt that the 2004, 2016 and 2024 elections were stolen from the Democrats and that in 2008, 2012 and 2020 the country jumped out of the cycle of theft, the only conclusion can be that those wins were too big to fix. The assertion is that Democrats should have been in power continuously since 2004. Now I’ve been around politics all my working life, and the chances of that are, shall we say, ‘remote.’

There is no question that free and fair elections are the foundation of democracy, and if there is an issue with ‘election integrity’, it is right and proper that no stone should be left unturned in establishing any vulnerabilities in the process. On one hand, the claim is that election fraud is not an issue, and we see this statement repeated time and time again. It’s something my own research shows to be the case, so are we saying that election manipulation is only an issue when the party that lost makes the claim? That’s frankly a preposterous argument.

If the claim is that Democrats should have been in power from 2004 to this day, then the only conclusion that can be drawn from this extensive research is that Republicans have a Trojan horse in the Democratic camp that enables Republicans to periodically steal power, because that appears to be the claim being made here. This is why I have not nailed my flag to the mast. It has to be said that I might be completely wrong and Republicans have been irrelevant since 2004, but if that’s the conclusion you draw, can I suggest you stop taking your mind-altering drugs?

Until we start viewing this problem through a political structural problem lens, we are destined to never recover from the tyranny we are being subjected to in this moment. The obvious question is, if we assume everything in this research is correct, then what? Is every piece of Republican legislation invalid? Should the tax cuts be returned, the deregulation be declared invalid, the dead soldiers killed in Republican wars resurrected? I’m failing to understand what the objective is other than to ‘be right’. Let me assure you, being right does not fix the existential threat the world faces as a result of the election of the monster currently sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

Does anyone seriously believe that this regime built on lies, cruelty and division will have a road to Damascus moment and admit what they did? Pigs might fly. The importance of this research is not to change the past, because nobody can do that. It’s to learn the lessons arising from these findings in order to build more robust guidelines for the future. The family struggling to put food on the table and fill their car with gas could not give a shit about people making the case that they were right. They need hope that things are going to get better. Proof of stolen elections does not pay the bills. At best, it can make people angry and ensure that when they vote in November, the margin of rebuke for this regime is beyond manipulation, and that’s why I think this story needs to be told to every American.

I’m a researcher to my very core; it’s in my DNA not to accept the narrative I’m being told by anyone with a political vested interest. However, I’m a pragmatist, and I understand that while we can learn lessons from the past, these lessons don’t define the future; what we do DOES. Then comes the real challenge: what do people like me do to effect change? It’s no secret I get extremely frustrated that the truth has become secondary to self-preservation and social pole climbing. I have, however, come to terms with the limitations of what I do based on the premise that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

One thing we know for sure, is that we can’t change the past, but what we can do is hope to have some influence, however small, on shaping the future. I wish all those invested in the injustices of the past every success on their chosen path. I am happy to feature their work and their findings, but for me the past is the past, and on the issue of changing US politics, if you can’t change the future, what hope do you have of changing the past?

This brings us nicely to the continuation of my piece from yesterday:

The fashionable statement of the moment is ‘Tax the rich.’ The whole reason its traction is limited is that the statement opens the door to the rich claiming we are all jealous of their wealth, and that it’s a spiteful strap line from a segment of society powerless to hold them to account.

On the surface, they have a point; the top 10% pay around 97% of all federal individual income taxes; that’s not hyperbole, it’s a simple FACT. The top 1% pay between 40 and 50% of the taxes, while the bottom 50% pay just 3%. So what on earth are we all complaining about?

To quote myself from the piece below:

The economic foundations are compromised, and for decades politicians have helped the rich cover up the structural economic damage that has resulted from their complicity. The answer is in the numbers: since 1970, the gap has grown exponentially to a point now where the top 10% own close to 70% of the nation’s wealth.

This is NOT a story about income; it’s a story about accumulated wealth, and it should be wealth that is the focus of our attention. There has long been a constant drumbeat from the right about political lawfare and two-tier justice, which is ironic given it appears Todd Blanche now looks set to be confirmed as the most dangerous threat to the rule of law in American history. People of colour in America have long been familiar with real ‘two-tier justice’; from traffic stops to obtaining loans and jobs, they know what it feels like to suffer the injustice of a two-tier society, as do those from the LGBTQ+ communities.

What is left unspoken is the longstanding two-tier tax system, which successive governments of both parties have allowed the rich to write their own rules. Rules that for sure don’t benefit the average working man. They reside on the tax concierge floor, while the bottom 90% of Americans live in the Tired Tax Motel, where the sheets get changed as often as the national minimum wage increases, and there are no refunds. The check-in desk has been replaced by a touchscreen operating competitive pricing for your accommodation, and tomorrow you might have to bid for a shift at work. For these privileges, your taxes are deducted at source, and if you’re lucky, you might be able to afford healthcare insurance.

Salaried Americans or hourly workers’ participation in tax collection is mandatory. If you do as you’re told, you might receive the crumbs from the rich man’s table resulting from the tax payments you never see in your wage packet. Welcome to the land of the free, where hard work and pulling yourself from the bootstraps you can no longer afford mean your kids go to bed hungry. Meanwhile, you don’t have the money to fill up your car to do anything but drive to work, then rinse and repeat. Does that sound to you like a fair society? It’s NOT, and that’s exactly how it’s designed to be.

The rich believe they contribute their share to society through the taxes paid by their employees, and that without their wealth and job creation, there is no society. That’s the narrative they force-feed Americans with the help of government EVERY DAY. You’re the working class, because there really is no middle class anymore; the top 1% hollowed that out a long time ago. Everything you do in life is now for the benefit of them. Did their wealth collapse under Biden because he didn’t hand them $4 trillion in tax cuts? NO, they just got obscenely rich a little slower. Let’s be very clear: the total accumulated national debt of the United States is now fast approaching $40 trillion, and 28% of that debt was added under Trump, with $3.1 trillion added just since his return to the White House.

To put that in perspective, the debt he’s added could have eradicated homelessness ($30 billion), eradicated food insecurity ($200 billion - Note that SNAP costs before Trump decided it would be best to starve American poor kids were $110 billion, so I threw in $90 billion given the argument about costs based on the $110 billion number). Provide a debt-free college education to those from families earning less than $125,000 ($63 billion over a 10-year budget cycle). End poverty altogether; this is a little more complex, but to shift every American above the official poverty line is estimated to cost around $168 billion. If you want to drill into the costs, take a look at this piece by Michael Hartnett for Scioto Analysis, which deals with the baseline.

However, if you want to really tackle the eradication of poverty, then we’re talking in excess of $1 trillion every year. Ironically, that’s close to the amount of tax evaded by those at the top of the economic food chain every year. That’s, of course, before the trillions in tax breaks they receive under every Republican administration. My friends, this is not rocket science; it’s common sense. Once you eradicate poverty, there is no cost for SNAP or child poverty. If you provide free college education to those families on lower incomes, you increase social mobility, and the savings are spent inside the domestic economy. It’s self-financing, or ‘revenue neutral’ as those smart folks refer to it.

While I accept these are numbers many might dispute, the bottom line is I am not making this a progressive obsession; I am merely highlighting the reality of the situation we find ourselves in. These economic realities that low earners and the vulnerable in society face are not through necessity; they are through choice, and that’s the critical point. Don’t you find it strange that we can’t come up with $2 trillion to fix a structural societal problem, but we can hand $4 trillion to the economic apex predators in tax cuts?

We’ll pick this up, and I’ll conclude my thoughts on solutions tomorrow; I just wanted to spend some time today on the issue of stolen elections, etc, because I know it exercises many, and I didn’t want it to go unaddressed by me. I also think that the tax solution needs a whole piece on its own to provide sufficient detail. Let’s catch up tomorrow and wrap up my solutions series.

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