Citizen Cartwright

Biden’s concern as he departs: Oligarchy of the ultrawealthy

In his Oval Office farewell speech Wednesday night, the president said, “I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern … the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. 

 

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

 

(Federal Reserve data show that the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans hold more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50 percent combined, The Associated Press reports.) 

 

“More than a century ago, the American people stood up to the robber barons back then and busted the trusts,” Biden said. “They didn’t punish the wealthy. They just made the wealthy play by the rules everybody else had. Workers want rights to earn their fair share. You know, they were dealt into the deal, and it helped put us on the path to building the largest middle class, the most prosperous century any nation the world has ever seen. We’ve got to do that again.”

 

Biden said: “You know, in his farewell address [in 1961], President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us that about, and I quote, ‘The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.’”

 

“I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”

 

Biden also said: “We need to get dark money — that’s that hidden funding behind too many campaign contributions — we need to get it out of our politics. We need to enact an 18-year time limit, term limit, time and term, for the strongest ethics — and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court. We need to ban members of Congress from trading stock while they are in the Congress. We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office.”

 

Biden expressed his thanks to the American people and said that after his 50 years of public service, “Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it, too.”

 

Here is the full transcript of Biden’s speech, from The New York Times.

A hopeful look at democracy

“Democracy is not facing a global extinction event” headlines a New York Times opinion article by longtime Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs reporter Serge Schmemann, who currently is a member of the Times editorial board.

“The election of Donald Trump and news of political turmoil in many other democracies has created the impression that liberal democracy is everywhere in retreat in the face of authoritarians feeding on discontent over economic woes, rapid social change, mass migration, disinformation and general malaise,” Schmemann says.

“But as The Times’s Berlin bureau chief Jim Tankersley suggested in a recent analysis of Germany’s plight, 'not all malaise is the same.' Popular discontent in Western democracies may have broadly similar sources, but the political consequences are as different as the leaders and systems in each country.” 

“Scanning the global political storms separately reveals their unique characteristics and challenges, and the way many are rooted more in a backlash against incumbent leaders than in a new embrace of the far right,” Schmemann says. 

And “the history of the United States — the lodestar of modern democracies — is hardly one of unity and harmony until the rise of Trumpism,” he says.

“That the threats to democracy are diverse may not be a great consolation to those worried about where it is headed, and there’s every reason to remain vigilant,” Schmemann says. “But it should be reassuring that democracy is not facing a global extinction event but more a patchwork of storms, and that democracies have usually found a way to weather them.”

Thank you, Jimmy Carter

Today is the national day of mourning for the former president.

 

It’s been very touching for me to work on this blog in the middle of the night while watching BBC News’ live coverage of people filing past Carter’s casket as he lies in state at the U.S. Capitol.

 

In the BBC audio that’s looping are comments by Carter’s grandson, Jason, who talks about Carter’s “foundational respect for human beings” and his value of democracy and common humanity in pursuit of shared goals. 

 

The lying in state ends at 7 a.m., and the national funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. 

 

President Biden is to delivery the eulogy. All of the living presidents are expected to attend.

 

“President Jimmy Carter had no idea what he was going to do next when he delivered his farewell address to the nation in January 1981,” says The New York Times. "Defeated after a single term by Ronald Reagan, he simply told Americans that he would leave the White House and 'take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president — the title of citizen.’”

 

“There is little question among historians that Citizen Carter carved a new mold for life after the Oval Office and that his post-presidency was the most consequential in modern history,” the Times says.

 

A Times editorial published when Carter died on Dec. 29 is headlined, “America needs more Jimmy Carters.”

 

“Up to now, Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at age 100 in Plains, Ga., has been judged to be a middle-of-the-pack president, his one term in office remembered for circumstances and events that simply overwhelmed him: the seizure in Iran of 52 American hostages, the bungled attempt to rescue them, the gasoline lines, inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

 

“Yet he is also considered one of America’s greatest ex-presidents, for using the residual star power of his office to help his successors and his country as a peacemaker, backstage diplomat, human rights champion, monitor of free elections and advocate for the homeless while finding time to write poetry and, by his own example, providing the best possible case for traditional religious values.

 

“In 2002, having been nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Carter finally won it for his 'vital contribution' to the Camp David agreement, which set the stage for peace between Israel and Egypt, as well as for his commitment to human rights, his work fighting tropical diseases and for furthering democracy everywhere.

“His life offers countless lessons for leaders everywhere.”

 

“Compared with Mr. Carter, most former presidents struggled to use their stature for the common weal. Most wrote memoirs. Some disappeared into private life; some set up foundations; some went around collecting large sums for speaking. Mr. Carter took risks and played crucial roles as an honest broker in nuclear talks with North Korea and in civil conflicts on the continent of Africa and in the Middle East.

“He described his second career as 'waging peace.' That work remains far from finished, and it remains for those who admired Mr. Carter to continue.”

 

Here is how to watch and stream the funeral, from USA Today. 

Dan Balz: GOP shutdown showdown showed boundaries of Trump’s power

The events leading up to Friday’s late-night passage of a spending bill showed the “perils” of governing that President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are likely to face in the year ahead, even as they have control of all the branches of government, says Washington Post analyst Dan Balz.

 

“The drama of the past week highlighted problems for various players. For Trump, this was recognition that as much power as he has, there are limits to what governing-by-Truth-Social can accomplish in a legislative environment. No wonder Trump prefers executive action and recess appointments to the gritty business of holding his own party together,” Balz says.

 

“Trump can dictate and he can threaten, as he has been doing. His allies can warn Republican lawmakers in the House or the Senate that if they don’t toe the line, they will face primary challenges. But when 38 House Republicans reject his entreaties, as they did at one point in the negotiations over the legislation to keep the government open, that’s evidence that his power has boundaries.”

 

“Whether it’s levels of government spending or nominations for his Cabinet and other positions that require Senate confirmation, Trump and his party may control both chambers in the coming year but not with such commanding majorities that he can have his way willy nilly.

 

“Will this past week’s drama, for example, remind Republicans in the Senate that they represent a separate branch of government and therefore have the power to block a few of Trump’s most controversial nominees, even at the risk of displeasing him?”

 

“The newest player in all this was Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and seeming a confidant of Trump who is using his association with the president-elect to the fullest. Musk helped kill the first bipartisan spending package with posts on his X social media platform, some with inaccurate claims about the legislation, that helped sink what Johnson thought was a carefully crafted agreement.

 

“Musk seems to enjoy flexing his muscles in the political arena, but with no experience in the legislative process.”

 

“Musk’s initial claims about how much can be cut from government were extravagant and likely unachievable, unless he and Ramaswamy recommend taking an ax to federal entitlement programs [such as Social Security and Medicare] and the defense budget.

“His first foray into dealing in real terms with the budget underscored that he remains a novice in this arena. As smart and entrepreneurial as he has been in developing electric vehicles or sending rockets into space, the business of government doesn’t conform to the business of business.”

Hope

Researchers, nonprofit leaders and other experts shared what keeps them optimistic about a better future for American society in an article published after the election by The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley.

 

The article isn’t password protected, so I won't try to summarize it for you.

She’s on Kash Patel’s enemies list but doesn’t want a pardon

Sarah Isgur worked at the Justice Department from 2017 to 2019 as director of the Office of Public Affairs and senior counsel to the deputy attorney general, during the investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

 

She’s one of 60 people named in “Government Gangsters,” a 2023 book by Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to be the next director of the FBI, as “members of the executive branch deep state” — a “cabal of unelected tyrants” who posed “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” Patel has since said the incoming Trump administration must deal with the deep state “criminally or civilly.”

 

As President Biden reportedly considers preemptive pardons for many of Trump’s perceived enemies, such as the people on Patel’s list, Isgur says in a New York Times opinion essay that she doesn’t want a pardon and hopes nobody else will.

 

“If we broke the law, we should be charged and convicted. If we didn’t break the law, we should be willing to show that we trust the fairness of the justice system that so many of us have defended. And we shouldn’t give permission to future presidents to pardon political allies who may commit real crimes on their behalf.

“This past spring, arguing in a brief to the Supreme Court that Mr. Trump shouldn’t have immunity from prosecution, Mr. Biden’s Justice Department reminded the justices that ‘the executive branch and the criminal justice system contain strong safeguards against groundless prosecutions.’ Many former government lawyers — including a number of us on Mr. Patel’s list — were quick to publicly agree, stressing how dangerous and unnecessary such a grant of blanket immunity would be.

 

“We emphasized the importance of the rule of law and the trust we had in the jury system. Yet now that the shoe is on the other foot, suddenly we would accept total immunity from prosecution for anything we did during our time in government?”

 

“A pardon would also let Mr. Patel off the hook. If he wants to prosecute everyone on his list, it’s going to require a lot of law enforcement resources. At a time when much of the American public wants the president to focus on inflation, crime and immigration, voters may not be pleased if drug cartels are a lower priority than prosecuting Liz Cheney for treason.

 

“And as Americans start to see his lack of evidence, Mr. Patel will look ridiculous. If anything, he may end up making heroes out of his targets, who would, in turn, be able to raise money for the exorbitant cost of their legal defense from outraged Americans until judges would predictably throw out these frivolous cases.

“If I accepted a pardon, Mr. Patel could also claim that it proved the ‘deep state’ rigged the system. He could argue that he would have gotten convictions against all of us, without ever having to make his case — to a jury or to voters.

 

“Populists and cynics from both political parties want to destroy the rule of law because it’s a lot easier to tear down an institution than to build one. That’s why those of us on Mr. Patel’s list should force him to show his work.”

Paul Krugman’s final NYTimes column, on ‘finding hope in an age of resentment’

The Nobel-prize-winning economist and author of 27 books, who’s retiring from The New York Times, reflects on what's changed since he began writing his opinion column in 2000. 

 

“What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired.”

 

“Why did this optimism curdle? As I see it, we’ve had a collapse of trust in elites: The public no longer has faith that the people running things know what they’re doing, or that we can assume that they’re being honest.”

 

For example, “the financial crisis of 2008 undermined any faith the public had that governments knew how to manage economies.”

 

“And it wasn’t that long ago that technology billionaires were widely admired across the political spectrum, some achieving folk-hero status. But now they and some of their products face disillusionment and worse; Australia has even banned social media use by children under 16.”

 

“These days there has been a lot of discussion of the hard right turn of some tech billionaires, from Elon Musk on down. I’d argue that we shouldn’t overthink it, and we especially shouldn’t try to say that this is somehow the fault of politically correct liberals. Basically it comes down to the pettiness of plutocrats who used to bask in public approval and are now discovering that all the money in the world can’t buy you love.

 

“So is there a way out of the grim place we’re in? What I believe is that while resentment can put bad people in power, in the long run it can’t keep them there. At some point the public will realize that most politicians railing against elites actually are elites in every sense that matters and start to hold them accountable for their failure to deliver on their promises. And at that point the public may be willing to listen to people who don’t try to argue from authority, don’t make false promises, but do try to tell the truth as best they can.

 

“We may never recover the kind of faith in our leaders — belief that people in power generally tell the truth and know what they’re doing — that we used to have. Nor should we. But if we stand up to the kakistocracy — rule by the worst — that’s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world.”

A quick explainer of how we got to this political moment

Long-time journalist and National Book Award-winner George Packer offers us some context for our current political situation in an Atlantic article. Here are some excerpts:

 

“The Roosevelt Republic — the progressive age that extended social welfare and equal rights to a widening circle of Americans — endured from the 1930s to the 1970s. At the end of that decade, it was overthrown by the Reagan Revolution, which expanded individual liberties on the strength of a conservative free-market ideology, until it in turn crashed against the 2008 financial crisis. 

 

“The era that followed has lacked a convincing name and a clear identity. It’s been variously called the post–post–Cold War, post-neoliberalism, the Great Awokening, and the Great Stagnation. 

 

“But the 2024 election has shown that the dominant political figure of this period is Donald Trump, who, by the end of his second term, will have loomed over American life for as long as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dozen years as president. We are living in the Trump Reaction.”

 

“This new era is neither progressive nor conservative. The organizing principle in Trump’s chaotic campaigns, the animating passion among his supporters, has been a reactionary turn against dizzying change, specifically the economic and cultural transformations of the past half century: the globalization of trade and migration, the transition from an industrial to an information economy, the growing inequality between metropolis and hinterland, the end of the traditional family, the rise of previously disenfranchised groups, the ‘browning' of the American people." 

 

“For two and a half centuries American politics alternated between progressive and conservative periods, played between the 40-yard lines of liberal democracy. The values of freedom, equality, and rule of law at least received lip service; the founding documents enjoyed the status of civic scripture; the requisite American mood was optimism. 

 

“Although reaction has dominated local or regional (mainly southern) politics, it’s something new in our national politics — which explains why Trump has been misunderstood and written off at every turn. Reaction is insular and aggrieved, and it paints in dark tones. It wants to undo progress and reverse history, restoring the nation to some imagined golden age when the people ruled. They want a strongman with the stomach to trample on the liberal pieties of the elites who sold them out.

 

“This is why so many voters are willing to tolerate — in some cases, celebrate — Trump’s vile language and behavior; his love affairs with foreign dictators; his readiness to toss aside norms, laws, the Constitution itself. Asked by pollsters if they’re concerned about the state of democracy, these voters answer yes — not because they fear its demise, but because it has already failed them. They don’t think Trump will destroy democracy; he’ll restore it to the people.”

Grateful

This Thanksgiving, as always, I’m grateful for you, dear readers.

 

And, as I’ve said before, I’m specifically grateful to the reader who alerted us to the good news aggregators at Australia’s Fix the News.

 

Fix the News founder Angus Hervey, who grew up in apartheid South Africa, wrote in a long essay in response to our U.S. election results, which I ran on Nov. 15:

 

"For the first time since I can remember, I'm not sure the good guys are going to win.

 

"I find myself returning to the lessons of South Africa. That change happened, not because it was inevitable, but because people made it inevitable. Each step forward mattered and people kept on believing in the right thing, even when that belief seemed foolish. In the end the impossible happened not because history ordained it, but because ordinary people kept pushing against the darkness until finally, impossibly, the light broke through.”

 

He said Fix the News will be writing “stories about how progress happens not through some invisible hand of history, but through the visible hands of people who refuse to give up on it.”

 

I emailed Hervey to let him know how much his work means to us here, while, as he put it in his essay, "every media outlet in the world” is "shrieking about Trump,” one way or the other.

 

He emailed back saying he appreciates the encouragement he’s gotten in response to his essay and that he’s feeling "more resolute than ever about the mission of Fix the News.”

 

As Stephen Hawking said, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star.” And blogger Maria Popova pointed out that we’re early in our evolution, so it’s to be expected that we mess things up a lot.

 

I’m grateful for the feeling of belonging and empowerment I get from our global connection to Hervey and others as we all stumble forward as best we can.

Applebaum on what citizens who care about U.S. democracy can do

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum, whose new book is titled “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” discusses ways to think about autocracy and authoritarianism in a second Trump term with Ezra Klein on his New York Times podcast.

 

In response to Klein’s question on what members of the public can do, Applebaum says:

 

"The worst result or the worst consequence of this kind of government, if that’s what we’re going to have, and of course we still don’t know yet, is that people become apathetic. They say: This is all so overwhelming, it’s so huge. I don’t even know what’s true and what’s not true anymore, and I’m just going to stay home.

"Try to overcome that. And it almost doesn’t matter what it is that you do. Involve yourself in a local group, a discussion group. Join a political party. Run for local office. Try to be present in your community in some way. Do something that makes you active. And that makes you feel that you’re taking part in the governance of your country.

"Democracies were always meant to be political systems that involved ordinary people in all kinds of ways. And I think one of the other reasons our system has declined as far as it has, is that that has atrophied. Along with all kinds of other institutions. There’s the famous thing about Americans not being in bowling clubs anymore and not joining the Rotary Club and not participating in real-life institutions because they’re at home watching TV or playing video games. But there’s also been a decline in civic activity and civic engagement.

"And even if it’s just for your mental health, Even if it’s just to make sure that you don’t feel that you are isolated and alone and unable to affect anything, try to join some group or work with some group that is making change in your community, either politically or even apolitically. And that seems to me to be the best antidote."

Klein always asks his guests to recommend three books, and Applebum says she’s chosen books that describe "the secret world of money laundering and kleptocracy”:

— “Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World,” by Oliver Bullough
— “Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism,” by Brooke Harrington

— “American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History,” by Casey Michel