United Front Against Austerity 
Tax Wall Street Party
Morning Briefing Tuesday, July 26, 2016
The Democratic Party, whatever its many faults, is now the only institutional barrier standing between America’s future and the fascist regime which Trump and the Republicans intend to impose. It is therefore time to set Utopian wish lists and pipe dreams aside and focus with great realism on the tasks of national survival – of defeating the Fascist Billionaire, while speeding the extinction of the Republican Party in the process.
If Trump seizes power, literally everything may be lost. He will attempt to destroy the free speech of the First Amendment, the due process of the Fifth Amendment, the birthright citizenship and due process by the states of the Fourteenth Amendment. He will be a tyrannical and vindictive Nixon, armed with the surveillance and harassment powers of the post 9/11 era. His retainers Manafort and Roger Stone come straight from the CREEP of Watergate infamy. This time the target may be you. If Trump wins, your normal political activity may soon no longer be possible. You may be muzzled. Sued for all you are worth. Jailed on some pretext. Or worse.
All petty squabbles, resentments, and grievances must be subordinated to the urgent task of stopping Trump. Successful resistance against Trump will require a different kind of campaigning, and a different kind of economic program.
So far, the rhetoric and methods deployed by Democrats against Trump by Democrats have been weak and ineffective. Hillary Clinton says “loose cannon.” Bernie Sanders says “bully and demagogue.” Many say he is a racist. Although all of these are true, none of them will work by itself. More than a few House Democrats have been leading the way in attacking Trump and tying their opponents to the fascist billionaire. Trump must be attacked as follows:
TRUMP IS A FASCIST AND NAZI – The only politically adequate and scientifically accurate terms for Trump are FASCIST and NAZI. Of the dozen basic features of fascism, Trump has every one. Countless public figures, many of them famous and/or authoritative, have said so, from Louis CK to Newsweek to ex-GOP Sen. Gordon Humphrey last week. Democratic candidates should take the gloves off and call a spade a spade before Trump hysteria becomes unstoppable. Friends of the Democratic Party should promote an international conference of scholars to discuss this question. Trump’s dictatorial methods and instability could easily lead to a reign of terror, or even civil war.
TRUMP IS A PSYCHOTIC SOCIOPATH – Trump’s cover story is that he suffers from a mild case of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the malady that afflicted Howard Hughes. That means he has been examined by a psychiatrist, making the demand for his mental health records just as important as his the demand for his tax returns. Many have seen Trump as a narcissist or megalomaniac. Others detect the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, which killed his father. Keith Olbermann has produced a humorous and well-documented video showing that Trump could not pass a simple screening test for insanity. Make this go viral, and use it to promote a conference of mental health professionals to pass judgment on Trump’s cognitive impairment. Someone should do for Trump what Dr. Justin Frank’s Bush on the Couch did for the 43rd president more than a decade ago.
Other important themes include Trump as a Mafioso and tax evader with ties to organized crime; Trump as an anti-worker and anti-labor union buster; and Trump as a tool of malevolent foreign interests. Promote aggressive opposition research on these themes.
Trump Is a Threat to Civilization Itself
Putting “fascist” together with “psychotic,” the most effective argument against Trump is the danger that he will get control of the US nuclear codes, start World War III, and put an end to civilization as we have known it. This analysis is being taken onto cable television by Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal. Schwartz says that Trump’s finger on the nuclear button threatens us all with a nuclear catastrophe. Schwartz should be a featured prime time speaker at this DNC. Democrats should go back to the Lyndon B. Johnson campaign’s 1964 attacks on Barry Goldwater as a warmonger and update them for Trump. And remember that Goldwater was bellicose, but not clinically insane.
To Defeat Trump, Crush ISIS this Summer
Trump’s demagogy of fear, defeatism, and pessimism requires a foreign enemy which he can use for his fear-mongering. He has usually cited ISIS (aka Daesh, ISIL, Islamic State, Caliphate). The corrupt US news media have been hiding the fact that ISIS is reeling from attacks on its holdings in Iraq and Syria, and could be finished off soon. A critical way to cut Trump off at the knees politically is on the battlefield, by completing the destruction of ISIS before November. This is perfectly feasible from a military point of view. President Obama must see to it that objectives like Mosul and Raqqa are liberated from ISIS, in part by firing failed and defeatist generals, and by ignoring countries like Great Britain which are pursuing their own imperial agendas. It is time to drop the absurd hostility to Russian and Syria, and join with them to fight actual terrorists. Trump desperately needs the US to be feckless and impotent in the fight against ISIS. The antidote is American victory against this terrorist entity.
Stop Trump’s Strategy of Tension and October Surprise
Democrats have often been terrified to discuss so-called conspiracy theories. This time they have no choice: Trump has frequently made sinister paranoid hints about President Obama being in league with terrorists or harboring sympathy for them. He talks absurd conspiracy theory to hide the obvious fact that Trump himself is the beneficiary of a coordinated Strategy of Tension made up of all kinds of terrorism, financial panics, crime sprees, and related chaotic events. Terrorist attacks like San Bernardino, Orlando, Dallas, Nice, are the fuel the Trump campaign runs on.
Comedian Bill Maher, journalist Thomas L. Friedman, talk show host Charlie Rose, Brian Lehrer of WNYC, and even GOP pollster Frank Luntz have spoken in public about the potential of terror events in September-October to stampede masses of voters into the Trump column and catapult the fascist bully into the White House. This is the infamous Trump October Surprise. Factions of the US intelligence community back Trump and have a vested interest in this scenario. It is hopeless to pretend this is not happening — this issue must be attacked head on. Trump relishes predicting future terrorism. Ask him how come he knows so much.
The new wave of FBI and CIA failures suggests that the pro-Trump faction in the intelligence community may be quite considerable. Because of their incompetence and bungling, these agencies need to be put under special surveillance by the White House, using officials of reliable loyalty and other monitors. In addition, ministerial responsibility must be observed. If more terror attacks occur, top officials of the relevant agencies must be fired, whether this means Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Rogers, or others. Watch Trump surrogate Michael Flynn’s old boys at the NSA. As always, watch Gen. Petraeus, whose October Surprise expertise is unquestioned.
No More Democratic Warmongers and Regime Changers
The Democratic ticket suffers from lack of credibility on national security and the economy. It is time to put together the best initiatives of recent years to create a program capable of exposing Trump as the demagogue he is, and defeating him.
- The American people are sick of war. They regard Ms. Clinton as a potential warmonger. She must rehabilitate herself and offer assurances by repudiating her adventurism of Iraq and Libya. She must abandon her reckless demand for a No-Fly zone in Syria, which means bombing Assad, saving ISIS, and possible confrontation with Russia. She must solemnly declare that any additional US use of military force abroad must be preceded by a formal declaration of war by the Congress, with no substitutes accepted. Sen. Kaine’s work on the War Powers Act should be used to expose Republicans as hypocrites on the ISIS issue. The Democratic ticket must also formally condemn the idea of regime change as applied to Syria, Iran, or any other country. They must reject and abolish the practices known as “color revolutions” and “the Arab spring,” which have brought so much war, chaos, and civilizational breakdown into the world. Samantha Power and her humanitarian bombers, infamous for having weaponized human rights, should be ousted. The same goes for Victoria Nuland, who has brought chaos to Ukraine and much of eastern Europe.
Tax Wall Street, Seize the Fed, 15% Protective Tariff for 40 Million New Jobs and Full Employment, Silencing Trump
- Bernie Sanders, the Progressive Caucus, and other Democrats have rightly demanded a tax on Wall Street speculation, variously called a Robin Hood Tax, Tobin tax, financial transfer tax, or Wall Street Sales Tax. This should be a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax on all financial transfers over $1 million per person per year, paid by the seller, with half of the proceeds going to the US Treasury and half to the states under revenue sharing. It should be collected on stocks, bonds, and the notional value of derivatives both exchange traded and over the counter. Here are hundreds of billion dollars of Treasury revenue to pay for health care, free college education, and a 10-million job Marion Barry Memorial job creation program for the inner cities and rural American designed to bring young people into the work force for the first time, as Congressman Conyers and others have been requesting for years.
- Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2013 advanced a landmark proposal to force the Federal Reserve to go beyond its current role as an institution of the bankers, by the bankers, and for the bankers and finally begin to serve the needs of the entire US economy, not just Wall Street. Warren’s idea was for Congress to direct the Fed to finance student loans at 0.75% through the discount window – far less than the 7% to 12% interest often charged on the $1.5 trillion of crushing student loans debt. It is imperative to apply this approach to the entire economy with 0%, long-term Federal Reserve credit for student loan refinancing. $5 trillion in 0% century bonds should be allocated to rebuild and modernize the entire national infrastructure, creating 30 million new productive jobs at union wages, bring the country to full employment for the first time since 1945. This job program can finally lift the nation out of the post-2008 depression. It can begin to reverse the more than 50% decline in the US standard of living since 1967-1974 which is the single greatest unsung factor helping Trump.
- Clinton and Kaine now say they are opposed to the NAFTA-CAFTA-TPP line of free trade sellouts, which have forced US workers to compete with low-wage foreign sweatshops, bring untold plant closings, runaway shops, de-industrialization, declining wages, and despair. But the public simply does not believe them, and with good reason. The Democratic Party must therefore support a permanent 15% across-the-board protective tariff on all imports. This will give the public confidence that the era of free trade sellouts, dumping, US status as the buyer of last resort, and the giant sucking sound are really at an end. It will also outflank Trump, who has never proposed a permanent protective tariff. Trump regards tariffs as a weapon, and not as a permanent stable featured of a well regulated national economy.
Obama Should Call Congress Back for a Special Session to Enact the $15 Federal Minimum Wage, Indexed to Real Inflation
- A new effort needs to be made to establish the $15 per hour federal minimum wage. In 1948, Harry Truman called the GOP Congress back into session and forced them to take a stand on a number of key issues. President Obama should help bar the door to Trump by calling the Congress back into session to pass emergency legislation, starting with the $15 minimum wage, indexed to the real inflation rate. Free college and Medicare for All can also be brought up. Force the GOP to vote, and force Trump to take a binding position. It will tie them in knots, disrupt their campaigns, flush them out, and expose them to public scorn as the Do-Nothing Trump Congress. It will also commit both members of the Democratic ticket to $15, with no more evasions. It will help break GOP control of both houses of Congress.
Follow Alexander Hamilton and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Not Modern Mush-Heads
In the disputed election of 1800, the great Alexander Hamilton faced a dilemma similar to ours today. In that year, the House of Representatives had to choose between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr for the presidency. As Hamilton wrote, if anybody had earned his hatred, it was Jefferson, who had fought him at every turn. But, Hamilton concluded, the public interest required that the arch-traitor and scoundrel Burr be kept out of the presidency. Jefferson might promote bad laws, but Burr would try to split the country and set himself up as king, which he later did. Hamilton’s Federalist Party flocked to support Burr, but Hamilton wisely threw his influence into the scales to make Jefferson President – an action which later cost him his life.
When the nation is in danger, long-standing hatreds and animosities must be jettisoned.
When fascism is at the gates, as it is today in the form of Trump, a national unity approach is indispensable. After the fall of France to the Nazis in June 1940, the great Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to re-shuffle his cabinet to make it a national unity government. An unprepared nation suddenly was confronted by the specter of a two-front war. Two Republicans – Republicans!! – were brought in. Henry Stimson became Secretary of War and Frank Knox, who had been on the GOP ticket for vice president, were ushered in. Knox especially had slandered FDR on the 1936 campaign trail, but FDR was a wise statesman who refused to nurse petty, stupid grievances at the expense of the American people in a time of grave crisis. Only in this way could FDR get support from the anti-New Deal industrialists and bankers who might otherwise have openly boycotted and sabotaged the war effort. The lesson is that, when fascism threatens, national unity must be achieved. All the more so today, when a fascist movement is already on our soil.
Some word-mongering leftist mush-heads claim that Hillary and Trump are identical. But ask yourself: which candidate is clinically insane? No contest: it’s Trump. Which candidate has a fascist mass movement? Once again, the answer is Trump, whose real running mate has emerged as David Duke of the KKK. The argument is over. #StopTrumpTerror is the order of the day, and everything else takes second place.
Defeat Trump, and the Demise of the GOP Is Within Reach this Year
A severe 2016 defeat for the GOP, with their loss of the White House, the Senate, the House, and thus the Supreme Court, will put this despicable party on the road to much-deserved oblivion. Once the GOP has been crippled as a national political party, the path will be open for the Sanders-Warren anti-Wall Street and pro-labor wing of the Democratic Party to assert its dominance over the various Wall Street Democrats. The potential party re-alignment, the re-orientation of the entire political playing field for decades to come, if far more important than the ephemeral candidates we see in the short term.
We must defeat Trump, send the GOP into the garbage can of history, and open a new perspective human progress for the United States.
