#strike debt

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Why did Biden block the rail strike and then JOIN a UAW picket-line?

Biden broke the railway strike.

Biden joined the autoworkers’ strike.

Does this make Biden a hypocrite?

Obviously.

But more to the point, it shows that Biden’s actions are driven by expedience as much as they are by principle.

Biden, after all, is a career politician, who was sold to voters on the basis of his deal-making ability, his history getting things done in bipartisan smoke-filled rooms.

Biden doubtless has principles, and maybe they’re even good principles, but when those principles conflicted with “good politics,” politics won and principles lost.

Seen in that light, Biden’s decision to join the autoworkers’ strike makes perfect sense. With support for unions at their highest point in two generations, joining an autoworkers’ strike is good politics.

-What to do with the Democrats: They want to do it? Let's make them do it.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[strike-debt-bay-area]

Book Group Saturday, 2/11, 5:00 pm

We'll discuss CANNIBAL CAPITALISM by Nancy Fraser.

“Nancy Fraser has produced the most elegant theory yet of capitalism in our age - capitalism not in the narrow economic sense, but capitalism in the sense of a total omnivore, a system that cannot stop devouring everything around it, destroying the lives of people and nature. This is Marxist theory for our age of crisis - and, we shall hope, of reckoning.”

– Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

[majoringindebt]

Tens of thousands of people who took out private loans to pay for college but have not been able to keep up payments may get their debts wiped away because critical paperwork is missing. The troubled loans, which total at least $5 billion, are at the center of a protracted legal dispute between the student borrowers and a group of creditors who have aggressively pursued them in court after they fell behind on payments. Judges have already dismissed dozens of lawsuits against former students, essentially wiping out their debt, because documents proving who owns the loans are missing. A review of court records by The New York Times shows that many other collection cases are deeply flawed, with incomplete ownership records and mass-produced documentation. Some of the problems playing out now in the $108 billion private student loan market are reminiscent of those that arose from the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago, when billions of dollars in subprime mortgage loans were ruled uncollectible by courts because of missing or fake documentation. And like those troubled mortgages, private student loans — which come with higher interest rates and fewer consumer protections than federal loans — are often targeted at the most vulnerable borrowers, like those attending for-profit schools. At the center of the storm is one of the nation’s largest owners of private student loans, the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts. It is struggling to prove in court that it has the legal paperwork showing ownership of its loans, which were originally made by banks and then sold to investors. National Collegiate’s lawyers warned in a recent legal filing, “As news of the servicing issues and the trusts’ inability to produce the documents needed to foreclose on loans spreads, the likelihood of more defaults rises.” National Collegiate is an umbrella name for 15 trusts that hold 800,000 private student loans, totaling $12 billion. More than $5 billion of that debt is in default, according to court filings. The trusts aggressively pursue borrowers who fall behind on their bills. Across the country, they have brought at least four new collection cases each day, on average — more than 800 so far this year — and tens of thousands of lawsuits in the past five years.

As Paperwork Goes Missing, Private Student Loan Debts May Be Wiped Away

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Manchin-Synematic Universe is over (if we want it)

I’m glad he did these things.

I wish he’d done more.

I wish he’d play hardball with Synema and Manchin (say, by loading up bills with pork for their states and then campaigning in person in their capitals to get voters to put pressure on their senators to back his play). I wish he’d campaign on packing the Supreme Court or putting term-limits on its judges (or both).

What we’ve learned from Biden v Rail Workers and Biden v Autoworkers is that if we make weaksauce compromises and other pizzaburgers politically unpalatable, Biden will respond. He may or may not care about principles, but he definitely cares about politics.

And delivering for the American people is good politics.

-What to do with the Democrats: They want to do it? Let's make them do it.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Benevolent dictators are not infallible dictators

When Biden broke the railroad strike, he continued to work for the railroad workers. Months later, the administration brokered a deal to give those workers the sick leave that had been at the center of their dispute.

This was a very Obama-ish move. Obama’s Chicago Democratic Machine-style politics was suspicious of the grassroots. That’s why Obama’s first act after winning office was to literally switch off the server that his grassroots campaign used to coordinate his victory.

In Obama-style politics, the president is a power-broker, petitioned by various factions in his administration, the electorate and the legislature, and he weighs all their requests and apportions out wins based on his wise and technocratic view of what’s best for everyone.

Like all benevolent dictatorships, this model works well, but fails badly. A benevolent dictator isn’t the same thing as an infallible dictator. If the president decides he should take the side of bankers over homeowners, he must first kick noisy activists out of the room, close the door, and bargain among the “grownups” without being distracted by their noisy protests.

It’s not enough that Biden won the railway workers sick-leave. If worker power comes from presidents unilaterally choosing which of their demands deserve to win, then workers are at the whim of the president.

-What to do with the Democrats: They want to do it? Let's make them do it.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pizzaburger politics are bad politics

Biden’s instinct is to find compromises between fundamentally incompatible positions. He’ll appease the Sanders-Warren wing of the party by appointing the brilliant Lina Khan to run the FTC and aggressively target corporate consolidation; but he’ll also appease the Clinton wing by appointing Jacqueline Scott Corley to the bench, from which position she will rule against Khan.

This is pizzaburger politics: half the family wants pizza for dinner, the other half wants burgers, and Biden serves up pizzaburgers, which no one wants. Because everyone is equally unhappy, he declares the compromise to be “fair.”

What changed between the railroad strike and the UAW strike? The outrage at Biden’s paternalistic I’ll-take-care-of-this-you-go-back-to-work gambit with the railroad workers convinced him that pizzaburger politics were bad politics.

-What to do with the Democrats: They want to do it? Let's make them do it.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[strike-debt-bay-area]

Book Group meets Saturday, January 14, 5pm on Zoom

We'll discuss the second half of LESS IS MORE by Jason Hickel. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link

“Jason Hickel shows that recovering the commons and decolonizing nature, cultures, and humanity are necessary conditions for hope of a common future in our common home. By extracting less we leave more for other species, other people and future generations, thus creating well-being for all. In an ecologically interconnected world, less is more.” -- Vandana Shiva

[strike-debt-bay-area]

BOOK GROUP: How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century, Part 2

We’ll meet on Saturday, May 16, from 4:30 to 5:45 via Zoom (to get the Zoom link, email us at [email protected] ). We’ll discuss the second half of HOW TO BE AN ANTI-CAPITALIST IN THE 21st CENTURY by Erik Olin Wright (you know the topic is on your mind).

“This is the rare book that can speak to both the faithful and the unconverted. You could buy it for your skeptical uncle or your militant cousin: there is something here for the reader who needs persuading that another world is possible, and the reader who wants ideas for bringing that world into being.”

– Ben Tarnoff, Guardian