Friday, April 17, 2026
Most Americans Don't Believe Trump Is A Good Negotiator
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll - done between April 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,748 adults (including 1,573 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.1 points for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters.
The Affordability Issue Remains Strong - And It Favors Democrats
The charts above are from the Navigator Poll -- done between April 2nd and 6th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
The Myths Republicans Use To Help Billionaires Instead Of Workers
Robert Reich exposes the three myths Republicans use to tilt the economic playing field to favor the super-rich instead of helping workers:
It’s important to remind ourselves that a record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American.
How do the ultra-wealthy justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths — all of which are utter rubbish.
The first is trickle-down economics.
Billionaires (and their apologists) claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs.
Rubbish. For more than 40 years, as wealth at the top has soared, almost nothing has trickled down. Adjusted for inflation, the median wage today is barely higher than it was four decades ago.
Trump provided a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, promising it would generate $4,000 in increased income for everyone else. Did you receive it?
In reality, the super-wealthy don’t create jobs or raise wages. Jobs are created when average working people earn enough money to buy all the goods and services they produce, pushing companies to hire more people and pay them higher wages.
The second myth is the “free market.”
The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for.
The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.
Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market” would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded with decades ago.
The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurship with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — not billions.
As to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change.
In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in the U.S. for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31 million in the 2010 elections to $1.2 billion in the 2024 presidential cycle — a nearly 40-fold increase.
What have they gotten for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets, and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.
The third myth is that they’re superior human beings.
They portray themselves as “self-made” rugged individuals who “did it on their own” and therefore deserve their billions.
Bupkis. Six of the 10 wealthiest Americans alive today are heirs to fortunes passed on to them by wealthy ancestors.
Others had the advantages that come with wealthy parents.
Jeff Bezos’s garage-based start was funded by a quarter-million-dollar investment from his parents. Bill Gates’s mother used her business connections to help land a software deal with IBM that made Microsoft. Elon Musk came from a family that reportedly owned shares of an emerald mine in southern Africa.
Don’t fall for these three myths.
Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.
The so-called free market has been distorted by huge campaign contributions from the ultra-rich.
Don’t lionize the ultra-rich as superior “self-made” human beings who deserve their billions. They were lucky and had connections.
In reality, there is no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. It’s distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people.
The last time America faced anything comparable was at the start of the 20th century.
In 1910, former president Theodore Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy.
Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916 and the capital gains tax in 1922.
Since that time, both have eroded. As the rich have accumulated greater wealth, they have also amassed more political power — and have used that political power to reduce their taxes.
Teddy Roosevelt understood something about the American economy and the ultra-rich that has now reemerged, even more extreme and more dangerous. We must understand it, too — and act.
For our economy and democracy, we must tax the wealth of the wealthiest.
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Nearly Half Of Americans Believe Trump Is Suffering Cognitive Decline
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,748 adults (including 1,573 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.1 points for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters.
New Poll Has Trump's Job Approval At 38%
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,748 adults (including 1,573 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.1 points for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters.
Autocracy = Corruption (And That Corruption Can Be Used To Defeat It)
The following is part of a post by Paul Krugman:
Autocracy and corruption aren’t separate issues. In practice they inevitably go hand in hand. They’re a natural pairing, like crypto and crime, because authoritarian rule removes accountability and opens the door for Grand Theft Autocracy. . . .
What Hungary has shown the world is that autocratic corruption can be a powerful mobilizing issue. . . .
What does the “new Hungarian Revolution” mean for the U.S. today?
An immediate lesson is the political power of highlighting corruption as we try to defeat our own home-grown autocrats. Corruption is something every voter can understand, unlike abstract principles in defense of democracy.
The self-dealing during Trump I was, in fact, unprecedented in American history. Recall how lobbyists and foreign potentates booked pricey rooms in Trump’s Washington hotel? But under Trump II blatant corruption has run wild at the highest levels of government, on a scale like nobody has ever seen before. Trump and his family have used his office to extract billions in de facto graft, through crypto deals with petro-state autocrats, investments in prediction markets and defense contractors, making sweetheart foreign real estate deals that line up with favorable tariff treatment, soliciting hundreds of millions for Trump vanity projects.
Oh, yes, then there is the Epstein affair…
While the average American voter may (unfortunately) tolerate some small-scale corruption by those in power, the level of corruption we are now seeing is so vast that it has become a cancer, that is eating away at the heart of the U.S. government.
Want to stop a data center in your community and impose common-sense controls on AI? Well, that’s a non-starter because the Trump family has invested in data centers and in AI firms. Want to regulate crypto and stop its use as a vehicle for crime? Well, um, no, because the Trump family has amassed billions from their crypto holdings. Want to rein in the pernicious effects of prediction markets. I don’t think so, because the Trump family invests in Polymarket. Want to shift America towards safe, clean renewable energy? Think again, because petrostate oligarchs have poured $500 million into Trump’s World Liberty coin.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Trump promised to drain the swamp, but under his rule the swamp drains you.
And everyone can see it.
Like Orbán, Trump is trying to solidify his own version of soft autocracy by destroying the American system of democratic checks and balances – such as corrupting the Justice Department, bullying Democratic states, and delivering CNN into the hands of the Ellisons.
The possibility that should truly terrify us is that Trumpian levels of corruption and its accompanying authoritarianism will become normalized in America. And that’s the game plan of the autocrat: the public comes to believe that resistance is futile because the regime controls so many levers of power and has corrupted so many people and institutions.
The good news from Hungary is that blatant corruption doesn’t have to be normalized. In fact, public perceptions of runaway corruption can become a weapon in defense of democracy. The public understands corruption, hates it, and can be mobilized to vote en masse against it.
Hungary has shown the way. Will America follow?
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