Some of the sharpest writing on American politics has come from historian Heather Cox Richardson. In her April 19 Letters from an American she described the unemployment calamity in Florida where “former Republican Governor Rick Scott deliberately made the unemployment application process difficult to keep the unemployment numbers low. ‘The system was designed to fail,’ an advisor to current Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters. Now, ‘it’s a sh— sandwich.’” (Scott is now a U.S. senator).
The situation in Georgia may be even worse, from Cox Richardson’s Letter from April 21. Here she relies on Georgia journalist George Chidi’s analysis of why Governor Brian Kemp has decided to reopen many of the state’s businesses. According to Chidi, “It’s about making sure people can’t file unemployment.” The Georgia unemployment fund would run out in about 28 weeks and there is no way to replenish it—Georgia recently imposed constitutional limitations on increasing the income tax (a major goal of right wingers) and it is also restricted from borrowing to meet the emergency. Cox Richardson writes: “By ending the business closures, Kemp guarantees that workers can no longer claim they are involuntarily unemployed, and so cannot claim unemployment benefits.”
The Open America movement is similarly driven, as we see in an article by Tina Nguyen of Politico, How a Tea Party-Linked Group Plans to Turbocharge Lockdown Protests. Commendably the article describes how funding for the organizing group Convention of States comes from the far right wing Mercer family and from Donors Trust, a deep dark foundation with ties to the Koch network. The goal of the Convention of States is to get Republicans in control of 34 states, enough to call a constitutional convention to rewrite the Constitution and protect property rights. As historian Nancy MacLean shows in Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, this is the ultimate goal of the Koch network: to amend the Constitution to further protect private wealth.
The Kochs, Mercers, and their Republican allies understand that if democracy works as it should, people will use their votes to bring about policies that benefit the majority—health care, public education, financial regulation, environmental action, unemployment insurance, and more, policies that will require the super wealthy to pay more in taxes. Thus Republicans need to rig the rules of the game—toss people off unemployment or not let them on in the first place, place constitutional limits on taxation of the rich, rewrite the Constitution, and suppress votes.
There is no Republican majority in this country and no majority for property supremacy. Thus oligarchy needs to place Democracy in Chains—and fast.
Postscript, May 5, 2020: In Republicans Sprint to Place Democracy in Chains I noted that coverage of the open for business movement is being driven by right wing funders including the Mercer family (former underwriters of Breitbart News) and a foundation used by Charles Koch and his allies. Since then Massachusetts has had its own protest, see Anissa Gardizy, Hundreds Gather at State House to Protest Measures to Slow Spread of Coronavirus. The story notes the demonstration was called the Liberty Rally and promoted by radio host Jeffrey Kuhner and “Super Happy Fun America, the group behind the 2019 Straight Pride Parade that drew more counter protesters than participants, identified itself as one of the rally’s hosts.” A few observations.
- We don’t really know who was behind the Liberty Rally. Reporting cited in my post Republicans Sprint to Place Democracy in Chains and other contemporaneous reporting about protests in other states identifies funding from Koch, the Mercers, and other right wing billionaire funders. Of course they don’t appear at the rallies.
- As opposed to Super Happy Fun America’s last stab at a rally, where protestors outnumbered participants, the Liberty Rally was well attended and while there were some hand written signs there were also many professionally made signs. Who paid for them? Who organized the rally?
- As the Republican commentator Ed Lyons suggests there were many attendees who are tied to The Boston Broadside. Were they the organizers, or just a an available cadre of right wingers?
- Cheering off in the background was the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, which has been promoting a reopen. Little is known about MFA’s funding, but it is known that right wing legal advocacy organizations that have represented MFA in litigation are supported by Koch, the Mercers, and other right wingers.
- The political world moves on but an important question remains: who is funding operations like the Liberty Rally and Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance? This is a good time for Boston media to do a deep dive, but will they?
The American political system has become “an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors . . . .” – Former President Jimmy Carter.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, oligarchy, and democracy.]