Anti-Democracy

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the WEAC Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the program. These are strange times for democracy to say the least. Our democracy was badly broken before the Republicans came along. It was badly broken, or it was certainly in the process of breaking when the internet came along. Now AI overhyped as it is, is adding to the confusion. But there was another dimension to a two, a dimension that's been debated for more than... a hundred years, and that is whether or not the average citizen is able to manage the responsibilities of a voter and participant in a true democracy. I'm thinking specifically about a famous... debate that took place in the 1920s between John Dewey and Walter Lipman. Now, just as a little background for those of you who aren't familiar with either or both of those figures, Walter Lipman was a famous newspaper columnist and political commentary. of the time with a sort of an interesting trajectory career trajectory he began as a chief of staff or some other assistant to the socialist mayor of syracuse new york so he was which is a little known uh in fact that there was a socialist mayor is a little known piece of americana And Lipman worked for him, but Lipman went on to become a mainstream newspaper columnist, considered, I guess we would think of him as a mainstream liberal, democratic, centrist. At least that's how I think of him. Now, John Dewey was a political philosopher. He was a philosopher of education and a number of other things. And he was a public intellectual at a time when being a public intellectual actually had some influence in American society. Now, here's what their debate was about. And this debate resonates throughout American history from the early days of the post-revolutionary war era. Walter Lipman. wrote some columns and then some books, arguing that citizens did not have and would never have the information needed in order to be competent.

participants in a democracy. He argued that the so-called omni-competent citizen, as he put it, the citizen who's capable in doing everything and knowing everything doesn't exist, and that the world was too complicated now for information flooding us now. They had a flood of information in the 1920s, too, with the advent of radio, with the spread. an increased influence of newspapers and so on. They felt they were in an information boom as well. H.G. Wells famously wrote a book at the time called World Brain that suggested something like the Internet, except it would be run by elites, and it would consist of reading rooms in every city and town in the world where the knowledge of humanity curated by these elites. would exist on microfilm. So they were already thinking along these lines. But Lipman eventually wrote two books about it, public opinion and the phantom public. And he was pretty tough on the average voter. He called the voting public the bewildered. heard, which is a pretty deprecating way to speak about the general public. Now, whether or not you accept his argument that the world is too complicated for the average voter. Beowler-Hard kind of reflects a little bias on his part, I would say. So he just thought that we weren't up to the task. I believe he was the one who invented the term stereotype. And he said that voters instead of making informed decisions relied on stereotypes, on pictures in our heads rather than the reality itself and those pictures in our heads can be manipulated or they can be incomplete. Now, I can't argue with that. So far, he's making sense. But the public, he described the public as deaf as a spectator that only intervenes when there's a crisis. And his solution was a government led by a technocratic elite specialists and experts who would use objective data to make decisions. And I want to get back to this in a little bit, the public's only role in. in the Lippman's worldview, would some periodically check in on their elites, their technocrats, make sure they were guiding things they wanted them to be guided. Along comes John Dewey. Now, John Dewey, this may be a little unfair, but I think of John Dewey as someone who was

worried, this is true, worried about the rise of communism in the United States, which is very popular in the 1920s, let's not forget, and probably very influential in shaping the New Deal in the 1930s. So Dewey was concerned about that, but he was by any reasonable measure what we would call a democratic uh socialists today he uh he responded directly to lipman first of all in some essays and then in a book called the public and its problems by this time we're up to nineteen twenty seven or just about a hundred years ago and he agreed with lipman's diagnosis that the public is bewildered overwhelmed and confused, but he radically disliked the elitist solution. For Dewey, the problem wasn't that people weren't smart enough, but that there wasn't good communication. There wasn't effective social organization to keep people active and informed. And John Dewey argued that Lipman's experts would eventually become their own class of rulers, overlords, disconnected from the needs of the people. Now, Dewey's famous quote was he said about this problem, quote, the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy. We're going to have a conversation right now after the break with Sonali Kolhotkar, our senior correspondent. When that's done, I'll return to this topic, but this time talking about how this 100-year-old debate affects our politics today. So please stick around. We'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and you're listening to The Zero Hour.

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we are back on The Zero Hour. I, as always, am your host, Richard R.J. Escal. And as always, I welcome Zero Hour Senior Correspondent and so much more Sonali Cole Hotcar. You can find a lot of Sonali's work at Rising Up with Sonali.com. She's an author, a journalist, a broadcaster, and probably a couple other things I've left out as well. And it's always a pleasure to speak with her. So first of all, Sonali, welcome back to the program. Thank you so much, Richard. Good to be with you. And good to be with you. Tax Day is coming up in a couple weeks. And not everyone is filled with zest and enthusiasm about it. But something interesting is going on that you've been looking into on the West Coast regarding taxes. So if you don't mind, why don't you tell us about it? Yeah, I wish I could say that the state I live in, California, is enacting a wealth tax. It's not, but it might later this year. And you and I talked about voter measure on the ballot that is hopefully going to be on November's ballot. But actually, it was a state of Washington that ended up passing through the legislature rather than going through the ballot process. a wealth tax, not on billionaires, but on millionaires and wealthier, which is an even bigger group of wealthy people. And it was quite remarkable because, look, Washington, like California, has a high concentration of tech billionaires, a lot of corporate CEOs. It's, you know, the city of Seattle is home to, famously home to Amazon. headquarters, et cetera. And for years, there have been attempts to tax millionaires and billionaires in Seattle, but now the entire state of Washington through the legislature passed not just a one time, but a permanent 9.9% annual tax on everybody making a million dollars and more. What makes us so remarkable is that Washington has been one of the most tax regressive states in the nation, you know, which is... partly why millionaires and billionaires love living there. So there was a wonderful analysis done by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showing just how aggressive the tax system is. Those people who make, you know, just something to the effect of $33,000 a year. We're talking about the poorest 20% of the state pays something like nearly 14% of their income in state taxes. And it keeps going down, down, down. The top 1% of earners in Washington state who make like $870,000 a year, so nearly a million dollars a year, only pay 4.2% of their income as taxes. And so it's a deeply regressive system.

to that the so-called one big beautiful bill last year, which was a tax and spend bill, that removed taxes on tips and overtime, which is going to leave states with hundreds of millions of dollars of shortfalls in tax revenues every year, and states are in trouble. And so this bill that legislators, state legislators in Washington passed, the governor of Washington has already said they're going to sign it. into law and it could really be a model for other states going forward. Massachusetts has already passed such a similar bill. And most of these are bills whose revenues go towards funding really critical social infrastructure, education, healthcare, you know, all of those bread and butter things that. ordinary people need benefit from. And so it's a big win for economic justice. And if Washington is, you know, able to show that this sort of tax bill is actually beneficial for everybody, other states could follow. Already the state of Massachusetts has shown several years into their millionaire tax that not only did it raise revenue, make the state income inequality. less bad, but it also ended up benefiting millionaires and billionaires because in the end, everybody benefits when we have more taxes to pay for things that we can all enjoy. And so hopefully this will be, you know, this will be a train that is going to continue to gain momentum and spread throughout the country because as a federal government fails to take on. inequality fails to and it continues to reduce taxes on the rich, the states can and should step in to compensate for that by enacting taxes on the very rich. And I looked into it for a minute before we began to speak. Sonali, first of all, just to clarify, in case anyone's confused, this is a tax on income above a million dollars, right? So if someone makes $1,100, they'll get tax, what, $9.90 more than they would have. If they make right, isn't that right? Well, 9.9%. So if they... The 9.9%. Right. So that... applies to annual income exceeding $1 million. Exactly. So $9.9 of every $100 that you earn would be taxed, yes. Above a million. Yes. And so that's one thing. The second thing is Washington already taxes capital gains, some long-term capital gains at 7%, so it wouldn't be double taxed,

would go up for some capital gains and it would be added for others. And capital gains is something, you know, certainly at a federal level, we don't often talk about the ways that taxes are avoided or lowered for people making enormous amounts on capital gains or passive income of various kinds. So this is really a step forward. It looks like it's going to happen because the governor says he will sign it, right? Even though it came through the legislature. Did you manage to find out how popular it is in the state of Washington? No, I haven't looked at polls, but throughout, I haven't looked at specific polls to Washington, but poll after poll shows that there's a huge public appetite across the country for taxing the rich. And this actually applies. you know, as well to majorities of Republicans, although it's a smaller majority than among Democrats, certainly among independents. It's hugely popular. And, you know, folks can and should look that up. And probably most people, even on both sides of the aisle, agree that wealthy people should be taxed more. And I think the point that you raised was really an important one that, you know, this is income. above a million dollars. It is still a modest tax, right? It's for really wealthy people, for people who are in the 1% or more. So it's impacting the wealthiest people. It cannot, I mean, I can't imagine people who make less than a million dollars you are having any complaints about this tax. And what's also interesting about Washington State is that in kind of tandem with this tax. The state has expanded. They call it a working family's tax credit, which is based on the federal family tax credit that we had briefly enjoyed for a few years during the COVID years, and that worked so well. And so Washington is enacting it on a state level and now has expanded to something like 460,000 households where people can basically get some of the state taxes if they make below a certain amount back as a stimulant to, you know, the economy. And it's those two things in tandem can and will reduce income inequality in the state. It's a really good combination of things to happen. And we need to see much more of that happening around the country. And the other thing worth noting is that there has been no personal, correct me if I'm wrong, but there has been no personal income tax at all in the state of Washington. So if you take somebody who's making several million dollars a year with all the Trump tax cuts they've benefited from, then even with this added on, they won't be paying as much as they did.

under Ronald Reagan's administration, I would imagine, or at other, certainly not under the Eisenhower years when the top marginal tax rate was 92%. So they're still doing pretty well for themselves, aren't that? Absolutely, they are. And, you know, we're talking about this bill actually going into effect in 2008, right? So it doesn't even, like, it's only going to start impacting incomes in two years, which means the revenue will start coming into the state in 2019. And we're talking about $3 billion of revenue is what they're expecting to raise. And it's still fairly modest because there's so much, you know, we're seeing food stamp benefits being cut. The health care subsidies that were cut last year, Congress had an opportunity to restore Obamacare subsidies for people who are buying their health insurance through the health care exchanges and chose not to. And so premiums have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, you know, we're spending money on the Iran war like it's water. And there were, there's always billions, of course, to spend on war and never on health care. I don't know, Richard, if you saw today on the front page of the New York Times, there was a story about how affordability concerns impacting people. The headlines says when voters worry about affordability, many point to health care, right? And so these are the kinds of shortfalls that states like Washington. are attempting to fill. And if states don't fill it, people are going to start falling through the cracks really, really fast. But yeah, it's not a very... It doesn't put out millionaires. And, you know, one of the things that millionaires and billionaires love to do is threatened to leave when they're taxed. That's happened in California, which is why Gavin Newsom is opposing the billionaires tax, one-time tax in California because a handful of billionaires have whined about it and threatened to leave. And I think one or two have already left and bought homes in Florida. But the solution to that is states everywhere raising taxes on the rich. They have nowhere to flee. You know, and if they want to leave the country, leave the damn country then, right? So, you know, they'll take their private jets with them. We'll be right back after this was more of my conversation with Sonali call Hotcar. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow and you're listening to The Zero Hour.

You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash weactradio, D.C. And we are back on the Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Escal, we now continue our conversation with Sonali Kolhotkar. I mean, I think it would be interesting at some point to try to explore the hidden costs of having billionaires in your state. But I'm sure there are many in terms of maintenance of private airports and special privileges that are given one way or another. And of course, they talk as if. all of their income was being appropriately taxed now. So it was going to be a devastating income loss for the state when that's hardly the case. And, you know, what you were when you were talking, Sonali, what I was thinking of was the articles I've read about how Palo Alto. is being uh i i'm sure it's palo alto is being ruined a whole area of it by Mark Zuckerberg who's buying and this is a wealthy neighborhood uh because he's buying up property after property and as sort of absorbing it into a giant compound and the already wealthy people who live there are getting hemmed and squeezed and stopped by security guards when they're trying to get home as if they were intruding on private property. And it seems to me these sorts of things that degrade the quality of life, that degrade people's accessibility to their own resources or public resources. This is something I don't think anyone's ever looked at. So I guess that's just my way of agreeing with you that, hey, if they want to leave, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Yeah, I mean, you know, these tech millionaires have proven and billionaires have proven to be bad for the environment, bad for social concerns, bad, you know, they have terrible ideas. They are, they boast about being disruptors, but all they're doing is actually disrupting people's lives, right? They have on a whim. gone out and done stupid things like buying up social media platforms and destroying them. And so, yeah, absolutely. And they benefit from, right? Many of them will travel through Europe or talk about cities like San Francisco and New York City being ruined by the unhoused when in fact those vibrant cities.

are the product of working class labor, culture, you know, and the kind of structure that makes interesting living for everybody, these billionaires have come in and ruined these cities. Yeah, I think that... You know, there's too much dependence that people feel that they have on them. And the dynamic needs to be turned back around. Billionaires need the state more than the state needs billionaires. And not to mention that those unhoused are unhoused because these people aren't paying their fair share of taxes. Yes. And driving up property values. And absolutely. Absolutely. That's the tragedy of San Francisco is. In a nutshell, a beautiful city that I've always loved. My mother was from the East Bay, and I lived in the East Bay for 10 years or so. And I used to love the area, but between the traffic and the cost of everything, you know, it's really been decimated. So let's talk for a second about politics. Bob Ferguson, I believe his name is Bob Ferguson, the governor of Washington, Democrat. uh says he'll sign this bill that came through the legislature uh Gavin Newsom governor of california democrat says he won't sign the billionaire's tax i was rather amused to see the third way the wall street funded reactionary democratic group called that a just a courageous move on Gavin Newsom's part he says he doesn't want the billionaire's leave but of course he doesn't want the billionaire's money to leave his campaign coffers so uh Gavin Newsom says he won't vote for it uh You now have another example you can point to. One can point, I don't mean you personally, although you are a California voter, but there is now one more example to Shade and Gavin Newsom and the Democrats of the state of California and Democrats around the country. If they can do it in Washington State, why can't you do it? And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about the politics of that. Yeah, I mean, you know, Gavin Newsom wrote, look, has his eyes towards the White House. And this is, you know, this has been the downfall of so many political figures who. have their sights set on higher office. What he's trying to do is position himself as this national leader and understanding that every step that he takes in his current position as governor of California is being closely watched, but also he's trying to build up this campaign. And he's doing it the way that centrist right-wing Democrats love to build up their campaigns, which is rely on the wealthy.

to support them rather than what very popular, populist left-wing candidates for higher office successfully have done, which is build campaigns on many, many small dollar donations. People like Bernie Sanders, like Zohran Mamdani, like many, you know, members of the squad, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she first ran for Congress. It is very effective to run campaigns on a populist left-wing message. that relies on smaller dollar donations and it often keeps you more accountable as a politician. But Gavin Newsom isn't interested in that. Gavin Newsom is interested in making big waves, taking big swings, being seen as this. you know, brash, upstart, telegenic personality who can take on Trump and be super clever doing it. He's the pick me politician as you and I have talked about so many. The pick me politician. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I call him the politician as influencer. But the, so he basically he's using the same strategy that works so well for Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris. So he's going now and tried a true path of, if you ask me, a failure. And what that does is it leaves the country in the hands of right-wing figures like Trump, right? It's not just about these candidates failing on their own and failing themselves, but failing the rest of us because they suck up all of the energy and excitement. that would go to a true leftist candidate who could really win against somebody like a Trump or a Trump-like figure. So yeah, I mean, Gavin Newsom needs to be put in his place now as soon as possible. Yeah, it's disappointing, but true. So with that, first of all, you've been really great on following these taxation issues, which are so important. And I think if people were able to get perceptible value for the taxes like Medicare for all, like affordable child care, like family leave, we could go down the list, I think people wouldn't hate. April 15th, quite as much as they do. In fact, they might understand they can get great bargains in health care coverage and child care and a million other things if we get the right people in office to deliver them. Absolutely. I mean, just in the few weeks that the U.S. has waged a ridiculous illegal war on Iran, we have spent federal tax dollars to the tune of 25 to 30. billion dollars. The first six days alone cost more than $11 billion, right? And this is more than the amount that was being demanded by some Democrats last year to restore the health care subsidies. And Congress said, oh, that's too much money. Oh, they just blew it on a destructive war that is actually going to upend the entire economy, the capitalist economy, but still, you know, we're all sadly.

in against our will invested in that um and so yeah i think that that those connections should be made Bernie Sanders is one of the most vocal making those connections you know bless him for doing so um but meanwhile you have someone like trump saying oh if gas prices prices rise they rise and so what um and and just you know blundering through wasting and spending money and trying to still call himself the peace president. But yeah, we need to be making these financial equations and calculations. Like, oh, there's always money for war. How interesting, without even attempting to go through Congress, right? There's always money to just blow on war and not on the things that we actually need. Right, because a trillion dollars a year for the military is apparently not enough. So. With that, Sonali called Hotcar, as always, thanks for your great work. And as always, thanks for coming on the program. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much, Richard. And we'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and this is The Zero Hour.

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. back on the Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Before we had our conversation with Sinalukkah, I was talking about the so-called Dewey Lipman debate of the 1920s, and I teased the idea that I would be talking about how it affects and reflects upon our politics today. Now, first of all, I should clarify that at the time, it wasn't seen as so much of a debate. as just a series of opinions being issued by two prominent public thinkers. It was only later, maybe in the 60s or so, that they started talking about it as a debate about democracy. But that's what it was. And remember, if you think back on how that might have been categorized in those days, both of these people were, Dewey and would have been considered. on the left side of the political spectrum, for sure, in some way, shape, or form. Now, John Dewey was probably seen as more of an idealist and more of an abstract thinker. He not only said the cure for democracy is more democracy, but he talked about sharing knowledge and debate and what he called the great... community and as a way to create a social wisdom that includes all of us. So I think people probably saw Lipman as the clear-eyed realist and Dewey as the idealist. And I think there was some element of truth to that. But this conflict between the idea that the public can make its own decisions and the idea that the public is a bewildered. heard has never left us. Now, interestingly enough, the so-called progressives of that era, like maybe progressives of today were divided into a couple different groups. There were progressives who were had qualities that would be horrifying to progressives today. For example, eugenicists were often, and progressives were often the same people because progressives believed in progress and there was a and if anything and over what's the word idealization of science uh so they thought well science can make human beings better through uh weeding out the lower race is so called which of course is racism and that central element of eugenics uh and read out the less intelligent or the less skilled as if they have any less inherent value as human beings. So that was one element. That element of progressivism liked what Dewey, I'm sorry, liked what Lipman had to say because, hey, look, it's all about creating an efficient society. But the humanistically oriented progressives and left and the people who really

think democracy is a workable principle for society uh were appalled by litman and defended dewey now i should add at this point that that lipman being a newspaper guy uh could write good prose. Dewey, I admire a lot of his thinking, but reading him gives me a migraine sometimes. And so it was hard for his work to really absorb, get absorbed in public consciousness, except through intermediaries who would interpret him. That said, Dewey had his defender's lip and had his... defenders, but the great fear that I would have had and that sensible people of the time had was if you're talking about a technocracy, if you're talking about a technocratic elite running things, that only is not democracy, that creates a self-serving, self-sustaining class of a small percentage of the population that controls. everything else. This is where we jump into today, isn't it? Because that's what we're seeing today. And we're seeing it in different ways. We're seeing it manifest in different ways in today's politics. So first of all, we had during the Obama era, the whole phenomenon of in political culture of people who called themselves wonks, policy wonk. technocratic wanks. Ezra Klein, now of the New York Times, was a prominent member of this group of people at the time. But the idea, always president of American society in certain ways, was that some people are just smarter and know more and should tell. other people, how democracy ought to be run, and they can do it on a dispassionate basis based on analyzing data and producing outcomes. But as many profound thinkers, And even casual observers have noted there's no such thing as value neutral number crunching. Everything that we do in terms of, first of all, garbage in, garbage out, which numbers we choose to process, where we get them from. All of that is a reflection of our cultural upbringing and biases. So the notion of the technocratic wonk that became so popular during the Obama era and really was reflected by things like the Hillary. Clinton campaign, and today by the ways that a lot of Democratic leaders and consultants and policy advisors communicate with the public, that they are Lickman's children, right? They are carrying on this tradition that the public is the bewildered heard. But voters aren't stupid.

and they can sense when politicians or TV per news anchors or anyone else is talking down to them and it makes them understandably angry. So Lippman's legacy, which is infused, I would argue, the establishment, at least of the Democratic Party and many of us politicians and spokespeople. turns voters off. Then we have the rise, what they call the professional managerial class, the PMC, who have become, instead of the working class, the base for the Democratic Party, this creates a huge problem because most of the people in this country are not members of that class. That's your doctors, lawyers, accountants, executives, and so on, professors. even though many professors have been reduced to gig workers, we're talking about higher income folks. So you have the technocratic Democratic Party, which created an opportunity for the Republican Party to pretend, and I emphasize the word pretend, to be the party of the people, the party of democracy. That left an opening, and boy, was Trump good at taking advantage of it. They don't care. And pretty soon the whole Republican Party caught on. They don't care about you. They just want to tell you what pronouns to use. They think they know better than you. I mean, one of the reasons that the anti-trans issue has caught on across America is not so much. to do with trans people as it is to do, I would argue, with the way it was presented in the public and the way it meshed with this perception that Democrats see themselves as a technocratic elite telling people what they should think instead of just talking to them as equals. Now, do I think the Republicans are really the party of democracy? Well, hardly. They're hard at work every day trying to crush it in newer and more efficient ways, the latest being the so-called SAVE Act. They are an extremely anti-democratic force, but they cloak themselves with issues that really don't have to do with public information like trans. Now we're suffused with, I'm sorry, they don't have to do with public information in a broader sense like trans. So, for example, they can scaremonger about boys and girls' bathrooms very easily on that issue. It's one of emotion rather than information. That distracts the public from absorbing the information it should absorb about what Republicans and technocrats. in both parties have done to the American working family. So here we have a situation where artificial, artificially inflated pseudo information and fear is being used to crowd out the functioning democracy and crush the great community that John Dewey talked about. We have, in addition to that

really nobody fulfilling the role, not in the mainstream media, not in politics itself. Nobody is fulfilling the role of informing, of educating the public, of taking away that bewilderment, to use Walter Lipman's words, and replacing it with a deeper understanding. Why, that doesn't sell newspapers, that doesn't get eyeballs on cable TV or your website to talk about it. But it could, but it doesn't. And the people who run our major media systems are beholden to the people who are distracting us and giving us, if anything, misinformation. A final word about that. Now, of course, we have social media, the internet and... AI. We were told when these things all came into being that information would now travel at the speed of light, which is true. But there's only one thing that travels faster than information in this new digital age. And that's misinformation. So the challenge of our time building that great community and sharing the knowledge we need to build a real democracy, not a technocracy. We'll be right back after this.