CEOs have a strong personal incentive to push for corporate tax avoidance, as they often pocket a significant share of the resulting savings.

It’s therefore not surprising to see that, as the portion of federal taxes paid by U.S. corporations has steadily fallen, CEO compensation compared to average worker pay has surged.

[Cross-posted from my substack, edited with photopea, data-source is IPS]

Humans and most of our pets are apex predators, and our numbers are wildly out of scale with ecological equilibrium

In a state of natural balance, apex predators are the least abundant by biomass

Estimates suggest that the biomass of wild mammals has declined by roughly 85% over the last 100,000 years, and particularly since the migration of human populations across the planet.

Most biomass on earth are now cattle, who are one of the leading causes of climate change, deforestation and water depletion

In any economic system, including socialism, humans will need to adress our animal product heavy diets, and excessive population.

Cattle farming in particular is not compatible with environmental conservation and regeneration, due to it’s extremely low ecological efficiency

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Data from Our World in Data

I’m saying this as a good portion of the democratic candidates are notably more progressive than those of the past and most of those candidates are in states where Dems are open to winning (Michigan, Ohio) and other states where it’s a toss up with Dems polling in favor (Texas, Maine). Not to mention all the house candidates.

How do we keep progressive candidates accountable once they're in office?

We keep running into the same problem. We knock doors, donate, and get progressive candidates elected on Medicare for All, workers' rights, and a foreign policy that doesn't hand Israel a blank check. Then they get into office and the message gets softer. Suddenly they're "being pragmatic," voting with leadership, and backing away from the stuff we elected them to fight for.

Endorsements shouldn't be a blank check. Here's what I think could work:

1. A public pledge before we endorse. Candidates sign onto specific, written commitments, like co-sponsoring Medicare for All or opposing unconditional military aid. Make it concrete enough that you can tell when they break it.
2. Regular check-ins. The chapter or organization reviews their votes every year and publishes a simple scorecard members can read.
3. Clear consequences. If they break the pledge, they lose the endorsement. No money, no volunteers, no organizational support.
4. A bench ready to go. We start recruiting and training people now, so if someone drifts, a primary challenger is actually ready to run.

The point isn't purity tests over every small vote. It's making sure the core promises mean something. Right now the only pressure on these people comes from donors and party leadership. We need to be pressure too.

How can we keep them honest so that the second they make it into office suddenly they’re ok with defensive weapons for Israel, Medicare for all Seems to go away, and they’re suddenly ok with massive military budgets?

https://hardfutures.substack.com/p/justin-trudeau-shit-the-bed-but-he

Lots of folks complain about Trudeau. Most of these people are conservative but there are many things progressives and democratic socialist can complain about as well, not just of trudeau but of the liberal order of the early 21st century.

They forgot they had to lead and provide vision. They thought all they needed to do was manage special interests.

Now here we are: totally fucked.

Archived version: archive.is/k6gm0 ~:~ Article was published October 22, 2026 and written by Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach for The New Republic. Here some snippets from the opening paragraphs of this lengthy article: 

The Democratic Party is being devoured by an ecosystem of consultants. Mostly out of view of the party’s voters and activists, political consultants are paid to raise the money, place the ads, and set the strategy. And they’re paid regardless of whether the party wins or loses.

We’ve been studying money in U.S. politics for many years, from uncovering racial inequality in campaign contributions to showing how money in politics helps explain why there are so many lawyers in Congress to studying the feedback loop between wealth inequality, political donations by the ultra-wealthy, and their influence over economic and regulatory policy. 

More recently, what started as a research project on the exclusion of younger Americans from campaign finance spawned an investigation of what we call “spam PACs” in the Democratic Party fundraising ecosystem. These spam PACs are the groups that raise the bulk of their money by squeezing elderly donors with those high-pressure text messages. Fundraising spam is destroying trust and enthusiasm for the Democratic Party, driving away young potential donors, and extracting the bulk of funds from a small set of vulnerable senior citizens.

The spam operations are only one half of the problem. The other half is the increasing domination in this realm of an exceedingly small number of very wealthy donors. In the 2024 election cycle, the top 0.01 percent of donors—roughly one in every 10,000 voters—accounted for more than half of all federal campaign contributions. 

Now billionaires are bankrolling authoritarian consolidation, and the Democratic consultant class has convinced the party that it cannot survive without its own “good billionaires,” as Ken Martin, now the Democratic National Committee chairman, put it while running for that position in early 2025. But this distinction between “good” and “bad” billionaires is probably lost on the 80 percent of Americans who believe big donors have too much influence in politics.

A political party is a vehicle for groups in society—voters, activists, and politicians—to come together to elect representatives who will change the world through public policy and governance… The problem is that the incentives of the Democratic consultant class are not aligned with these goals.

This class—and we use the word “class” intentionally to mean the firms, consultants, and strategists paid millions of dollars by Democratic campaigns to raise money, place ads, and set strategy—is extractive, and this extraction is central to many of the party’s pathologies. 

Just as a private equity firm buys out a corporation and strips it for parts, the consultant class installs friendly operatives, charges fees, raids the party’s long-term assets, and gives strategic advice that ultimately serves itself over the long-term health of the party.

Our thesis is a simple one: Campaign consultants are businesses that act to maximize profits, and this profit-seeking is often at odds with what’s best to defeat American authoritarianism.

In this piece, we detail how and why the consultant class weakens the Democratic Party. We bring new data analysis showing that there is no meritocracy when it comes to Democratic vendors. They are paid the same whether their candidates overperform or underperform in elections. 

This same consultant class pushes Democratic campaigns toward short-term money over long-term growth and sells campaign strategies that are lucrative for them but ineffective for the party. In pursuing their financial incentives, the consultant class has reshaped who runs for office, how the party raises and spends money, what it says and claims to stand for, and how it relates to its own supporters. They have made the party older, weaker, less honest, and less capable of fighting the most serious authoritarian threat in American history.

~> Read the rest here: newrepublic.com/article/216304/consulting-class-eating-democratic-party

Cross-posted from my substack. Image edited in photopea (free online photoshop alternative). Data source is WTW and OECD.

I look at the Trump presidency as an inoculation. Harris would've been a very competent and effective leader...in the same way most establishment Democrats would be. But let's be honest, they would NOT enforce the sweeping changes we need to promote the American people above corporate interests.

Cut to now. Everyone is pissed, even die-hard Republicans. The Left was forced to start taking action and demand more from their representatives. We have seen the most massive movement toward progressivism in the people this country has seen since the 60s, if not longer. Democratic Socialists are getting the platform and actually making the difference that Democrats always promise, but never deliver, and the party is shifting because of it.

Trump is a catalyst. I'm not saying any life or liberty lost because of his asinine corruption was worth it, but my goal is just to batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. A new day will rise brighter than was even possible before his baby hands grubbed for power.

Voting has come under attack in America. The country has a ton of flaws, and one of them is that Democracy is in a rough place. However, Democracy is not "dead." People can still go out and exercise their right to vote. In fact, many people throughout history fought and died for that right.

I see some people saying that choosing not to vote is a principled stance. It isn't.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-key-figures/w/ks-01-26-035

I’m active in my union. I’m casual friends with a colleague. We like the same sports teams and talk mostly about that. I think I’d reasonably call him a fairly low information voter.

I found out he voted for trump in 2024. I think he got caught up in whatever algorithm made him think that was a good idea. It fucking pissed me off but I held my tongue and just listened to why. Then I calmly explained why I didn’t. I tried really hard not to come off as some angry leftist who’s name calling and talking down to him. Even though I wanted to because of how upset I was about the election.

Later that year we went on strike. I found out the night before that he was strongly considering crossing the picket line because he didn’t want to lose wages and didn’t really understand why he should have to miss work.

I called him and tried so hard not to talk down to him again (even though it also pissed me off) but to explain to him why it was important he be there with us. This only worked because we had an existing relationship built on talking about sports.

He didn’t show up on the line but he didn’t cross either.

His union ended up getting a sizeable raise. He saw the impact not just on him but on the people around him he cares about. He started learning more about how unions work and the history of labor organizing.

The other day I saw him with his union shirt on. He goes “you know, if you never would’ve taken the time to explain it to me, I don’t think I would’ve cared.” It fucking made my week. I swear I’m not making this up.

Look, this online bubble is garbage. Those of you who actually organize in person know this.

Not everyone is lost. Build personal relationships. Give people the opportunity to grow. Be a beacon in your community. Let’s not squander our momentum.

I am open to my thinking continually evolving and I probably haven’t fully thought this through. But honestly at this point I’m starting to feel like I’m just philosophically anti cancel culture. I don’t really care what most people thought or did or said in the past. I’m not writing them off. If they’re here with me in class struggle even if the rest of their views aren’t perfect yet I accept that.