Trump's Old-School Brand of Imperialism

MAGA-Fest Destiny

William Astore for the TomDispatch

A few years ago, I came across an old book at an estate sale. Its title caught my eye: “Our New Possessions.” Its cover featured the Statue of Liberty against stylized stars and stripes. 

What were those “new possessions”? The cover made it quite clear: Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. The subtitle made it even clearer: “A graphic account, descriptive and historical, of the tropic islands of the sea which have fallen under our sway, their cities, peoples, and commerce, natural resources and the opportunities they offer to Americans.” 

What a mouthful! I’m still impressed with the notion that “tropical” peoples falling “under our sway” offered real Americans amazing opportunities, as did our (whoops — I meant their) lands. Consider that Manifest Destiny at its boldest, imperialism unapologetically being celebrated as a new basis for burgeoning American greatness.

The year that imperial celebration was published — 1898 — won’t surprise students of U.S. history. America had just won its splendid little imperial war with Spain, an old empire very much in the “decline and fall” stage of a rich, long, and rapacious history. And just then red-blooded Americans like “Rough Rider” Teddy Roosevelt were emerging as the inheritors of the conquistador tradition of an often murderously swashbuckling Spanish Empire.

Of course, freedom-loving Americans were supposed to know better than to follow in the tradition of “old world” imperial exploitation. Nevertheless, cheerleaders and mentors like storyteller Rudyard Kipling were then urging Americans to embrace Europe’s civilizing mission, to take up “the white man’s burden,” to spread enlightenment and civilization to the benighted darker-skinned peoples of the tropics. 

Yet to cite just one example, U.S. troops dispatched to the Philippines on their “civilizing” mission quickly resorted to widespread murder and torture, methods of “pacification” that might even have made Spanish inquisitors blush. That grim reality wasn’t lost on Mark Twain and other critics who spoke out against imperialism, American-style, with its murderous suppression of Filipino “guerrillas” and bottomless hypocrisy about its “civilizing” motives.

After his exposure to “enlightened” all-American empire-building, retired Major General Smedley Butler, twice awarded the Medal of Honor, would bluntly write in the 1930s of war as a “racket” and insist his long career as a Marine had been spent largely in the service of “gangster” capitalism. Now there was a plain-speaking American hero.

And speaking of plain-speaking, or perhaps plain-boasting, I suggest that we think of Donald Trump as America’s retro president from 1898. Isn’t it time, America, to reach for our destiny once again? Isn’t it time for more tropical (and Arctic) peoples to be put “under our sway”? Greenland! Canada! The Panama Canal! 

These and other regions of the globe offer Donald Trump’s America so many “opportunities.” And if we can’t occupy an area like the Gulf of Mexico, the least we can do is rebrand it the Gulf of America! A lexigraphic “mission accomplished” moment bought with no casualties, which sure beats the calamitous wars of George W. Bush and Barack Obama in this century!

Now, here’s what I appreciate about Trump: the transparent nature of his greed. He doesn’t shroud American imperialism in happy talk. He says it just like they did in 1898. It’s about resources and profits. 

As the dedication page to that old book from 1898 put it: “To all Americans who go a-pioneering in our new possessions and to the people who are there before them.” Oh, and pay no attention to that “before” caveat. 

We Americans clearly came first then and, at least to Donald Trump, come first now, and — yes! — we come to rule. The world is our possession and our beneficence will certainly serve the peoples who were there before us in Greenland or anywhere else (the “hellhole” of Gaza included), even if we have to torture or kill them in the process of winning their hearts and minds.

Yes, Trump is a malignant narcissist and sadist with an insatiable lust for power who gets pleasure out of making others squirm. But there’s something else.

Trump's Trade War, Authoritarian Power, and the Oligarchs

Robert Reich in Inequality Media

Understand this: The reason Trump has raised tariffs on Canada and Mexico is not to have more bargaining leverage to get better deals for the United States from Canada or from Mexico.

Hours before the Canadian tariffs went into effect, Trump was asked if there was anything Canada could do to stop them. “We’re not looking for a concession,” Trump said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. “We’ll just see what happens, we’ll see what happens.”

The real reason Trump has raised tariffs on Canada and Mexico is to show the world that he’s willing to harm (smaller) economies even at the cost of harming America’s (very large) economy.

The point is the show — so the world knows it’s dealing with someone who’s willing to mete out big punishments. Trump increases his power by demonstrating he has the power and is willing to use it.

The same with deporting, say, Colombians or Brazilians in military planes, handcuffed and shackled. If, say, Colombia or Brazil complains about their treatment, so much the better. Trump says, without any basis in fact, that they’re criminals. Then he threatens tariffs. If Colombia backs down, Trump has once again demonstrated his power.

Why did Trump stop foreign aid? Not because it’s wasteful. In fact, it helps stabilize the world and reduces the spread of communicable diseases. The real reason Trump stopped foreign aid is he wants to show he can.

Why is he disregarding (or threatening to tear up) treaties and agreements (the Paris Agreement, NATO, whatever)? Not because such treaties and agreements are bad for America. To the contrary, they’re in America’s best interest.

The real reason Trump is tearing up treaties is they tie Trump’s hands and thereby limit his discretion to mete out punishments and rewards.

Soften the blow by stocking up on these tariff-sensitive items

Stockpile but don't go nuts

By Will Collette

You’ve heard a lot lately about Donald Trump’s plan to impose “tariffs” (also called “duties”) on imported goods. We still don’t know if he will impose these tariffs across the board as he said he would during his campaign. Or whether he will target them to gain bargaining power, punish countries for some real or imagined offense or just pressure them, as he threatened to do against Canada to force it to become the US’s 51^st state.

Tariffs are paid for by you, not the targeted country.

US importers of foreign goods pay the actual tariff and then pass that cost onto you. Trump’s tariff blitz on Canada and Mexico, now postponed, will have a huge impact on food and construction materials. Because of low margins in those industries, the tariffs will be passed on almost entirely on YOU.

Trump has NOT postponed the 10% tariff on China and, given how so much of what Americans use comes from China, that means we will be seeing what is basically a 10% National Sales Tax on all those goods. China is a major supplier of medications so there may be a big spike in the cost of prescriptions and over-the-counter meds.

But food is probably the most sensitive item to tariff-driven price hikes because of very low mark-ups at markets and Canada and Mexico supply much of what we eat. Canada is a huge source of America’s grains and cereals. We get the majority of our fresh produce from Mexico. You WILL pay a 25% Trump Sales Tax on food if he decides to go ahead with his tariffs.

Economists are already saying that Trump's tariffs, if imposed as he promised, would amount to the largest tax increase in US history with the brunt of it falling on low income and middle-class families.

A couple of rarely discussed effects will also hit you in the pocketbook. One is supply-chain disruption as these dramatic tax hikes create chaos in the marketplace. Expect shortages, especially for meats, that will also crank up prices. Further, since the price of Canadian and Mexican food products will go up drastically, US food producers will see these tariffs as an invitation to boost their prices and profits.

Further, Trump’s deportation binge will remove many of the workers who grow and harvest American fields and also work in the packing and processing plants that prepare the food to go into the food chain. This will cause food rotting in the fields, shortages and price hikes.

You can do some stocking up to perhaps cushion some of the blow.

Using a freezer and dry storage, you can stock up on meats and seafood, nuts, coffee, chocolate, fruits and vegetables.

More than half of our red meats come from Canada. Vietnam and Mexico supply most of our nuts. Latin America and Canada supply most of our beans. We have virtually no domestic production of coffee or the cacao beans that make chocolate, although climate change may make it possible to grow coffee and cacao on the US mainland. 

A small amount of our coffee comes from Hawaii (Kona coffee) and a small growing region in Puerto Rico, but that’s only a tiny fraction of what Americans need. Cafe Bustelo is partly comprised of Puerto Rico beans but mostly coffee from Columbia and Guatemala. 

I’ve been accumulating a personal stockpile of coffee in the freezer for added freshness.

Dietitians say that canned or frozen fruits and vegetables are almost as nutritious as fresh, although there’s nothing like fresh for taste. And say goodbye to salads.

During the pandemic, we saw shortages and the beginning of the on-going food cost inflation. Some people bought a lot of flour but many lost their investment because of improper storage and deterioration when flour is stored at room temperature.

I wish there was a way to address the out-of-control prices of eggs, other than use substitutes. 

In addition to being subject to Trump's ill-advised economic practices, chicken and egg prices are sky-rocketing due to widespread bird (or avian) flu. If you are thinking of raising your own chickens, be aware that they are as susceptible to getting bird flu from wild birds as commercially grown chickens. 

There is no treatment or vaccine for bird flu. Standard practice has been to destroy entire flocks even if only one bird is infected. I don't expect the Trump regime to be any more effective at dealing with avian flu than they were in dealing with COVID. Heaven forbid they should launch a drive to find a vaccine. 

I do expect Trump to follow his COVID gameplan of denying there is a problem, promoting phony remedies, making up some conspiracy theories, covering up the science and statistics on the outbreak and generally let the disease take its toll. He is already gutting and censoring our country's tools to fight this and other diseases.

On that cheerful note, here’s a handy list of egg substitutes to get you started.

You should look at your household’s needs and do the research to see the best way to safely store the food.

Of course you can consider growing your own, though climate conditions limit the practical effect of an anticipated new wave of Victory Gardens.

This is what 49.9% of the voters voted for, despite very specific warnings. If you're angry about inflation, blame MAGA.

Even Those Who Believe Tariffs Are Useful Think Trump's Trade War Makes 'Zero Sense'

The "largest tax increase... that has ever been imposed" on working-class families.

Jake Johnson

The trade war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched over the weekend by announcing sweeping new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China drew intense criticism from experts and analysts across the ideological spectrum, including those who believe strategically deployed tariffs can help protect domestic jobs and workers.

"Tariffs are a powerful, effective tool to deliver certain goals. But Trump's Canada/China/Mexico tariffs make zero sense. And even undermine tariffs' legit uses," Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote on social media late Sunday, expressing agreement with United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.

Fain said in a statement that the UAW "supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy," pointing specifically to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor agreement that Trump negotiated during his first White House term.

The union does not, however, "support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy," Fain continued. "The national emergency we face is not about drugs or immigration, but about a working class that has fallen behind for generations while corporate America exploits workers abroad and consumers at home for massive Wall Street paydays."

The officially stated purpose for Trump's 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10% tariffs on Chinese imports is to confront what the White House described as the "extraordinary threat" posed by the movement of migrants and drugs across the southern and northern U.S. borders.

By the numbers: how the national sale tax (tariffs) will affect the price of groceries

 

Operation Lower Egg Prices

Yeah, ,another four years of this shit

Check out time

Beware Elon Musk and His Attempts to Steer the World Toward the Neo-Fascist Right

South African immigrant and unelected megalomaniac attacks world democracies

Pushes fascism in U.S., Britain, Germany, Canada and Italy

Robert Reich in Inequality Media

Elon Musk repeatedly asserts, without evidence, that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer covered up the abuses of young girls by gangs comprised largely of British Pakistani men, in cases that date back to before 2010 when Starmer was head of Britain’s public prosecutions.

“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for six years,” Musk posted to the top of his account on Friday. “Starmer must go, and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”

In fact, Starmer, who heads the Labour government, did not cover up abuses. Instead, he brought the first case against an Asian grooming gang and drafted new guidelines for how the Crown Prosecution Service should deal with cases of sexual exploitation of children, including the mandatory reporting of child sex offenses.

Musk also calls Jess Phillips, the Labour government’s under secretary for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, a “rape genocide apologist” because she pushed back on calls for a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, a town near Manchester.

In fact, Phillips, who has long campaigned for women’s rights, has called for a local investigation by Oldham authorities rather than the central government. Women’s rights supporters say Musk’s labeling Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” is threatening her safety.

Starmer warned publicly that Musk’s baseless accusations “crossed a line,” adding that “once we lose the anchor that truth matters, in the robust debate that we must have, then we are on a very slippery slope.”

Is Trump serious about invading Panama, Greenland, Canada and Mexico or just crazy?

Trump escalates vow to seize Greenland during wild press briefing

Donald the Conqueror?

By Oliver Willis, Daily Kos Staff

At a press conference on Tuesday, Donald Trump said that it’s possible that he’ll use military force to control Greenland and the Panama Canal once he’s president.

A reporter asked Trump if he could assure that he would not use military or economic coercion to assume control of the two territories, of which he previously said he wants to seize control.

“No. I can’t assure you on either of those two, but I can say this: We need them for economic security,” he said, later adding that “it might be that you’ll have to do something.”

Trump can’t seem to stop bringing up the potential purchase of Greenland, which his son Donald Trump Jr. is currently visiting to reportedly record a podcast.

“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland. The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Vote for a fascist moron and this is what you get

What will Trump, RFK Jr. do to prepare for the next pandemic? Stock up on bleach?

How America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic

Amy Maxmen 

Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.

But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.

“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.

Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 845 herds across 16 states have tested positive.

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

MAGA menace: Canada

Some Republicans are saying we need to wall off the 5,500 mile Canadian border, too. 

By Jim Hightower 

They must be stopped!

In the 1980s, many Texans were alarmed that hordes of immigrants were fleeing Rust Belt states and pouring across the Red River to take our jobs. So my friend Steve Fromholz recommended a big beautiful wall across our northern border to keep them out.

Fromholz, a popular singer-songwriter and renowned political sprite, was ahead of his time in the political sport of wall building.

Instead of steel barriers and miles of nasty razor wire, Steve proposed preventing Yankee refugees from entering the Lone Star State by planting a 10-foot high, 10-foot thick wall of jalapeño peppers along the length of the Red River. Eat your way through and you’d be accepted as a naturalized Texan.

I thought of Steve’s impishness when I read that Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and other Republicans were concocting a whole new xenophobic bugaboo to goose up their anti-immigrant demagoguery.

Is it worth it?

Deep-sea mining has larger-than-expected impacts on sea life, study says

GRACE VAN DEELEN, The New Lede

The fast-growing practice of deep-sea mining poses significant threats to important sea creatures, such as fish, shrimp, corals, and sponges, according to a new study. 

Researchers say they found evidence that disturbances caused by deep-sea mining can slash populations of nearby ocean animals roughly in half and impact marine life across larger areas than scientists have previously thought.  

The study, published Friday in Current Biology, adds to evidence that mining the deep ocean for minerals used to make electric vehicles and renewable energy components has harmful ecological impacts that must be weighed against the climate benefits of transitioning away from fossil fuels. 

Although deep sea mining may be one way to meet the world’s growing demand for certain metals, “it also has the potential to greatly disrupt many deep-sea habitats,” the new paper states. 

“Is it worth it to get these [metals] and mess up the sea versus mess up somewhere else? I don’t know, but we have to use everything we have to make the right call,” said Travis Washburn, an ocean floor ecologist and author on the new study. 

Another study, released Tuesday, shows that deep-sea mining could interfere with tuna fisheries, as well. 

Another way we need to tax the rich

Carbon taxes that focus on luxury consumption are fairer than those that tax all emissions equally

Cell Press

Elon Musk's superyacht

Not all carbon emissions are made for the same reason -- they range from more essential purposes like heating a home to nonessential "luxury" activities like leisure travel. However, proposals for the implementations of carbon taxes tend to apply to all emissions at an equal rate. 

This can give rise to and exacerbate inequalities. A new analysis published on July 11 in the journal One Earth suggests taxing luxury carbon emissions at a higher rate instead; if all 88 countries analyzed in this study adopted the luxury-focused policy, this would achieve 75% of the emissions reduction needed to reach the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting climate change to well below 2°C by 2050.

"There is an injustice in terms of who uses energy, or carbon, for basic or luxury purposes, but it hasn't been translated into explicit policy yet," says Yannick Oswald, an economist at the University of Leeds. "In this study, we test policies derived from this knowledge for the first time."

Will toxic haze and the 2023 danger season make a difference?

Believing the evidence of your own eyes (and lungs)

Derrick Z. Jackson for the Environmental Health News

The year is only half done and the United States has already been enveloped by acrid orange skies in the East, battered by winter rains and floods in California, seared by record winter temperatures in the South, soaked by a record 26-inch April deluge in Fort Lauderdale, and broiled by record spring heat in the Pacific Northwest, Texas, and Puerto Rico.

The onslaught has led to another round of media headlines and press releases from environmental and public health groups asking whether the nation is at a tipping point of urgency to fight climate change.

A Los Angeles Times headline for reader letters on the floods said, “California rains are a wake-up call for climate upheaval to come.” Many other media outlets and advocacy groups, from Al Jazeera to the American Lung Association, speculated as to whether the recent smoke plumes may also be such a “wake-up call.”

A Vox headline on the orange skies from Canadian wildfires said, “Wildfire smoke reminded people about climate change. How soon will they forget?” A Washington Post story carried the headline: “How the Canadian wildfire smoke could shift Americans’ views on climate.” A Philadelphia Inquirer column carried the headline, “America sleepwalks through a climate crisis. Will this smoke alarm wake us up?”

So far, no alarm bell has been loud enough to stop the sleepwalking. Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, and Hurricane Irma in 2021 were all accompanied by the same question. After the 2021 “heat dome” that saw Portland, Oregon hit 116 degrees and Seattle soar to 106, a Los Angeles Times headline said: “Northwest heat wave swamped the vulnerable, was a harsh climate wake-up call.”

The usual and eventual response to such things was summed up in an Associated Press story five years after Superstorm Sandy. The headline was “5 years after Superstorm Sandy, the lessons haven’t sunk in.” It was about most plans for climate security in the New York City area being unrealized.

Oh, Canada: extended warning about bad air from Canadian wildfires

 

MAGA meets South County

South County has always had a sizeable conservative population, but it’s getting ridiculous

By Will Collette

Now's your chance, guys

According to Russian news media, Russia hopes to lure up to 7 million conservatives from the US, Canada and Europe to migrate to Russia. They already have washed-up action movie star Steven Segal so now they need 6,999,999 more. They're calling this "ideological immigration" and if you are white and very conservative, you may qualify.

BYO toilet. 

On May 11, state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti reported that a new village is being constructed for them outside of Moscow. This offer does not include the promise of plumbing or electricity. 

Given how often these items are looted by Russian soldiers in occupied areas of Ukraine, you may have to bring your own.

Jim Mageau, are you paying attention?

I am singling Mageau out because he is the most vocal Trump supporter and recently has used the Westerly Sun and Town Council meetings to propagate lunatic right-wing issues.

Lately, Mageau has had his letter-to-the-editor guns blazing, taking on all comers in his defense of private ownership of weapons of war, such as the AR-15 assault rifle. 

https://americanhandgunner.com/

Mainly, Mageau defends guns by conflating gun deaths with abortion, automotive fatalities, the price of bananas and whatever other distraction he can concoct. Hey Jim – the only purpose of weapons of war is to kill people. 

Mageau also weighed in on the Russian invasion of Ukraine with another letter where he blames the war on Joe Biden. Of course he does. 

With his usual keen reasoning and grasp of history, Mageau says that because Obama did not go to war with Russia over their 2014 seizure of Crimea, Joe Biden is to blame for the current war. 

He contrasts Presidents Biden and Obama’s conduct of foreign affairs with that of his idol, sex offender Donald Trump. According to Mageau, Trump showed his mastery over North Korea, Iran, Russia and China in Rooseveltesque “carry a big” stick style. 

During the last conversation I ever had with Jim Mageau, I listened to a spittle-filled diatribe against President Obama and Hillary Clinton, where he predicted that Benghazi would be the political death of both of them. Mageau is such a prophet!

On February 13, Mageau stood before the Charlestown Town Council to testify on behalf of an obscure MAGA priority, the convening of a new national “Convention of the States” to amend the Constitution. He spoke of a bill, introduced by state Representative Arthur “Doc” Corvese, one of the most conservative DINOs in the State House, with no co-sponsors and no chance of passage.

The reason why there is a MAGA riptide pushing a new Constitutional Convention is to block any future federal mandates like the anti-COVID measures put in place during the pandemic and to rein in some imagined abuses by the IRS. 

The effort is being funded by the notorious Koch Industries.

Mageau asked for Charlestown resolution in support of a new convention. 

Pack your bags, Jim, cuz you’re not going to get what you want. Better luck in Russia.

And when you leave, take Doc Corvese with you along with the other super-DINO, Westerly’s own state Rep. Sam Azzinaro.

Azzinaro once declared that he takes his direction on how to vote not from voters but from the Catholic Bishop of Providence. Maybe that’s where Sam’s recent bill to criminalize distribution by school libraries – and if Sam has his way ALL libraries – from distributing material Sam deems offensive to anyone under age 18.

In a bizarre interview Sam gave to Alex Nunes at the Public’s Radio, Azzinaro said:

“The bill is saying that anyone under the age of 18 should not be allowed to go into a library and take a book out that is showing all kinds of pornographic illustrations of sex acts: oral and intercourse–men with men, woman with women, and so on and so forth…I don't think a child of 10, 11, 12 years old should be able to go and get a book, and bring it up, and say, ‘Look at this book–wow.’”

Azzinaro broadly defines the types of materials he considers criminal to include any depiction of nudity (goodbye, Michelangelo’s David) full or partial (goodbye crucifixes). It also criminalizes any depiction of sexual intercourse. Goodbye Bible. 

Oh, and it’s not surprising that among the small cadre of General Assembly right-wingers co-sponsoring Sam’s bill is none other than Doc Corvese.

Look, I understand how MAGAnuts have made ignorance and illiteracy into public virtues. Trump himself, in a rare moment of honesty, declared in 2016 that “I love the poorly educated.”

However, most people believe that education is the magic bullet for individual success in life and the good of our community.

That’s why Charlestown and its Chariho partners, Richmond and Hopkinton, need to prepare themselves for the approaching storm if the MAGA Council majority in Richmond succeeds in installing MAGAnut Clay Johnson to file a vacancy on the Chariho School Committee.

The Richmond town council appointed Johnson to fill a Chariho vacancy instead of following the Town Charter that requires vacancies to be filled by the next-highest vote getter. Johnson didn’t even run for election, but Jessica Purcell did.

Purcell missed getting elected by only 27 votes, but is, under the Town Charter, the person who should be filling the vacancy.

This controversy is detailed HERE, another insightful piece by Alex Nunes, and has had its hearing before the RI Supreme Court. Clay Johnson showed his intellectual prowess and rightwing hardness in a remarkable 2018 NBC 10 News Conference with Bill Rappleye, a preview of coming attractions should the Court allow him to stay.

The Richmond MAGA Council was represented by none other than Charlestown’s Narragansett-hating lawyer, Joe Larisa.

If Purcell loses and Johnson keeps the Chariho seat, I predict an all-out war over books, race, teacher salaries and tenure that will rip through the Chariho towns pitting neighbors against neighbors. 

Mageau hasn’t weighed in on the Chariho controversy yet. Maybe he’s too busy defending assault rifles and packing his bags for Moscow.

The 75-year thievery of joint tax returns

Some issues you may have never considered before 

By Gerald E. Scorse, Progressive Charlestown contributor 

Another tax season has ended, and more than 50 million returns arrived at the Internal Revenue Service marked “Married filing jointly”.  Few of the filers had any idea that joint returns—created in 1948 and modified in 1969—may be the oldest tax inequity in America. They’ve been picking various pockets for 75 years, and there’s little chance they’ll ever stop.  

Let’s find out how and why the returns came to be, and what’s at the root of the thievery. Let’s see how different parties, notably women, have been paying the price. Lastly, let’s examine a newfound connection between joint returns and America’s racial wealth gap.

The modern personal income tax dates back to 1913, and it began with individual returns. Taxes after all are levied on individuals, and that’s how they were reported.

But a shipbuilding magnate named Henry Seaborn decided to test the rules: he sharply reduced taxes by splitting his income with his nonworking wife and filing separate returns. The IRS retaliated by assessing a surtax for the amount he’d saved. Seaborn paid up, then sued in federal district court to get his money back.

He won the district court case, and won again when an appeal by the IRS was denied by the Supreme Court. Some states, though, didn’t allow income-splitting. Congress ultimately nullified those rules with the Revenue Act of 1948, setting up joint tax returns that effectively divided the incomes of all couples.

Overnight, marital status became a major determinant of taxes. Different rates for singles and married couples created specific winners and losers.

Traditional, single-earner families were the big winners. The new joint returns were set up to split total incomes in half and tax each half at the same marginal rates. On the downside, singles were the first financial victims of joint returns. They had to pay a singles penalty, higher taxes than married couples making the same incomes.

Joint returns changed, drastically, with a 1969 revision to the Internal Revenue Code. Instead of taxing both incomes equally, the rate on the second income would start where the marginal rate on the first income left off.  It was the beginning of the marriage penalty, higher taxes for couples than singles making the same incomes.

Some feminists, though, saw the marriage penalty as a penalty on women. Since wives were almost always the secondary earners, their incomes were being taxed at the highest rates—and the more they earned, the greater the penalty. A 1971 law review article expanded on the same theme, alleging that the revised tax code was tainted by sexism. In 2010, nearly four decades later, the article reappeared as the opening chapter in a book on tax theory.

DiPalma, Tanzi look to Canada for lower prescription drug costs

Maybe Canada can help

As millions of Americans struggle to afford necessary prescriptions, Sen. Louis DiPalma and Rep. Teresa Tanzi have introduced two bills that would lower prescription costs for Rhode Islanders by looking to Canada.

“Prescription drug costs are ridiculous,” said Senator DiPalma (D-Dist. 12, Middletown, Newport, Tiverton, Little Compton). “Why, in the greatest country on earth, are we paying so much more for life-saving medications than people in other countries?”

According to a 2021 report by the Rand Corporation, prescription drugs in the United States cost 218% what they cost in Canada, a phenomenon driven by higher prices for brand-name drugs.

“Someone living in Rhode Island pays more than double for the exact same prescription as someone living just 300 miles away,” said Representative Tanzi (D-Dist. 34, South Kingstown, Narragansett). “The pharmaceutical companies still make money by selling the drugs in Canada, they’re just making way more money off the backs of Rhode Islanders.”

According to a 2019 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 29% of Americans have not taken their medications as prescribed because of cost. And because prescriptions make up around 12% of total health care spending according to the US Government Accountability Office, high costs lead to bigger premiums for private insurance and more Medicare and Medicaid spending.