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Articles by Bill Scheuerman
Time for Big Oil to Pay Up
The skyrocketing price of gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil is squeezing the consumer’s pocketbook and giving Big Oil record breaking profits. Donald Trump says he wants Big Oil to lower prices. Meanwhile, he’s making multi-millions from the oil stocks he bought before starting the war with Iran, according to the Joint Economic Committee Minority (JECM). Aside from profiteering and whining, what did he do about oil prices?
Trump’s Iran War: Power to the People
Months in, Trump’s war on Iran has netted him none of the goals he proclaimed when he began dropping bombs. Iran still has a dictatorship, enriched uranium, plenty of missiles and drones, and effective control of the now closed Strait of Hormuz. Military observers repeatedly tell the press that for Trump to seize control of the Strait and Iran’s uranium would require a U.S. military invasion, “boots on the ground.” So, what’s stopping him?
Trump’s Iran War: Power to the People
Months in, Trump’s war on Iran has netted him none of the goals he proclaimed when he began dropping bombs. Iran still has a dictatorship, enriched uranium, plenty of missiles and drones, and effective control of the now-closed Strait of Hormuz. Military observers repeatedly tell the press that for Trump to seize control of the Strait and Iran’s uranium would require a U.S. military invasion, “boots on the ground.” So, what’s stopping him?
Crushed between giants
A recent Wall Street Journal headline screamed “Big Banks' Profits Surge After a Red-Hot Quarter on Wall Street.” The Big Five of finance – JP Morgan, Chase, Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo – earned $49 billion in the first quarter of 2026. JP Morgan's CEO Jamie Dimon was happy. He declared this is about “as good as it gets.” Behind this nearly $50 billion are the credit card interest and fees that you and I pay.
What Happens When the Dream Explodes?
Breaking News “The American Dream is Back,” President Trump boasted during his July 4, 2026, speech on the National Mall. This is the same man who said, “I love the inflation,” as he constantly assures us that affordability is a Democratic hoax. Trump no longer even pretends to give lip service to addressing the economic issues he ran – and won – on in 2024.
What Happens When the Dream Explodes?
“The American Dream is Back,” President Trump boasted during his July 4, 2026, speech on the National Mall. This is the same man who said, “I love the inflation,” as he constantly assures us that affordability is a Democratic hoax. Trump no longer even pretends to give lip service to addressing the economic issues he ran – and won – on in 2024. As the New York Times just reported, Trump’s wealth has increased by over two billion dollars in the fifteen months since he returned to office again.
What happens when the dream explodes? - Salisbury Post
“The American Dream is Back,” President Trump boasted during his July 4 speech on the National Mall. This is the same man who said, “I love the inflation,” as he constantly assures us that affordability is a Democratic hoax. Trump no longer even pretends to give lip service to addressing the economic issues he ran — and won — on in 2024. As the New York Times just reported, Trump’s wealth has increased by over $2 billion in the 15 months since he returned to office again.
The American Plan and the 2026 Elections
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Sidney Plotkin & Bill Scheuerman Woody Guthrie proudly sang “This land is your land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island,” but, in fact, the conversion of vast public resources and wealth to private property is one of the defining dynamics of American history. The political economist Thorstein Veblen called this process “The American Plan:” the conversion of public resources into private hands as fast as possible.
The American Plan and the 2026 Elections
Woody Guthrie proudly sang “This land is your land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island,” but, in fact, the conversion of vast public resources and wealth to private property is one of the defining dynamics of American history. The political economist Thorstein Veblen called this process “The American Plan:” the conversion of public resources into private hands as fast as possible. It started with the “legal seizure” of native lands and resources.
Grand Theft Big OIL
Breaking News While many of us are cutting back on groceries, travel, health care and other necessities to pay almost five bucks a gallon for gas (more than $5/gallon in some states), oil companies are raking in mega bucks. According to the politically centrist publication, The Hill, since President Trump started the war with Iran the world’s eleven largest oil companies are earning about 30 million dollars every hour. That comes to $720 million a day or more than $5 billion every week.
Grand Theft Big OIL
We were filling the tank (and emptying the wallet) when a guy in a pickup truck with a Trump sticker started complaining about the high price of gas. We told him the oil companies are making unholy profits but the price at the pump is just a fraction of what we’re really paying. Taxpayers give oil and gas companies billions, we said, and, we couldn’t resist, it’s much worse since Trump’s election. He didn’t believe us.
Opinion | While you get gouged at the pump, guess who profits
We were filling the tank (and emptying the wallet) when a guy in a pickup truck with a Trump sticker started complaining about the high price of gas. We told him the oil companies are making unholy profits but the price at the pump is just a fraction of what we’re really paying. Taxpayers give oil and gas companies billions, we said, and, we couldn’t resist, it’s much worse since Trump’s election. He didn’t believe us.
Grand theft big oil
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Sidney Plotkin & Bill Scheuerman We were filling the tank (and emptying the wallet) when a guy in a pickup truck with a Trump sticker started complaining about the high price of gas. We told him the oil companies are making unholy profits but the price at the pump is just a fraction of what we’re really paying. Taxpayers give oil and gas companies billions, we said, and, we couldn’t resist, it’s much worse since Trump’s election. He didn’t believe us.
Time for a Fox Hunt
Photograph Source: Steve Bott – CC BY 2.0 Millions of Americans have taken to the streets to resist Trump’s hijacking of democracy. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. Our challenge is to fight the misinformation campaigns that are dividing us. Fox News is an obvious starting point.
Suppressing and Killing the Other: An American Tradition
People are shocked at the cold-blooded killings of Alex Petti and Renee Nicole Good. They should be shocked. ICE shot Petti multiple times as he was attempting to help a person whom they had thrown to the ground. Renee Good had just dropped her six-year-old at school before taking bullets to her face, head and chest. But killing Americans or denying them of basic rights because they’re different or protesting injustice is not nearly as un-American as we like to tell ourselves.
Time for a Fox Hunt Original
Millions of Americans have taken to the streets to resist Trump’s hijacking of democracy. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. Our challenge is to fight the misinformation campaigns that are dividing us. Fox News is an obvious starting point.
Epstein, Trump and The Higher Immorality
We live in an America where those who control the levers of power potentially have knowledge of almost everything about the ordinary citizen while they operate clandestinely with little or no public scrutiny. In contrast, they have access not only to information such as our social media, but also our voting records, our medical histories and our financial records. In the world of power holders, what C.
Venezuela, Project 2025 and Big Oil’s Trump Investment
If you think Trump’s threat to invade Venezuela is about stopping the influx of drugs into the United States, you need to take a closer look at Project 2025. That document advocates American hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. But Trump does not read documents or strategy papers. He wants to bully the hemisphere and control its vast natural resources. His “Gulf of America” apparently includes the vast oil reserves of Venezuela. The socialist nation has the world’s largest proven reserves.
Is Capitalism Reaching the End of the Road?
Capitalism is fast becoming so unpopular that the money-grubbing old autocrat in the White House wants to protect it by promising to investigate and prosecute anyone who speaks against it. Free speech be damned. But Milton Friedman said Capitalism and Freedom go together. So, we will use some of that fast-disappearing freedom to comment on the fading popularity of “free enterprise”.
The Neofascist Economy is Here
Donald Trump is creating a new form of capitalism. His economic policy is driven by his personal whims rather than the needs of capital, the results of which are likely to bring disaster to our economy and extreme hardship to American workers and the American people. Trump voters have consistently overlooked or dismissed his glaring failures as a businessman who squandered his great family wealth.
Regime Change 2025
The popular protest sign “They’re eating the checks, they’re eating the balances” exactly captures the destruction Donald Trump has wrought in his first six months in office as he follows the Project 2025 roadmap to change every aspect of American government and American life.
Commodifying the Life of the Mind
As a long-time leader in higher ed unionism, I was recently asked to comment on the transformative changes taking place in American higher education. To answer, I reflected on my nearly sixty years in higher education. I was a working-class kid from New York City who went to CCNY, where tuition was free. Yes, free. Free or low-cost tuition was the norm in American public colleges and universities in the 1960s. My expectations of college were probably typical of my generation.
Labor Movement Means More Than Unions
Since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, headlines have focused on union organizing victories at Starbucks and Amazon. But a recent New York Times story declaring “New York Delivery Workers Are Getting a Bump in Pay” reminds us that workers outside the union movement are part of the labor movement too.
Labor Movement Means More Than Unions
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / June 16th, 2023 Since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, headlines have focused on union organizing victories at Starbucks and Amazon. But a recent New York Times story declaring “New York Delivery Workers Are Getting a Bump in Pay” reminds us that workers outside the union movement are part of the labor movement too.
Forward to the Past
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / May 24th, 2023 Outrage continues over Justice Neil Gorsuch’s recent remarks that policy responses to COVID-19 may represent “the greatest intrusion of civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” Slavery, the historical exclusion of women and non-property owners from voting, Jim Crow, the abuses of the Red Scares and an infinite list of other violations of civil liberties are nothing to Gorsuch compared to asking people to wear masks and get...
Steering the Titanic into the Iceberg
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / May 23rd, 2023 Patty Chayefsky’s film Network, an acid-laced spoof of capitalist media, reaches its climax when Chairman Arthur Jensen, leader of the fictional mega-corporation CAA, thunders his disapproval to the crazed but wildly popular anchorman, Howard Beale.
May Day Resurrected
Another May Day has come and gone, and most Americans never noticed. It wasn’t always like this. In decades past, thousands of workers of different ages, ethnicities and genders celebrated the first of May by marching in support of worker rights. Workers traditionally wore red on May Day to show unity in their struggle against the power of capital and to remember the blood shed by thousands of workers in the struggle for human dignity.
Radio Free - Independent Media for People, Not Profits.
Another May Day has come and gone, and most Americans never noticed. It wasn’t always like this. In decades past, thousands of workers of different ages, ethnicities and genders celebrated the first of May by marching in support of worker rights. Workers traditionally wore red on May Day to show unity in their struggle against the power of capital and to remember the blood shed by thousands of workers in the struggle for human dignity.
Aggression, Guns, and Marcuse
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / April 25th, 2023 Better not knock on the wrong door or drive into the wrong driveway, you may get shot. Kids are afraid to go to school for fear of getting killed, as the body count from mass shootings climbs every day. Hate crimes are increasing, and just driving to work is potentially dangerous. Think of tailgaters honking their horns and flipping you the bird as they speed past.
Playing with Financial Fire
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / March 29th, 2023 Capitalism, Marx said, is unceasingly prone to crisis. His observation applies as much to financial capital as to industrial capital, as the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York attest. In their pursuit of profits, banks make loans that borrowers cannot repay or back the loans with assets that lose value.
American Labor: Prospects and Possibilities
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / March 25th, 2023 Starbucks workers at over 100 sites greeted Spring and the company’s new CEO by walking off the job. Some pundits hail this action as a reflection of labors’ growing new strength. Public approval of unions is at a fifty year high, petitions for union elections are on the upswing, and the recent well-publicized organizing victories at Trader Joes, Amazon, outdoor outfitter REI, and almost 300 Starbucks stores, among others.
Class and Diversity in the Left
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / March 1st, 2023 A recent expose in The New York Times documenting how U.S. corporations exploit migrant children sheds light on a crucial issue facing the American Left. Nowadays, many activists on the Left rightly focus on identity politics. To them, diversity is the order of the day. No argument here. Richard Penniman said it succinctly: diversity is a beautiful bouquet of flowers.
DeSantis as Gradgrind
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / February 24th, 2023 Florida’s Governor DeSantis educational scheme that students need to learn the facts and nothing but the facts is likely to make teaching and learning in Florida more challenging than ever before. DeSantis’ “fact only” pedagogy mirrors that of Thomas Gradgrind, a character in Dickens’ Hard Times who sustained the Victorian status quo by teaching students how not to think.
Republican Attacks on Education and Critical Thinking
by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / February 20th, 2023 Have you ever been grilled by little kids asking the question, “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why does Heather have two moms? Why are you going to work? Why do you need money? Before you know it they have you questioning basic social values you never even thought about. That’s why right-wing Americans attack public education from kindergarten through college.
Tidbits - Jan. 5, 2023 - Reader Comments: MAGAers Hold Congress Hostage; Roots of American Fascism; Open Letter to Young UniOrganizers; Come Work With Railroad Workers United; Jan 6th Justice: Our Freedoms, Our Vote - Nationwide Events; Cartoons; More… |
If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary. (One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.) And just so you know, unions do work..... (A. Philip Randolph Institute) Re: Jan.
Bussing Immigrants to Vice President Harris’ Home
How fascism has become an acceptable part of American politics by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / January 4th, 2023 Migrants traveling from Texas arrived by bus outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence in Washington, DC. Fox News Migrants traveling from Texas arrived by bus outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
Commentary: Happy Labor Day, while there are still jobs for folks to do
Labor Day is almost here again. You've worked hard, so enjoy the day off. But don't count on having a job much longer. Structural changes in the economy are killing jobs at a record pace and most are not coming back. If this sounds alarmist, think about the current COVID-19-induced recession in light of the three-decade history of "jobless recoveries" following recessions.
Commentary: Fight for Fifteen proves the labor movement is not dead
On a November day in 2012, a vibrant new labor movement was born. Two hundred underpaid fast-food workers in New York City walked off the job and took to the streets demanding a wage of $15 an hour and union rights. Thanks to their efforts and the efforts of thousands of others who joined the Fight for Fifteen movement, this New Year's Eve the minimum wage in New York City will jump to an almost-livable $15 an hour.
Keep our fate from Trump
Keep our fate from Trump The other day, while rummaging through an old box containing relics of my misspent youth, I found the dog tag I wore in grade school during the 1950s. During the early years of the Cold War, when nuclear war was uppermost in almost everybody's minds, students in New York City's public schools wore dog tags with their name, address (my address, incidentally, was wrong), and blood type. The dog tags would help identify bodies in the event of a nuclear holocaust.
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