Dark Money Vouchers Are Having a Moment

Josh Cowen

Photo by Aidan Bartos

The decades-long push to divert tax dollars toward religious education reached new heights last year. As proclaimed by EdChoice—the advocacy group devoted to school vouchers—2023 was the year these schemes reached “escape velocity.” In strictly legislative terms, seven states passed new voucher systems, and ten more expanded existing versions. Ten states now run eleven universal voucher programs, all of which have no meaningful income or other restrictions.

But these numbers change quickly. As late as the last week of November, the Republican governor of Tennessee announced plans to create just such a universal voucher system.

To wit: successful new voucher and related legislation has come almost exclusively in states won by Donald Trump in 2020. And even that Right-ward bent required substantial investment—notably by heiress and former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Koch network—in state legislative campaigns to oust voucher opponents. Instructively, many of those opponents were often GOP legislators representing rural districts with few private schools to benefit.

As a scholar who has studied voucher systems—including through research funded by conservative organizations—I have been watching these developments with growing concern. It can all be difficult to make sense of, so let’s walk through it.

Vouchers Hurt Kids, Defund Public Schools and Prop-Up Church Budgets

First, why are these new voucher schemes such bad public policy? To understand the answer, it’s important to know that the typical voucher-accepting school is a far cry from the kind of elite private academy you might find in a coastal city or wealthy suburban outpost. Instead, they’re usually sub-prime providers, akin to predatory lenders in the mortgage sector. These schools are either pop-ups opening to cash in on the new taxpayer subsidy, or financially distressed existing schools desperate for a bailout to stay open. Both types of financially insecure schools often close anyway, creating turnover for children who were once enrolled.

And the voucher results reflect that educational vulnerability: in terms of academic impacts, vouchers have some of the worst results in the history of education research—on par or worse than what COVID-19 did to test scores.

Those results are bad enough, but the real issue today is that they come at a cost of funding traditional public schools. As voucher systems expand, they cannibalize states’ ability to pay for their public education commitments. Arizona, which passed universal vouchers in 2022, is nearing a genuine budget crisis as a result of voucher over-spending. Six of the last seven states to pass vouchers have had to slow spending on public schools relative to investments made by non-voucher states.

That’s because most new voucher users were never in the public schools—they are new financial obligations for states. The vast majority of new voucher beneficiaries have been students who were already in private school beforehand. And for many rural students who live far from the nearest private school, vouchers are unrealistic in the first place, meaning that when states cut spending on public education, they weaken the only educational lifeline available to poorer and more remote communities in some places. That’s why even many GOP legislators representing rural districts—conservative in every other way—continue to fight against vouchers.

Vouchers do, however, benefit churches and church schools. Right-wing advocacy groups have been busy mobilizing Catholic school and other religious school parents to save their schools with new voucher funding. In new voucher states, conservatives are openly advocating for churches to startup taxpayer-funded schools. That’s why vouchers eventually become a key source of revenue for those churches, often replacing the need to rely on private donations. It’s also why many existing religious schools raise tuition almost immediately after vouchers pass.

The Right-Wing War on Public Schools

Victories for these voucher bills is nothing short of an ascendant Right-wing war on public education. And the link to religious nationalism energizes much of that attack.

Voucher bills have dovetailed almost perfectly with new victories for other priorities of the Religious Right. Alongside vouchers, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has also increased: 508 new bills in 2023 alone, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. As has a jump in legislation restricting book access in schools and libraries, with more than half of those bans targeting books on topics related to race and racism, or containing at least one LGBTQ+ character.

It is also important to note the longstanding antipathy that Betsy DeVos, the Koch Network, and other long-term voucher backers have toward organized labor—including and especially in this case, teachers’ unions. And that in two states that passed vouchers this year—Iowa and Arkansas—the governors also signed new rollbacks to child labor protections at almost the exact same time as well.

To close the 2022 judicial session, the Supreme Court issued its latest expansion of voucher jurisprudence in Carson v. Makin, holding that states with private school voucher programs may not exclude religious providers from applying tax dollars specifically to religious education. That ruling came just 72 hours before the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson removed reproductive rights from federal constitutional protections.

To hear backers of vouchers, book bans, and policies targeting transgender students in school bathrooms tell it, such efforts represent a new movement toward so-called “parents’ rights” or “education freedom,” as Betsy DeVos describes in her 2022 memoir. But in truth this latest push was a long time coming. DeVos is only one part of the vast network of Right-wing donors, activists, and organizations devoted to conservative political activism.

That network, called the Council for National Policy, includes representatives from the Heritage Foundation, the influential Right-wing policy outfit; multiple organizations funded by Charles Koch; the Leadership Institute, which trains young conservative activists; and a number of state policy advocacy groups funded by a conservative philanthropy called the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

It was the Bradley Foundation that seeded much of the legal work in the 1990s defending early voucher programs in state and federal courts. Bradley helped to fund the Institute for Justice, a legal group co-founded by a former Clarence Thomas staffer named Clint Bolick after a personal donation from Charles Koch. The lead trial attorney for that work was none other than Kenneth Starr, who was at the time also in the middle of his infamous pursuit of President Bill Clinton.

In late 2023, the Institute for Justice and the voucher-group EdChoice announced a new formal venture, but that partnership is just a spin on an older collaboration, with the Bradley Foundation as the tie that binds. EdChoice itself, when it was called the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, helped fund the data analysis cited by Institute lawyers at no less than the Supreme Court ahead of its first decision approving vouchers in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002).

From these vantage points, 2023 was a long time coming indeed.

And heading into 2024, the voucher push and its companion “parents’ rights” bills on schoolbooks and school bathrooms show no sign of weakening.

Prior to his political career, the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, was an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom. That group, which itself has deep ties to Betsy DeVos’s family, has led the legal charge to rollback LBGTQ+ equality initiatives. It was also involved “from the beginning,” as its website crows, in the anti-abortion effort that culminated with Dobbs.

The Heritage Foundation has created a platform called Project 2025, which serves as something of a clearinghouse for what would be the legal framework and policy agenda for a second Trump Administration. Among the advisors and funders of Project 2025 are several organizations linked to Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, and others with ties to the Council for National Policy. The Project’s education agenda includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education—especially its oversight authority on anti-discrimination issues—and jumpstarting federal support for voucher programs.

A dark money group called The Concord Fund has launched an entity called Free to Learn, ostensibly organized around opposition to the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. In reality, these are active players in Republican campaign attacks around a variety of education-related culture war issues. The Concord Fund is closely tied to Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society chief, Council of National Policy member, and architect of the Roe takedown. Through the Leo connection, the Concord Fund was also instrumental in confirming Donald Trump’s judicial nominations from Brett Kavanaugh on downward.

And so while the 2023 “parents’ rights” success has been largely a feature of red state legislatures, the 2022 Carson ruling and the nexus between Leonard Leo, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Institute for Justice itself underscore the importance of the federal judiciary to Right-wing education activism.

Long-term, the goal insofar as school privatization is concerned appears to be nothing short of a Supreme Court ruling that tax-subsidized school vouchers and homeschool options are mandatory in every state that uses public funding (as all do) to support education. The logic would be, as Betsy DeVos herself previewed before leaving office, that public spending on public schools without a religious option is a violation of Free Exercise protections.

Such a ruling, in other words, would complete the destruction of a wall between church and state when it comes to voucher jurisprudence. Earlier Court decisions have found that states may spend tax dollars on school vouchers but, as the Right’s ultimate goal, the Supreme Court would determine that states must.

Closer on the horizon, we can expect to see each of these Right-wing groups acting with new energy as the 2024 campaign season heats up. The president of the Heritage Foundation—himself yet another member of the Council for National Policy—has recently taken over the think tank’s political arm, called Heritage Action. At the start of the year, investigative reporting linked Heritage Action to earlier voter suppression initiatives, signaling potential tactics ahead.

And the money is going to flow—they have all said as much. After Heritage’s merger of its policy and political arms, Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children followed suit by creating the AFC Victory Fund—a new group to spearhead its own campaign activity.

Their plan includes a $10 million base commitment to ramp up heading into 2024. “Coming off our best election cycle ever,” AFC’s announcement declared, “the tectonic plates have shifted decisively in favor of educational freedom, and we’re just getting started.” And, they warned:

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school choice and freedom in education – you’re a target.”

In that threat lies the reality of the latest voucher push, and of this moment of so-called parents’ rights. None of this is a grassroots uprising. “Education freedom” is a top-down, big-money operation, tied to every other political priority of religious nationalism today.

But coming at the end of this past year’s legislative successes, AFC’s warnings are also a very clear statement of what is yet to come. The push to privatize American education is only just getting started.

The farmers’ protests in Germany: A social uprising against the coalition government

Peter Schwarz

Over the course of last week, tens of thousands of farmers protested against the German government’s austerity policy, blocking motorways, access roads and city centres with their tractors. Some of the tractor convoys were up to 10 kilometres long. The farmers have planned another major demonstration in Berlin this Monday.

Farmers' protest in front of the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin,January 10, 2024 [Photo by Stefan Müller / flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0]

The farmers’ protests are part of a social uprising against the government (a coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party) embracing broad sections of the working class, as well as layers of the middle class. In the same week as the farmers’ protests, train drivers shut down the country’s rail network (Deutsche Bahn) for three days, with many craft workers joining the farmers’ demonstrations. Around 70 percent of the population have expressed support for the protesters, according to polls.

Last year, millions of public sector and postal workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action. This was then sabotaged by their trade unions, which then fobbed them off with wage settlements far below the rate of inflation. At the same time, a huge wave of job losses is unfolding in the auto and supplier industry, endorsed and co-organised by the country’s main engineering union, IG Metall.

Representatives of the government and related media outlets alternately tried to portray the farmers’ protests as a far-right conspiracy or as protests by privileged layers greedy for subsidies.

Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party), who was prevented from leaving a ferry by outraged farmers after a holiday on a North Sea island, ranted in a video produced by his ministry: “There are calls circulating involving fantasies of a coup. Extremist groups are forming, nationalist symbols are being openly displayed.” The German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) claimed that “right-wing extremists and other enemies of democracy are trying to infiltrate the protests.”

The weekly Der Spiegel compared the farmers’ protest to the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters and warned of “far-right coup fantasies.” The Green Party-affiliated newspaper taz declared: “The protests are inappropriate and are encouraging right-wing extremists.” And the Frankfurter Allgemeine commented under the headline “Pampered farmers”: “German farmers can hardly rescue themselves from subsidies. But when they have to give up one of their privileges, tractors roll onto the motorways. This is not a reasonable protest, but rather an impertinence.”

In fact these are despicable slanders. Isolated attempts by right-wing extremists to attach themselves to the protests—such as a separate “farmers” demonstration by the Free Saxons in Dresden—have come to nothing. Right-wing extremists were unwelcomed at most of the farmers’ rallies. Attempts at ingratiation into the protests by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which had called for “more competition” and “fewer subsidies” for agriculture in its 2016 programme, also had little effect. And as far as the economic situation of farmers is concerned, many are up to their necks in water.

The protests were triggered by the German government’s decision to cancel tax concessions for agricultural diesel and tax exemption for agricultural vehicles. These two measures were intended to save, respectively, €450 million and €485 million a year, i.e., just under a billion euros. Adjusted to the over 250,000 farms that exist in Germany, this amounts to the considerable sum of €4,000 per farm on average, directly reduced from farmers’ incomes.

The tax increase, however, was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. That is why the protests did not stop when the government made a partial retreat last Thursday, cancelling the abolition of the vehicle tax exemption and spreading the abolition of tax relief for agricultural diesel over three years.

Agriculture in crisis

For decades, there has been brutal cutthroat competition in agriculture, forcing thousands of farms to cease production every year—an extremely painful and nerve-wracking process. Fifty years ago there were still over 900,000 farms in Germany, today there are just 250,000.

In order to remain viable, farms must constantly expand by leasing new land, investing in new machinery and increasing their specialisation. They not only have to contend with rising rental prices—between 2010 and 2020, the rent per hectare of farmland rose from €230 to €375—and wildly fluctuating prices for their products, which are dictated by speculation on international commodity exchanges or by market-dominating retailers such as Aldi and Lidl, but also with ever new regulations from the European Union and the German government. Although some of these measures—such as setting aside certain areas for environmental reasons—are linked to payments (“subsidies”), this makes farmers even more dependent on the whims of politicians.

All of this makes long-term planning extremely difficult. However, in view of the high degree of mechanisation in agriculture, farmers are urgently dependent on such planning. At €794,300 capital per employee (not including land), agriculture is one of the most capital-intensive sectors of all. In manufacturing (industry) this figure is just €411,000, in trade €193,300, and in construction €59,500. Such high investments in machinery, stables and other facilities can only pay off if they are planned over decades.

In 2020, the German agricultural sector employed 937,000 people. Just under half, 436,000, were family workers in sole proprietorships; 229,000 were permanent employees and 271,000 were seasonal workers. Incomes were relatively low and very unevenly distributed.

The figure of €115,000 profit per farm, which is often cited as proof of the “wealth” of farmers, actually proves nothing of the sort. Unlike company profits, where the salaries of employees and board members have already been deducted, the profits must be used to cover the living expenses of the farm owner and family members who work on the farm.

The actual per capita income (profit plus personnel expenses per worker) amounted to €43,500 in the financial year 2021/22. This represented a huge leap of almost a third compared to the previous year, and resulted from the increase in food prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Food prices since have fallen significantly.

Previously, farmers’ incomes had stagnated for 10 years. In 2020/21, the average was €32,900, €1,700 below the level of 2012/13, which corresponds to an average gross monthly wage of €2,740. This is well below the average salary of €4,100, and involves for many farmers working hours of between 60 and 70 hours per week and hardly any holidays.

In addition, incomes vary greatly depending on the type of farm, region and form of employment, meaning that many farmers and employees earn significantly less.

There are 38,000 farms in Germany with an area of more than 100 hectares, which together farm 62 percent of the agricultural land. These are often agricultural enterprises. Their returns are relatively high, but this does not mean they also pay their employees well. In eastern Germany, where many of these agricultural enterprises are located, a third are owned by non-local investors.

In contrast, 86 percent of all farms cultivate less than 100 hectares of land. These range from intensive livestock farming to traditional family farms and organic farms to part-time farms. Eighty percent of all farms are family-owned—in some cases for generations. According to a survey by the Federal Statistical Office, 42 percent stated that in addition to farming, they were involved in other sources of income such as forestry, wood processing and the production of renewable energy.

A number of farms have tried to secure their existence by converting to organic farming. There are now 37,000 organic farms in Germany. Prices are more stable here, but incomes are also particularly low due to high labour intensity. The government’s increase in the price of diesel is hitting these farms particularly hard, due to their heavy reliance on machinery in order to compensate for their limited use of pesticides.

Lessons from history

The austerity measures of the coalition government have now managed to unite the different groups and sections of farmers. Unlike in October 2019, when smaller farmers’ associations organised tractor protests against the government’s agricultural policy, this time the German Farmers’ Association, which traditionally represents the interests of large landowners and agricultural businesses, has taken the lead. It is doing everything in its power to keep the movement under control and prevent it from becoming part of a broader revolt against the government and the state.

In fact, just such a movement is developing. The policies of the coalition government, which is spending hundreds of billions on war and rearmament, protecting the profits of the rich while cutting social spending, wages and public investment, are driving ever broader sections of the population onto the barricades. Similar developments are taking place in every capitalist country.

Even somewhat more far-sighted bourgeois commentators see it that way. The business daily Handelsblatt writes:

Around 70 percent of the population sympathise with the farmers’ protests. The farmers have been joined on the streets by small and medium-sized businesses, tradespeople and ordinary industrial workers. They are all united by a feeling of helplessness, which has long since turned into anger at the situation in the country. It is no longer just about cutting subsidies.

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the energy emergency have left citizens unable to cope. Now there is also a fundamental mistrust of the state.

The coalition in Berlin will stop at nothing to suppress this movement and defend the bankrupt capitalist social system against any opposition. This is underlined by the brutality with which it is fueling the punitive war against Russia in Ukraine, supporting the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and adopting the refugee policy of the AfD. Despite some tactical differences, the government essentially agrees with the opposition parties, the conservative CDU and CSU, the Left Party and the AfD.

WHO officials warn sharply of the ongoing dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic

Benjamin Mateus

Throughout the world, COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths are surging amid the fourth winter of the pandemic, as the highly infectious and immune-resistant JN.1 variant spreads globally. Wherever wastewater sampling is conducted, levels of viral transmission are currently at the highest or second-highest levels of the entire pandemic.

This ongoing wave of mass infection underscores the utter criminality of the World Health Organization (WHO), Biden administration and other national health agencies ending their respective COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations last May. The result of these unscientific and politically motivated decisions was that virtually all pandemic surveillance was lifted, while masses of people were led to falsely believe that the pandemic was over.

In two extraordinary press briefings last week, WHO officials made clear the ongoing dangers of the pandemic, while hypocritically admonishing the global population for no longer taking precautions, ignoring their own culpability in this process.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (center) declaring the coronavirus pandemic a Public Health emergency of International Concern in March 2020. [Photo: Fabrice Coffrini]

On Wednesday, January 10, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that in December the world had seen a surge in COVID-19 transmission fueled by holiday gatherings and the evolution of the JN.1 variant. He added:

Almost 10,000 deaths from COVID-19 were reported to the WHO in December and there was a 42 percent increase in hospitalizations and 62 percent increase in ICU admissions compared to November. However, the trends [on mortality] are based on data from less than 50 countries, mostly in Europe and the Americas. It’s certain that there are also increases in other countries that are not being reported.

Information on the number of hospitalizations admissions is being provided by only 29 countries, while only 21 countries are providing data on ICU admissions. Again, these data are so scant because the vast majority of countries completely dismantled their pandemic surveillance systems in response to the WHO’s ending of the PHE last May.

Speaking two days later at another press conference held by the WHO on their UN Web TV, devoted to the co-circulation of COVID, flu and respiratory pathogens, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Technical Lead on COVID-19, remarked, “Essentially, given the lifting of the public health and social measures, with the world opened up, these viruses, these bacteria that pass efficiently between people through the air, take advantage.”

Van Kerkhove stated that access to vaccines remains a challenge in much of the globe, noting that where vaccines are available, demand and uptake are quite low, raising concerns about the elderly and most vulnerable, including immunocompromised people and pregnant women. She then warned starkly:

What is critical to know right now is that the public health risk from COVID remains high globally. We have a pathogen that is circulating in all countries … case-based data that is reported to the WHO is not a reliable indicator and has not been a reliable indicator for a couple of years now. If you look at the epidemiology curve it looks like the virus is gone, but it hasn’t.

Van Kerkhove added, “According to wastewater estimates we have from a number of countries, the actual circulation of SARS-CoV-2 is anywhere from two to 19 times higher than what is being reported. And what is difficult is that the virus is continuing to evolve.” Although she noted that the number of deaths has reduced drastically from two years ago, there continues to be around 10,000 official COVID deaths per month.

However, Van Kerkhove cautioned that this represents less than a quarter of all countries reporting data, and half of official deaths were just from the US, meaning there is a massive undercounting simply from lack of reporting. She stated bluntly, “We are missing deaths from countries around the world. Just because those countries aren’t reporting deaths doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.”

Official figures for January are expected to rise given the intense circulation of JN.1 and many large indoor gatherings that have taken place surrounding the holidays.

After acknowledging that the pandemic continues unchecked, Van Kerkhove noted:

On the one hand, while we are seeing a reduced impact, we feel that there is far too much burden in countries from COVID when we can prevent them with adequate tests, with adequate access to and use of antivirals, with appropriate clinical care, medical oxygen, and, of course, vaccination … COVID is still a public health threat and is causing far too much burden and we can prevent it.

Van Kerkhove estimated that presently “hundreds of thousands” are hospitalized around the world for COVID, based on the limited data available.

Van Kerkhove then acknowledged that the post-acute phase of COVID-19 infections known as Long COVID is considerable. She said that 6-10 percent of symptomatic cases can evolve into Long COVID, potentially affecting multiple organs throughout the body, with debilitating conditions that can last for 12 months or longer.

Simple math means that tens or hundreds of millions of people will develop some level of Long COVID in the current global surge alone. It is no hyperbole to characterize Long COVID as a mass disabling event and a pandemic within a pandemic.

Van Kerkhove then warned, “We don’t know the long-term impacts of repeat infections … Our concern is in five years from now, ten years from now, in 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, of pulmonary impairment, of neurological impairment; we don’t know. We don’t know everything about this virus.” She continued to state that the problem is significant and research in better understanding and treating Long COVID is severely financially under-resourced.

The dire reports from these two leading WHO officials begs the question: why are they not moving to quickly reinstate the PHE and urge all world governments to reimpose strict anti-COVID mitigation measures to slow the spread of the virus.

Clearly, the WHO’s abrupt scrapping of their PHE last May, one week before the Biden administration, came under intense pressure from US imperialism, to which they acquiesced. They were motivated by political pressures and not any meaningful change in the ongoing public health threat that COVID-19 clearly still posed.

In light of recent evidence that the JN.1 lineage of Omicron appears to have a higher predilection for the lower respiratory airways and the concomitant risk of the virus reverting to earlier, more virulent forms, it is imperative that the PHE be reimplemented and comprehensive public health programs be massively funded in every country.

Instead, all world governments have imposed a brutal “forever COVID” policy of endless waves of infections with a highly dangerous virus that harms more than just the respiratory organs, but every organ system in the body, with accumulating evidence that long-term consequences of pursuing these policies will have significant implications for the health of the global population.

Taiwan’s election result signals escalating tensions with China

Peter Symonds

The Taiwanese election held on January 13 resulted in a win for Lai Ching-te, the candidate of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who defeated Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang (KMT) and Ko Wen-je from the newly established Taiwan People’s Party (DPP). In league with the US, Lai will only accelerate the dangerous confrontation with China of his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen, also from the DPP.

Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai, centre, celebrates his victory with running mate Bi-khim Hsiao, right, and supporters in Taipei, Taiwan., Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024. [AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying]

Lai, who will be inaugurated in May, had the tacit backing of the US which under the Trump and Biden administrations ramped up tensions with China over the status of the island. While nominally adhering to the One China policy under which Washington de facto recognises Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan, the US has deliberately undermined that program by strengthening political and military ties with Taipei.

The US and international media have trumpeted Lai’s win as a rebuff to “Chinese interference” in the election and a triumph for democracy. In reality, Lai only won the presidency on the basis of the island’s first-past-the post electoral system with just over 40 percent of the vote.

Lai, who described himself in 2017 as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence,” played down his pro-independence stance during the campaign, well aware that a majority of voters are fearful of war with China. Beijing has repeatedly declared that it is seeking peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but would resort to force if Taipei formally declared independence from China.

The current President Tsai Ing-wen, who was ineligible to stand again having served two four-year terms, attempted to avoid any immediate conflict by maintaining that Taiwan was already a sovereign country and had no need to declare formal independence. At the same time, however, with the backing of Washington, Tsai strengthened the Taiwanese military in preparations for war with China.

In the course of the campaign, Lai adhered to Tsai’s formulations and declared that he would maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. He is, however, opposed to reunification with China and champions greater independence.

Campaigning in July, Lai declared Taiwan wants closer ties with Washington. He provocatively added that he looked forward to the day when “the president of Taiwan can walk into the White House.” In other words, for the Taiwanese president to be treated as the leader of an independent country. In similar fashion, Lai declares that any talks with China must be “as equals,” knowing full well that Beijing would never accept such a condition.

Lai transformed his victory rally into a celebration of Taiwanese nationalism, telling supporters: “This is a night that belongs to Taiwan. We managed to keep Taiwan on the map of the world.” While claiming he would maintain the cross-strait status quo, he added: “At the same time, we are also determined to safeguard Taiwan from continuing threats and intimidation from China.”

Lai’s running mate, Hsiao Bi-khim, who will become vice-president, served as Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States. Known for her aggressive anti-China stance, she earned the nickname of “cat warrior” for her forthright responses to Chinese diplomats branded in the Western media as “wolf warriors.”

The confrontation with China over Taiwan has only come to the fore as Washington has escalated its diplomatic and economic offensive against Beijing along with a huge military build-up in preparation for war. In the same manner in which the US and its NATO allies goaded Russia into invading Ukraine, Washington is seeking to transform Taiwan into a military trap for China, which it regards as the chief threat to its global hegemony.

Just prior to Saturday’s election, the Biden administration leaked to the media that the US would be sending a high-level delegation to Taiwan headed by former national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and former deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg. That team is due to arrive next Sunday.

China, which regards Lai as a “troublemaker” and has warned of the dangers of conflict if he were elected, reiterated the One China policy and called for an end to foreign interference in the island. A spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry said, “Whatever changes take place in Taiwan, the basic fact that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China will not change.”

To rub salt into the wound, the US and its allies, which in the past have largely ignored Taiwan’s elections, congratulated Lai. A US State Department spokesman praised the Taiwanese people “for once again demonstrating the strength of their robust democratic system and electoral process.” China’s foreign ministry responded by declaring that the statement “seriously violated US promises that it would only maintain cultural, economic and other non-official ties with Taiwan.

While Lai and the DPP won the presidency for a third term, the election outcome was not a ringing endorsement of their policies. KMT candidate Hou received 33.5 percent of the vote while the so-called independent Ko and his TPP gained 26.5 percent. Together, the two candidates that favour an easing of tensions with China received 60 percent of the vote. Lai is the first president to be elected with less than 50 percent of votes.

Moreover, the DPP has lost control of the legislative Yuan or parliament. Out of 113 seats, the DPP took 51 and the KMT 52, with the TPP holding the balance of power with eight seats. The election also revealed broad alienation from all of the establishment parties, with the second lowest voter turnout of just over 71 percent.

The KMT was driven out of China in the 1949 Chinese Revolution and took refuge on Taiwan with the assistance and protection of the US military. Under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, it established a brutal military dictatorship over the island that maintained its rule through martial law.

The bitter rivalry with Beijing eased as the Chinese Communist Party turned to capitalist restoration from 1978 onwards and opportunities opened up for Taiwanese corporations to exploit cheap labour on the Chinese mainland. The KMT adheres to what is known as the “1992 Consensus” that acknowledges “One China” but allows for different interpretations of what that means. The DPP rejects the 1992 Consensus outright.

The DPP rose to prominence amid the protest and strike movement in the late 1980s that finally compelled the KMT to concede popular elections. Its electoral support has fallen after eight years in power amid a deepening social and economic crisis. Young people in particular have been alienated by an economic slow-down that has led to a lack of jobs, low wages and soaring prices, especially for housing. The DPP has sought to capitalise on this disaffection while offering limited proposals to address the social problems.

The stance taken by the new Lai administration that takes office in May will certainly compound tensions across the Taiwan Strait. However, it is Washington, already embroiled in wars in Europe and the Middle East, that is the chief instigator of the war drive against China throughout the Indo-Pacific, now focused, above all, on Taiwan.

Respiratory infections rip as Spain’s COVID cases rise

Santiago Guillen

A wave of respiratory infections is rapidly spreading across Spain since the last weeks of 2023. The wave has been dubbed “tripledemia” a combination of infections of three different viruses, COVID-19, Influenza A and RSV, a virus that can cause bronchiolitis that mainly affects children.

The latest report posted January 4 from the Carlos III University Health Institute states that the rate of respiratory infections now stands at a total of 952.9 cases per one hundred thousand inhabitants at national level, 78 percent more than a month ago.

Medical staff members attend to a COVID-19 patient in the ICU department of the Hospital Universitario, in Pamplona, northern Spain, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos) [AP Photo/Álvaro Barrientos]

In some regions the figure is much higher. In Castilla La Mancha there are 1,710 cases per hundred thousand and in Valencia it is 1,501.

Spain’s hospitals have come under immense pressure, as hospitalisations grew 60 percent in a week. In Madrid, the Hospital Universitario La Paz, which serves a population in excess of 500,000 people and is one of the largest in Spain by the number of beds, has been forced to suspend operations to make room for new patients.

Emergency services are saturated due to the avalanche of patients. The health authorities ask patients not to go to the emergency room and go to primary care centers, which face shortages of doctors after 15 years of spending cuts in the healthcare sector. With the prospect of taking several days or even weeks to be treated, many patients are going directly to the emergency rooms out of desperation.

The situation is becoming especially complicated with the flu, which saw a 75 percent increase in cases in the last week alone. The forecast is that the combination of the cold and Christmas gatherings, which in Spain last until January 6, the day of the Three Magic Kings, means the flu is expected to peak in the third week of January. The same naturally holds true for COVID.

Epidemiological forecasts calculate that at least 4,000 people will die by the end of February.

These viruses are dangerous for a large part of the population, but especially for children and people over 65 years of age, pregnant women, immunosuppressed or those who suffer from other ailments that may make them vulnerable. To this we must add those affected by Long COVID, which according to studies may be around 10 percent of the people who have been infected by COVID and rises with each subsequent infection. In Spain, this would mean around two million people affected.

According to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID infections are on the rise worldwide, with an increase of 52 percent in the last month that is likely greater due to the decrease in reports and the dismantling of monitoring systems.

WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters this amounts to 850,000 new daily cases. The true figure is likely much higher. He stated, “You know that all throughout the world and you've seen it in many of your own countries, the reporting has dropped, the surveillance centers have dropped, the vaccination centers have dropped, have been dismantled as well or shut down”.

This is the result of capitalist policies of prioritising profits over lives. Across the world, governments are systematically seeking to hide the spread of COVID and other respiratory viruses by insisting on the non-use of masks, eliminating containment measures and dismantling information and control systems. The anti-vaccine propaganda strongly disseminated by the media is causing the population to vaccinate less, not only against COVID, but also against flu and other diseases.

The spread of respiratory diseases was predictable. Spain experienced something similar last year, although with less intensity. North America, China and Northern Europe are all experiencing a wave of respiratory infections with hospitals saturated.

Rather than heeding the continued dangers posed by the viruses and recognise the need for billions of euros investment in the depleted healthcare system after 15 years of austerity measures, the new government of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Sumar coalition formed by pseudo-leftists and Stalinists is debating whether to introduce the most rudimentary health measures, like masking in health facilities. It has adopted a laissez-faire attitude towards the “tripledemia”, six months after it declared the COVID  pandemic officially over.

On Tuesday, the government finally mandated minimal measures like mask-wearing in health facilities, after six regions had already imposed this over the past weeks. “We are talking about putting on a mask when you enter a health center and taking it off when you leave,” Health Minister Mónica García told Cadena Ser radio late Monday. “I don’t think it is any drama. It is a basic and simple measure of the first order.'

This is the same García who in December 2021 said that masking was a “useless measure”, echoing the worst and dangerous anti-scientific lies.

Instead of contracting more doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, the latest proposal of the PSOE-Sumar government is to allow workers themselves to self-diagnose and take sick days without pay and without seeing a doctor. Once again, workers are being abandoned to their fate.

They are pursuing continuing the same criminal and reckless policies of its predecessor, the PSOE-Podemos government (2019-2023), which systematically dismantled some of the most basic facets of public health—testing, contact tracing and reporting of disease outbreaks. According to The Lancet calculations, these policies have already cost 162,000 lives in Spain as per excess deaths, even though official data remains at over 122,000.

Meanwhile, the government continues to spend billions of euros on the military and NATO's war against Russia in Ukraine, while showering large banks and corporations with billions from European funds. This is the money that could be used to fund vaccines, therapeutics and the renovation of infrastructure to prevent airborne diseases.

The fight to end the pandemic is inseparable from the struggle by the working class against capitalism and its subordination of everything to the profits of big business. It is to the working class that principled scientists and epidemiologists must turn.

Across Europe, health workers have been at the forefront of opposition to the capitalist offensive against public health care, as the ruling class privatises, dismantles and sacks thousands of staff. In Spain, they have participated in massive strikes to improve their working conditions and the medical care they give to their patients. Last month, 55,000 nurses went on strike in Catalonia against low wages and precarious working conditions.  

These strikes have received mass support, with healthcare workers protests being joined by tens of thousands of people like in Madrid in November 2022 when hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the right-wing Popular Party (PP) regional government of Isabel Ayuso.

Their struggles have been constantly betrayed by the trade union bureaucracy, which has refused to organize unified strike actions, instead calling them on different dates and regions. Union leaders have also sought to shut down strikes as soon as they break out, seeking agreements with the different regional governments that include pay raises below workers' demands and do not improve the public healthcare situation.

One month of the Milei presidency in Argentina

Rafael Azul

January 10 marked one month since the fascistic TV personality Javier Milei was sworn in as Argentina’s president, and his administration has already introduced massive attacks on the working class. 

Javier Milei with other heads of state in the presidential palace during his inauguration on December 10 [Photo: Casa Rosada]

On December 14, four days into his rule, his Ministry of Economy imposed a devaluation of the Argentine currency from 400 pesos per dollar to over 800, dramatically increasing the rate of inflation in food and transportation for millions of workers overnight.

A few days later, on the 20th, as tens of thousands were commemorating in the streets the anniversary of the 2001 workers’ uprising in Buenos Aires, when 100,000 surrounded Argentina’s Government House, Milei announced a Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU). The act dismantles over 300 laws that regulate big business, shield working families and retirees from inflation and rent hikes and defend public education and health care. In response there have been scores of protests across the country.

The DNU has been followed by an omnibus bill named “Foundation and Starting Point for the Liberty of Argentinians” that includes about 600 ‘reforms’ that eliminate a half-century of social and economic regulations. The legislation is supported by big business and the International Monetary Fund, which manages the Argentine debt crisis and holds billions of dollars of Argentine debt. The Omnibus bill is currently being debated in Congress, with Milei expressing confidence that “we have the numbers” to have it approved.

The General Confederation of Workers (CGT), Argentina’s largest labor federation, has called for a 12-hour national protest strike on January 24, a totally insufficient measure aimed at pressuring Milei and timed to take place once the Milei proposals have been approved.

Milei’s anti-communist and anti-working-class party “Liberty Advances” rules in a coalition with former President Mauricio Macri’s Republican Proposal (PRO) and sections of the right-wing bourgeois Radical Party. Milei and his Vice President Victoria Villaruel have repeatedly declared themselves in support of the military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983 and have justified its murder of 30,000 workers and youth. 

Last week, the National Chamber for Labor Appeals (CNAT) suspended one of the measures in Milei’s DNU. The decision was in response to an appeal from the CGT. At issue are increases in probation periods for new hires (from three to eight months), a restriction on severance pay, restrictions on plant occupations and picket lines that block entrances to plants, and on the right to strike for jobs considered “essential,” such as education, transit, and communications.

The Labor Board’s toothless decision makes no mention of any of the other brutal attacks in the DNU. For instance, it introduces a near-total deregulation of housing and rents, making it possible to evict renters at will, to raise rents at will, and to demand payments in US dollars and other currencies. 

Milei’s spokesperson Manuel Adorni announced it would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, insisting that the labor measures were meant to guarantee the “freedom” for workers to be hired and for owners to hire without fear. 

With only token opposition from the national legislature, Milei’s brutal austerity measures outlined in the DNU will likely be approved by at least one of the two houses of Congress (which is all that is needed according to Argentine law). 

Both the DNU and omnibus bill are designed to benefit the parasitic ruling class while destroying the living standards of the working class and retirees, whose incomes will no longer be pegged to inflation. It will also hit small businesses, which are suffering from a drastic drop in demand, driven by inflation and sales tax increases. The bill also includes the elimination of environmental measures and the ending of mental health programs.

Throughout his campaign and now in office, Milei has peddled the message that all this economic and social pain is necessary to usher in a transformation of Argentine society, bringing in a new epoch of prosperity and freedom. But false electoral promises of a shared sacrifice have now given way to a savage assault on the lower 90 percent of society, while big business, agricultural monopolies and multinational corporations celebrate.

Milei is also further subordinating Argentina to US and British imperialisms, celebrating the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza and moving to break commercial ties with China. After Milei rejected the invitation to join the BRICS group, China decided to withhold a currency swap agreement that Argentina was relying on to service its debt payments. 

The economic and political crisis in Argentina, which Milei and the legislature seek to resolve through police-state repression and economic shock therapy involving even worse inflation, austerity and unemployment, is the most intense since 2001-02. 

At the time, the Fernando De La Rua administration and the legislature implemented a “labor flexibility law” and massive cuts to healthcare and education as part of an IMF structural program, but this failed to contain a massive flight of dollars and other hard currencies, and the closure of banks and factories. This provoked a social explosion that began on January 20, 2001, and included the occupation and appropriation of shutdown factories across the country. De La Rua resigned and was forced to flee via helicopter as tens of thousands surrounded the government house and demonstrators battled the police. Over 30 demonstrators were killed that day.

But given this pre-revolutionary situation, what prevented the working class from taking over and securing its interests, abolishing capitalism and establishing a workers' state? It was the same forces that claimed to represent them: the Peronists, led by Nestor Kirchner, with their nostalgic message of populist bourgeois nationalism, and the trade unions, both supported by numerous Stalinist, Maoist, Castroite, pseudo-left, and other left-nationalist organizations. These tendencies already had a long record of steering the working class away from revolution and channeling unrest behind pressure tactics on the national bourgeoisie.