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VIDEO: The Free Press Meets the Democratic Socialists of America Ben Kawaller

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When I went to Chicago last month to cover the Democratic Socialists of America convention, my main worry was that some brilliant socialist would run circles around me. I’m still traumatized from a collegiate brush with Karl Marx, who I found impossible: our time on this beautiful earth is short, and I need to be hooked by page one.

My fear of being exposed as an intellectual lightweight aside, I was looking forward to speaking with these people. After all, my family and I are more or less on the left, and I am the grandson of a pretend Communist (who also happened to be a CEO). In 2020, I canvassed for Bernie Sanders in Berkeley with a contingent of DSA members, and I voted for the man twice. 

Furthermore, much of what the DSA espouses seems rooted in the effort to ensure a dignified existence for minorities and the working class. They are “socialist,” they say, because they support a world order based on “equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.” They are “democratic” because at “the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to democracy.” Put socialism and democracy together and you get “a vision of a more free, democratic and humane society.”

Some of this sounds just great to me. Freedom? Democracy? Terrific! And yet, for most of the DSA’s 52-year history, the organization’s membership has hovered between six and ten thousand. With the election of Donald Trump, that number ballooned (it’s now around 92,000), and 2018 saw the election of its most prominent member, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

And yet the DSA remains at the margins of power. 

One possible explanation for the DSA’s relative unpopularity is its evident belief that the root cause of our problems is not a political ecosystem compromised by special interests, but capitalism itself. 

I am not sure about that. It is one thing to unionize, or to fight for public ownership of public utilities. It is another to suggest that the world would be a better place without Ikea. 

Perhaps it would be fairer to say that the DSA envisions a world where Ikea is owned by its workers. Personally, I think whoever is running Ikea should be given more global influence, not less. I think any form of capitalism that can both finance a nation’s health insurance and produce my sofa bed should be the envy of the world. 

So what is with all this anti-capitalism talk? I emailed a socialist friend of mine before I left for Chicago to ask if he actually opposes all private enterprise. 

Of course not, he told me. The goal, he said, was “positive development out of capitalism with greater labor union power and democracy.” 

If that’s true, my question for the DSA is: why not say that? And if it’s not true, then does the DSA actually want to live in a world without private enterprise? If so, how is that going to work?

When I got to the conference, I had hoped to spar with smart, good-natured socialists on these questions, all of us finding each other delightful and leaving everyone with hope for humanity.

But that’s not what happened. 

So instead I offer you reality: a video about what happened when I tried to ask about life under utopia, and the capitalists who took me in when the socialists kicked me out.

Ben Kawaller is an L.A.-based writer and host. Watch his last Free Press video, “Pork Chops! Politics! The Free Press Goes to the Iowa State Fair.”

This video was produced by Ben Kawaller and Alex Chitty and edited by Jonah Kaplan. Director of photography was David Pavlina; production assistant was Dana Engell.

Also, we are hosting our first live debate on September 13 at the Ace Theatre in Los Angeles! Has the sexual revolution failed? Come argue about it and have a drink. We can’t wait to meet you in person. You can purchase tickets now at thefp.com/debates.

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It Pays to Be a Friend of Donald Trump Joe Nocera

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Two dodgy Democrats had a great day on Monday—thanks to our new Republican president, Donald J. Trump.

The first, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, was granted a full pardon. Back in 2009, after he’d been charged with corruption, Blagojevich got himself booked on Trump’s show, Celebrity Apprentice. (You can see his appearance in these YouTube clips. He was fired, of course.) I don’t know if Blagojevich had a premonition that Trump might someday be in a position to help him, but it sure has turned out that way. Transforming himself from a high-profile Democratic governor to a big-time Trump supporter was the single best move he could have made.


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Stop Making Cents? Charles Lane

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On Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that he has ordered his administration to cease production of the penny. The argument for the move seems straightforward enough. It costs more than a penny to make a penny (3.7 cents, according to the U.S. Mint). Given inflation and the move to digital payments, ditching the coin is just common cents, right?

Not necessarily. Life’s about more than just making the numbers add up, and amid all the government waste, doesn’t the humble penny deserve a carve out for sentimental reasons?

Today, we debate the penny’s fate. Good riddance or gone too soon? Deputy Editor Charles Lane supports Trump’s move. Consulting Editor Jonathan Rosen opposes it. Have at it, gentleman.

Charles Lane: President Trump’s decision to end production of the penny has my total support. This mite of a coin betrayed me, quite directly and personally, over the course of 13 years.

“Save your pennies, Chuck,” a supervisor at work told me in 2002, responding to some angst I expressed about future college tuition costs. This was her way of not getting the hint that I needed a raise.

Attitudinally positive as always, I took her advice. I told my 5-year-old son that we would henceforth be keeping every one-cent coin we received as change, found on the street, or won playing dreidel until the moment he left for college.

What a father-son project! So rich in lessons about thrift, consistency, and long-term thinking! And so we collected and collected, filling first one large glass jug and then another, until July 2015, when it was time for the big reveal: We had accumulated 10,142 pennies, about 2.19 per day.

They were worth $101.42, not even enough to cover a month’s fraternity dues.

Wrapping the little suckers in paper rolls to enable deposit at a bank took me several days. Valued at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, the time wasted offset any wealth embodied in our hoard—with change left over.

So I did not need the DOGE to tell me the government lost over $179 million in fiscal year 2023 minting more than 4.5 billion one-cent pieces at a cost of three-plus cents each. I already knew that a penny is much more trouble than it’s worth.


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Nellie Bowles: The Triumph of the Plastic Straw Nellie Bowles

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The biggest environmentalist craze of my generation started in 2011 with Vermont 9-year-old Milo Cress cooking up an arbitrary number for how many plastic straws Americans used daily. This 9-year-old figured it was so many. He says he called up straw manufacturers and calculated 500 million a day. Boom, big number, good number. The mainstream media was off to the races. That 500 million a day number was cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Suddenly the most important thing we could do for the environment—for our children!—was ban plastic straws.

States and cities passed laws against them. California banned them from restaurants outright in 2018. New York, in 2021, changed the law so the only straws on display were paper (you were allowed to ask for plastic). Official fact sheets from Ron DeSantis’s state of Florida instruct Floridians to “Skip the Straw,” citing the 500 million figure. Did anyone question the basis of this?


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