Thom Hartmann 2 txt

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</div><div>Thom HartmannAugust 27, 2023</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>America is rapidly bifurcating — becoming two nations — and one of the main drivers of the process is a federal system that encourages Red states to mooch off Blue states, using essentially stolen tax money to reinvent the old Confederacy, “own the libs,” and wage “war on woke.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Most Red states have become oligarchic white supremacist medieval-like fiefdoms with obscene levels of often multigenerational wealth at the top, extreme poverty at the bottom, and working people, women, and minorities kept in subordinate roles through explicit government and corporate policy.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In this, these Red states are following the once-classic European and later Southern US tradition of a patriarchal, hierarchical society run by male kings, nobles, plantation masters, and wealthy churchmen, with all the work done by serfs, slaves, women, or impoverished wage-slaves.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Frederick Douglass, who was born into Southern slavery, described the South as “a little nation by itself, having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fewer than 2000 families — six-tenths of one percent of the Southern population — owned more than 50 enslaved people and ruled the oligarchy that we call the Confederacy with an iron fist. The 75 percent of white people in the South during that era who did not own any enslaved persons generally lived in deep poverty.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Women had no rights, queer people were routinely tortured and murdered, education for both enslaved Africans and poor whites was generally outlawed, religious attendance was often mandated, and hunger and disease stalked all but those in the families of the two thousand morbidly rich planter dynasties.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Modern-day Red states are doing their best to recreate that old Confederacy, right down to state Senator Kathy Chism’s new effort to return the Confederate battle flag to Mississippi's state flag.</b>&nbsp;Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence have both emphasized their presidential pledges to restore the names of murderous Civil War traitors to American military bases, celebrating their armed defense of the “values” of the Old South.</div><div>
</div><div>Today’s version of yesteryear’s plantation owners are called CEOs, hedge and vulture fund managers, and the morbidly rich.</div><div>
</div><div>They use the power of political bribery given them by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — with Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking Citizens United vote on behalf of his sugar daddy Harlan Crow — to lord over their Red states, regardless of the will of those states’ citizens.</div><div>
</div><div>Working people in Red states are kept in poverty by “<b>Right to Work for Less” laws</b>&nbsp;based on the GOP’s 1947 Taft-Hartley Act (passed over Harry Truman’s veto), deprived of healthcare by their governors’ refusal to expand Medicaid to cover all low-wage working people, and draconian cuts along with byzantine bureaucratic obstacles to getting state aid ranging from housing support to food stamps to subsidized daycare to unemployment insurance.</div><div>
</div><div>Women are returning to chattel status in Red states, the property of their fathers or husbands, their bondage enforced by bounty systems and the threat of imprisonment should they try to assert agency over their own bodies.</div><div>
</div><div>Multiple Red states have outlawed teaching the actual history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the ongoing violence and persecution suffered by racial, gender, and religious minorities. Many are using government tax revenues to subsidize typically-all-white “Christian” religious schools, a trend spreading across Republican-controlled states like an out-of-control fungus.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Almost a dozen GOP-controlled states have passed laws criminalizing protests against Republican policies, and, writes The Atlantic quoting the International Center for Non-for-Profit Law, “several of those states have simultaneously provided civil or criminal protection for drivers who hit [and kill] protesters</span>…”</div><div>
</div><div>Others have banned books and fired teachers who dare discuss diversity or basic sex education. Many, as I wrote here yesterday, are withholding state funds from banking and investment institutions that consider the environment, social justice, or governance on behalf of the working class and the poor (ESG) when making business decisions.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Climate change,</b>&nbsp;they’ll tell you as they take campaign funds from the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it’s created, is a hoax perpetrated by liberal scientists who are somehow “getting rich” by warning the world of its consequences.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis no longer rule the South on behalf of the notorious “2000 families” but their spiritual heirs, today’s Red state governors, would make them proud with their restrictions on voting, encouragement of armed white supremacist vigilantism, and state tax subsidies for American oligarch billionaires and their<b>&nbsp;corporate&nbsp;</b>empires.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Georgia Governor Brian Kemp — whose family, investigative reporter Greg Palast discovered, was the first to bring enslaved Africans to Georgia&nbsp;</b>— famously signed a law codifying 10-hour voting lines in Black neighborhoods and giving his state the power to throw people off voting rolls without justification in a closed-door ceremony before a painting of one of the 2000 families’ Georgia slave plantations.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>It’s said that Red states are trying to take us back to the 1950s. In fact, most are shooting for the 1870s,</b>&nbsp;when women were the property of their husbands, poor children worked 12-hour days for pennies, queer people were invisible, and Black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic people could be murdered with impunity.</div><div>
</div><div>On the other hand,&nbsp;<b>Blue states</b>&nbsp;have embraced 21st-century values of inclusiveness, tolerance, education, healthcare, a clean environment, worker’s rights, higher minimum wages and unionization, gun safety, paid sick leave, and are working to override the electoral college to bring democracy to the race for president.</div><div>
</div><div>Most have enacted gun control laws that often include assault weapon bans, outlawed forced “captive audience” union-busting meetings, expanded drug treatment programs, decriminalized marijuana, strengthened abortion rights protections, raised their minimum wages, and are moving quickly to green their economies to mitigate climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>They’re offering protections to asylum seekers, women seeking medical care, and transgender individuals fleeing overt persecution in Red states. They celebrate gay marriage and honor the holidays of religious minorities. Women and racial minorities make up large parts of their legislative bodies and occupy many of their governor’s offices.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In this, Blue states are following the vision and values laid out by several of America’s Founders who helped create the first nation in world history espousing the idea that nobody should have to live in poverty and an important role of government was to prevent people from falling through the cracks.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Thomas Paine, for example, laid out a proposal for what we today call Social Security in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice, and Thomas Jefferson created the nation’s first totally free university (the University of Virginia</b>).&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Half the delegates to the Constitutional Convention spoke against slavery as a curse against our nation’s ideals, although it took a bloody war to end that “peculiar institution” held so tightly in the grip of the 2000 families.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Even in the first years of our republic,&nbsp;<b>the founding generation understood that caring for the public good was an essential function of government, as referenced in the preamble to the Constitution</b>.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">President George Washington signed the first legislation providing federal funds for poorhouses that including food, clothing, shelter, and medical care along with job training.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Three decades later, when the legislation was up for renewal, President James Madison (the “Father of the Constitution”) vetoed a provision proposed by Southern states that would have cycled those revenues through local churches</span>, writing in his veto message that federal funding of churches — even for charitable antipoverty purposes the government supported — “would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”</div><div>
</div><div>So, how did we get here and what can we do about it?</div><div>
</div><div><b>Ironically, it turns out that Red states are able to carry out their campaign of reviving the old Confederacy and its values of patriarchy, hierarchy, and wage slavery in large part because Blue states are subsidizing them.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While Donald Trump carried 2,497 counties in the 2020 election compared to Joe Biden’s 477 counties, the&nbsp;<b>Blue counties Biden carried generated a total of 71 percent of the nation’s economic activity.</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The fiscal health of Blue states and counties — along with widespread Red state poverty exacerbated by Red State tax breaks for the morbidly rich — accounts for the bizarre reality that Blue states are subsidizing the brutal and retrograde policies of Red states.</span></div><div>
</div><div>A March 2023 report from the Rockefeller Institute lays out how glaring this appropriation of Blue state revenue is by the Red states. In just New York, for example, they write that over a five-year period:</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“New York taxpayers have given $142.6 billion more to the federal government than New York residents have received back in federal spending.”</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the Associated Press summarized in an article titled AP FACT CHECK: Blue high-tax states fund red low-tax states:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar the state sent to Washington in 2015, according to the Rockefeller study. West Virginia received $2.07, Kentucky got $1.90 and South Carolina got $1.71.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Meanwhile, New Jersey received 74 cents in federal spending for tax every dollar the state sent to Washington. New York received 81 cents, Connecticut received 82 cents and Massachusetts received 83 cents.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“California fared a bit better than other blue states. It received 96 cents for every dollar the state sent to Washington.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>When the Biden administration tried to just slightly slow down the Red state gravy train, specifying in the American Rescue Plan that the subsidies to the states for helping people who lost their jobs due to Covid could not be misappropriated and redirected to tax cuts for local billionaires, their politicians — dancing to the tune of their in-state oligarchs — went ballistic. As Forbes documented:</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“So far, a total of 18 red states are plaintiffs in five separate lawsuits challenging a provision in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Biden signed into law last month which says that state governments cannot use any of the $350 billion in federal pandemic relief funds coming their way to ‘either directly or indirectly offset a reduction’ in their net tax revenue resulting from state tax cuts.</span></div><div>“In a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen<b>, 21 Republican state attorneys general described it as ‘the greatest attempted invasion of state sovereignty by Congress in the history of our Republic.’”</b></div><div>
</div><div>Federal policy fails to equalize revenue flowing to Red states against the tax money they send Washington DC. This loophole in US tax law is driving this bizarre process where citizens in&nbsp;<b>Blue states are forced by law to pay for all-white “Christian” academies, enforcement of abortion restrictions, persecution of asylum seekers and immigrants, and political attacks on queer people.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Red state “welfare queen” governors and legislatures are going to happily continue this grift as long as we let them get away with it. Congress should pass legislation mandating that Red state revenues to DC must at least match 90 percent of the money they get back; 100 percent would be better, and help hugely with our nation’s budget deficit.</div><div>
</div><div>It’s time to end Red state welfare!</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>The strange truth about the pro-slavery origins of Christian nationalism in the United States ›</div><div>'You're unemployable': Matt Gaetz shamed for tying 'rigorous work requirements' to the debt ceiling ›</div><div>Republicans can’t stop won’t stop hating the poor ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>'Red State Socialism' graphic says GOP-leaning states ... - PolitiFact ›</div><div>AP FACT CHECK: Blue high-tax states fund red low-tax states | AP ... ›</div><div>Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed ›</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 7 23&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ke<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ntucky MAGA Republican James Comer, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, has been</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://popular.info/p/fox-news-wont-let-new-facts-get-in" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">exposed as basically a con man&nbsp;</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">with his phony Hunter Biden bribe witness. Now he is trying to rewrite the history of</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.rawstory.com/trump-news/?utm_campaign=SmartLinks" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">and Covid.</span></font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comer’s latest stunt to try to whitewash Trump’s role in the unnecessary death of at least a half-million Americans is to argue — nonsensically — that the virus came out of the Wuhan virology lab and therefore something, something, something Trump is not responsible. He’s doing this with House Oversight Committee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/nicole-malliotakis-2662264500/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">hearings this week</a>.</font></p><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reason Comer and other MAGA Republicans are working so hard to push this perennial theory (which may be true, but so what?) is that they think directing the nation’s attention to the Wuhan lab — which got collaboration and minor funding from Anthony Fauci’s realm of the government — will point us at Fauci and thus distract us all from how many Americans Trump let die and why.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it’s the “why” Trump intentionally let a half million Americans die unnecessarily where our media, and the Democrats, are really missing the story.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">April 7, 2020 was the day everything changed in America. And hardly anybody realizes it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was the day that caused Jared Kushner to decide that letting Black and Hispanic Americans in Blue states die of Covid — yes, intentionally using the force of law and social pressure to push people into death’s jaws — could become part of what he called “an effective political strategy” to help them win the 2020 election, and Donald Trump signed off on it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most unreported story of the pandemic, the one that seems destined to be overlooked as histories are being written, is what Trump did when he learned the Covid coronavirus was largely killing Black and Hispanic people and mostly sparing whites.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The moment he came to that realization he completely altered the US response to the pandemic, leading to the unnecessary death of 300,000 to 500,000 Americans.</font></p><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deaths that he and his advisors apparently believed (correctly) would be, outside of nursing home residents, disproportionately Black and Hispanic people.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s an amazing story and the evidence is easily found. But even Congressman Jamie Raskin missed an opportunity to point it out when he corrected Comer during yesterday’s hearing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/jamie-raskin-trump-lab-leak/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">to say</a>:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">”[E]ven if the virus came from a lab, as indeed it could have, we don't know that yet, that would only deepen Donald Trump’s culpability because he was the one who repeatedly and enthusiastically praised China’s early handling of the pandemic and assured us that he was working closely with President Xi on the response to it.”
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But when you line up the timeline and events of 2020, a much more sinister picture of Trump’s willingness to let Americans die — and the reason why he was willing to let particular Americans die — emerges that is pretty damn compelling.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Here’s how it played out. It’s the story of the crime of mass death done entirely for political purposes.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Through January of 2020, Covid was limited to a few clusters in the US.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump — who’d&nbsp;<a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/natural-disasters/516502-in-newly-released-tape-trump-says-covid-19-is-a/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">privately told</a>&nbsp;Bob Woodward the disease was a “killer” that “rips you apart” — kept downplaying its severity and assuring Americans there was nothing to worry about.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On January 30th the World Health Organization&nbsp;<a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">declared</a>&nbsp;the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Louise and I joined two of my brothers and several of their and our kids on a family cruise the next day; when we left the ship and flew home on February 8th most of us were sick (we still don’t know if it was Covid) and the 3,700 passengers and crew of a different ship, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7a486b7b-e92f-47b7-a6bd-9da9637b42ac" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Diamond Princess</a>, were getting headlines around the world,&nbsp;<a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/11/20-1165_article" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">quarantined</a>&nbsp;off the coast of Japan for two long weeks with hundreds of cases of Covid.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">March 2020 was the month when things went to hell here in the United States. On March 5th there were 129 known cases and&nbsp;<a href="https://doggett.house.gov/media/blog-post/timeline-trumps-coronavirus-responses" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">only</a>&nbsp;11 deaths in the US: just 33 days later, hospitals were using refrigerated trucks as morgues and&nbsp;<a href="https://doggett.house.gov/media/blog-post/timeline-trumps-coronavirus-responses" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">over</a>&nbsp;10,000 Americans were dead of Covid.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fear ran through communities and stalked our homes. We were washing our groceries with bleach after picking them up at the store’s parking lot from people wearing masks, goggles, and gloves. We bought up all the air filters in the country. We worked from home when we could. We isolated ourselves from other people as much as was humanly possible.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within those few weeks in March and early April, serious Covid outbreaks were showing up across the Northeast and Trump — who had two years earlier&nbsp;<a href="https://doggett.house.gov/media/blog-post/timeline-trumps-coronavirus-responses" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">shut down&nbsp;</a><a href="https://doggett.house.gov/media/blog-post/timeline-trumps-coronavirus-responses" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">both of the two federal pandemic task forces</a>&nbsp;Obama had put into place after the Ebola scare — charged Jared Kushner with responding to the crisis.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By March 7th, US deaths had&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States(2020)#March" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">risen from 4 to only 22</a>, but that was enough to spur federal action. Trump’s official emergency declaration came on March 11th, and most of the country shut down during the following week.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The skies and highways fell silent, the Dow collapsed, and millions of Americans were laid off but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Jared Kushner put together a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/an-explosive-new-documentary-details-how-jared-kushners-coronavirus-task-force-consisted-mainly-of-20-something-volunteers-buying-ppe-with-personal-email-accounts/ar-BB19NWkK" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">task force</a>&nbsp;of preppie 30-something white men he knew from college to coordinate getting Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from Trump buddies and companies&nbsp;<a href="https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2022.12.09%20Preparing%20for%20and%20Preventing%20the%20Next%20Public%20Health%20Emergency.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">close to Republican members of Congress</a>&nbsp;into hospitals.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They even had a plan for the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-administration-scrapped-plan-send-every-american-mask-april-email-n1240359" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Post Office to distribute 650 million masks</a>&nbsp;— 5 to every American household — to slow the pandemic.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But then came April 7th, just one month later, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States</a>. It was followed the day later with the all-caps headline across the top of the front page:&nbsp;<a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/04/08/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">BLACK AMERICANS BEAR THE BRUNT AS DEATHS CLIMB.</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It hit conservative media, Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner like a lightning bolt</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Most of the non-elderly people dying from Covid, the report found, were Black or Hispanic, not White people.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reported</a>&nbsp;on April 7th:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the United States at disproportionately high rates…
“In Illinois, 43 percent of people who have died from the disease and 28 percent of those who have tested positive are African-Americans, a group that makes up just 15 percent of the state’s population. African-Americans, who account for a third of positive tests in Michigan, represent 40 percent of deaths in that state even though they make up 14 percent of the population. In Louisiana, about 70 percent of the people who have died are black, though only a third of that state’s population is.”
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/rush-limbaugh-slams-news-coverage-coronavirus-racial-disparity-how-they-stop" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Limbaugh declared</a>&nbsp;solemnly that afternoon:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“With the coronavirus, I have been waiting for the racial component.”</span>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And here it was:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The coronavirus now hits African Americans harder,” Limbaugh intoned, “harder than illegal aliens, harder than women. It hits African Americans harder than anybody: disproportionate representation.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It didn’t take a medical savant, of course, to figure out why, and it had nothing to do with the biology of race or Covid: it was purely systemic racism. African Americans die disproportionately from everything, from heart disease to strokes to cancer to childbirth, and are<b>&nbsp;also over-represented in low-paid public-facing service jobs where they would more easily catch Covid.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">It’s a symptom of a racially rigged economy and a healthcare system that only responds to money</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, which America has conspired to keep from African Americans for over 400 years. Of course Black people are going to die more frequently from coronavirus.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously publishing April 7th front-page articles about that disparity — followed by it leading or making the news that night on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox — echoed across the rightwing media landscape like a Fourth of July fireworks display.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Tucker Carlson, the only prime-time Fox “News” host who’d previously expressed serious concerns about the dangers of the virus, changed his tune the same day, as documented by Media Matters for America.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/tucker-carlson-coronavirus-crisis-may-have-passed-well-see-it-looks-it-may" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Now, Tucker said</a>:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“[W]e can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest, the countless Americans who have been grievously hurt by this, by our response to this. How do we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That’s our task.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The rest” are white people. Those “vulnerable citizens” Tucker wanted to get back to work appear to be disproportionately minorities. As a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus&nbsp;<a href="https://coronavirus-democrats-oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2022.12.09%20Preparing%20for%20and%20Preventing%20the%20Next%20Public%20Health%20Emergency.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">noted</a>:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Essential workers who needed to work in person, and their family members, were significantly more likely to contract the coronavirus early in the crisis. These essential workers disproportionately earned low wages and were more likely to be people of color.
“Black and Latina women were particularly ‘overrepresented as essential workers’ at greater risk of coronavirus infection ‘with Latina women making up 22% of women grocery store workers and Black women making up 27% of women home health aide workers’…”
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On the other hand, salaried workers — overwhelmingly white — were telecommuting</b>. For over a year I did my show from home, for example, as did all my peers at SiriusXM, Free Speech TV, and in most media operations around the country. Everywhere people could work from home, most employers were making accommodations.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump wanted the rest of the economy to recover from the election-year shutdown shock because he knew presidents running for reelection during economic bad times almost always lose. He knew that if he wanted to win in 2020, that meant getting “essential” workers like transit drivers, store clerks, and people in slaughterhouses back to their jobs.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Particularly if they were Black or Brown.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://twitter.com/BadFoxGraphics/status/1247684528698777600" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Brit Hume joined</a>&nbsp;Tucker’s show and, using his gravitas as a “real news guy,” intoned:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The disease turned out not to be quite as dangerous as we thought.”</span>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Left unsaid was the issue of for whom it was “not quite as dangerous,” but Limbaugh listeners and Fox “News” viewers are anything but unsophisticated when it comes to hearing dog-whistles on behalf of white supremacy.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Only 12,677 Americans were dead by that April day, but now that Trump and his rightwing media believed most of the non-elderly dying people were and would be Black and Hispanic, things were suddenly very, very different.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now it was time to quit talking about people dying and start talking about getting those Black and Brown people back to work, even if it meant exposing them to a deadly disease!</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On April 12th, Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/13/trump-fire-fauci-coronavirus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci</a>&nbsp;a</b>nd declared, in&nbsp;<a href="https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/1249712404260421633.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">another tweet</a>, that he had the sole authority to open the US back up and would announce a specific plan to do that “shortly.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">On April 13th, the ultra-rightwing,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.uschamber.com/about/executive-leadership" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">nearly-entirely-white-managed</a>&nbsp;<b>US Chamber of Commerce&nbsp;</b><a href="https://www.uschamber.com/coronavirus/implementing-national-return-to-work-plan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">published a policy paper</a>&nbsp;titled Implementing A National Return to Work Plan.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The next day, Freedomworks, the billionaire-founded and -funded group that animated the Tea Party against Obamacare a decade earlier,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.freedomworks.org/content/economic-recovery-starts-lifting-small-businesses-back" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">published an op-ed</a>&nbsp;on their website calling for an “economic recovery”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;program including an end to the capital gains tax and a new law to “shield” businesses from Covid-deaths and -injuries lawsuits.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three days after that,<b>&nbsp;Freedomworks and the House Freedom Caucus</b>&nbsp;issued a joint&nbsp;<a href="https://www.freedomworks.org/content/freedomworks-echoes-house-freedom-caucus-call-safe-and-swift-reopening-us-economy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">statement</a>&nbsp;declaring that “[I]t’s time to re-open the economy.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Freedomworks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.freedomworks.org/content/reopenamerica-rally-planning-guide" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">published</a>&nbsp;their “#ReopenAmerica Rally Planning Guide” encouraging conservatives to show up “in person” at their state capitols and governor’s mansions, and, for signage, to “Keep it short: ‘I’m essential,’ ‘Let me work,’ ‘Let Me Feed My Family’” and to “Keep [the signs looking] homemade.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the first #OpenTheCountry rallies to get widespread national attention was April 19th in mostly-white&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fosters.com/news/20200419/protesters-plan-second-reopen-nh-rally" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">New Hampshire</a>. Over the next several weeks, rallies filled with angry white people had metastasized across the nation, from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.koin.com/news/health/coronavirus/oregon-uniting-for-liberty-rally-salem-capitol-reopen-economy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Oregon</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.azmirror.com/2020/04/16/covid-19-rally-to-re-open-arizona-planned/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Arizona</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://delawarestatenews.net/coronavirus/delaware-group-sets-may-1-rally-to-oppose-excessive-quarantine/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Delaware</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/reopennc-rally-planned-for-tuesday-in-downtown-raleigh/19062732/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">North Carolina</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/05/rally-reopen-virginia-planned-wednesday/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Virginia</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/5/1/21244518/reopen-illinois-rally-thompson-center-coronavirus-covid-19-stay-at-home-order" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Illinois</a>&nbsp;and elsewhere.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One that drew particularly high levels of media attention —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/02/nazi-slogans-at-coronavirus-lockdown-protest-draws-rebuke-from-auschwitz-museum/#161a87031831" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">complete</a>&nbsp;with swastikas, confederate flags, and assault rifles — was directed against the governor of Michigan, rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was around the time long-standing rightwing networks began to awaken and coordinate with each other. They reached out to members of Congress and the Senate and found allies. Trump explicitly encouraged them to require low-wage essential workers to return to their jobs.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Suddenly things began to change as the federal government stopped trying to save lives and started promoting policies that would eventually kill — unnecessarily — a half-million Americans.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">NBC News, when they’d gotten hold of April emails from within the White House,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-administration-scrapped-plan-send-every-american-mask-april-email-n1240359" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ran the headline</a>:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Trump Administration Scrapped Plan to Send Every American a Mask in April, Email Shows.”</span>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When Rachel Maddow reported on meat-packing plants that were epicenters of mass infection, the<b>&nbsp;conservative&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/wisconsin-gop-judge-covid-19-is-spreading-due-to-meat-packing-workers-and-not-regular-folks/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court</a>&nbsp;</b>pointed out that the virus flare wasn’t coming from the “regular folks” of the surrounding white community: the sick people were mostly Hispanic and Black.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He essentially said, “No big deal.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican meme was now well-established and was being repeated virtually daily on Fox “News” and rightwing talk radio. Working-age white people were far, far less likely to get less sick, more likely to be asymptomatic, or — even if they were unlucky and got sick — most likely to survive a trip to the hospital.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Then came news that bigger outbreaks than we realized were now happening in meat packing plants, places with few white people (and the few whites in them were largely poor and thus disposable).</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s response was to issue an executive order using the Defense Production Act (which he had refused to use to order production of testing or PPE equipment) to order the largely Hispanic and Black workforce back into the slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">African Americans were dying in our cities, Hispanics were dying in meat packing plants, the elderly of all races were dying in nursing homes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the death toll among working age affluent white people (who could telecommute and/or were less likely to be obese, have hypertension, or struggle with diabetes) was relatively low.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It took a lot of pressure off Trump and his Republicans. They could now politicize the virus, and, if they did it right, they could do so publicly with a “wink” to their white supremacist base.&nbsp;<b>And if they could get the economy back to cranking along within the next few months, they might be able to pull the 2020 election out of the bag</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>.</b></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As an “expert” member of Jared Kushner’s team of young, unqualified volunteers supervising the administration’s PPE response noted to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban</a>:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”</span>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It was, after all, exclusively Blue States that were then hit hard by the virus: Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And there was an election coming in just a few months.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At year’s end, the United States was ranked&nbsp;<a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/the-countries-that-handled-covid19-pandemic-the-worst-revealed/news-story/1c630aa87ddebecdeb7534ce92416fd2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">5th worst in the world</a>&nbsp;in our response (behind Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Iran); we&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/health/us-coronavirus-toll-in-numbers-june-trnd/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">had about 20% of the world’s Covid deaths</a>, but only 4.5% of the world’s population</b>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lasting legacy of Trump’s changes in policy and encouraging Covid skepticism is that today we’re the world’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/opinion/contributors/2022/12/08/the-tragedy-of-avoidable-covid-deaths/69712239007/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">worst</a>&nbsp;in terms of death and sickness, period. He’d thrown his unqualified slumlord son-in-law Jared Kushner at something even a professional would’ve found the challenge of a lifetime. And then manipulated it to help him in the upcoming 2020 election.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">More people have died of Covid in America, as a percentage or in absolute terms, than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">any other</a>&nbsp;developed country in the world.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why? Because Trump and his Republican enablers and co-conspirators were just fine with getting the economy back on track to win an election over the bodies of dead Black and Hispanic people, particularly when they could blame it on Democratic Blue-state governors.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Former Attorney General Kennedy’s grandson Max Kennedy Jr, 26, was one of the administration’s volunteers, who blew the whistle to Congress on Kushner and Trump. As&nbsp;<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/28/a-young-kennedy-in-kushnerland-turned-whistle-blower" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Jane Mayer wrote for&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/28/a-young-kennedy-in-kushnerland-turned-whistle-blower" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The New Yorker</a>:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Kennedy was disgusted to see that the political appointees who supervised him were hailing Trump as ‘a marketing genius,’ because, Kennedy said they’d told him, ‘he personally came up with the strategy of blaming the [Blue] states.’”</span>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As that report released from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus&nbsp;<a href="https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2022.12.09%20Preparing%20for%20and%20Preventing%20the%20Next%20Public%20Health%20Emergency.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reported</a>&nbsp;just a few months ago:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In the first half of 2020, African Americans and Latinos had death rates from coronavirus that far outweighed those of whites. While 62% of the population age 45-54 in 2020 was white, this population accounted for only 22% of coronavirus deaths in that age range. …
“<b>Disparities were even more pronounced in some states such as Louisiana, where where in April 2020, African Americans represented 70% of coronavirus deaths despite being only one third of the state’s population</b>.”
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And once Trump and Kushner put that death-based reelection strategy into place in April, it became politically impossible to back away from it, even as more and more Red state white people became infected.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Trump told Dr. Deborah Birx in mid-April and she reported in her book&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Invasion-Administration-Covid-19-Preventing-ebook/dp/B09HCDSLDP/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Silent Invasion: The Untold Story</a>…:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“‘We will never shut down the country again. Never.’ His pupils hardened into points of anger… I felt the blood drain from my face, and I shivered slightly.”</span>
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Trump’s change — from a policy of prevention to a policy of “herd immunity” once he realized on April 7, 2020 that healthy white people were largely immune from death by the coronavirus — put the US on-course to have the worst Covid death rate in the world.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was the day everything changed because Trump and Kushner were willing to let Black and Hispanic people die on a gamble they could still put the economy back together fast enough to win the 2020 election.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Over a million Americans have died so far, more than any other nation. Multiple studies show that up to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-economy/u-s-covid-response-could-have-avoided-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths-research-idUSKBN2BH1DK" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">500,000</a>&nbsp;of those deaths wouldn’t have happened if Trump had just promoted masks and lock-downs through the year before the vaccine was available</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;and, since then, if he had condemned the anti-vax movement that emerged in the last months of his presidency.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But he didn’t do either. All because he knew the virus disproportionately killed Black and Brown people and he was willing to do anything to win the election.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And sure enough, as Congress&nbsp;<a href="https://coronavirus-democrats-oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2022.12.09%20Preparing%20for%20and%20Preventing%20the%20Next%20Public%20Health%20Emergency.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reported last December</a>, a massive number of those deaths were — as a clear result of Trump’s policy ­— among Black and Hispanic people.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If that’s not racial mass slaughter, aka genocide at a Serbian war crimes level, then the phrase has lost much of its meaning.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jack Smith: are you listening?</font></p><div id="story_page_post_article" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="tp-cxense-placeholder-inline tp-widget-placeholder"><div id="cxense-ff213be4f89eb23ae78d1f6cdb9c24c7b1534ebf"><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.444px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="from-your-siteitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ivanka-trump-jared-kushner-endeavors" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner no longer affiliated with Donald Trump's political endeavors: report ›</a></font></font></font></font></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/legal-reporter-inappropriate-sermonizing-bragg/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Legal reporter shreds Trump judge’s 'inappropriate' sermonizing about Alvin Bragg’s politics ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/trump-prosecution-2661317008/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Trump's prosecution is a product of democratic politics — not the ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.444px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="around-the-webitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2021/01/29/how-america-changed-during-donald-trumps-presidency/" class="around-the-weblink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">How America Changed During Trump's Presidency | Pew Research ... ›</a></font></font></font></font></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/politics/presidential-candidates-2024.html" class="around-the-weblink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Who Are the 2024 Presidential Election Candidates? 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</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">want to get Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court? The best route to do so may be through his wife, Ginni.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s history here, and it’s really worth knowing.</font></p><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in March, I&nbsp;<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/what-do-pornography-ginny-thomas" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">shared with you</a>&nbsp;the story of how Senator Strom Thurmond torpedoed LBJ’s plan to make Abe Fortas Chief Justice — Fortas was then the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court — by running the “Abe Fortas Film Festival,” showing porn movies to men in the Senate on a continuous basis for weeks.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thurmond dragged the process out long enough that Johnson’s term expired and Vice President Hubert Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon (who’d&nbsp;<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-republicans-abandoned-democracy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">committed treason to win</a>&nbsp;the White House by&nbsp;<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-republicans-abandoned-democracy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">cutting a deal</a>&nbsp;with the Vietnamese to turn down the peace treaty they’d negotiated with LBJ). Once Nixon became president, he put Warren Burger on the Court and into that top slot.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that’s only part of the story, and the rest of it, particularly in light of the most recently unearthed nakedly corrupt behavior by Clarence Thomas, brings forward a possible solution to the unwillingness of the Supreme Court to police themselves and Congress’s inability to begin impeachment proceedings.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No Supreme Court justice in history has been either prosecuted or removed by impeachment. (Samuel Chase was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/04/07/supreme-court-justice-impeached/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">impeached</a>&nbsp;in the House in 1805, but the Senate failed to convict and remove him from office.)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Richard Nixon figured out how to get one off the bench — specifically, the ultra-liberal Abe Fortas — and there’s a lesson in that experience for us today.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Nixon’s motives back then were entirely partisan and corrupt, the Court today faces a genuine crisis of confidence that shakes Americans’ trust in their government. And credibility is the only tool the Court has to enforce its decisions, as Alexander Hamilton pointed out&nbsp;<a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">in Federalist 78</a>:[bad code?]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[T]he judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” (emphasis Hamilton’s)
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The revelations about three decades of Clarence Thomas’ corrupt behavior have been coming fast and furious in the past few weeks, on top of the shocking revelations laid out last April about billionaire Harlan Crow’s spending millions, starting in 1994, to cement his “friendship” with and apparent influence over the justice.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-real-estate-scotus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ProPublica discovered</a>&nbsp;that Crow had showered millions in gifts and luxury vacations on the Thomas’, bought Clarence’s mother’s home and lets her live there rent-free, and put the boy they were raising as their son through high-end prep schools. Since then, America has also learned that Crow also appears to be profiting mightily from Thomas’ tie-breaking votes on the Court.</font></p><p style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, last week Thomas was the tie-breaking vote to gut federal protections for half the wetlands in America, putting the most ecologically diverse and fragile ecosystems in the country up for commercial and residential development.</font></b></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.levernews.com/clarence-thomas-billionaire-benefactor-is-grateful-for-latest-scotus-bombshell/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Lever News is reporting</a>&nbsp;that this accomplishes a goal that Crow’s companies and the trade associations they’re members of have been working toward for years, perhaps even decades.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’ve spent millions on lobbying, court battles, and submitting Amicus (Friend of the Court) briefs in federal courts, including specifically advocating for the outcome Thomas assured with his tie-breaking vote in last week’s Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency case.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earlier, Paul Blumenthal had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-business-interests_n_64494a12e4b0d840388c2935" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">written for&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-business-interests_n_64494a12e4b0d840388c2935" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Huffington Post</a>&nbsp;about how Crow’s company might benefit if the Clean Water Act was gutted by the Supreme Court, in part because they had some huge development projects that were apparently waiting on the ability to pave over, build on, or erect next to wetlands that had federal protection:</font></span></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“In 2022, Crow Holdings Industrial&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sas.usace.army.mil/Portals/61/docs/Regulatory/publicnotices/SAS-2022-00842-Gordon-0928-AFW.pdf?ver=RdtmgPejHc_qiwBHgYdmGg%3D%3D" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">sought authorization from the Army Corps of Engineers</a>&nbsp;under the Clean Water Act for a warehouse development in Georgia that would result in ‘cumulative adverse impacts to 6.87 acres of wetland.’”</span>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the Sackett decision, those wetlands are presumably no longer a concern for Crow’s company. Time to make some money!</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is just one of literally dozens — and perhaps hundreds — of decisions Thomas voted on that might have either affected Crow’s companies, affiliated entities and trade groups, or comported with Crow’s political perspective.</font></b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But while simple corruption like this would probably get a state court judge impeached or even thrown in jail, it apparently isn’t enough to draw fire from either the Justice Department (the only agency with the power and authority to take on the Supreme Court) or Congress (via impeachment).</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trying to overthrow the government of the United States, however, may be another matter altogether. And that’s where Clarence’s wife Ginni may be vulnerable.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Richard Nixon wanted to get rid of Abe Fortas, embarrassment (via the “Fortas Film Festivals”) wasn’t enough: Fortas&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1968/10/7/the-fortas-reflex-pwhen-supreme-court/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">defended</a>&nbsp;his vote to legalize pornographic movies and ignored the critics.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But then Nixon ordered his attorney general, John Mitchell, to convene a grand jury to investigate a bogus allegation that Fortas’ wife had engaged in a tax-avoidance scheme.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She was a lawyer with a prestigious DC firm and an obscure rightwing source had alleged the proof of her involvement in the tax scheme could be found in her safe. It made for lurid headlines, even though she happily emptied the safe for her bosses in the law firm.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitchell then began pulling together the grand jury and Fortas — knowing the old saw that “a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich” — put an end to the entire charade by resigning from the Court.</font></b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean, who was there and knew the players, wrote in his book on the era (<a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Rehnquist-Choice-Appointment-Redefined-Supreme-dp-0743226070/dp/0743226070/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Rehnquist Choice</a>):</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Did the Justice Department have the goods on Fortas? Not even close. Mitchell’s talk was pure bluff. … Lyndon Johnson’s Justice Department had investigated this question [back when Fortas was nominated for Chief Justice in 1968] and found nothing improper…. Reopening of the matter by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department was purely a means to torture Fortas.”
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nixon’s persecution of Abe Fortas’ wife was as bogus as his war on drugs, both being done for purely political reasons (as I&nbsp;<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/heres-the-truth-if-youre-anti-woke" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">mentioned yesterday</a>).</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With Ginni Thomas, though, the story is quite different.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the crimes for which Donald&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/trump-news/?utm_campaign=SmartLinks" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump</a>, Rudy Giuliani, et al are being investigated is defrauding the federal government (and the voters) by fielding a slate of false or phony electors to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden and award it to Donald Trump.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post obtained copies of messages Ginni Thomas sent to more than half the Republican legislators in Arizona and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/01/politics/ginni-thomas-overturn-2020-election-wisconsin/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">multiple ones in Wisconsin</a>&nbsp;encouraging them to do just that. She&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/10/ginni-thomas-election-arizona-lawmakers/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wrote</a>:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to protect the integrity of our elections - and we need you to exercise that power now! Never before in our nation’s history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures.”
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asking them to watch a video purporting to prove the election was stolen (that’s since been deleted from YouTube for violating their terms of service), Thomas concluded her message&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/06/10/ginni-thomas-election-arizona-lawmakers/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">with</a>:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[P]lease consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.”
</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Post also,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/31/ginni-thomas-clarence-thomas-conflict-jan6-committee/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">in a separate article</a>, documented multiple clear violations of ethics norms committed by the Thomas couple, some of which may rise to the level of violations of law.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Additionally, it’s possible Ginni Thomas was involved in the organization of January 6th, although she has denied it publicly. Only an investigation by an agency with subpoena power like a grand jury could determine the truth.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The New York Times Magazine&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/magazine/clarence-thomas-ginni-thomas.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">noted</a>&nbsp;in February of last year:</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“Dustin Stockton,</b> an organizer who worked with Women for America First, which held the permit for the Ellipse rally, said he was told that Ginni Thomas played a peacemaking role between feuding factions of rally organizers ‘so that there wouldn’t be any division around January 6.’
“‘The way it was presented to me was that Ginni was uniting these different factions around a singular mission on January 6,’ said Stockton, who previously worked for Bannon.”</span>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A federal grand jury investigation of Ginni Thomas would serve several purposes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— First, it would demonstrate that there can be consequences for blatant corruption by members of the Supreme Court and their families, thus serving as a deterrent to corrupt practices by other or future justices.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Second, it could shed light on some of the behind-the-scenes actions around the January 6th attempted insurrection and the effort to overturn the election through the criminal fake elector scheme.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Third, it may provoke Clarence Thomas to finally pack it in and leave the Court, as his predecessor Abe Fortas did back in the day.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given his apparent fear of appearing partisan, it’s unlikely Attorney General Merrick Garland would take an action like this on his own or directly through the DOJ. After all, he dithered and ignored Trump’s clear criminality for almost two full years until he was shamed into doing something by the public January 6th Committee hearings.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, if there’s enough public pressure, it may provoke him to appoint a surrogate, a special counsel, to convene a grand jury and begin the necessary investigations.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it’s entirely possible, after Jack Smith sends Donald Trump to prison (please, G-d!), that he’ll have some time on his hands which could be well spent sticking around Washington, DC…</font></p><div id="story_page_post_article" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="tp-cxense-placeholder-inline tp-widget-placeholder"><div id="cxense-ff213be4f89eb23ae78d1f6cdb9c24c7b1534ebf"><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.444px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="from-your-siteitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/clarence-thomas-worst-yet-come/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Why the worst may be yet to come for Clarence Thomas: report ›</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/ginni-thomas-kevin-mccarthy-letter/" class="from-your-sitelink rm-stats-tracked" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Justice Thomas' wife long steeped in conservative politics | AP News ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d62e9e2f-3cb6-47ab-bde7-f43a03ecf428" class="around-the-weblink rm-stats-tracked" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Ginni Thomas: the Supreme Court justice's wife caught up in ... ›</a></li></ul></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x? trump coup mil?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/donald-trump-conspiracy-even-bigger">https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/donald-trump-conspiracy-even-bigger</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">belated</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">short list co-author</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">badass video?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/guns-dont-kill-americans-republicans/">https://www.alternet.org/guns-dont-kill-americans-republicans/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yet&nbsp; another tpusa pix
no lnx
Guns don't kill Americans, Republicans do

Thom Hartmann andRaw Story March 28, 2023
Yesterday

a 28-year-old graduate of a Christian school shot up the place, killing

three 9-year-old students and three adults. This was almost 2 years to

the day that Republican Governor Bill Lee signed a wide-ranging gun

deregulation bill allowing Tennesseans to carry guns — open or concealed

— without a permit or any other government interference.

Republicans

are trying to distract America from the easy access Audrey Hale had to

weapons of war by discussing Hale’s personal life, but the availability

of guns and the Republican embrace of death as a political weapon are

the only real issues here.

We’re the only developed country in

the world that unconditionally allows civilians to own military-style

assault weapons, that allows “open carry,” and that lets gun

manufacturers openly buy politicians (thanks, Republicans on the Supreme

Court).

<b>As a consequence, we’re also the only country in the

world where the leading cause of death for children is being blown apart

by bullets.</b>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
Today

is the 87th day of the year. So far, we’ve had over 130 mass shootings.

Yesterday’s was the 33rd school shooting. This is not happening in any

other developed country in the world.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The last time there was a school shooting in the United Kingdom, for example, was 26 years ago.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">These

guns have been put into American’s hands by Republicans. Bill Clinton

passed an assault weapons ban in 1994, but Republican President George

W. Bush led the charge to refuse to renew it. It died in 2004.</span>

The result is clear from the graphic Hillary Clinton posted here.


<b>There are two simple reasons why Republicans want America drenched in guns and the deaths they bring.

The first is that they’ve been taking piles of money from explicit peddlers of death: the NRA and gun manufacturers. </b>This

form of corrupt political bribery was legalized by 5 Republicans on the

Supreme Court in 1978 and doubled down on with Citizens United: it’s

not just corrupting politics in America, it is killing our children.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The

second is that there’s a substantial part of the violent white racist

GOP base that is actively arming in preparation for a civil racial war

in America, egged on by multiple Republican members of Congress.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">These

America-hating legislators — these sick, twisted bastards — delight in

posing their white families with military assault weapons and posting

the pictures on social media, their way of telling Black people and

“liberals” what’s coming.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last

weekend in Waco, Donald Trump ran clips on a giant screen of his

January 6th mob assaulting and killing people, producing three dead

police officers, as he and his followers stood with their hands over

their hearts singing a version of the national anthem that was

interspersed with quotes from Trump himself.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The

leading Republican candidate for president and his followers were

literally celebrating the deaths they had caused, while calling for an

end to our form of democratic republican government.

If that

bloody mass murderer Vladimir Putin wanted to kill a few hundred

thousand Americans, for example, he couldn’t have done better. We’ve

lost more Americans to guns in just the past three years than Putin has

lost on the battlefield in Ukraine.</span>

Which reminds me of the September 17, 2019 article from National Public Radio (NPR):

“The

National Rifle Association acted as a ‘foreign asset’ for Russia in the

period leading up to the 2016 election, according to a new

investigation...”
Or the April 11, 2018 piece in Politico that opened with:

“The

National Rifle Association reported this week that it received more

money from people with Russian ties than it has previously acknowledged,

and announced that it was officially done cooperating with a

congressional inquiry exploring whether illicit Kremlin-linked funding

passed through the NRA and into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential

campaign…”
The Republican-controlled congressional committee and the

Republican-blocked Federal Elections Commission that learned about this

both failed to issue or enforce a subpoena to learn more.

<b>Nothing

to see here but thousands of dead children. Republicans will use them

as an excuse to ban books or harass drag performers, but they don’t

really give a damn if our kids die from bullets.</b>

Setting

aside the Putin theory — regardless of how we got over 400 million guns

in this country, the majority of them since the Reagan Revolution,

earning hundreds of billions for the weapons industry — we are

experiencing an orgy of death unparalleled in the rest of the developed

world. Brought to us by the GOP.
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
America

has just a bit more than 4 percent of the world’s population, but, with

more guns than people in our country, we have more than 40 percent of

all the civilian guns in the world.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Specifically,

as a Swiss-based research group found, there are “approximately 857

million civilian-held firearms in the world’s 230 countries and

territories” and, as ABC News points out, in America there are “over 393

million firearms in civilian possession” as of 2017.

About fifteenth million more have been sold in the US since then: <b>we are the only nation in the world with more guns than people.</b></span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For

every 100 people in America, there are 120 guns. Among developed

nations, next highest on the list is Canada, at 34 per 100 people, and

all other developed countries are lower down the list than that: South

Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, for example, all clock in at fewer than one

gun per 100 people.</span>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">This

is entirely a recent phenomenon. Before the Reagan Revolution, gun

ownership numbers in America resembled Canada’s and school shootings had

not yet become a thing.</span>

<b>Today, however, America not

only leads the world in gun ownership but we also lead the world in gun

deaths. As an exhaustive study of gun deaths in the world’s 23

wealthiest countries </b>published in The American Journal of Medicine found:

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“US

homicide rates were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income

countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher.</span>

For 15- to 24-year-olds, the gun homicide rate in the United States was

49.0 times higher. Firearm-related suicide rates were 8.0 times higher

in the United States... Unintentional firearm deaths were 6.2 times

higher in the United States. The overall firearm death rate in the

United States from all causes was 10.0 times higher.”
Astonishingly,

they added, ninety percent of all women murdered by firearms in those 23

countries were killed here in the United States, as well as 91 percent

of all children killed by firearms.

<b>Thanks to the Republican

Party, fully 82 percent of all the human beings living in the world’s

wealthy countries killed by firearms lived in the USA.</b>

Only

ten percent of the wealthy world’s firearms deaths occurred in

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland,

France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South

Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovak

Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland,

and Scotland combined.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Other

countries have gotten their gun violence under control by simply

reducing the number of guns in circulation and requiring gun owners to

do two of the three things we do across America for car owners: be

licensed and register your weapon.</span>

<b>I’d add that we

should include mandatory liability insurance, like we do for cars: the

insurance companies would then sniff out the “high risk” gun owners and

refuse to insure them, thus preventing them from easily and legally

owning a gun. (San Jose, CA just put this into law!)</b>

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Gallup

found last year that Americans are si&nbsp; ck and tired of seeing our

children slaughtered by guns just to satisfy fanatics and on-the-take

politicians in the GOP: 57 percent of Americans and 85 percent of

Democrats want stricter gun laws in America.</span>

Giving

American voters a giant middle finger, Republican politicians are moving

in the opposite direction, endorsing gun violence and terror:

then-Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn said after the Rittenhouse

verdict that Republicans should “be armed and dangerous” while Marjorie

Taylor Greene said, “[G]un rights are the only thing holding back the

Communist Revolution the Democrats are waging.”

<b>Because

death-promoting fascists like these in the GOP continue to try to push

America toward armed civil war, opposition to gun control appears to be

an issue that animates the hard-core white supremacist Republican base

who are openly enthusiastic about seeing Democrats and people of color

die at the hands of vigilantes.</b>

It used to be that

Republicans promoted guns because of the NRA’s money, but the NRA is now

a shell of its former self. Today, it appears they’re opposing rational

gun control measures because so many of them are openly promoting

gun-based rightwing terrorism and the death it brings to America’s

streets.

Killer Kyle Rittenhouse, for example, is lionized by the

GOP, embraced by the House Sedition Caucus, a popular speaker at

Republican political events, and feted on Fox News and rightwing hate

radio.

America is caught in a crossfire between gun manufacturers

bribing politicians with the blessing of 5 corrupt Republicans on the

Supreme Court, and a fascist movement fed by billionaire-owned media

machines that has seized control of the GOP.

Mass shooters,

rightwing terrorists, and child-killers are celebrating. Meanwhile

Republican politicians vow to protect us and our kids from — wait for it

— librarians, drag queens, and history teachers.

Every developed

country in the world has guns, and most have lots of them. But only

America has a crisis of mass slaughter of our children.

Republicans and their sociopathic policies and rhetoric are causing people to use those guns to murder others.

<b>It’s

the Republican promotion of violence as an acceptable part of American

politics — indisputably on display in Waco last weekend — that has led

rightwing terrorists to commit virtually every act of political murder

in the past 20 years.</b>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
It’s

Republican austerity and tax-cut policies that have gutted the middle

class, led to an epidemic of homelessness, and destroyed our system for

treating mental illness.</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">And

then those same Republican politicians cynically tell formerly

middle-class white men that their economic crisis was caused by women,

Black people, teachers, immigrants, and “radical” Democrats rather than

the<b> morbidly rich and massive corporations who are actually funding the corruption of our government.</b></span></span><b>
</b>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They promote the <b>language

of dehumanization and victimhood, demonize immigrants and queer people,

and encourage antisemitism and racial hate with their Great Replacement

Theory, which has made it all the way to Fox “News” and has recently

been cited by multiple mass murderers.</b></span>
<b>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Even

during the worst pandemic in a century, Republicans chose to politicize

a virus, leading the British medical journal The Lancet to conclude

that a half-million Americans died unnecessarily, the majority of them

followers of conservative media.</span></b>

All while GOP

politicians condone the slaughter of our children with their silence,

hypocritical “prayers,” and refusal to do anything about over 400

million guns.

The rest of the world is watching us, boggled. It’s

way past time to wake the hell up and do something about the

Republican-led slaughter of Americans and our children.

The number to call your members of Congress and demand immediate action is 202-224-3121.

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>And double-check your voter registration every few months: s</b>ince

5 Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that Red states could

throw you off the voting rolls without even letting you know, GOP

governors and secretaries of state have already purged millions.</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 3 23</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div>because they oppose a woman having the right to terminate a pregnancy, Republicans claim to be the Party of Life. In fact, they're the Party of Death.</div><div>
</div><div>Seriously. Unless you're white, straight, male, Christian, and morbidly rich, Republicans appear to want you and your children dead. In every instance, they will put a corporation or a rich white man's making a buck over the life of anybody else.</div><div>
</div><div>— Toxic waste kills people, but Republicans have worked for decades to cripple the EPA and other agencies' ability to regulate it. Trump alone rolled back over 100 environmental regulations that protected families and children.</div><div>
</div><div>— Being homeless kills people, but Republicans fight any sort of housing support, rent control, or laws that might inhibit foreign or Wall Street investors from buying up housing stock and jacking up housing costs.</div><div>
</div><div>— Guns kill more children in America than any other single cause, and Republicans want more of them, including weapons designed exclusively for use on the battlefield.</div><div>
</div><div>— Hunger kills children through weakening their immune systems and diminishing their ability to learn, but Republicans are so opposed to feeding children at school that one right-wing talk host recently argued that hungry kids should be sent to orphanages.</div><div>
</div><div>— Pregnancy kills women far more often than abortion (20.1 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies versus .4 deaths per 100,000 abortions), but Republicans are passing laws to force women and girls to endure childbirth whether they want to or not.</div><div>
</div><div>— Suicide kills more gay men than AIDS, and queer youth are four times more likely to kill themselves than their cis counterparts, but Republicans continue to stigmatize and attempt to criminalize homosexuality, being transgender, and even dressing in drag.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>— Cancer kills people, but Republicans defend carcinogenic pesticides and other chemicals in our food supply.</div><div>
</div><div>— Civil wars kill people, but Republicans are openly advocating one today.</div><div>
</div><div>— Coups kill people, too; over 140 police officers were injured, three were killed, along with four civilians on that January 6th day that Republican President Trump tried to overthrow the government of the United States.</div><div>
</div><div>— Children forced to work in meat packing plants and other dangerous places kill, but Arkansas' Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders just proudly signed legislation loosening that state's child labor laws and other Republican governors are considering the same.</div><div>
</div><div>— Back-alley abortions kill women, but Republicans in South Carolina are considering legislation to give the death penalty (your choice of lethal injection or firing squad) to women who travel to other states to get a legal abortion.</div><div>
</div><div>— Opioids kill people, but Republicans consistently oppose any funding for addiction treatment programs, "safe" places for addicts, and even anti-overdose drugs.</div><div>
</div><div>— Heart disease kills people, but Republicans fight every effort to reduce Americans' consumption of trans-fats and saturated fats.</div><div>
</div><div>— Bacterial and viral infections kill people, but Republicans oppose any attempt to expand healthcare coverage for low-income people.</div><div>
</div><div>— Hate kills people, but Republicans most recently voted against anti-Asian hate crimes legislation.</div><div>
</div><div>— Tearing children from their parents kills people — both through stress and suicide — but Republicans gleefully ripped thousands from their mothers' arms and trafficked so many of them that around 1,000 are still missing.</div><div>
</div><div>— Stress from working full time but not being able to support your family kills people, but Republicans vigorously fight any effort to raise the minimum wage above $7.25 an hour.</div><div>
</div><div>— Cutting medications in half to save money kills people, but Republicans oppose any effort to reduce obscene drug prices.</div><div>
</div><div>— Deregulated trains kill people, but Republicans will only support more deregulation of the industry on top of all the rules Trump rolled back in 2018.</div><div>
</div><div>— Covid kills people, but Republicans were so anxious to turn a pandemic into a political opportunity that they embraced policies that led to over 300,000 unnecessary deaths, most (two to one) among people who trusted the GOP.</div><div>
</div><div>— Misogyny and domestic violence kills people, but Republicans have fought the Equal Rights Amendment for over 5 decades and 157 Republicans in the House voted against taking guns away from domestic abusers.</div><div>
</div><div>— Losing your home during an economic crisis kills people, but as suicides spiked during the 2008 Bush Crash, Republican Steve Mnuchin happily and perhaps illegally threw over 36,000 families out of their homes (and he was just the tip of the iceberg).</div><div>
</div><div>— Ignorance kills people, but Republicans want to ban books, fire teachers, and defund public schools.</div><div>
</div><div>— Student debt kills people, but Republicans fight any effort to reduce the school loan burden of millions of struggling Americans.</div><div>
</div><div>— Climate change kills people every single day, but Republicans continue to insist it's not a problem or doesn't even exist.</div><div>
</div><div>— Losing power during harsh weather kills people, but Republicans block every effort to shift America from big, centralized, for-profit power systems to local, community-based green power.</div><div>
</div><div>— Racism kills people, but Republicans have elevated it to the centerpiece of their so-called "anti-woke agenda."</div><div>
</div><div>— Poverty kills children, but Republicans have blocked the Biden administration's effort to maintain the child tax credit.</div><div>
</div><div>— Mass- and school shooters kill people, but Republicans fight for killers' right to continue to buy semi-automatic weapons, high-capacity magazines, and "cop-killer" bullets.</div><div>
</div><div>— Speaking of cops, they can kill, too. Far too often, and it's got to be really tough on the good cops. But Republicans fight any effort to professionalize our police in America. If anything, they work to the contrary.</div><div>
</div><div>— Health insurance payment denials kill senior citizens, but Republicans continue to defend George W. Bush's "Medicare Advantage" scam.</div><div>
</div><div>— Autocracy and strongman government kills people, but Republicans embrace both over democracy, which today they are actively working against.</div><div>
</div><div>— Diabetes kills people, but for over 20 years Republicans have fought lowering the cost of insulin.</div><div>
</div><div>— Premature birth kills babies, but for 40 years Republicans have fought every effort to provide housing, food, or medical care to pregnant women and, most recently, fought efforts to even provide workplace accommodations.</div><div>
</div><div>— Advanced dental disease kills people, but Republicans have fought adding dental care to Medicare or Medicaid since 1965 and proudly continue to do so.</div><div>
</div><div>— Vigilantism kills people but Republican-led states around the county have passed "stand your ground" laws that effectively legalize murder.</div><div>
</div><div>— Not having a union kills people (workplace deaths are 54% higher in "right to work for less" states), but Republicans consistently oppose the right of workers to unionize.</div><div>
</div><div>Untreated mental health issues can kill people, but 205 Republicans just voted against a bill to expand school mental health services.</div><div>
</div><div>Is there any area where Republicans will put the interests of life above making a buck or pandering to their base? Outside of their affection for fertilized eggs, I can't find a single one.</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>'It scares me to death': GOP fears that Georgia's primary debacle will backfire for Trump ›</div><div>How Florida Republicans are seeking to expand the death penalty: report ›</div><div>GOP 'death cult' isn't hyperbole: Republicans reject green infrastructure as Western states face historic drought ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>How Many Republicans Died Because GOP Leaders Turned ... ›</div><div>Texans who get abortions could face death penalty if proposed bill ... ›</div><div>South Carolina GOP lawmakers propose death penalty for women ... ›</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/america-third-world/">https://www.alternet.org/america-third-world/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>Have you noticed America is looking like a third world nation?</div><div>
</div><div>SEATTLE, WA - NOVEMBER 3: A homeless encampment known as Nickelsville, located on steep, muddy hillside next to Interstate 5 and 90, is viewed on November 3, 2015, in Seattle, Washington. Seattle, located in King County, is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, and is experiencing an economic boom as a result of its European and Asian global business connections. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)</div><div>
</div><div>Thom Hartmann and Raw Story March 15, 2023</div><div>
</div><div>Louise and I got home Saturday from a week with extended family in Central America. On the drive from our rented vacation condo by the Pacific Ocean back to the airport, we passed miles of slums or barrio bajos. Some homes were made from scavenged cinderblock and brick, but most were scrap wood and cardboard with tarps as roofs. Along the rudimentary streets ran ditches filled with raw sewage, and electricity was hijacked from streetlights.</div><div>
</div><div>Back in the 1980s, when I was doing international relief work for the German-based Salem organization, I spent months in such places in Uganda, Peru, Kenya, Colombia, Mexico, southern Sudan, Ecuador, Peru, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and several other “Third World” countries. At that time, four decades ago, the “slums” in America looked like high-quality housing compared to those countries, with most having electricity, running water, and reliable sewer systems.</div><div>
</div><div>But no longer: America has an entirely new type of slum we haven’t seen here since the 1930s, the product of 42 years of the Reagan Revolution. We call them “tent cities,” along with their more upscale neighbors: roadsides lined with old RVs and cars in which desperate or hopeless people live.</div><div>
</div><div>Instead of referring to their denizens as slum-dwellers, we call them the “homeless,” and their numbers have grown so large in the past decade of our neoliberal experiment that they signal an undeniable national housing crisis.</div><div>
</div><div>America, in other words, is more and more resembling a Third World nation.</div><div>
</div><div>But why?</div><div>
</div><div>Homelessness and slums like these aren’t an accident or act of G-d; they’re the result of intentional policy decisions made by politicians. They reflect the confluence of multiple choices we’ve made as a nation over the past four decades, choices that were sold to us by the morbidly rich with the promise that their increases in wealth would “trickle down” to the rest of us even as they cut services and raised the retirement age to 67.</div><div>
</div><div>Historically, the wealth or poverty of a nation has first reflected its natural resource base. Countries with lots of stuff under or growing above the ground that can be exported or used as energy end up with lots of money and, broadly, a healthy society.</div><div>
</div><div>A nation sitting on billions of barrels of oil will generally have a wealthier populace (Saudi Arabia, UAE) than one living on scrub brush and desert (South Sudan).</div><div>
</div><div>The exception to this is the application of human labor and ingenuity to whatever natural resources may be available. Japan, for example, is a relatively resource-poor nation but has maximized arable land through terraced rice farming and used manufacturing — importing raw materials and exporting finished goods — to create wealth that’s turned it into a First World nation.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">America is both resource rich (from arable land to minerals and fuels) and was once the manufacturing floor of the world, producing extraordinary wealth across the land. By the 1950s we were the first large nation in the world to have a middle class made up of more than half its population, largely because of our manufacturing base, supplemented by our resource sectors.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But then Reagan brought America some new ideas, rejecting classical economics — from Adam Smith in 1776 to John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s — and embraced a new system called neoliberalism by its founders, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The theory was that if we just abandoned government regulation and taxation of large companies and the morbidly rich, it would free them up to turbocharge our national prosperity. The newly created wealth, Reagan Republicans told us, would be shared by all.</div><div>
</div><div>Of course, that’s not how it worked out.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, neoliberalism has reduced our middle class from almost two-thirds of us in 1980 to fewer than 45 percent of us today; thrown two generations into massive student and healthcare debt; produced a handful of morbidly rich individuals and families; and created a housing crises that rivals the Hoovervilles of the Republican Great Depression.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Reagan promised American workers if they’d go along with his war on organized labor that wages and benefits would go up because companies would no longer be “burdened” with having to work things out with “union bosses.” This new “right to work for less” would, he said, make us all richer.</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, cutting union membership from a third of our workers down to around 6 percent of the private workforce has caused wages to stagnate so badly that the standard of living a single full-time worker could provide his family in <b>1980 now requires at least two full-time workers. While “household income” (the number Republicans love to cite) has risen slightly in the past 42 years, individual income relative to living expenses has collapsed.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us that if we’d stop enforcing anti-trust laws (as he did in 1983) and let giant companies become ever bigger, the increased efficiencies and economies of scale would translate into a widespread prosperity.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, giant monopolistic and oligopolistic corporations have used their increased efficiency to run small- and medium-sized competitors out of business, reducing our urban downtowns and rural cities to ghost towns. The pharaonic wealth produced by these giant corporations is tightly held by their largest investors and senior executives.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us that if we’d just cut the “tax burden” on the wealthiest Americans and our largest and most profitable corporations it would provoke morbidly rich “job creators” to use that extra cash to hire millions more Americans and give everybody a raise.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, billionaires are buying half-billion-dollar super-yachts, private jets, and shooting themselves and their rich buddies into outer space while paying an average 3 percent income tax.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us if we’d just follow Milton Friedman’s advice (when he was secretly being paid off by the real estate lobby) and end rent controls, cut home mortgage subsidies like those through the FHA and VA, and throw our housing markets open to unrestrained speculation and both corporate and foreign ownership, every American could live the American Dream.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Instead, foreign investors and massive hedge funds run by Wall Street billionaires are buying up America’s housing stock and turning it into rental properties, both exploding the price of houses and rents.</b> The clear and measurable result is an epidemic of homelessness and the tent cities I mentioned at the start of this article.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us if we’d just end the “oppressive regulations” designed to keep our food supply safe, our drugs affordable, clean up our air and water, and protect our children from death by firearms the “magic of the free market” would instead provide all those things in spades.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, our food supply is filled with chemicals, microplastics, and heavily processed faux foods that have produced two generations of obesity and related metabolic disorders in children along with an explosion of cancer, birth defects, and other once-rare diseases.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us if we’d just stop funding public schools and stop teaching civics and instead direct that money to private for-profit or church-run voucher and charter schools it would grow the levels of literacy, civic engagement, and healthy political dialogue.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, about half of all American adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy. Only 39 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government, leaving our nation vulnerable to racist white nationalists and fascists wanting to transform the democratic experiment our Founders began with this American republic.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us, as he and George HW Bush were negotiating the GATT/WTO and NAFTA, that if we’d just abandon 191 years of protectionist tariffs and trade policy so American companies could move their manufacturing overseas, we’d see an eruption of high-paying white-collar jobs in technology without having to get grease under our fingernails.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, over 60,000 factories left this nation,</span> moving at least 16 million good-paying and previously unionized manufacturing jobs to mostly China. When I lived and studied in Beijing in late 1986, the country was impoverished.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Today, China’s manufacturing sector — built over the past 30+ years by American “free trade” policy with American inventions and technology — is double the manufacturing capacity of the US.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Reagan promised us if we’d just deregulate our media </b>and abandon local ownership requirements for newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets that we’d end up with a flourishing, diverse, and edifying media sector. He kicked it off by ending enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and Bill Clinton carried it forward with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, a small handful of billionaires and rightwing companies own virtually every consequential radio and TV station in the country; most of our local newspapers are bankrupt; more than <b>half of the ones left are owned by a couple of New York-based hedge funds; and hate, lies, and disinformation have proven more effective at driving profits than honest information or concern for the public good so they’ve become an unscrupulous business model on the right.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>Reagan promised us if we’d stop blindly trusting our government to do the right thing, a healthy skepticism would make our country’s bureaucracies more efficient. After all, he claimed, <b>there are no truly competent people working in government because, if they were really talented, they’d be out making more money in private industry.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead of getting a more efficient government we ended up with an entire political party made up of fascist-tolerant hacks, sellouts, and opportunists anxious to dance to the tune of any billionaire willing to fund their way of life. They now populate the majority of the Supreme Court, the federal court system, control the House of Representatives, and run about half of our states.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us if we’d just drop all those silly regulations on gun ownership and throw the doors open to weapons of war in civilian hands, the result would be “an armed society is a polite society.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Instead, bullets are the number one killer of our children</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> and the GOP’s answer to “the crisis of our youth” is to ban drag shows.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reagan promised us if we’d just kill off the “welfare” programs of the New Deal and Great Society, then Americans would no longer be infuriated when a “strapping young buck” was using food stamps to “buy a T-Bone steak,” while “you were waiting in line to buy hamburger.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead, as the social safety net collapsed, poverty became more deeply entrenched and<b> hunger among America’s children has increased since the 1980s.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>Years ago, I was up late one night in an Asian city watching financial news on a hotel TV. A young American host was interviewing a very wealthy German businessman at a conference in Singapore.</div><div>
</div><div>Amidst questions about the business climate and the conference, the host asked the German businessman what tax rate he was “suffering under” in his home country. As I recall, the businessman said, “A bit over 60 percent, when everything is included.”</div><div>
</div><div>“How can you handle that?” asked the host, incredulous.</div><div>
</div><div>The German shrugged his shoulders and moved the conversation to another topic.</div><div>
</div><div>A few minutes later, the American reporter, still all wound up by the tax question, again asked the businessman how he could possibly live in a country with such a high tax rate on very wealthy and successful people. Again, the German deferred and changed the subject.</div><div>
</div><div>The reporter went for a third try. “Why don’t you lead a revolt against those high taxes?” he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American rebellion-making.</div><div>
</div><div>The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He stared at the young man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, <b>“I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There are a few wealthy Americans who understand this. Like the Patriotic Millionaires group, they embrace an opportunity to help our country, often via Democratic politicians.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the billionaires who fund the Republican Party and own right-wing media think it’s perfectly fine to rip the moral and political guts out of their own nation, condemn its future to severe weather, and turn its people against each other if it helps them fill their money bins.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They’ve funded and facilitated movements like the Tea Party and rightwing paramilitaries, media outlets like Fox “News” and Breitbart, and organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and ALEC.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They throw piles of money at Republican politicians, so long as they never stray far from the “deregulate, cut, denigrate” line about American government. They sponsor climate denial, anti-abortion, and pro-death penalty legislation to get enough political power to<b> increase their own profits through buying deregulation.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>And, increasingly, Americans of all stripes are realizing this truth.</div><div>
</div><div>I’ve lived seven decades in this country, and have literally traveled pretty much everywhere, from hitchhiking from Michigan to San Francisco and back in 1967 to raising a family and living in five different states, to traveling for business to almost every other state.</div><div>
</div><div>But it wasn’t until America got seriously whacked, the endpoint of 40 years of austerity politics and Reaganomics combined with the stress of the century’s worst pandemic, that it became absolutely unavoidable.</div><div>
</div><div>I’ve never in all that time — and I’ll bet this is true of you, too, regardless of how old you are — seen tent cities growing across our land like the last five years.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Homelessness </b>that can be directly and scientifically tracked back to one primary cause, which was one of the programs of the Reagan Revolution. That was the explosion in the cost of housing driven by parasitic speculators and Wall Street billionaires following widespread Republican deregulation of housing, particularly at state and local level</span>s.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Reagan’s housing policies, which opened the door to slumlords like Jared Kushner</b>, got the interest and involvement of the speculators from the beginning. They really jumped into the real estate market, though, at its bottom in 2008, and now in some parts of the country as many as half of all houses that are offered for sale get sold to speculators or foreign buyers.</span></div><div>
</div><div>As they drive up home prices and raise their rental rates, cities see eruptions of homelessness.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The Reagan Revolution, as we are confronted with daily, broke our nation.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It set the stage for a cynical George W. Bush to tell his biographer in 1999 that if he was elected president in 2000 he’d start a war in Iraq that would last long enough to get him re-elected in 2004, unlike his father, whose war with Iraq didn’t last long enough. Bush Jr. was our first president to act like a Third World politician, right down to the torture, wiretapping, and secret prisons.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">America is now haunted by the daily dozens of suicides among veterans of those two unnecessary, expensive, and illegal wars Bush lied us into.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>The Reagan Revolution also set the stage for the Trump administration.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Like Reagan, who tried to destroy the EPA by putting Anne Gorsuch in charge of it (she eventually had to resign in disgrace; her revenge is that her son now sits on the Supreme Court) <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Trump </b>got rid of more than half its scientific staff.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He then tried to take over the military, the courts, and the Department of Justice including the FBI. Just like a classic Third World strongman dictator.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And that, of course, was just the beginning of Trump’s corruption of our government, his infiltration of fascists and white supremacists into our systems who, in far too many cases, are still in place and sabotaging things.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Trump’s holdovers appear to have dissuaded the FBI and DOJ from investigating and prosecuting Trump and the insider senior officials around him for more than two years, until shamed into a quick handoff to Jack Smith by a Congressional committee.</div><div>
</div><div>Even Mike Pence went along with the coup until the last minute, when he finally realized it couldn’t work and then pretended he was outraged. Sort of. Years later. Without giving testimony under oath. Like a Third World political opportunist.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Reagan Revolution and the corruption it brought to Washington, DC and state capitols across the land — think Kari Lake, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Scott Walker, or Kristi Noem — changed the very nature of America.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The question for today is whether, how, and at what cost we can right our nation and repair Reagan’s, Bush’s and Trump’s damage.</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>A racist delusion has become a Republican talking point ›</div><div>Here are 10 things Europe does way better than America ›</div><div>Rudy Giuliani implies that indigenous populations deserved to be slaughtered by European settlers ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>Six Ways America Is Like a Third-World Country – Rolling Stone ›</div><div>There's a third-world America that no one notices - The Washington ... ›</div><div>Trump and I can agree: The US is a 'third-world country' | Inequality ... ›</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 3 23</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for an American “divorce.”</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>She apparently sees herself as a modern-day John C. Calhoun, a demagogue who serves the interests of the white oligarch class and, in turn, receives their support, and the power and wealth that come with it.</div><div>
</div><div>She's started a secession propaganda campaign much like Calhoun and his buddies did when he left the White House as VP in 1833, the same year England outlawed slavery on British-territory plantations and talk of abolition in the US kicked into high gear.</div><div>
</div><div>It took Calhoun and his fellow traitors about 25 years to convince enough people in the South to go to war against America and try to replace our democracy with a fascist, race-based oligarchy.</div><div>
</div><div>But today—with electronic media providing instant communication and AR15s being much more efficient killing machines than the Confederacy had available—the heirs to Calhoun's sedition apparently think they can pull it off in a much shorter time.</div><div>
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie recently suggested the tipping point, the second American Civil War, will come when:</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“[T]hirty to forty percent could agree that [the American government] was legitimate tyranny and it needed to be thrown off."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He then openly argued that American fascists should be sufficiently well-armed to take on the US Marines. Finishing that sentence, Massey—who tweeted a Christmas picture of his family (including his young children) each cradling an assault weapon—added:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>“They [those trying to bring down the American government] need to have sufficient [fire]power without asking for extra permission. It should be right there and completely available to them in their living room in order to effect the change [of our form of government]</b>.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Make no mistake about it: this is sedition. It's anti-American. It's pro-fascist.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Yesterday on my radio/TV program, Congressman Mark Pocan said Greene's comments were “almost treasonous.&nbsp; "I'd drop the “almost.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Greene even said out loud the part Republicans have been trying to not get caught saying for several decades now: she doesn't think Democrats should be allowed to vote if they live in Red states.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When a resolution came to the House floor last week condemning Putin's ally, Syrian dictator Assad, the only two “no" votes came from Greene and Massey.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Dictatorship good, democracy bad.</div><div>
</div><div><b>It's an old, old song for America that dates back to the 1840s.</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Keep in mind that the Civil War wasn't just about slavery: it was primarily about preserving the wealth of the Southern oligarchs.</b> While slavery was the source of their wealth, morbidly rich planters had so overtaken the political system of the South that it ceased to be anything close to a democracy—even for white people—by the 1840s.</div><div>
</div><div>That decade of the 1840s, in fact, was a key turning point for the effort to end democracy altogether in America. In just the ten years from 1840 to 1850, over 800,000 enslaved people were brought into the deep South.</div><div>
</div><div>Poor whites suddenly found themselves without work and pay generally collapsed across the region, while the plantation owner class became fabulously rich. It led to an internal abolition movement in the South, as white workers who didn't own slaves desperately tried to regain opportunities in the workplace.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Southern abolitionist Hinton Helper wrote in his 1857 book The Impending Crisis of the South:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The lords of the lash are not only absolute masters of the blacks, but they are also the oracle and arbiters of non-slaveholding whites, whose freedom is merely nominal, and whose unparalleled illiteracy and degradation is purposely and fiendishly perpetuated.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The book became one of the biggest bestsellers in American history </b>(even though you could go to prison for owning it in the South where it was banned), and sparked such a political crisis in 1860 that the House of Representatives was unable to elect a Speaker for almost two months. Sound familiar?</span></div><div>
</div><div>Abraham Lincoln didn't even advocate ending slavery until well into the Civil War: he was too busy fighting against Southern oligarchs who were hell-bent on ending democracy in America and replacing it with a white supremacist oligarchy. Lincoln's goal in responding militarily to Southern succession wasn't to free enslaved African Americans, it was to keep the country together and try to restore some semblance of democracy to the South.</div><div>
</div><div>On Aug. 22, 1862 (the Emancipation Proclamation would come exactly one month later), after more than a year of war, Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune pointing this out:</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it;</b> and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”</div><div>Here we are again, and once more the issue that's got working-class white people riled up is the intersection of economics end race.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republicans pass laws against Critical Race Theory, teaching Black history, and complain about “woke" and “BLM," but at its core it's all about distracting white people from their being ripped off by a white oligarchic class that promotes racial hatred to deflect anger from themselves.</span></div><div>
</div><div>As Marjorie Taylor Greene is essentially pointing out, just like in 1860.</div><div>
</div><div>The genesis of today's discontent began in the 1980s with the Reagan Revolution, as the Reagan/Bush administration opened America to “free trade" with the early stages of what became the World Trade Organization and negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which Bill Clinton signed on January 1, 1994.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like the middle-class working white people in the South—who'd been about a third of that region's population prior to the 1840s when all those slaves were imported—the four decades <b>since Reaganism began here have also seen the collapse of white working-class income and wealth.</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When Reagan came into office in 1980 about two-thirds of white Americans were solidly in the middle class: today that number is around 45 percent and it requires two people working full time to pull even that off.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, the rich have gotten fabulously richer. <b>Several of America's billionaires are today richer than any person has ever been in history. Richer than the pharaohs. </b>Richer than the ancient kings of Europe. Rich enough to shoot themselves into outer space with their pocket change.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And where did that money come from? Just like the plantation owners in 1850, it came from rigging the system.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The past 42 years have seen over $50 trillion in wealth stolen from the homes and pockets of working-class people and deposited into the money bins of the morbidly rich through GOP tax-cut and union-busting policies.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the past 42 years over 60,000 factories and 15 million well-paying union jobs have been shipped to Mexico and China, leaving working class whites (among others) literally out in the cold.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Just like in the 1850s, that's an explosive transition. And just like in the 1850s, it has brought out oligarch-funded political demagogues to tell white working-class people that their problems are all caused by Black people and their “woke" allies, and therefore the nation must divide itself.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Greene, Massey, and the rest of the sedition caucus in Congress are playing with fire. The people they're trying to crank up on behalf of America's rightwing oligarchs have already tried to murder the Governor of Michigan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Vice President of the United States.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As The Washington Post's Philip Bump noted this week:</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Over the past decade, 96 percent of incidents in which extremists killed someone were committed by people motivated by right-wing ideologies.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The number of people murdered for political purposes over the past 25 years by SDS or Antifa or other anti-fascist or “left wing" ideologues? Zero.</span></div><div>
</div><div>And in promoting bloodshed in 2023 America, the seditionists among us aren't even subtle. Last December 10th, Greene told a Young Republican group in New York:</div><div>
</div><div>“I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that [January 6th insurrection and effort to murder Vice President Pence], we would have won. Not to mention, it <b>would've been armed."</b></div><div>
</div><div>Pitting Americans against each other by race, geography, or even politics when simultaneously invoking bloodshed as a justified outcome is as anti-American as it gets.</div><div>
</div><div>It's why the 14th Amendment says:</div><div>
</div><div>“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”</div><div>
</div><div>If the seditionists within today's Republican Party had any goal other than to tear America apart and create an apartheid state run by and for the oligarchs who fund their campaigns and lifestyles, they'd be telling us about it right now. But are they?</div><div>
</div><div>Do they have anything to offer the working class of America?</div><div>
</div><div>So far, all we've heard is that they want to turn Social Security over to the New York banks and Medicare over to the big insurance companies. They're still fighting to keep the minimum wage at $7.25 an hour and deny union rights to workers.</div><div>
</div><div>Do they have anything to offer the women of America?</div><div>
</div><div>So far, all we've heard is that they want to send them to prison or administer lethal injection if they get an abortion.</div><div>
</div><div>How about climate change?</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans are still taking millions from the fossil fuel barons every year and denying climate change even exists, all while actively trying to sabotage any effort to move to a green economy.</div><div>
</div><div>Harmony between the races and the acceptance of our queer brothers and sisters?</div><div>
</div><div>Instead, they're doing everything they can to encourage hate and intolerance, up to and including codifying hate into law.</div><div>
</div><div>Or our children?</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">While America is now the only country in the world—in the entire world — where the leading cause of children's death is bullets, they instead want to “protect" our kids from books and drag queens. </span>It would be funny if it didn't mean a child's body will be fatally torn apart by a bullet in America every 2 hours and 36 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for every day of this coming year.</div><div>
</div><div>The morbidly rich oligarchs who own the GOP—including their toadies on the Supreme Court—have no interest in doing anything about the crisis of the middle class, healthcare, climate change, women's rights, civil rights, or saving our children.</div><div>
</div><div>They're too busy making common cause with autocrats, oligarchs, and dictators around the world as they try to dismantle our democracy.</div><div>
</div><div>People like Greene and Massey don't just emerge out of nothing: there's a hand above these puppets, feeding their bellies and pulling their strings.</div><div>
</div><div>And as long as we ignore that hand and fight their phony “culture war" instead of raising taxes on billionaires and extending an absolute right to vote to all Americans, we're just helping them stuff another trillion dollars taken from working people into their money bins.</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>'Dangerous': Philosopher warns media’s framing of 'culture wars' is a 'misrepresentation of fascism' ›</div><div>These are the 'dumbest' and 'silliest' things that 'triggered' far-right culture warriors in 2022: podcast ›</div><div>Watch: Republican governor blames right-wing culture wars on the government ›</div><div>RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><div>How Gas Stoves Became a Right-Wing Cause in the Culture Wars ... ›</div><div>GOP candidates embrace culture wars - The Washington Post ›</div><div>Global culture wars: Some far right groups in the U.S. are taking a ... ›</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/l2hhv6fo1grejwc/MTA-ACLU-2023_0105_thp-010523-hour3.mp3?dl=0">https://www.dropbox.com/s/l2hhv6fo1grejwc/MTA-ACLU-2023_0105_thp-010523-hour3.mp3?dl=0</a> link to Thom Hartman Video</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>caller says aclu and common cause oppose MTA</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 23</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/economy/wealthy-people/">https://www.alternet.org/economy/wealthy-people/</a></font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">why are America’s plutocrats funding efforts to weaken our democracy and replace it with plutocracy and oligarchy? Is it just about money? Or is there something much deeper that most Americans rarely even consider?</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An extraordinary investigative report from&nbsp;<a href="https://documented.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">documented.net</a>&nbsp;tells how morbidly rich families, their companies, and their personal foundations are funding efforts to limit or restrict democracy across the United States.</font></span></p><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style=""><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an article co-published with&nbsp;The Guardian,&nbsp;they&nbsp;<a href="https://documented.net/reporting/heritage-action-spent-millions-lobbying-as-it-undermined-freedom-to-vote" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">noted</a>:</font></span></p><div style="margin-left: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the powerful conservative think tank based in Washington, spent more than $5m on lobbying in 2021 as it worked to block federal voting rights legislation and advance an ambitious plan to spread its far-right agenda calling for aggressive voter suppression measures in battleground states.”
</font></span></div><div style=""><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their efforts have had substantial success, as you can read in Documented’s&nbsp;<a href="https://documented.net/reporting/heritage-action-spent-millions-lobbying-as-it-undermined-freedom-to-vote" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">article</a>.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This effort, of course, is not unique to the one think tank they called out. From Donald Trump all the way down to the lowest Republican county official, efforts to make it harder for what John Adams called “the rabble” to vote and otherwise participate in democracy are in full swing across America.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why? Why are some wealthy people so opposed to expanding democracy in America?</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most Americans — and lots of editorial writers — are convinced it’s simply because rich folks want to influence legislation to benefit themselves and keep their regulations and taxes down. I proposed a motive like that in yesterday’s&nbsp;<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-governed-in-america-arent-getting" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Daily Take</a>.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And surely, for some, that’s the largest part of it. But that’s not the entire story.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I can’t claim (nor would I) to know the exact motives driving the various wealthy individuals funding efforts to reduce the Black, Hispanic, senior, and youth vote. But history does suggest that many are trying to “stabilize” America rather than just pillage her.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They are worried that America is suffering from too much democracy.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The modern-day backstory to this starts in the early 1950s when conservative thinker Russell Kirk proposed a startling hypothesis that would fundamentally change our nation and the world.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American middle-class at that time was growing more rapidly than any middle-class had ever grown in the history of the world, both in terms of the number of people in the middle class, the income of those people, and the overall wealth that those people were accumulating.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The middle-class was growing in wealth and income back then, in fact,&nbsp;<b style=""><a href="https://www.growthemiddleclass.com/get-the-facts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">faster</a>&nbsp;</b>than were the top 1%.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kirk and colleagues like William F. Buckley postulated that if the middle-class and minorities became too wealthy, they’d feel the safety and freedom to throw themselves actively into our political processes, as rich people had historically done.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That expansion of democracy, they believed, would produce an absolute collapse of our nation’s social order — producing chaos, riots, and possibly even the end of the republic.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first chapter of Kirk’s 1951 book,&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/3tfMFpu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Conservative Mind</a>, is devoted to Edmund Burke, the British conservative who Thomas Paine visited for two weeks in 1793 on his way to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-paine-is-arrested-in-france" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">get arrested</a>&nbsp;in the French revolution. Paine was so outraged by Burke’s arguments that he wrote an entire book rebutting them titled&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/3vkqlN5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Rights of Man</a>. It’s still in print (as is Burke).</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Burke was defending, among other things, Britain’s restrictions on democracy, including limits on who could vote or run for office, and the British maximum wage.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s right,<b>&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Artificers_1562" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">maximum</a></b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Artificers_1562" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">&nbsp;wage</a>.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Burke and his contemporaries in the late 1700s believed that if working-class people made too much money, they’d have enough spare time to use democratic processes to challenge the social order and collapse the British kingdom.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Too much democracy, Burke believed, was a dangerous thing: deadly to nations and a violation of evolution and nature itself.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Summarizing his debate with Paine about the French Revolution, Burke&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bartleby.com/24/3/4.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wrote</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); width: 602.542px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The occupation of a hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler [candle maker], cannot be a matter of honour to any person—to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively are permitted to rule [by voting]. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature.”</font></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was why Parliament passed a law making it illegal for employers to pay people<b>&nbsp;over</b>&nbsp;a certain amount, so as to keep wage-earners right at the edge of poverty throughout their lives.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was explicitly to avoid too much democracy and preserve the stability of the kingdom. (For the outcome of this policy, read pretty much any Dickens novel.)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Picking up on this, Kirk’s followers argued that if the American middle-class became wealthy enough to have time for political activism, there would be similarly dire consequences.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Young people would cease to respect their elders, they warned. Women would stop respecting (and depending on) their husbands. Minorities would begin making outrageous demands and set the country on fire.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Kirk laid this out in 1951, only a few conservative intellectuals took him seriously.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Skeptics of multiracial egalitarian democracy like William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater were electrified by his writings and line of thinking, but Republicans like then-President Dwight <b>Eisenhower said of people like Kirk and his wealthy supporters:</b></font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“<a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/social-insecurity/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Their numbers are negligible and they are stupid</a>.“</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then came the 1960s.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— In 1961, the birth control pill was legalized and by 1964 was in widespread use; this helped kick off the Women’s Liberation Movement, as women, now in control of their reproductive capacity, demanded equality in the workplace. Bra burning became a thing, at least in pop culture lore.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— By 1967, young people on college campuses were also in revolt; the object of their anger was an illegal war in Vietnam. Along with national protest, draft card burning was also a thing.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— The labor movement was feeling it’s oats: strikes spread across America throughout the 1960s from farm workers in California to steel workers in Pennsylvania. In the one year of 1970 alone, over 3 million workers&nbsp;<a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/01/1970s-decade-strike-workers-labor-history/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">walked out</a>&nbsp;in 5,716 strikes.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— And throughout that decade African Americans were demanding an end to police violence and an expansion of Civil and Voting Rights. In response to several brutal and well-publicized instances of police violence against Black people in the late 1960s, riots broke out and several of our cities were on fire.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These four movements all hitting America at the same time got the attention of Republicans who had previously ignored or even ridiculed Kirk’s 1950s warnings about the dangers of the middle class and minorities embracing democracy.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suddenly, he seemed like a prophet. And the GOP turned on a dime.</font></span></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Republican/Conservative “solution” to the “national crisis” these movements represented was put into place with the election of 1980: </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">the project of the Reagan Revolution was to dial back democracy while taking the middle class down a peg, and thus end the protests and social instability.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their goal was, at its core, to save America from itself.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plan was to declare war on labor unions so wages could slide down or at least remain frozen for a few decades; end free college across the nation so students would study in fear rather than be willing to protest; and increase the penalties Nixon had already put on drugs so they could use those laws against hippy antiwar protesters and Black people demanding participation in democracy.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Nixon‘s right hand man,&nbsp;<a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">John Ehrlichman, told reporter Dan Baum</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); width: 602.542px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);">“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. Do you understand what I’m saying?</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
“We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”</span></font></blockquote><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While it looks from the outside like the singular mission of the Reagan Revolution was simply to help rich people and giant corporations get richer and more powerful (and that’s certainly been the effect), the ideologues driving the movement also thought they were restoring stability to the United States, both socially, economically, and — most important — politically.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The middle class was out of control by the late 1960s, they believed, and something had to be done. There was too much democracy, and it was tearing America apart.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looking back at the “solutions” England used around the time of the American Revolution (and for 1000 years before) and advocated by Edmund Burke and other conservative thinkers throughout history, Republicans saw a remedy to the crisis.<b> As a bonus, it had the side effect of helping their biggest donors and thus boosting their political war-chests.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If working people, women, minorities, and students were a bit more desperate about their economic situations, these conservative thinkers asserted, then they’d be less likely to organize, protest, strike, or even vote. The unevenness, the instability, the&nbsp;turbulence&nbsp;of democracy in the 1960s would be calmed.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— To accomplish this, Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— He put a tax on Social Security income and unemployment benefits and put in a mechanism to track and tax tips income, all of which had previously been tax-free but were exclusively needed and used by working-class people.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— He&nbsp;<a href="https://thedailybanter.com/2017/08/08/this-chart-shows-how-reaganomics-has-destroyed-the-middle-class/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ended the deductibility&nbsp;</a>of credit-card, car-loan and student-debt interest, overwhelmingly claimed by working-class people. At the same time, he cut the top tax bracket for millionaires and multimillionaires from 74% to 27%. (There were no billionaires in America then, in large part because of FDR’s previous tax policies; the modern explosion of billionaires followed Reagan’s massive tax cuts for the rich.)</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— He declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American non-government workforce when he came into office to around 10% today.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— He&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Supreme-Betrayal-America-Hartmann/dp/1523085940/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">brought</a>&nbsp;a young lawyer named John Roberts into the White House to work out ways to overturn the 1973&nbsp;Roe v Wade&nbsp;Supreme Court decision. His VP brought in his son, George W., to build bridges between the GOP and the most fanatical branches of evangelical Christianity, who opposed both women’s rights and the Civil Rights movement.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and NAFTA, which opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while cutting corporate donor’s labor costs and union membership.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, sure enough, it worked.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Reagan’s doubling-down on the War on Drugs shattered Black communities and our prison population became the largest in the world, both as a percentage of our population and in absolute numbers.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— His War on Labor cut average inflation-adjusted minimum and median wages by more over a couple of decades than anybody had seen since the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s.</font></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— And his War on Students jacked up the cost of education so high that an entire generation is today so saddled with more than $1.7 trillion in student debt that many aren’t willing to jeopardize their future by “acting up” on campuses.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The key to selling all this to the American people was the idea that the US shouldn’t protect the rights of workers, subsidize education, or enforce Civil Rights laws because, Republicans said, government itself is a remote, dangerous and incompetent power that can legally use guns to enforce its will.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Reagan told us in his first inaugural, democracy was not the solution to our problems, but democracy — government — instead&nbsp;was the problem itself.</font></b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He ridiculed the once-noble idea of service to one’s country and joked that there were really no good people left in government because if they were smart or competent they’d be working in the private sector for a lot more money.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He told us that the nine most frightening words in the English language were:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); width: 602.542px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”</font></blockquote><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, wealthy people associated with Kirk’s and Reagan’s Republicans built a massive infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets to promote and amplify this message about the dangers of too much democracy.</font></span></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the reporting from&nbsp;documented.net&nbsp;indicates, they’re working at it with as much enthusiasm today as ever.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It so completely swept America that by the 1990s even President Bill Clinton was repeating things like, “The era of big government is over,” and “This is the end of welfare as we know it.” Limbaugh, Hannity and other right-wing radio talkers were getting&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/tea-party-radio-network-105774" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">millions a year in subsidies from groups like the Heritage Foundation</a>, the group&nbsp;documented.net&nbsp;wrote about yesterday.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox News today carries on the tradition, warning almost daily about the danger of “people in the streets” or political movements like anti-fascism and BLM.</font></b></p><p style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you look at the long arc of post-Agricultural Revolution human history you discover that Burke was right when he claimed that oligarchy — rule by the rich — has been the norm, not the exception.</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it’s generally provided at least a modicum of stability: feudal Europe changed so little for over a thousand years that we simply refer to that era as the Dark Ages followed by the Middle Ages without detail. It’s all kind of black-and-white fuzzy in our mind’s eye.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Popes, kings, queens, pharaohs, emperors: none allowed democracy because all knew it was both a threat to their wealth and power but also because, they asserted, it would render their nations unstable.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These historic leaders — and their modern day “strongman” versions emerging in former democracies like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, The Philippines, and Russia — are the model for many of today’s conservatives. And not just because they were rich.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Understanding this history gives us clues to how we can revive democracy in America. Step one is to help people realize that instability, like labor pains before birth, is not a bad thing for a democracy but most frequently is a sign of emerging and positive political and social advances.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hopefully one day soon our vision of an all-inclusive democracy — the original promise of America, to quote historian&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Paine-Promise-America-Harvey/dp/080908970X/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Harvey Kaye</a>&nbsp;— will be realized. But first we’re going to have to get past the millions of dollars mobilized by democracy’s skeptics.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I believe it’s possible. But it’s going to take all of us getting involved to make it happen. As both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama were fond of saying: “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tag, we’re it.</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1886</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-deciding-moment/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">prolly 2x</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as Abraham Lincoln biographer Albert J. Beveridge noted in 1928:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facts when justly arranged interpret themselves. They tell the story. For this purpose a little fact is as important as what is called a big fact. The picture may be well-nigh finished, but it remains vague for want of one more fact. When that missing fact is discovered all others become clear and distinct; it is like turning a light, properly shaded, upon a painting which but a moment before was a blur in the dimness.<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[1]</a></font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is such illumination in learning, for example, that in 1886 the Supreme Court had not, in fact, granted corporations the rights of persons— or in discovering that the battle between working people and what Grover Cleveland called the “iron heel” of corporate power was actually at the core of the American Revolution.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Pilgrims were early arrivers to America, and their deeds and experiences make outstanding folklore, they weren’t the country’s founders. This country was formally settled nineteen years before the pilgrims’ arrival, when land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi was staked out by what was then the world’s largest transnational corporation. The Pilgrims arrived in America in 1620 aboard a boat they chartered from that corporation. That boat, the Mayflower, had already made three trips to North America from England on behalf of the East India Company, the corporation that owned it. By the early- 1600s colonization of North America, the British Empire was just starting to become a world empire.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a century or so before that, as western European nations extended their reach and rule across the world in the 1400s and 1500s, England was far from being a world power. Following a series of internal battles and wars with Scot- land and Ireland, as well as power struggles within the royal family and with the Catholic Church, England at that time was considered by the Spanish, French, and Dutch to be an uncultured tribe of barbarians ruled by sadistic warlords.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Sir Francis Drake is touted in British history as a heroic explorer and battler of the Spanish Armada, as a treasure hunter and privateer he was in reality a de facto licensed pirate, and even in the late 1500s England lacked a coherent naval strategy or vision.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The British first got the idea about the importance of becoming a world power in the late 1400s when they observed the result of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America—he brought back slaves, gold, and other trea- sures. That got Europe’s attention and threw Spain full-bore into a time of explosive boom. Then, in 1522, when Ferdinand Magellan sailed all the way around the world, he proved that the planet was a closed system, raising the possibility of tremendous financial opportunity for whatever company could seize control of international trade.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In many of the European countries, particularly Holland and France, consortia were put together to finance ships to sail the seas.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">England got into the act a bit late, in 1580, with Queen Elizabeth I becoming the largest shareholder in The Golden Hind, a ship owned by Sir Francis Drake. She granted him “legal freedom from liability,” an early archetype for modern corporations.<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#2" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[2]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investment worked out very well for Queen Elizabeth. There’s no record of exactly how much she made when Drake paid her share of the Hind’s dividends, but it was undoubtedly vast, since Drake himself and the other minor shareholders all received a 5,000 percent return on their investment. Plus, the queen’s placing a maximum loss to the initial investors of their investment amount only made it a low-risk investment to begin with. She also was endorsing an investment model that led to the modern limited-liability corporation.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The queen also often granted monopoly rights over particular industries or businesses in exchange for a fee. The 1624 Statute of Monopolies did away with this ability of the crown, although in the years thereafter the British government used tax laws to produce a similar result for the corporations favored by Parliament or the royal family.<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#3" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[3]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Limiting Risk by Incorporating</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A business can operate at a profit, a break-even, or a loss. If the business is a sole proprietorship or a partnership (owned by one or a few people) and it loses more money than its assets are worth, the owners and the investors are personally responsible for the debts, which may exceed the amount they originally invested. A small-business owner could put up $10,000 of her own money to start a company, have it fail with $50,000 in debts, and be personally responsible for paying off that debt out of her own pocket.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But let’s say you invest $10,000 in a limited-liability corporation, and the corporation runs up $50,000 in debts and then defaults on those debts. You would lose only your initial $10,000 investment. The remaining $40,000 wouldn’t be your concern because the amount of your investment is the “limit of your liability,” even if the corporation goes bankrupt, defaults in any other way, or causes millions of dollars in damage to the environment or even the deaths of people.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who foots the bill? The creditors—the people to whom the corporation owes money—or the community that was devastated. The company took the goods or services from them, didn’t pay, and leaves them with the bill, exactly as if you had put in a week’s work and not gotten paid for it. Or it wreaks havoc and death and then simply shuts down, as so many asbestos companies have done recently.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And if the corporation declares bankruptcy and dissolves itself, there is nobody for the creditors to go after. That’s the main thing that makes a corporation a corporation, and it’s why in England the abbreviation for a corporation isn’t Inc., as in the United States, but Ltd., which stands for&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">limited-liability corporation</em>&nbsp;(which is also used in the United States and other nations).</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you were a stockholder in a corporation that went under, it wouldn’t even be reflected on your personal credit rating (unless you had volunteered to personally guarantee the corporation’s debt). Your liability is limited to how- ever much you invested.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moreover, a corporation can outlast its founders. If you started a one- man glassblowing business, for example, when you die or can’t work anymore, the income stops. But a glassblowing corporation is an entity unto itself and can continue on with new glassblowers and managers after the founders move on. The implication, of course, is that a corporation can pay profits as a divi- dend to its shareholders for centuries, theoretically forever.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is what Queen Elizabeth had in mind. Incorporating The Golden Hind would limit her liability and that of the other noble and lesser noble investors and maximize their potential for profit. So after the big bucks she made on Drake’s expeditions on The Golden Hind, she started pondering what could be done about the small role England played in world trade relative to Holland, France, Spain, and Portugal.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In part to remedy this situation and in part to exploit a relative vacuum of power, she authorized a group of 218 London merchants and noblemen to form a corporation that would take on the mostly Dutch control of the global spice trade. They formed what came to be the largest of England’s corporations during that and the next century, the East India Company. Queen Elizabeth granted the company’s corporate charter on December 31, 1600.<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#4" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[4]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The East India Company Builds England…and America</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It went slowly at first. For several decades the East India Company struggled to establish a commercial beachhead among the many Spice Islands and distant lands where there were potential products, raw materials, or markets.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Dutch had so sewn up the world at this point in the early 1600s, however, that the only island the company was able to secure on behalf of England was Puloroon (leading King James I, who commissioned the translation of the Bible into English, to declare himself “King of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Puloroon”). In addition, the company’s hard-drinking captain, William Hawkins, managed to befriend the alcoholic ruler of India, the Mogul emperor Jehangir, building a powerful presence for the East India Company on the Indian subcontinent (which the company would take over and rule as a corporate-run state within two centuries).</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During this time England had exported colonists to the Americas in large numbers, including many as prisoners (a practice they later moved to Australia, when it was no longer practical to send them to North America). There was also a steady and growing exodus from England of various types of malcontents who, on arrival in America, redefined themselves as explorers and pioneers or set up theocratic communities.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much of this transportation was provided at a profitable price by the East India Company, which laid claim to parts of North America and created the first official colony in North America on company-owned land, deeded to the Virginia Company in 1606. (The companies had interlocking boards, as Sir Thomas Smythe administered the American operations of both from his house. Smythe was also the first North American governor of both the East India Company and the Virginia Company.)</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The company called it Jamestown, after company patron and stockholder King James I (who took the throne and the royal share of the company’s stock when Queen Elizabeth died in 1603), and placed Jamestown on the Chesapeake Bay in the company-owned Commonwealth of Virginia, named after the now- deceased “virgin queen,” Elizabeth I, who had granted the company its original charter. On the maps from that time, the two companies’ claim of Virginia extended from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Mississippi River.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another corporation to claim America during that time was the Massachusetts Bay Col- ony. They weren’t quite as successful, however, as the East India Company, and when the corporation wasn’t performing up to the measure of King James, he threatened to revoke its charter. One of the documents in the possession of the University of Virginia, compiled as “Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Chapter 23” contains Jefferson’s note to himself of his possessing “an order of council for issuing a quo warranto against the charter of the colony of the Massachuset’s [sic] bay in New-England, with his majesty’s declaration that in case the said corporation of Masschuset’s [sic] bay shall before prosecution had upon the same quo warranto make a full submission and entire resignation to his royal pleasure, he will then regulate their charter in such a manner as shall be for his service and the good of that colony. 1683, July 26. 35. Car. 2.” Much of America was then considered plantation land for British corporations. Another of Jefferson’s documents in the same collection is titled “A proclamation for prohibiting the importation of commodities of Europe into any of his majesty’s plantations in Africa, Asia, or America, which were not laden in England: and for putting all other laws relating to the trade of the plantations in effectual execution. 1675, Oct. 1. 27. Car. 2.” The most powerful of the British corporations of the time, though, was the East India Company.</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /><center style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><img decoding="async" src="https://truthout.org/app/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/hartmann040511_01.jpg" alt="" loading="lazy" style="box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle;" /></font></center><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America was one of the East India Company’s major international bases of operations; and once the company figured out how to make a colony work, it grew rapidly. Through the 1600s and the early 1700s, the company and its affiliates largely took control of North America but also sent Captain James Cook on his explorations of Australia, Hawaii, and other Pacific islands. He was killed in Hawaii while on a company mission of exploration.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The company’s influence was pervasive wherever it went. For example, one hundred years or more before Betsy Ross was born, the flag of the East India Company was made up of thirteen horizontal red and white alternating bars, with a blue field in the upper-left corner with the Union Jack in it. Although, according to the well-known legend, Ross reversed the order of the red and white bars, the American flag is startling similar to that of the East India Company in the 1700s.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The East India Company designed its flag with thirteen red and white bars long before there were thirteen states. Many historians believe it was because most of the stockholders in the East India Company were initiates in the Masonic Order, and the Masons considered thirteen to be a metaphysically powerful number. Virtually every signer of the Constitution was also a Mason, which may be why they chose to limit the original colonies to thirteen. But that’s all speculation; nobody knows for sure, or, if they do, they’re not telling.</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its earliest years, the company began assembling its own private military and police forces. After a particularly bloody massacre of company employees by the Dutch at Amboina, Indonesia, in 1623, the company realized it needed to hire some new and uniquely competent people to ply the trade routes. To stop smugglers from competing with its trade to North America, the company authorized its governor of New York to hire Captain William Kidd to clean up its trade routes by killing colonial smugglers and sinking their ships. When Kidd began secretly competing with the company on the side (an activity the company called smuggling and piracy), it had him captured and executed in 1701.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The company also approached the British Parliament and asked for authority and protection by British military forces.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, many of the seemingly “political” appointees of England to the early Americas were first and foremost employees of the East India Company. One of many examples of how the company and the British military were connected is General Charles Cornwallis. During the American Revolution, he lost the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 but later went on to “serve with great distinction in the company’s service in India, and it was said of him that whilst he lost a colony in the West, he won one in the East.”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#5" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[5]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From India to Yale: The East India Company Influences</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As its first century of existence was wrapping up, the company’s worldwide reach had proven enormously profitable for its stockholders. For example, during these years Elihu and Thomas Yale grew up in the American colonies and, like many American colonists, went to work for the East India Company. Elihu became the company’s governor of Madras, India, where he made a huge fortune for himself and the company, while his brother, Thomas, negotiated the company’s first trade deals with China. Elihu returned home and made a large grant to the school that he and his brother had attended, which, in appreciation, renamed itself Yale College in 1718.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the 1760s the East India Company’s power had grown massive and global. It had taken control of much of the commerce of India, was aggressively importing opium into China to take control of that nation (which would lead to the Opium Wars of the mid-1800s, which China lost, ceding Hong Kong to Britain for ninety-nine years), and had largely taken control of all international commerce to and from North America. This very rapid expansion and attempt to keep ahead of the Dutch trading companies, however, was a mixed blessing, as the East India Company went deep in debt to support its growth and by 1770 found itself nearly bankrupt.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the company’s biggest and most vexing problems were American colonial small businessmen and entrepreneurs, who ran their own small ships to bring tea and other goods directly into America without routing them through Britain or through the company. And there were many small-business tea retailers in North America who were buying their wholesale tea directly from Dutch trading companies instead of the East India Company. These two types of competition were very painful for the company.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The First Pro-corporate Tax Laws</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The East India Company set a precedent that multinational corporations follow to this day: it lobbied for laws that would enable it to easily put its small- business competitors out of business. By 1681 most of the members of the British government and royalty were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy that year to pass “An Act for the restraining and punishing Privateers and Pirates.” This law required a license to import anything into the Americas (among other British-controlled parts of the world), and the licenses were only rarely granted except to the East India Company and other large British corporations.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The law was explicit about its purpose and the death penalty for operating without a license. It read, in part:</font></span></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It shall be felony for any Person, which now doth, or within four Years last past heretofore hath or here after shall Inhabit or belong to this Island, to serve in America in an hostile manner, under any Foreign Prince, state or Potentate in Amity with his Majesty of Great Britain, without special License for so doing, under the hand and seal of the Governour or Commander in chief of this Island for the time being, and that all and every such offender or offenders contrary to the true intent of this Act being thereof duly convicted in his Majesties supreme Court of Judicature within this Island to which court authority is hereby given to hear and to determine the same as other cases of Felony, shall suffer pains of Death without the benefit of Clergy.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, that all and every Person or Persons that shall any way knowingly Entertain, Harbour, Conceal, Trade or hold any correspondence by Letter or otherwise with any Person or Persons, that shall be deemed or adjudged to be Privateers, Pirates or other offenders within the construction of this Act, and that shall not readily endeavour to the best of his or their Power to apprehend or cause to be apprehended, such Offender or Offenders, shall be liable to be prosecuted as accessories and Confederates, and to suffer such pains and penalties as in such case by law is Provided.</font></span></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Source:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/ABL/etext/hinman-web/p149.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">https://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/ABL/etext/hinman-web/p149.html</a></font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As trade to the American colonies grew, and under pressure from the East India Company, the British government passed a series of laws that increased the company’s power and influence and reduced its competition and barriers to international trade, including the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Tea Act was the most essential for the East India Company because the American colonies had become a huge market for tea—millions of pounds per month—which was largely being supplied at cheap prices by Dutch trading companies and American smugglers, also known as privateers because they operated privately instead of working for the company. (The company also often encouraged the British government to prosecute these entrepreneurial traders and smugglers as “pirates” under the 1681 law.)</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many people today think that the Tea Act—which led to the Boston Tea Party—was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. Instead, the purpose of the Tea Act was to give the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade and to exempt the company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea that it was unable to sell and holding in inventory.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the king) and to help the company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the company temporarily no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut those of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and teahouses in every town in America.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This infuriated the independence-minded colonists, who were, by and large, unappreciative of their colonies’ being used as a profit center for the multinational East India Company corporation. They resented their small businesses still having to pay the higher, pre–Tea Act taxes without having any say or vote in the matter (thus the cry of “no taxation without representation!”).</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even in the official British version of the history, the 1773 Tea Act was a “legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in America,” with a goal of helping the East India Company quickly “sell 17 million pounds of tea stored in England…”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#6" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[6]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A clue to the anti-globalization agenda of the American revolutionaries was found right on the Web site of the modern East India Company: “The infamous Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a direct result of the drawback of the government in London of duties on tea which enabled the East India Company to dump excess stocks on the American colonies, and acted as a rallying point for the discontented.”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#7" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[7]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The site also noted that American antipathy toward the corporation that had first founded, owned, ruled, and settled the original colonies continued even after the American Revolution. After the Revolutionary War, the company tried to resume trading with America, offering clothing, silks, coffee, earthenware, cocoa, and spices, but, “Even after Independence the East India Company remained a highly competitive importer of goods into the United States, resulting in occasional flare-ups such as the trade war between 1812 and 1814.”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#8" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[8]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]&nbsp; Also See Thom Hartmann’s “Daily Take”:</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America’s First Entrepreneurs Protest</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This economics-driven view of American history piqued my curiosity when I first discovered it. So when I came upon an original first edition of one of this nation’s earliest history books, I made a sizable investment to buy it to read the thoughts of somebody who had actually been alive and participated in the Boston Tea Party and the subsequent American Revolution. I purchased from an antiquarian bookseller an original copy of A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-Party with a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbour in 1773, published in New York by S. S. Bliss in 1834.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because the identities of the Boston Tea Party participants were hid- den (other than Samuel Adams) and all were sworn to secrecy for the next fifty years, this account (published sixty-one years later) is singularly rare and important, as it’s the only actual first-person account of the event by a participant that exists, so far as I can find. Turning its brittle, age-colored pages and looking at printing on unevenly sized sheets, typeset by hand and printed on a small hand press almost two hundred years ago, was both fascinating and exciting. Even more interesting was the perspective of the anonymous (“by a citizen of New York”) author and of George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes, whom the author interviewed extensively for the book.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Hewes’s name is today largely lost to history, he was apparently well known in colonial times and during the nineteenth century.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Esther Forbes’s classic 1942 biography of Paul Revere, which depended heavily on Revere’s “many volumes of papers” and numerous late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century sources, mentions Hewes repeatedly. For example, when young Paul Revere went off to join the British army in the spring of 1756, he took Hewes along with him.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frontispiece and title page of “A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-Party with a Memoir of George R. T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbour in 1773.” (New York: S. S. Bliss, 1834)</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Paul Revere served in Richard Gridley’s regiment,” Forbes writes, noting Revere’s recollection that the army had certain requirements for its recruits. “All must be able-bodied and between seventeen and forty-five, and must measure to a certain height. George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes could not go. He was too short, and in vain did he get a shoemaker to build up the inside of his shoes; but Paul Revere ‘passed muster’ and ‘mounted the cockade.’”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#9" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[9]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes wasn’t of noble birth, according to Forbes.</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George was of poor family. He had started out apprenticed to a shoemaker, ran away to sea and fished on the Grand Banks. At the time of the great inoculation, he was of age, back in Boston, and completing his apprenticeship to a shoemaker. In spite of his diminutive size and the dignity of his name, he was mixed up in every street fight, massacre, or tea party that occurred in the Boston of his day.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even the wealthy John Hancock, who kept careful records of his philanthropy, knew Hewes. According to Forbes, “He [Hancock] called that young scamp, George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes, ‘my lad’ and ‘put his hand into his breeches-pocket and pulled out a crown piece, which he placed softly in his hand.’”</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes was present for the Boston Massacre, one of the early events that led to the Tea Party. “George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes, of course, was in the middle of it,” writes Forbes. “He was a little fellow, but ‘stood up straight… and spoke up sharp and quick on all occasions.’ Recently he had married Sally Sumner, a young washerwoman. When Captain Preston and his men shoved their way across King Street, they had bumped smack into Hewes.”</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And when it came to the Boston Tea Party, Forbes notes, “No one invited George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes, but no one could have kept him home.” She quotes him as to the size of the raiding party, noting, “Hewes says there were one hundred to a hundred and fifty ‘indians’” that night.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes apparently came to Boston, writes Forbes, through the good graces of America’s first president:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes fished nine weeks for the British fleet until he saw his chance [to escape] and took it. Landing in Lynn, he was immediately taken to [George] Washington at Cambridge. The General enjoyed the story of his escape—“he didn’t laugh to be sure but looked amazing good natured, you may depend.” He asked him to dine with him, and Hewes says that “Madam Washington waited upon them at table at dinner-time and was remarkably social.” Hewes was one of the many Boston refugees who never went back there to live. Having served as a privateersman and soldier during the war, he settled outside of the state.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And there, outside the state, was where Hewes lived into his old age, finally telling his story to those who would listen, including S. S. Bliss, who published the little book I found. While Forbes doesn’t list my volume among her bibliography, she does note that George R. T. Hewes was holding young listeners spellbound out in Oswego County, New York, in his old age, and references Peleg W. Chandler’s American Criminal Trials, published in 1841, as a source that “gives what seems to me the most careful analysis of the [Boston] Massacre and I have used this book as my primary source, adding to it various contemporary accounts, especially George Robert Twelvetrees Hewes.”</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reading Hewes’s account, I learned that the Boston Tea Party resembled in many ways the growing modern-day protests against transnational corporations and small-town efforts to protect themselves from chain-store retailers or factory farms. With few exceptions the Tea Party’s participants thought of themselves as protesters against the actions of the multinational East India Company and the government that “unfairly” represented, supported, and served the company while not representing or serving the residents.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes said that many American colonists either boycotted the purchase of tea or were smuggling tea or purchasing smuggled tea to avoid supporting the East India Company’s profits and the British taxes on tea, which, according to Hewes’s account of 1773,</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rendered the smuggling of [tea] an object and was frequently practiced, and their resolutions against using it, although observed by many with little fidelity, had greatly diminished the importation into the colonies of this commodity. Meanwhile, an immense quantity of it was accumulated in the warehouses of the East India Company in England. This company petitioned the king to suppress the duty of three pence per pound upon its introduction into America…<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#10" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[10]</a></font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That petition was successful and produced the Tea Act of 1773. The result was a boon for the transnational East India Company corporation and a big problem for the entrepreneurial American “smugglers.”</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Hewes, “The [East India] Company, however, received per- mission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America,” allowing it to wipe out its small competitors and take over the tea business in all of America. “Hence,” he wrote,</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">it was no longer the small vessels of private merchants, who went to vend tea for their own account in the ports of the colonies, but, on the contrary, ships of an enormous burthen, that transported immense quantities of this commodity, which by the aid of the public authority, might, as they supposed, easily be landed, and amassed in suitable magazines. Accordingly, the company sent its agents at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, six hundred chests of tea, and a proportionate number to Charleston, and other maritime cities of the American continent. The colonies were now arrived at the decisive moment when they must cast the dye [sic], and determine their course…</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interestingly, Hewes notes that it wasn’t just American small businesses and citizens who objected to the new monopoly powers granted the East India Company by the English Parliament. The company was also putting out of business many smaller tea exporters in England, who had been doing business with American family-owned retail stores for decades, and those companies began a protest in England that was simultaneous with the American protests against transnational corporate bullying and the East India Company’s buying of influence with the British Parliament. Hewes continues:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even in England individuals were not wanting, who fanned this fire; some from a desire to baffle the government, others from motives of private interest, says the historian of the event, and jealousy at the opportunity offered the East India Company, to make immense profits to their prejudice.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These opposers [sic] of the measure in England [the Tea Act of 1773] wrote therefore to America, encouraging a strenuous resistance. They represented to the colonists that this would prove their last trial, and that if they should triumph now, their liberty was secured forever; but if they should yield, they must bow their necks to the yoke of slavery. The materials were so prepared and disposed that they could easily kindle.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The battle between the small businessmen of America and the huge multinational East India Company actually began in Pennsylvania, according to Hewes. “At Philadelphia,” he writes,</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">those to whom the teas of the [East India] Company were intended to be con- signed, were induced by persuasion, or constrained by menaces, to promise, on no terms, to accept the proffered consignment.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At New-York, Captain Sears and McDougal, daring and enterprising men, effected a concert of will [against the East India Company], between the smugglers, the merchants, and the sons of liberty [who had all joined forces and in most cases were the same people]. Pamphlets suited to the conjecture, were daily distributed, and nothing was left unattempted by popular leaders, to obtain their purpose.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Resistance was organizing and growing, and the Tea Act was the final straw. The citizens of the colonies were preparing to throw off one of the corporations that for almost two hundred years had determined nearly every aspect of their lives through its economic and political power. They were planning to destroy the goods of the world’s largest multinational corporation, intimidate its employees, and face down the guns of the government that supported it.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A newsletter called The Alarm circulated through the colonies; the May 27, 1773, issue, signed by an enigmatic “Rusticus,”11 made clear the feelings of colonial Americans about England’s largest transnational corporation and its behavior around the world:</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Are we in like Manner to be given up to the Disposal of the East India Company, who have now the Assurance, to step forth in Aid of the Minister, to execute his Plan, of enslaving America? Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have centered in their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Bar- barities, Extortions, and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate that the poor could not purchase them.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Pamphleteering Worked</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After turning back the company’s ships in Philadelphia and New York, Hewes writes, “In Boston the general voice declared the time was come to face the storm.”</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes writes about the sentiment among the colonists who opposed the naked power and wealth of the East India Company and the British government that supported it:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why do we wait? they exclaimed; soon or late we must engage in conflict with England. Hundreds of years may roll away before the ministers[] can have perpetrated as many violations of our rights, as they have committed within a few years. The opposition is formed; it is general; it remains for us to seize the occasion. The more we delay the more strength is acquired by the ministers. Now is the time to prove our courage, or be disgraced with our brethren of the other colonies, who have their eyes fixed upon us, and will be prompt in their succor if we show ourselves faithful and firm.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was the voice of the Bostonians in 1773. The factors who were to be the consignees of the tea, were urged to renounce their agency, but they refused and took refuge in the fortress. A guard was placed on Griffin’s wharf, near where the tea ships were moored. It was agreed that a strict watch should be kept; that if any insult should be offered, the bell should be immediately rung; and some persons always ready to bear intelligence of what might happen, to the neighbouring towns, and to call in the assistance of the country people.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes refers to the local East India Company employees who doubled as agents of Britain as the “ministers” and their local claim at governance in cooperation with and to the profit of the East India Company as the “ministerial enterprises.”</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rusticus added his voice in the May 1773 pamphlet, saying, “Resolve therefore, nobly resolve, and publish to the World your Resolutions, that no Man will receive the Tea, no Man will let his Stores, or suffer the Vessel that brings it to moor at his Wharf, and that if any Person assists at unloading, landing, or storing it, he shall ever after be deemed an Enemy to his Country, and never be employed by his Fellow Citizens.”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#12" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[12]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colonial voices were getting louder and louder about their outrage at the giant corporation’s behavior. Another issue of The Alarm, signed Hampden and dated October 27, 1773, said, “It hath now been proved to you, That the East India Company, obtained the monopoly of that trade by bribery, and corruption. That the power thus obtained they have prostituted to extortion, and other the most cruel and horrible purposes, the Sun ever beheld.”<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#13" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[13]</a></font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The People Challenge the Corporation</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then, Hewes says, on a cold November evening, the first of the East India Company’s ships of reduced-tax tea arrived:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the 28th of November, 1773, the ship Dartmouth with 112 chests arrived; and the next morning after, the following notice was widely circulated.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Friends, Brethren, Countrymen! That worst of plagues, the detested TEA, has arrived in this harbour. The hour of destruction, a manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny, stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and to posterity, is now called upon to meet in Faneuil Hall, at nine o’clock, this day, at which time the bells will ring, to make a united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reaction to the pamphlet—back then one part of what was truly a “free press” in America—was emphatic. Hewes’s account was that, “Things thus appeared to be hastening to a disastrous issue. The people of the country arrived in great numbers, the inhabitants of the town assembled. This assembly which was on the 16th of December, 1773, was the most numerous ever known, there being more than 2,000 from the country present.”</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes continues,</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This notification brought together a vast concourse of the people of Boston and the neighbouring towns, at the time and place appointed. Then it was resolved that the tea should be returned to the place from whence it came in all events, and no duty paid thereon. The arrival of other cargoes of tea soon after, increased the agitation of the public mind, already wrought up to a degree of desperation, and ready to break out into acts of violence, on every trivial occasion of offence….</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finding no measures were likely to be taken, either by the governor, or the commanders, or owners of the ships, to return their cargoes or prevent the landing of them, at 5 o’clock a vote was called for the dissolution of the meet- ing and obtained. But some of the more moderate and judicious members, fearing what might be the consequences, asked for a reconsideration of the vote, offering no other reason, than that they ought to do every thing in their power to send the tea back, according to their previous resolves. This, says the historian of that event,[] touched the pride of the assembly, and they agreed to remain together one hour.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Presumably Hewes is referring to himself in the third person, a form considered good manners in the eighteenth century, or this is the voice of the narrator who interviewed him.</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The people assembled in Boston at that moment faced the same issue that citizens who oppose combined corporate and co-opted government power all over the world confront today: Should they take on a well-financed and heavily armed opponent when such resistance could lead to their own imprisonment or death? Even worse, what if they lose the struggle, leading to the imposition on them and their children of an even more repressive regime to support the profits of the corporation?</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There Are Corporate Spies among Us!</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was a debate late that afternoon in Boston, Hewes notes, but it was short because a man named Josiah Quiney pointed out that some of the people in the group worked directly or indirectly for the East India Company or held loyalty to Britain or both. Quiney suggested that if they took the first step of confronting the East India Company, it would inevitably mean they would have to take on the army of England. He pointed out that they were really dis- cussing the possibility of going to war against England to stop England from enforcing the East India Company’s right to run its “ministerial enterprise” and that some who profited from that enterprise were right there in the room with them.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hewes goes on to say,</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In this conjuncture, Josiah Quiney, a man of great influence in the colony, of a vigorous and cultivated genius, and strenuously opposed to ministerial enterprises, wishing to apprise his fellow-citizens of the importance of the crisis, and direct their attention to probable results which might follow, after demanding silence said, “This ardour and this impetuosity, which are manifested within these walls, are not those that are requisite to conduct us to the object we have in view; these may cool, may abate, may vanish like a flittering shade. Quite other spirits, quite other efforts are essential to our salvation.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Greatly will he deceive himself, who shall think, that with cries, with exclamations, with popular resolutions, we can hope to triumph in the conflict, and vanquish our inveterate foes. Their malignity is implacable, their thirst for vengeance insatiable. They have their allies, their accomplices, even in the midst of us—even in the bosom of this innocent country; and who is ignorant of the power of those who have conspired our ruin? Who knows not their artifices? Imagine not therefore, that you can bring this controversy to a happy conclusion without the most strenuous, the most arduous, the most terrible conflict; consider attentively the difficulty of the enterprise, and the uncertainty of the issue. Reflict [sic] and ponder, even ponder well, before you embrace the measures, which are to involve this country in the most perilous enterprise the world has witnessed.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most Americans today believe that the colonists were upset only because they didn’t have a legislature they had elected that would pass the laws under which they were taxed: “taxation without representation” was their rallying cry. And while that was true, Hewes points out, the thorn in their side, the pin- prick that was really driving their rage, was that England was passing tax laws solely for the benefit of the transnational East India Company at the expense of the average American worker and America’s small-business owners.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus “taxation without representation” also meant hitting the average person and small business with taxes while letting the richest and most powerful corporation in the world off the hook for its taxes. It was government sponsorship of one corporation over all competitors, plain and simple.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the more the colonists resisted the predations of the East India Company and its British protectors, the more reactive and repressive the British government became, arresting American entrepreneurs as smugglers and defending the trade interests of the East India Company.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among the reasons cited in the 1776 Declaration of Independence for separating America from Britain are, “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.” The British had used tax and anti-smuggling laws to make it nearly impossible for American small businesses to compete against the huge multinational East India Company, and the Tea Act of 1773 was the final straw.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus the group assembled in Boston responded to Josiah Quiney’s comment by calling for a vote. The next paragraph in Hewes’s book says:</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question was then immediately put whether the landing of the tea should be opposed and carried in the affirmative unanimously. Rotch [a local tea seller], to whom the cargo of tea had been consigned, was then requested to demand of the governor to permit to pass the castle [return the ships to England]. The latter answered haughtily, that for the honor of the laws, and from duty towards the king, he could not grant the permit, until the vessel was regularly cleared. A violent commotion immediately ensued; and it is related by one historian of that scene, that a person disguised after the manner of the Indians, who was in the gallery, shouted at this juncture, the cry of war; and that the meeting dissolved in the twinkling of an eye, and the multitude rushed in a mass to Griffin’s wharf.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A First-person Account of the Tea Party</font></span></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On what happened next, Hewes is quite specific in pointing out that not only were the protesters registering their anger and upset over domination by England and the East India Company but they were willing to commit a million- dollar act of vandalism to make their point. Hewes says:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the tomahawk, with which, and a club, after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffin’s wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea. When I first appeared in the street after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was, and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When we arrived at the wharf, there were three of our number who assumed an authority to direct our operations, to which we readily submitted. They divided us into three parties, for the purpose of boarding the three ships which contained the tea at the same time. The name of him who commanded the division to which I was assigned was Leonard Pitt. The names of the other commanders I never knew.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We were immediately ordered by the respective commanders to board all the ships at the same time, which we promptly obeyed. The commander of the division to which I belonged, as soon as we were on board the ship appointed me boatswain, and ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles. I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We then quietly retired to our several places of residence, without having any conversation with each other, or taking any measures to discover who were our associates; nor do I recollect of our having had the knowledge of the name of a single individual concerned in that affair, except that of Leonard Pitt, the commander of my division, whom I have mentioned. There appeared to be an understanding that each individual should volunteer his services, keep his own secret, and risk the consequence for himself. No disorder took place during that transaction, and it was observed at that time that the stillest night ensued that Boston had enjoyed for many months.</font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The participants were absolutely committed that none of the East India Company’s tea would ever again be consumed on American shores. Hewes continues:</font></p><blockquote style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the time we were throwing the tea overboard, there were several attempts made by some of the citizens of Boston and its vicinity to carry off small quantities of it for their family use. To effect that object, they would watch their opportunity to snatch up a handful from the deck, where it became plentifully scattered, and put it into their pockets.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One Captain O’Connor, whom I well knew, came on board for that purpose, and when he supposed he was not noticed, filled his pockets, and also the lining of his coat. But I had detected him and gave information to the captain of what he was doing. We were ordered to take him into custody, and just as he was stepping from the vessel, I seized him by the skirt of his coat, and in attempting to pull him back, I tore it off; but, springing forward, by a rapid effort he made his escape. He had, however, to run a gauntlet through the crowd upon the wharf; each one, as he passed, giving him a kick or a stroke.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another attempt was made to save a little tea from the ruins of the cargo by a tall, aged man who wore a large cocked hat and white wig, which was fashionable at that time. He had slightly slipped a little into his pocket, but being detected, they seized him and, taking his hat and wig from his head, threw them, together with the tea, of which they had emptied his pockets, into the water. In consideration of his advanced age, he was permitted to escape, with now and then a slight kick.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; margin-top: 0px; line-height: 30.66px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The next morning, after we had cleared the ships of the tea, it was discovered that very considerable quantities of it were floating upon the surface of the water; and to prevent the possibility of any of its being saved for use, a number of small boats were manned by sailors and citizens, who rowed them into those parts of the harbor wherever the tea was visible, and by beating it with oars and paddles so thoroughly drenched it as to render its entire destruction inevitable. In all, the 342 chests of tea—more than ninety thousand pounds— thrown overboard that night were enough to make 24 million cups of tea and were valued by the East India Company at 9,659 pounds sterling or, in today’s U.S. currency, just over $1 million.<a href="https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-boston-tea-party-revealed/#14" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; backface-visibility: hidden; transition: all 0.15s ease-in-out 0s; box-shadow: rgb(156, 22, 44) 0px -2px 0px inset;">[14]</a></font></p></blockquote><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament immediately passed the Boston Port Act, stating that the port of Boston would be closed until the citizens of Boston reimbursed the East India Company for the tea they had destroyed. The colonists refused. A year and a half later, the colonists would again openly state their defiance of the East India Company and Great Britain by taking on British troops in an armed conflict at Lexington and Con- cord (“the shots heard ’round the world”) on April 19, 1775.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That war—finally triggered by a transnational corporation and its government patrons trying to deny American colonists a fair and competitive local marketplace—would last until 1783.</font></p><p style="Style" palatino="Palatino" linotype="Linotype" palladio="Palladio" urw="URW" l="L" book="Book" antiqua="Antiqua" baskerville="Baskerville" bookman="Bookman" old="Old" bitstream="Bitstream" charter="Charter" nimbus="Nimbus" roman="Roman" no9="No9" garamond="Garamond" apple="Apple" itc="ITC" narrow="Narrow" new="New" century="Century" schoolbook="Schoolbook" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References:...</font></span></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2015/11/real-reason-why-kochs-developed-sudden-passion-prison-reform</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...justice Department officials, for example, told The New York Times that not having this tool might have prevented them from getting guilty pleas in a 2013 case involving a Colorado factory farm whose listeria-infected cantaloupes killed 33 people, as well as a 2012 case involving a pharmacy that killed three people by selling them mislabeled drugs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, letting white collar criminals claim ignorance of the law as a defense would make it really easy for them to get away with, well, murder. And, yes, according to The New York Times, that's what the Kochs are proposing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So yeah, this is a big deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It also turns out that the Koch brothers have a very personal reason for supporting these kinds of changes to federal criminal law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The New York Times reports, Koch Industries' general counsel and senior vice president Mark Holden "acknowledge[s]... that the company's efforts to pursue revisions in federal criminal law were inspired in part by a criminal case filed 15 years ago against Koch Industries claiming that it covered up releases of hazardous air pollution at a Texas oil refinery. Those charges resulted in a guilty plea by the company and a $20 million penalty."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As usual, the Kochs are just looking out for themselves. And the sad thing is that even if they do really care about changing drug sentencing laws, their push to let white collar criminals off the hook could sabotage the efforts going on in Congress right now to make real change to our criminal legal system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A bill that's effectively a gimme for polluters might be too much for many Democrats to swallow, especially now that the Justice Department has called it out as just that - a gimme for polluters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ever since John D. Rockefeller started handing out shiny new dimes to children to enhance his robber baron image, rich people have been trying to portray themselves as concerned about average people as part of a ploy to protect their own privilege. Sometimes we see through it and sometimes we get bamboozled, but this time we really got bamboozled.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Koch brothers don't want to reform the federal criminal code to help average Americans stay out of jail for smoking pot; they want to reform the federal criminal code to protect fat-cat polluters. It really is as simple and dirty as that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Welcome to life in the best democracy money can buy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 11 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/gop/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">if dying young appeals to you, here's a simple bit of advice: move to a state or county controlled by Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At first glance, the images below appear to be political maps. And in the most real sense of the word they are: the county-by-county differences shown by the map from Jeremy Ney's brilliant American Inequality Substack newsletter and the state-by-state screen shot from the CDC's NCHS below it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both reflect, in large part, decades of regional policy differences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Long-lived parts of America have generally embraced progressive policies dating back to FDR's New Deal; the early-death parts of our country most often reflect conservative opposition to everything from the working-class wealth that unionization and higher minimum wages bring, to the availability of healthcare through Medicaid expansion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb553faf-565e-477b-948f-f746b7480c81_1240x1042.png Source: American Inequality by Jeremy Ney on Substack</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[grx]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2019 Life Expectancy by State — Source: National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To zoom out ever farther, since many conservative policies affect the entire country, consider what happened to the health of our nation in the 1980s with the Reagan Revolution. It's particularly visible when you compare the outcomes of our healthcare system with other developed countries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our World In Data lays it out starkly, as you will see below. One of the proudest accomplishments of the neoliberal Reagan Revolution was—following a bill Nixon signed in 1973 that opened the door—overturning laws in state-after-state that required both hospitals and health insurance companies to run as non-profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan also, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, FTC, and SEC to essentially stop enforcing anti-trust laws dating back to the 1891 Sherman Act, resulting in the "Mergers & Acquisitions Mania" that characterized the 1980s and inspired the "greed is good" movie Wall Street starring Michael Douglas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Health insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers all morphed from regional and competitive organizations into giant, monopolistic predators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their profits exploded and our lifespans collapsed. Every year now, they spread hundreds of millions of dollars around Washington DC and state capitols to prevent regulation and maintain the status quo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are, quite literally, the only country in the world with a corrupt Supreme Court that has legalized this kind of a vicious attack on its citizens by a bought-off political party and their morbidly rich donors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republicans on the Supreme Court call it "free speech" but every other nation in the world knows it's simply naked, criminal, political bribery.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[gfx]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Source: Our World in Data</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As you can see above, the average American spends more than twice as much on healthcare every year as do the citizens of any other developed country in the world. And, as the Reagan Revolution really bit hard in the 1980s and 1990s, our average lifespans collapsed while corporate healthcare profits exploded.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's not just death by lack of healthcare that skews these statistics: if you're concerned about being murdered, it's also a good idea to avoid states run by conservatives. As the centrist Third Way think tank noted last month:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's true of Red cities as well. Again, from Third Way:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat [sic] mayor, despite their comparable populations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy's Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And don't even think about having sex in Red states: they generally lead America in sexually transmitted diseases, presumably because most have outlawed teaching sex education in their public schools.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The five states with the highest rates of Chlamydia infections are Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and New Mexico. The highest rates of Gonorrhea are in Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking of schools, the states with the lowest educational attainment in the nation are entirely Red states. Ranked from terrible to absolutely worst, they are: Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nevada, Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As giddy as Republicans are about "owning the libs," the citizens they govern pay a tragic price for the sport. They are literally dying as conservative politicians revel in their ability to cut taxes for the rich and suppress wages and healthcare for everybody else.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans are about to take over the House of Representatives and begin their "investigations" into, well, anything that will distract from these terrible statistics. In the meantime, Americans, particularly those in Red states and counties, will continue to die at rates considered obscene by the standards of every other developed nation in the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our next chance to put America back on track will be in two years, and we damn well better get ready.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 11 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States should buy out the fossil fuel industry to save the planet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Thom Hartmann and Common Dreams November 05, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back on October 13th, I wrote an article here titled When Will the Victims of Oil Companies' Lies Get Their Day In Court? detailing how Big Oil has been deceiving Americans—and, thus, killing Americans and our climate—for more than a half-century. Their model, "Doubt is our product," was borrowed from the tobacco industry and weaponized against us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suing the big oil companies like we did the tobacco companies is a good start, but we need more to get our climate-destroying emissions under control.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the industry is doing everything they can to make sure we never hold them accountable. Taxpayers for Common Sense documents how the industry fielded over 700 lobbyists just last year, spending almost $120 million to buy legislators across Washington, DC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're also not just lobbying intensely at the federal level, but have gotten they're toadies appointed to boards that oversee state climate policy, as is happening in New York State right now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're even making their pitch to voters. As InfluenceMap, which tracks online advertising spending, noted:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This research found 25,147 ads from just 25 oil and gas sector organizations on Facebook's US platforms in 2020, which have been seen over 431 million times. This indicates the industry is now using social media to directly reach a vast audience and influence public opinions on climate change and the energy mix. These ads had a spend of $9,597,376.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the ads weren't backing up actual efforts the industry is taking to clean up their act, most likely because such efforts are insignificant relative to the industry's profits, which were over $90 billion last year and have already surpassed $100 billion this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Crucially,' InfluenceMap writes, 'many of these ads either contained misleading content or present information that was misaligned from the science of climate change according to both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's and the International Energy Agency's reports on reaching net zero by 2050.'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On top of that, if the oil and gas industry were to take seriously the pledges they've made and the prescriptions of the IPCC to avoid climate disaster, they'll end up with hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of "stranded assets": oil and natural gas that simply has to be left in the ground and thus taken off the companies' books.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That process could trigger the largest bankruptcy in the history of the world, which is probably why they're doing everything they can, PR-wise, to prevent the kind of accountability that may force them to change their behavior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, instead of trying to regulate or engage in a protracted and expensive PR battle with these companies, or bail them out when they go down in flames, why don't we just buy them now?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The entire market capitalization of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, is a mere $451 billion, and we could purchase a controlling interest in the company for a fraction of that. Even if we splurged and bought 51% of shares in the open market (far more than necessary), that would only be a $230 billion expense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember, we poured $6 trillion into keeping our economy afloat during the Covid pandemic year of 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just the stimulus checks that showed up in our mailboxes totaled $804 billion, we passed out an additional $567 billion in unemployment checks, and gave over a trillion dollars to American corporations, most of which will never be paid back (particularly the millions the Trump family and their buddies got).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We put $331 billion into our healthcare system to deal with the crisis, and delivered $254 billion to states and cities. Our schools and colleges got another $231 billion, and just the airline industry itself took home $73 billion. Rent subsidies, childcare support, and nutrition assistance added up to $166 billion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Covid was bad, but we're talking here about the survival of human civilization over the short term and the death of most life on Earth over longer time horizons if we don't stop the fossil fuel companies from interfering with our nation's and international efforts to transition to renewable energy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And interfere they are.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every single member of the Republican Party, so far as I can find, is in the bag for them: all are either blocking any actions to deal with greenhouse gasses, denying even the existence of global warming, or both.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Conservative" radio and TV networks, shows, and hosts are also recipients of the industry's largess to the point that they also deny the crisis our nation and world are experiencing right now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So we can pick up ExxonMobil for roughly what we spent just keeping our schools viable for a year and a half. The second largest oil/gas company operating in the US, Chevron, has a market capitalization of $342 billion, Shell is $195 billion, and Conoco Phillips is $161 billion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Acquiring controlling interest in the entire bunch of them could cost less than we spent just on unemployment checks during the Covid crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And if ever there was an industry that merited our buying it out and eventually retiring it to pasture—nationalization, essentially—the fossil fuel industry is it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They manipulate prices to both enhance profits and swing elections, bribe their way through the halls of Congress, and pump out a steady stream of lies about climate change. All while pouring hundreds of billions into the money bins of their morbidly rich CEOs, shareholders, and senior executives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump's billionaire tax cuts we could move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But is it even possible? Does our federal government actually know how to run nationalized companies? Is there a precedent for anything even remotely like saving our nation and the world through this sort of process?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Turns out that history says an emphatic, "Yes!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country's railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation's radio networks and radio stations. All were returned to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the same during World War II, nationalizing airplane manufacturers, gun manufacturers, over 3,300 mines, the nation's railroads, dozens of oil companies, Western Electric Co., Hughes Tool Co., Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and even one of the nation's largest retail outlets, Montgomery Ward. He also nationalized 17 foreign companies doing business in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation's steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like with Wilson's nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were re-privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who would put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1970s, in the wake of the collapse of the Penn Central Railroad, President Richard Nixon oversaw the voluntary nationalization and transfer of 20 railroads into the newly created National Rail Passenger Corporation, now known as Amtrak.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1974 Congress created another nationalized entity to deal with freight rail, the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), which absorbed dozens of failing rail companies. Conrail was government held until 1987, when it was privatized in the then-largest IPO in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1984, when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was in a crisis, President Ronald Reagan's administration oversaw the FDIC nationalizing it by acquiring an 80 percent ownership share in the company; it wasn't re-privatized until 1991, and was bought by Bank of America in 1994.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also in the 1980s, after Reagan recklessly deregulated the Savings & Loan industry, banksters made off with billions leaving the wreckage of crushed S&Ls all across the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the government agency that insured them, FSLIC, went bankrupt itself in 1987, Reagan and Congress created an umbrella agency—the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC)—to nationalize over 740 of America's S&Ls with combined assets of over $400 billion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their assets were sold back into the private market in 1995 as the RTC shut itself down, having averted a 1929-style banking crisis through temporary nationalization.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When George W. Bush was handed the White House by 5 Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, the nation's airline security system was entirely in private hands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The airlines' minimum-wage security screeners failed miserably on 9/11, so Bush didn't even bother with the normal acquisition process that would protect the hundreds of small contractors running security at airports across the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, Bush simply nationalized the entire system and created a government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to take over airport and airline security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Bush also partially nationalized the nation's airlines, creating the Air Transportation Stabilization Board that traded around $10 billion in loans to airlines in crisis (air traffic collapsed after 9/11) in exchange for company stock.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We (through our government) ended up holding 7.64 million shares in US Airways, 18.7 million shares of America West Airlines, 3.45 million shares in Frontier Airlines, 1.47 million shares in American TransAir, and 2.38 million shares in World Airways.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congress had deregulated the nation's banks in 1999 when Newt Gingrich's Republicans pushed through an end to the Glass-Steagall Act and Bill Clinton signed it into law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The resulting banking system crash in 2008 forced the Bush administration to nationalize the country's two largest mortgage lenders (they held about 40% of all US mortgages), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bush administration then additionally nationalized a 77.9% share in AIG, a 36% share of Citigroup, and a 73.5% share of GMAC, forcing out GM's CEO Rick Wagoner, who'd been a particularly terrible manager of that company and was actively lobbying against what Bush thought were America's interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As President Barack Obama came into office in 2009, GM and Chrysler were on the brink of collapse. His administration created a new company, NGMCO, Inc., that nationalized the assets of GM and was 60.8% owned by the federal government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GM was finally fully re-privatized by the Obama administration in 2013. Chrysler went through a similar process, although both the UAW and the Canadian government were part owners when it was temporarily nationalized.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas M. Hanna, Director of Research at The Democracy Collaborative and author of Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States, compiled most of the data above in a brilliant paper titled "A History of Nationalization in the United States 1917-2009."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toward its end, he summarizes brilliantly the case for nationalizing—perhaps only temporarily—America's largest oil and gas companies:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In such times of political and economic crisis, policymakers of all ideological persuasions in the United States have never been hesitant to use one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: nationalization of private enterprises and assets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This included the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who nationalized railroads, and the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (among others), and the Republican Ronald Reagan, who nationalized a major national bank; the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who nationalized dozens of mining and manufacturing facilities, and the Republican George W. Bush, who nationalized airport security and various major financial institutions; the Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized auto manufacturers, and the Republican Richard Nixon, who nationalized all passenger rail service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today's climate crisis dwarfs the threat of Nazism in the 1940s, Bin Laden's 9/11 attack, the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan and Bush administrations, or even the Covid crisis. It literally threatens all life on Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to fund climate denial and to lobby against any meaningful solutions, as we saw when every Republican in the Senate along with Joe Manchin killed the $500 billion investment in clean energy the Biden administration proposed in their Build Back Better legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Squeals of "socialism!" and "Venezuela!" aside, we know how to nationalize industries that are working against our nation's interests and we have done it before, repeatedly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This time it's not just about saving our banks, keeping our schools intact, or fighting a war. This time, it's about saving the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Buy out the fossil fuel industry!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">some lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...he entire market capitalization of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, is a mere $451 billion, and we could purchase a controlling interest in the company for a fraction of that. Even if we splurged and bought 51% of shares in the open market (far more than necessary), that would only be a $230 billion expense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember, we poured $6 trillion into keeping our economy afloat during the Covid pandemic year of 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just the stimulus checks that showed up in our mailboxes totaled $804 billion, we passed out an additional $567 billion in unemployment checks, and gave over a trillion dollars to American corporations, most of which will never be paid back (particularly the millions the Trump family and their buddies got).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We put $331 billion into our healthcare system to deal with the crisis, and delivered $254 billion to states and cities. Our schools and colleges got another $231 billion, and just the airline industry itself took home $73 billion. Rent subsidies, childcare support, and nutrition assistance added up to $166 billion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">america has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump's billionaire tax cuts we could move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But is it even possible? Does our federal government actually know how to run nationalized companies? Is there a precedent for anything even remotely like saving our nation and the world through this sort of process?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Turns out that history says an emphatic, "Yes!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country's railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation's radio networks and radio stations. All were returned✎ EditSign to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the same during World War II, nationalizing airplane manufacturers, gun manufacturers, over 3,300 mines, the nation's railroads, dozens of oil companies, Western Electric Co., Hughes Tool Co., Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and even one of the nation's largest retail outlets, Montgomery Ward. He also nationalized 17 foreign companies doing business in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation's steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like with Wilson's nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were re-privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who would put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This research found 25,147 ads from just 25 oil and gas sector organizations on Facebook's US platforms in 2020, which have been seen over 431 million times. This indicates the industry is now using social media to directly reach a vast audience and influence public opinions on climate change and the energy mix. These ads had a spend of $9,597,376.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the ads weren't backing up actual efforts the industry is taking to clean up their act, most likely because such efforts are insignificant relative to the industry's profits, which were over $90 billion last year and have already surpassed $100 billion this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Crucially,' InfluenceMap writes, 'many of these ads either contained misleading content or present information that was misaligned from the science of climate change according to both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's and the International Energy Agency's reports on reaching net zero by 2050.'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://influencemap.org/report/Climate-Change-and-Digital-Advertising-a40c8116160668aa2d865da2f5abe91b#1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... A breakdown of the different messaging categories and their frequency can be found below</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Categories</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Explanation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Number of ads (and percentage of sample), Spend, Impression</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Examples of key narratives</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Community & Economy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Includes narratives about the role of the oil and gas industry in local communities and the broader economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Number (%): 5542 (22%)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spend: $2,575,779</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Impressions: 134,626,737</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity/Industry helps the economy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity/Industry provides jobs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity/Industry helps community through philanthropic efforts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Solutions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Includes narratives promoting the ‘green/clean’ climate efforts of the industry and is designed to capture narratives suggesting the oil and gas industry is ‘part of the solution’ on climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Number (%): 12140 (48%)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spend: $1,893,080</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Impressions: 122,248,437</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity/Industry supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity/Industry supporting transitioning the energy mix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity/Industry supports the use of gas as, a clean/green/low-carbon energy source or a climate solution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pragmatic Energy Mix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Includes narratives which promote the benefits of oil and gas as energy sources to the functioning of people’s everyday lives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Number (%): 7749 (31%)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spend: $4,354,825</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Impressions: 174,545,645</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil & gas are affordable</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil & gas are reliable</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patriotic Energy Mix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Includes narratives tying the production of domestic oil and gas to energy independence and energy leadership for the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Number (%): 2904 (12%)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spend: $1,482,998</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Impressions: 55,474,052</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Energy Independence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Energy Leadership</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.thomhartmann.com/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For press inquiries, please contact Michelle Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@fsbassociates.com).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HH books:&nbsp; https://hiddenhistorybooks.com/product/the-hidden-history-of-the-supreme-court-and-the-betrayal-of-america</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America and a New York Times bestselling author, lays out a sweeping and largely unknown history of the Supreme Court of the United States, from Alexander Hamilton's arguments against judicial review to modern-day debates, with key examples of cases where the Supreme Court overstepped its constitutional powers using the excuse of judicial review, and possible solutions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hartmann explains how the Supreme Court has spilled beyond its Constitutional powers in a series of rulings, including how it turned our elections over to American and foreign oligarchs with twin decisions in the 1970s, setting the stage for the very richest of that day to bring Ronald Reagan to power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You'll hear the story of a series of Republican presidents who used fraud and treason to secure their elections, and how the GOP knew it but looked the other way because "the Court is hanging in the balance." A court that then went on to gut hundreds of pieces of progressive legislation, as Republicans had hoped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ironically, Hartmann points out, John Roberts (now the Court's Chief Justice), when he worked for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, came up with a novel theory about how Congress could go around the Supreme Court. His goal was to effectively reverse Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board, but in the process provides us with an elegant legal argument and legislative solution that could, in an emergency, be used by a progressive Congress and president to clean up much of the damage the Court has done in past decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Jefferson argued it is not the role of the Supreme Court to decide what the Constitution means, but rather the duty of the people themselves (and how they can do it). America may soon be forced to decide if it's going to continue to be governed as a constitutional monarchy, with nine unelected royals who have final say on everything, or if we are to revert to being a democratic republic as was largely the case before the late 1800s when America's first industrial era oligarchs corrupted the Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1523085940</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1523085941</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">copper kings</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-copper-kings-precipitous-fall-44306513/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://truthout.org/articles/unequal-protection-the-deciding-moment/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1886 sprr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">lincoln corps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDtSSFEZY38&nbsp; ted may 9 2014&nbsp; ad</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no ad:&nbsp; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDtSSFEZY38</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lincoln didn't fight the civil war to free the corporations: Thom Hartmann at TEDxConcordiaUPortland</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">graeber debt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HH olig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YibDwEDzU0k</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HH monopolies:&nbsp; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejCR89oUypQ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HH guns:&nbsp; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALw6pOaGTXA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">30 min int bk&nbsp; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjIHLlWPIEs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HH of neo-lib:&nbsp; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLiH7Iv5sVs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 10 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the polls are tightening up right now, and the media is treating it like it’s some mystical force of nature causing people to shift their concerns from abortion, guns, climate, democracy, and the survival of Social Security over to gas prices, Black crime, banning books, and trans kids playing sports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The media, of course, knows what’s going on. They’re the secondary recipients of it, right behind the politicians, because they’re making billions conveying the GOP message to America. Which, of course, is why they won’t tell you what the real game is here or how it’s being played.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early 1970s, I was a partner with the late Terry O’Connor in a small Michigan advertising agency, Ter Graphics, and a copywriter for another, Barden-Durst, run by the late Bob Strand. Our biggest clients were Kellogg’s and Michigan National Bank, and I learned the business from these men and from in-person instruction by the legendary Joe Sugarman, to whom I’m grateful to this day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later in the ’70s, I taught marketing and advertising in cities around the world for the American Marketing Centers and in 1989 started the Atlanta advertising agency Chandler, MacDonald, Stout, Schneiderman & Poe, named after my favorite writers and my best friend, which Louise and I sold in 1997 to retire to the mountains of Vermont. CMSS&P primarily did business as The Newsletter Factory, and our clients included more than 100 of the Fortune 500 companies at that time, as well as government agencies from the US Army to the NSA and the CIA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’ve also been hosting what is today the #1 progressive talk show in America for 19 years, and worked in radio news for 7 years before that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I say all this not by way of bragging but hopefully to convince you that I know something about media and the advertising and marketing business. And if there’s anything I know deep in my gut, from decades of observation and experience, it’s that advertising works when it’s done big and done repeatedly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While creativity and “production values” in advertising are important, they’re both subordinate to frequency when it comes to producing results. Even a poorly crafted message for a mediocre product will convince people to act the way you want them to if it’s repeated frequently enough.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a variation on the 80s cliché about toys, whoever ends the campaign having spent the most money typically wins.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Multiple studies have been done about money in politics over the past few decades and the results are always within a few points of each other: between 80 and 95 percent of the time the biggest spender in a political race wins, with the average biggest spender winning around 91 percent of the time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which is why new analyses of campaign spending in the 2022 midterm race should concern every American.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OpenSecrets has found that more than $4.4 billion has been spent so far just on electing members of the US House and Senate (and 2/3rds of Senators are not even up for re-election), with an expected $9.3 billion to go to radio, TV, social media, and other forms of advertising by election day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NPR found, based on data from the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, that in just a dozen Senate races over $1.6 billion has been spent “with $3 out of every $4 being spent in six states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and Ohio…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Most of that money,” NPR reports, “is coming from dark money outside groups with little-to-no donor transparency — and Republicans are getting a huge boost from them.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of the nearly $1 billion in unregulated “outside” money that’s been spent so far just to elect Republicans to the Senate, NPR notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Eighty-six percent of the money going toward pro-GOP TV ads is coming from these outside groups, compared to 55% for Democrats. Put simply: If it weren't for these outside groups, Republican candidates would be swamped on the airwaves.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is not how a democratic republic is supposed to work, and it would have represented a federal felony just 12 years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was when 5 corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court blew open the doors to billionaires and massive corporations taking ownership of the GOP and much of the American political process with their poisonous Citizens United decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Simply put, the elections are “tightening” because rightwing billionaires and giant corporations are pouring billions of dollars into advertising. And, as noted earlier, advertising works. To quote the 2014 Washington Post headline: “91% of the time the better-financed candidate wins. Don’t act surprised.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On top of their advertising dominance, though, the GOP has a second tool for repeating their message so frequently that listeners are hearing it in their dreams: billionaire oligarch Murdoch’s Fox “News,” two additional rightwing television networks, over 200 television stations regularly carrying rightwing editorials and right-tilted newscasts, and over 1500 radio stations carrying rightwing hate radio, almost 300 of them in Spanish.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nothing like this massive rightwing/Republican media operation — carefully built at the cost of billions over a 4-decade period — exists on the Democratic side, and it provides a massive, 24/7/365 boost to the GOP that’s worth tens of billions a year in “earned media” (aka “free advertising/promotion”). It even makes money for its owners, rather than costing anybody anything!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When George W. Bush was president, he used to invite talk radio hosts to broadcast live from the lawn of the White House every summer; Obama killed the practice, in part because there are only a handful of nationally syndicated or even local progressive hosts in the country and in part because the Democratic Party has never taken seriously the power of talk radio.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(You can read the whole sorry tale in an article I wrote two years ago for The Nation and in a 2018 open letter I wrote to billionaire Tom Steyer when Clear Channel was up for sale.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Republicans retake the House, the Senate, or both this November after the Dobbs decision, their naked attempt to overthrow our government, their promises to end Social Security, and their playing footsie with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, it will be entirely because of the billions in dark money that supports them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And who can blame the billionaires and corporations behind this corruption? First off, it’s been fully legalized by the Supreme Court. Second, it’s a fantastic investment, as they saw in 2016: pour $7 billion into an election and within the first year get almost $2 trillion in tax breaks and another trillion in forgivable loans with few strings attached.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Billionaires win, corporations win, corrupt politicians win: the only losers are democracy and the American people. And, let’s be frank: the billion-dollar corporations that own our media and our politicians don’t really give a rat’s ass about either democracy or the American people as long as we keep buying the products and voting for the politicians advertised on their networks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As CBS’s then-CEO, Les Moonves, said back in 2016:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS. The money's rolling in and this is fun. I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big money in politics and a democracy that works for the majority of the people of a nation are incompatible: just ask any Russian. Or their victims in Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, both Republicans and the media will point out that, “Democrats are getting dark money, too!” as if that means everything is equal. But what the rightwing billionaires know is:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If they flood the zone with too much money it’ll get noticed, so they’re careful to just match — and then only slightly surpass — the money Democrats can raise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This prevents widespread political outrage and lets Republicans win “close elections” as if everything was still “normal” and our democracy was working as it should. (Thus, the “closing gap” stories we’re reading right now.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But they know in a pinch they can always just dump another few million or billion dollars when a race is essential to their interests. Plus, having a few Democrats like Manchin and Sinema in their pockets is their ultimate ace-in-the-hole.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans on the Supreme Court have, with their bizarre “money is free speech” decisions, put America on the fast track to oligarchy, authoritarianism, and ultimately tyranny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are multiple ways to overcome or overturn Citizens United and the other corrupt SCOTUS decisions that have handed our nation’s elections over to their billionaire patrons: I wrote an entire book about it (The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If people power beats big money in this election, Democrats must focus as much of their and their donor’s efforts as possible on overturning these democracy-destroying decisions while starting the long project of building out a media infrastructure so the rest of America can hear their message every day, year-round.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Otherwise, the rightwing billionaires will simply toss $20 or $30 billion — or whatever it takes — into the 2024 election and President Trump or President DeSantis will make sure it’s the last honest political race in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’ve watched this movie play out in Russia (and a few other countries) over the past four decades: let’s not allow it to happen here, too.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ALSO IN THE NEWS: GOP election spending in very blue districts has Democrats concerned: report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump wants to go after social media because Twitter pointed out one of his lies. And, in fact, social media has done a lot of damage to America and the American body politic, with the most visible example being its help in putting Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But even more concerning should be Fox News and right-wing hate radio. A new study out of Columbia University finds that when people in any particular ZIP Code experience a 1% increase in Fox News viewership, it “reduces the propensity to stay at home by 8.9 percentage points compared to the pre-pandemic average.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, one of the reasons that so many people have died in America right now is because conservative media has been repeatedly and consistently promoting the idea that this virus is a Democratic hoax or a “bad flu.“</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-wing media has gone from being the fringe home of crackpots and paranoids to a major influence in American culture and politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, the billionaire owners of this media have successfully avoided any responsibility or liability for the political chaos, destruction, and even the deaths they have caused, while they are laughing all the way to the bank.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before the coronavirus, you could argue that right-wing media has been merely disruptive to democracy and the public good. Now, this new study from Columbia University shows, it is actually responsible for the death.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Rwanda, it was right-wing talk radio that incited and lead that country’s genocidal slaughter of its own people. In the 1930s in Germany, right-wing radio talk shows were used to identify Jews and trade unionists so that angry mobs could attack them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today in the United States people who are heavy consumers of right-wing media have threatened elected officials with guns, spat viruses on workers in stores who were simply trying to protect the public, and gone out of their way to provoke police to kill people of color.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A court in Seattle this week threw out an attempt to hold Fox News responsible for some of the deaths in Washington state that resulted from their commentator’s irresponsible statements.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since Trump and McConnell have packed about a quarter of our federal courts with unqualified, right-wing judges it’s unlikely the courts will offer any help to our country with this crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The challenge America confronts today is how to reverse the damage that three decades of right-wing media have done to our country and our people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/scotus-republicans-end-democratic-presidencies/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court may be within a few months of ending democracy in the United States and turning the White House over to a group of billionaires who’ve already funded the GOP takeover of multiple state legislatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But don’t just take my word for it. Consider these sources:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Law & Crime: Election Law Experts Sound the Alarm About ‘Extremely Dangerous’ Voting Rights Case the Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Demand Justice: Republican Supreme Court to Decide If Democrats Are Allowed to Win Elections Anymore</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Atlantic: Is Democracy Constitutional?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MSNBC: Moore v. Harper Could Upend Elections as We Know Them</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Moore v Harper is just the latest in a long string of naked assaults on American democracy and the rights of average American citizens, particularly when they conflict with the rights of billionaires and giant corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, how the hell did we end up here?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of the six-vote hard-right majority on the Supreme Court, only one of them was appointed by a president who actually won his election (Thomas: Bush Sr.). The other five were appointed by George W. Bush (lost in 2000 by about a half-million votes) and Trump (lost in 2016 by over 3 million votes).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The urgency and ferocity with which they’re ripping our Constitution to shreds seems driven by their knowledge of their own illegitimacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican appointees across our federal court system are trying to “deconstruct the administrative state” of America, to quote Steve Bannon. Most recently, the majority-Trump-appointed 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism is unconstitutional. That case will appear at the Supreme Court soon, in all probability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most concerning case right now, however, is Moore v Harper which considers the bizarre theory Trump was pushing Pence to accept, that voters don’t determine who becomes president via the Electoral College but that individual state legislatures can simply award their Electoral votes to whichever candidate strikes their fancy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s loosely based on language in the Constitution, but defies two centuries of precedent and turns pretty much every part of elections over to state legislatures with no oversight whatsoever by either governors or the people, and can’t be appealed to any court, including the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge Michael Luttig — the famous and credible conservative judge, the Edmund Burke of this era — has joined the team fighting the potential outcome of this decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Luttig suggests this theory, if adopted by the Court, could very well signal the end of Democratic presidents so long as more than 25 of our 50 states have Republican-controlled legislatures (and their governors can’t even veto their legislatures, according to this theory). Today 30 states’ legislatures are fully under GOP control, up from 14 in 2009.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Luttig, the elders among us may remember, personally ran Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court hearing and worked for years side-by-side with John Roberts in the Reagan Justice Department. He’s friends with both men and is considered one of the top conservative judges in contemporary America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “Independent State Legislature theory” at the core of Moore v Harper is, according to Luttig:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[A]ntithetical to the Framers’ intent, the text, and the Constitution’s fundamental design and architecture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that’s just the beginning of the out-of-control and dangerous behavior of the far-right radicals on today’s court. Since there’s been a conservative majority on the Court it has, among other things:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Radically cut back the rights of unions to organize and represent workers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Declared that billionaires buying politicians is merely “free speech”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gutted the power of the EPA to regulate planet-destroying carbon pollution</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And ripped the heart out of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In just the past year this Court, now stacked with 3 new and deeply unqualified (but young!) hard-right Trump-humping activists, has already ruled to:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">End the 6th Amendment right of prisoners to challenge convictions when their lawyers were demonstrably corrupt or incompetent (Shinn v Ramirez. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “The Court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Further gut Americans’ right to vote. In 3 separate cases, Merrill v Milligan, Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, and Ardoin v. Robinson the six rightwing justices endorsed three separate Republican gerrymanders and voting maps in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Alabama that were each unabashedly based on efforts to enhance the electoral power of white voters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remove from US citizens who move to (or live in) Puerto Rico the right to receive certain Social Security benefits in their US v Vaello-Madero case. Whacking the rights of over 300,000 Americans living in PR, the six crazies on the Court ruled that only Congress could fix the damage they themselves were doing. The problem with that, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, is that because PR isn’t yet a state and has no member of Congress to fight on their behalf the Court was simply “punishing disparities suffered by citizen residents of Puerto Rico under Congress’ unequal treatment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Take away your Miranda rights to remain silent, avoid self-incrimination, and know you have access to a lawyer. Americans cannot, the 6 “conservatives” on the Court ruled in Vega v. Tekoh, sue police officers who fail to tell them their Miranda rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eliminate many non-citizens’ rights under the Constitution when abused by the federal government. While the Constitution refers to “persons” rather than “citizens” in most critical places (like the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law), the Court decided in two cases, Garland v. Gonzalez and in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, that noncitizens often are not entitled to bond hearings or class-wide injunctive relief when screwed by the feds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rip away 4th Amendment privacy rights against unreasonable search and seizure for all persons living within 100 miles of an ocean or our borders with Mexico or Canada (that’s two out of three American citizens – even here in Portland, I’m within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean). In Egbert v Boule, the six rightwingers on the Court ruled that border patrol and other federal officers can search you, your home, or your vehicle for any old reason they want because you live in the vicinity of a border or ocean and they consider you suspicious. No warrant necessary anymore.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Give police officers who use excessive force immunity from accountability. In Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna and City of Tahlequah, OK v. Bond the Court upheld its own invention, the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” that makes it almost impossible to sue cops when they wail on you or even kill you (in the Tahlequah case they killed a man in his own garage) for little or no reason.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kill the power of the EPA under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon pollution or protect communities from having their water supplies poisoned by industry seeking profits. West Virginia v EPA ended that agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and Louisiana v American Rivers handed polluters, overturning 50 years of precedent, the power to overrule states’ and tribes’ rules against pollution of their waterways.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was last year, and apparently it was just a warm-up:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now the Court, in addition to taking on Moore v Harper that could guarantee no Democrat in our lifetimes will ever again become president, is planning to take a second large bite out of the Voting Rights Act in Merrill v Mulligan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina the 6-judge majority will probably end affirmative action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District the Court allowed a coach to impose prayer on public school students because “religious liberty.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even as guns have become the leading cause of death among American children and gun-related crime is washing over our country like a poisonous bloody tide, the Court is preparing to unleash even more weapons on our nation by gutting gun owner licensure laws in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Virtually every one of these decisions are or will be based on the power the Court gave itself to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed by the President in its 1803 Marbury v Madison case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That case caused such a backlash that the next time the Court ruled on a major constitutional issue was in 1856 with Dred Scott v Sanford, which arguably kicked off the Civil War and President Lincoln refused to recognize.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From the founding of our republic until the post-Reconstruction era, the Court rarely ruled to strike down or modified laws based on their reading of Constitution. Mostly it just did its job as the final court of appeals; after all, the buck has to stop somewhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s how it’s designed in the Constitution: when different judges disagree or cases go back-and-forth on appeal, the Supreme Court makes the final decision about who wins and who loses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in the early days of the republic the Court was sometimes referred to as the “chickens and dogs court” because so many cases had to do with disputes between farmers (most of America was agricultural at the time).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea of deciding cases on the basis of the Constitution was considered exotic or bizarre, and the idea of striking down laws made by Congress and signed by the president was so unthinkable it was only done twice in major cases during the first century of this nation’s history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the Court voted in 1803 to give itself the power to claim the Constitution as its excuse to overturn Congress’ laws, then-President Jefferson reflected the outrage of the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is literally nothing in the Constitution that gives the Supreme Court the exclusive right to decide what the Constitution says or means and impose it on the other two branches of government, or on the rest of America. That is a power the Supreme Court took onto itself in that 1803 decision of its own, Marbury v Madison.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was such a radical step that it drove then-President Jefferson to declare:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[O]ur Constitution…has given — according to this opinion — to one of [the three branches of government] alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others; and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The popular outrage was so intense that, after that 1803 Marbury decision, the Supreme Court only ruled twice between the founding of our nation and the 1860s on a constitutional issue, and in each case both Congress and the president at the time ignored the ruling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first was President Andrew Jackson when the Court ruled the Second National Bank was constitutional and Jackson shut it down anyway, claiming it wasn’t. He said:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others… The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A generation later, President Abraham Lincoln chose to explicitly ignore the Supreme Court’s expansion of chattel slavery in its 1856 Dred Scott v Sanford decision, as did Congress, and even went on to free enslaved Americans before the Court could weigh in again.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead of putting the Supreme Court in charge of American laws, the Framers of the Constitution did the opposite: they put Congress in charge of the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As they wrote in Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[T]he Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans know this well. When John Roberts worked as an attorney for Ronald Reagan, he suggested that both Brown v Board and Roe v Wade could be overturned by Congress by simply stripping from the Court the power to decide on issues of race or abortion (as I detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most recently, in the wake of the Obergefell gay marriage decision, Republicans in Congress offered a law stripping from the Court its power to rule that gay people could get married. The Marriage Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives on July 22, 2004 but failed in the Senate, explicitly says:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C or this section.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While this sort of court-stripping is likely to meet resistance both from Congress and from the Supreme Court, a much easier step is to simply reduce the power of the Court to go off on these wild excursions based on their mind-reading of the Founders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That could be accomplished by Congress creating an “regulation” for the Court that says all decisions involving Constitutional matters must be decided by consensus (the most strict) or with no fewer than 7 out of 9 notes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other options include expanding the size of the Court, term-limiting the Court, or — what FDR had proposed — moving all over-70 justices (Alito, Thomas, and Roberts in 3 years) to “emeritus” status so they can continue to participate in deliberations but lose their vote (or all the emeritus members’ votes are consolidated into one when there’s consensus).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans are already talking out loud about state legislatures legally handing the 2024 election to Trump or DeSantis regardless of who wins, no insurrection necessary this time, because they’re assuming the Court will rule their way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, with Moore v Harper and even more toxic and democracy-hobbling or even democracy-destroying decisions coming before the Court, what can we do?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the very least, Congress should mandate that the Court abide by the same ethics rules that every other federal court and judge must follow, and that all arguments and decisions be televised. This would increase the power of dissenters on the Court and raise the integrity-focusing power of the spotlight of public opinion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of these options are within the power of Congress, should it choose to end the filibuster and exercise that power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever strategy Democratic leadership and the Biden administration choose, America is today in the midst of a severe constitutional crisis and action is needed right now or, at the very least, in the weeks immediately after this November’s election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we fail, 2024 may be this nation’s last election for president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an imi 10 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Founders of this nation, and the Framers who wrote our Constitution, created (as Ben Franklin famously said) a constitutional republic: a government “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed” through citizens’ (then white men) right to vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They referred to this as “republicanism” because it was based on the Greek and Roman republics (then thousands of years in the past but still remembered and idealized), and when put into law they called it “a Republican Form of Government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today that form of government in crisis in America, as that core right to vote that defines republicanism is under attack by Republican legislators in red states across our nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In emergency, break glass” is the almost-never-used option available should a building catch fire or otherwise be in crisis. There’s a similar alarm and safety valve built into the US Constitution that, like that glass in so many buildings, has never before been used to protect our republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: New report says 'evidence is mounting' for a disturbing reason the National Guard failed to act on Jan. 6</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s called the Guarantee Clause, and it’s the basis of the Right To Vote Act that has passed the House and is stalled by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Guarantee Clause, however, has never been used as a part of our everyday politics or law: most people, in fact, have never heard of it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s never been used or adopted as law by the courts so it’s essentially “potential power,” a powerful but tightly coiled force quietly waiting for a real emergency, buried deep in our Constitution for 232 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it comes alive when Congress activates it for the first time, which could be right now because the Freedom to Vote Act does just that, explicitly firing it up by name.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: 'This speech is unhinged': Russia expert explains why he was truly scared by Putin's recent remarks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Manchin is one of its co-sponsors, although it’s mostly an effort by Senators Klobuchar (its main sponsor), Kaine, King, Merkley, Padilla, Tester, and Warnock. On the Republican side, it appears to have support from Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And when you understand the background of the Guarantee Clause, the urgency and the consistency of The Right To Vote Act with the Framer’s vision about the possibility of this political moment is unmistakable:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 18, 1787</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a brutally hot summer in Philadelphia that year, and a week and a day after a mob chased down Mrs. Korbmacher on the streets outside Independence Hall (then the seat of the Pennsylvania legislature) and beat her to death for witchcraft.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inside the Hall, the delegates were writing the Constitution for a new nation, and the question had come up whether the new US government should have the power — or the obligation — to “guarantee” that no state could so change its laws as to deprive its citizens of a “Republican Form of Government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: The real reason right-wingers get so triggered by Dr. Fauci</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was particularly important, as British law at the time specifically outlawed republicanism: only monarchy was allowed, and citizens had to swear fealty to the king. Nowhere in the “civilized world” of 1787, in fact, was it legal for a nation to elect their own representatives and live under their own laws, all made and enforced “by the consent of the governed” through “a Republican Form of Government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of the long, intense day, James Madison wrote a short letter to Thomas Jefferson, who was then the US envoy to France and living in Paris, assuring him he was taking “lengthy notes” but couldn’t fill his mentor in on the details because he was “still under the mortification of being restrained from disclosing any part of their proceedings.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, those notes taken during the Convention wouldn’t see publication for another roughly 50 years, after all the men in the Hall were dead, a concession to numerous delegates who’d essentially sold out their wealthy acquaintances by ensuring a republican democracy or allowing slavery to continue (there were compromises on both sides, some of which, like the electoral college and setup of the 2-votes-only-regardless-of-population Senate, cripple us to this day).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before them for debate that day was proposed constitutional language: “That a republican constitution and its existing laws ought to be guarantied to each state by the United States.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: Madison Cawthorn says he and his wife are getting divorced after being married 8 months</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An immediate objection came up from both New York’s Gouverneur Morris and New Jersey’s William Houston, because that language would allow the new states to keep laws that some delegates thought weren’t “republican” in nature.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Morris, in particular, was an outspoken abolitionist and (from the left) wanted slavery phased out, and also opposed (from the right) laws like the one Rhode Island’s legislature was then debating that would have equalized all wealth in that state every 13 years. That “Jubilee” idea was a prescription for chaos, Morris believed, and thus a threat to the new republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The judgment of history weighed on Morris. Madison later recounted that, “He came here as a representative of America; he flattered himself he came here in some degree as a Representative of the whole human race; for the whole human race will be affected by the proceedings of this Convention.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus it was no surprise when Morris rose to object that the proposed language could keep terrible state laws in place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: Unvaccinated NFL player slams league's COVID protocols after testing positive for the virus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS thought the resolution very objectionable,” Madison wrote. “He should be very unwilling that such laws as exist in Rhode Island should be guarantied.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Jersey’s William Houston, a mathematics professor and abolitionist who served as a Captain in Washington’s army, concurred — although he was more concerned with not wanting to encourage laws that maintained slavery and debt peonage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. HOUSTON,” Madison noted, “was afraid of perpetuating the existing constitutions of the states. That of Georgia was a very bad one, and he hoped would be revised and amended.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At which point several men rose to point out they were debating the power of the federal government to “guarantee a Republican Form of Government” to all the states — but what if power-hungry people in a particular state were to rise up in rebellion and seize control of that state’s government, thus ending statewide republicanism and creating a minor dictatorship or cult?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then, what if that state then threatened other states’ ability to have a government reflecting the will of the people?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or tried to take them over either by corrupting them from within or invasion? (This was not an idle fear: both happened just 74 years later in 1861.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Massachusetts’ Nathaniel Gorham was particularly outspoken about this, given how there had been attempts by both rich landowners and Pilgrim clergy in his state over the past century to turn the state into a dictatorial theocracy (leading Roger Williams to flee and split off Rhode Island in the 1670s).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If such a thing were to happen again and succeed, Gorham wondered, shouldn’t the federal government have the power to intervene so it could guarantee the states around Massachusetts and its residents a republican form of government where those with political power had to answer to “the people” rather than just the clergy or the rich? What if a wealthy oligarch declared himself a monarch?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. GORHAM thought it strange that a rebellion should be known to exist in the empire,” Madison wrote, “and the general government should be restrained from interposing to subdue it. At this rate, an enterprising citizen might erect the standard of monarchy in a particular state; might gather together partisans from all quarters; might extend his views from state to state, and threaten to establish a tyranny over the whole,—and the general government be compelled to remain an inactive witness of its own destruction.” [emphasis added]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response, Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, a scholar of Greek democracy and an abolitionist, suggested different language for the Fourth Section of the Constitution’s Fourth Article:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[T]hat a republican form of government shall be guarantied to each state; and that each state shall be protected against foreign and domestic violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That did the trick.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This seeming to be well received,” Madison noted, “Mr. MADISON and Mr. RANDOLPH withdrew their propositions, and, on the question for agreeing to Mr. Wilson’s motion, it passed, nem. con.” The convention then adjourned for the day and Madison went home to write his letter to Jefferson.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That day’s debate is what gave us Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s an amazing sentence, that could be as sweeping in its power as the Commerce Clause (which JFK and LBJ used to force integration of the South), but has never really been used in any meaningful way since it was written on that hot summer day in 1787.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first time this “Guarantee Clause” came before the Supreme Court, slavery was the law of the land and Chief Justice Roger Taney, a former slaveholder, was determined to keep it that way by bottling up that Clause’s power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Seven years before he tried to cement slavery into the law of every state in the union with his Dred Scott decision, Taney ruled in Luther v Borden (1849) that his Supreme Court would never be allowed to interfere with state’s rights on the basis of the Guarantee Clause.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Under this article of the Constitution,” Taney wrote, “it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a state.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, Taney said: The definition of what a ‘Republican Form of Government’ actually means isn’t yet laid out in the law or previous interpretations of the Constitution: therefore, it’s politics. And politics is the province of Congress, not the Supreme Court, which must limit itself to law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On that foundation, later Supreme Courts repeated Taney’s assertion that the question was political and not one to be decided by the courts: instead it was up to the politicians in Congress if they were going to “guarantee a Republican Form of Government” to — or within — any particular state at any point in the future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Taney was quoted “lucidly and cogently” in Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph v Oregon (1912) and Chief Justice John Roberts noted in 2019 that, “This Court has several times concluded that the Guarantee Clause does not provide the basis for a justiciable claim.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, to this day, it’s up to Congress, not the Court, to decide what a “Republican Form of Government” is and how Congress will guarantee it to and/or within every state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which brings us to today, and how Congress can end partisan gerrymanders, dial back the power of money in politics, and guarantee the right of every American citizen to vote without undue difficulty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The opening of the Freedom To Vote Act lays it out clearly:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Congress also finds that it has both the authority and responsibility, as the legislative body for the United States, to fulfill the promise of article IV, section 4, of the Constitution, which states: ‘The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a “Republican Form of Government.”’” [emphasis added]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The proposed law even notes as justification for its existence how the Supreme Court has dropped — or laid down — the ball and therefore Congress must pick it up:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Congress finds that its authority and responsibility to enforce the Guarantee Clause is clear given that Federal courts have not enforced this clause because they understood that its enforcement is committed to Congress by the Constitution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Freedom To Vote Act ensures a “Republican Form of Government” in America by providing:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Automatic voter registration and online registration for 16 year olds who will be 18 and thus eligible to vote in the next election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Same day voter registration nationwide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ends partisan gerrymandering</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Limits campaign contributions to a maximum of $10,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Criminalizes “pass through” groups to get around campaign finance laws</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires companies to fully and rapidly disclose all election spending over $10,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires all websites (like Facebook) with more than 50 million users to create a publicly available and publicly searchable archive of political ads</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brings web-based election expenditures under the same disclosure rules as TV</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Makes it a federal crime to prevent a person from registering to vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires 14 consecutive days for early voting, at least 10 hours each day</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires easy access to polling places for rural and college campus voters, and easy access to voting for all voters by public transportation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guarantees that all voters, nationwide, can vote by mail with no excuses necessary</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guarantees that all voters can put themselves on a permanent vote-by-mail list and automatically receive a ballot in the mail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires states to give voters the ability to track their mail-in ballots to be sure they’re counted or contest any challenge to their ballot</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forbids states from forcing mail-in voters to have their ballots witnessed, notarized or jump through other onerous hoops</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires secured and clearly labeled ballot drop boxes in all jurisdictions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires the Post Office to process all ballots on the day they’re dropped off and without postage</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires states to keep voting lines shorter than 30 minutes in all cases and places</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allows people waiting in line to vote to receive food or water from others</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gives the right to vote to all felons who have served their sentences, in all states</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prohibits voter “caging” where failure to return a postcard gets you purged</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prohibits states from deleting voters from the rolls because they haven’t recently voted</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Empowers voters to sue in federal court any state or local officials who interfere with their right to vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Criminalizes intimidating, threatening or coercing any election official or election worker</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires federal prosecution of anybody who tries to harm or undermine public officials by doxxing the personal information of an election worker or their immediate family</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Makes it a federal crime to publish or distribute false information about elections (when, where, etc.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Increases federal penalties for voter intimidation or otherwise interfering with your absolute right to vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Keeps partisan “poll watchers” at least 8 feet from voters in all circumstances, including while voting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires paper ballots in all cases and all elections (there are exceptions for disabled voters)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires post-election audits</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Provides criminal penalties for any candidate or campaign that fails to fully and immediately report any interactions with foreign governments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gives lower income individuals $25 they can use to give to candidates in $5 or more increments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Freedom To Vote Act is more urgently needed with every passing day, as multiple Republican-controlled states openly (and ironically) tear down actual “republican principles” of representative government by continuing to pass laws that pre-rig election outcomes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some have even gone so far as to introduce laws that authorize their legislatures to ignore or reject votes they don’t like, in anticipation of the 2024 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Passing this law must now be the Senate’s first priority because, “It’s a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 8 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/donald-trump-conspiracy-even-bigger/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">there was, it increasingly appears, a conspiracy involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy along the lines of Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This would be followed, after the January 20th swearing-in of Trump for a second term, by a complete realignment of US foreign policy away from NATO and the EU and toward oligarchic, autocratic nations like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the possibility of this traitorous plan becomes increasingly visible, the GOP, after a frantic two weeks of not knowing what to say or do, has finally settled on a response to Trump’s theft of classified information: “Hillary did the same thing, and she didn’t go to jail!” I heard the comparison made at least a half-dozen times this weekend on various political shows.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(For the record, Hillary did nothing whatsoever even remotely close to Trump’s theft of classified materials. Among the 50,000+ personal emails on her server, Republicans found three that had markings indicating they were at one time classified, none had to do with espionage or compromised national security in any way, and all three were clearly there because she had replied to somebody using the wrong account in error. But we can expect this to be the distraction line coming from Trump and the GOP all this week.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, what did Trump do, and why did he do it? And who helped him and why?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s little dispute that on January 6th, 2020, an armed mob incited by Donald Trump and led by members of several white supremacist militias tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 7-million-vote victory in the November 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evidence is growing, however, that the leadership of this conspiracy to end our form of government and replace it with a Putin-style strongman oligarchy wasn’t limited to Trump, Stone, Giuliani, and a few dozen militia members.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While, at this moment, most of the evidence is circumstantial, collectively it paints a damning picture for which it’s hard to find any other possible explanation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article’s opening sentence describes the worst-case scenario that the media seems to be going out of its way not to even get close to mentioning. Again, this is, at this moment, still speculation, in large part because the alleged conspirators have been so successful at destroying much of the evidence that might have implicated (or cleared) them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Trump was truly planning not just to hang onto the presidency but to concurrently seize every lever of power in Washington — the way coups conducted from “inside of government” (like Putin and Orbán did) typically happen — he’d need some help, particularly from the military and the senior levels of federal law enforcement. So let’s start there.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over at the Department of Defense, then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and his Chief of Staff Kash Patel (formerly of Devin Nunes’ staff) were running the place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They controlled the Pentagon and our armed forces but, more importantly, they controlled the National Guard, whose troops had previously surrounded buildings in the Capitol area three-deep during the peaceful BLM protests in the summer of 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[twt]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the prospect that violence was heading toward the Capitol on January 6th wasn’t a secret to anybody with a Twitter or Facebook account: the nation was awash with threats and planning for violence, much of it in the open.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This apparently so alarmed Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy that, on January 4th, he reached out to his boss, Trump’s recently-appointed Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, to get permission to send the National Guard to the Capitol building on January 6th to prevent the violence they were seeing being planned all over social media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Acting Defense Secretary Miller, in the effective role of commander of our entire military just one step below Commander-in-Chief Trump (on whose behalf he acted), then issued a memo (attached at the end of this article) on January 4th specifically directing McCarthy and the National Guard that they were:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not authorized to be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not to interact physically with protestors, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not to employ any riot control agents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not to share equipment with law enforcement agencies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not authorized to use Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets or to conduct ISR or Incident, Awareness, and Assessment activities in assistance to Capitol Police.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not allowed to employ helicopters or any other air assets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not to conduct searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not authorized to seek support from any non-DC National Guard units.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If this isn’t bad enough, on January 6th itself — as armed traitors were attacking police and searching to “hang Mike Pence” — Chris Miller oversaw a mid-afternoon, mid-riot conference call in which Army Secretary McCarthy was again asking for authority to immediately bring in the National Guard.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations General Charles Flynn, the brother of convicted/pardoned foreign agent General Michael Flynn (who had been pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines nationwide) was on the call; both the Pentagon and the Army, it has been reported, lied to the press, Congress, and, apparently, to the Biden administration about his presence on that call for almost a year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It wasn’t until December that it was widely reported that the National Security Council’s Colonel Earl Matthews (who was also on the call) wrote a memo calling both Charles Flynn and Lt. Gen Walter Piatt, the Director of Army Staff, "absolute and unmitigated liars" for their testimony to Congress in which they both denied they’d argued to withhold the National Guard on January 6th.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most recently — just in the past few weeks — we discover that the phones and text messages of most of the group, including Chris Miller, Walter Piatt, Kash Patel and Ryan McCarthy, were all wiped of all conversations they had on January 6th.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ICE, whose plainclothes agents were sent by Trump to Portland to beat up and kidnap protesters off the street and used, essentially, as his private militia was also instructed by the Trump Administration to wipe all their phones after January 6th.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If they were involved in a plan to help Trump take over and run the government — as usually happens when coups involve senior levels of the military — it’s going to take a lot of digging to find out, since this coverup of their activities and conversations on January 6th was apparently in place for almost a full year before it was discovered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, if Trump was planning to install himself in power in a way that echoed and aligned him with Putin, he’d need the active help and support of his palace guard, the Secret Service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here, again, we discover that the evidence is not only missing but that Trump appointees — still in government — knew about it for over a year and concealed that information from the January 6th Committee, Congress, and the media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was at the same time that Trump was maintaining possession of documents for which foreign governments would be willing to spend billions. In fact, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and others have spent billions of dollars on acquiring secrets and documents of that sort, via their annual intelligence budgets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump would also have needed the support of several foreign governments if he was planning to end American democracy and re-align our nation with oligarchies run along the lines he and Putin were possibly envisioning.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia would logically be at the top of that list because of their military, oil, and financial power, followed by Turkey, Hungary, and Egypt because of their strategic locations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And lest you think that even Trump wouldn’t be so audacious as to solicit help from a foreign government to hold power, please remember that he was impeached for exactly that: his attempted extortion of Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to smear Joe Biden.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A couple of events from last year might highlight the echoes of those plans to end American democracy and re-align our government with Russia/China/Saudi Arabia. If Trump was coordinating with foreign governments, suddenly a lot of seemingly disparate and inchoate events make sense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, throughout 2020 and in January of 2021, Trump removed from the White House to Mar-a-Lago hundreds of Top Secret (and above) documents that, according to multiple news reports, contained information that could reveal the identities and locations of America’s spies and agents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and Kushner already had a history of illegally sharing Top Secret “human intelligence” information with Saudi dictator Mohammed Bin Salman dating back to when MBS staged his own coup/takeover of the Saudi government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The Jerusalem Post reported on March 23, 2018:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kushner, who is the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, and the crown prince had a late October meeting in Riyadh.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A week later, Mohammed began what he called an ‘anti-corruption crackdown.’ The Saudi government arrested and jailed dozens of members of the Saudi royal family in a Riyadh hotel – among them Saudi figures named in a daily classified brief read by the president and his closest advisers that Kushner read avidly….</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, Mohammed told confidants that he and Kushner discussed Saudis identified in the classified brief as disloyal to Mohammed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The day before, CBS and The Intercept quoted MBS as gloating that Kushner was “in his pocket.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post noted that:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recently ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy and might make naive mistakes, according to ­people familiar with their ­reactions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">… [National Security Advisor] McMaster was concerned there were no official records kept of what was said on the calls.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tillerson was even more aggrieved, they said, once remarking to staff: ‘Who is secretary of state here?’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, throughout his presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Russia’s President Putin (over 20 have been identified, including one just days before the 2020 election).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documents more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump Campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings just leading up to the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The manager of his 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort, who previously worked on behalf of Vladimir Putin, has recently admitted that he was regularly feeding inside campaign information to Russian intelligence. There is no known parallel to this behavior by any president in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post, just yesterday, reported that Trump had a habit of carrying top-secret information that could damage our national security, intentionally leaving it in hotel rooms in hostile nations:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Boxes of documents even came with Trump on foreign travel, following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries considered foreign adversaries of the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mueller Report identifies ten specific instances of Trump trying to obstruct the investigation, including offering the bribe of a pardon to Paul Manafort, asking FBI Director Comey to “go easy” on General Flynn, and directing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s ability to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Mueller Report noted:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who would could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For instance, the President attempted to remove the Attorney General; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions un-recuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It adds, detailing Trump’s specific obstruction of justice crimes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. For example, the President’s direction to McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed was followed almost immediately by his direction to Lewandowski to tell the Attorney General to limit the scope of the Russia investigation to prospective election-interference only—a temporal connection that suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose with respect to the investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are, after all, credible assertions that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, explicitly celebrating a victory they truly believed they helped make happen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador, resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” (relocate, change identity of) that spy. That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime US spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As CNN noted when the story leaked two years later:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned the spy was so great that, at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may have helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine, we pulled the spy out of Russia in 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, when they met in Helsinki, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is also fluent in English and German) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large room in which they met.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Things were picking up in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within a year, The New York Times ran a story with the headline: “Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by Donald Trump himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also in 2019, when the international press verified that Putin was paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American service members in Afghanistan (and 4 had died as a result), Trump refused to demand the practice stop, a possible sign that Putin ran him, not the other way around.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The New York Times noted at the time:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence... But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead of stopping Putin, Trump shut down every US airbase in Afghanistan except one (there were about a dozen), crippling incoming President Biden’s ability to extract US assets from the country in an orderly fashion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a visit to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump made “promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress":</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along his journey toward converting America into a full-blown oligarchy (as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class), Trump has picked up quite a few democracy-skeptical allies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As early as 2018, for example, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a private note from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s side with regard to the 2020 election and, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago this month, responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act. Perhaps he had ambitious plans for a role in the Trump administration after the planned end of American democracy?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With that backstory, consider more contemporary events to see if they fit together.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In January of last year Trump stole and moved to Florida information that, multiple sources assert, would reveal the identities of many of our spies, as well as our nuclear plans and capabilities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three months later, in March of 2021, Jared Kushner filed papers showing that his brand new investment company — against the advice of the Saudi government but at MBS’s order — had received over $2 billion from the Kingdom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s still unknown if or how much money the Kingdom gave to Trump himself, presumably through the dark offshore accounts common among billionaires like Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was not the first time Kushner had apparently altered US foreign policy or shared valuable US secrets with Middle East players in exchange for large quantities of cash that flowed directly to him or other members of the Trump family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As investigative reporter Vicky Ward notes in the most recent post on Vicky Ward Investigates on Substack:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kushner was struggling with the ticking time bomb of a $1.8 billion mortgage on 666 Fifth Avenue that would come due in February of 2019—a debt no domestic buyer was interested in. Not even the Chinese or Qataris wanted it. … Kushner desperately needed a bail-out for his troubled building…and the clock was ticking.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then, in the spring of 2018, two things happened within weeks. First, the U.S. withdrew their support of the blockade of Qatar, leading the Saudis and Emiratis to lift it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then, Brookfield, a Canadian real estate investment trust whose largest outside shareholder is the Qatari government, bailed out the Kushners in a deal that has real estate moguls rolling their eyes to this day: A 99-year lease paid upfront on a building that was bleeding money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which brings us back, again, to last year, just after Trump’s failed January 6th attempt to overthrow the US government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About six months after the Saudis gave Kushner that second batch of billions, we learned that for several months “dozens” of American spies and agents had been “captured or killed” around the world. As The Washington Post reported on October 5, 2021:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is it possible that all these different data points are part of one whole?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That Trump had a plan, worked out with Putin, MBS, a few dozen high administration officials, and a large handful of Republicans in the House and Senate, to overthrow our government and establish an oligarchic system like what is currently in place in Russia and that Fox “News” showcased in Hungary?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That once that overthrow was completed under the gimmick of six Republican-controlled states “discovering voter fraud” and changing their Electoral College votes, the plan was that Trump and his GOP allies (including the 11 Republican senators who, this May, voted against aid to Ukraine) would quickly move to re-align America away from NATO/EU and toward Russia/Saudi Arabia?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That, as soon as he was sworn in for a second term, he’d invoke his October 21, 2020 Executive Order 13957 that would instantly fire 50,000 senior Civil Service employees encompassing the management of every federal agency including the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DHS, and allow Trump to replace all of them with nakedly political loyalist appointees?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That as soon as that transformation of America and our alliances was complete, Trump would use a national state of emergency to suppress dissent and seize control of voting systems across the nation to insure he and the Republicans loyal to him would continue in power for the long run?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And that the deaths of our spies, the Saudi-driven explosion in oil prices when Biden came into office, Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine, and even Xi’s cranking up his aggression against Taiwan were all just the echoes of Trump’s failed plan?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all, it’s not like we’ve never had a coup attempt before in this country: wealthy industrialists tried to kidnap or kill President Franklin Roosevelt 91 years ago and turn America into an Italian/German-style fascist state “friendly to capitalism.” Not a single one of those conspirators were ever arrested or tried; why not try again?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While, as noted, some of this is just speculation right now, every day we get more information that seems to validate it. After all, if you’re going to try to overthrow your nation’s government and anoint yourself dictator for life, wouldn’t you want to do everything possible to guarantee your success? Why just do half-measures?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only “innocent” explanation I can come up with for Trump stealing spy-level documents and squirreling them away in Florida is what I noted in my Saturday Report last weekend:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump is simply mentally ill with a condition common among billionaires: hoarding syndrome. If he hadn’t been born rich, he’d be living in an apartment filled with newspapers and old tin cans from floor to ceiling; instead, he hoards money and anything else he thinks has value that gets close enough to grab.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is ‘normal’ among kleptocrats like Idi Amin or Baby Doc Duvalier: they think that they are the state, so everything the state owns is their property. Supporting this premise are over 3,000 former contractors and employees (including attorneys) who’ve sued Trump because he’s refused to pay them over the years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even if that’s the extent of it — which I believe is extremely unlikely — we appear to have dodged a huge bullet here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was there a high-level conspiracy in the Trump administration, done in concert with one or more foreign countries, to end democracy in America?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Did they intend to seize control of our government on January 6 and never let go?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was their next plan to realign us with autocratic nations like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given how effectively it appears much of the evidence including emails, phone calls, and text messages (that could exonerate as well as convict) has been destroyed, much of that destruction apparently done by Trump himself while in office (toilets, papers being burned, etc.) and, more recently, by Trump appointees still in our government, we may never know.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But even the possibility — that the question can be credibly raised given the evidence laid out here (which only scratches the surface) — should give every American pause.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The challenge going forward is now to repair the damage — both foreign and domestic — that this traitor and his colleagues in the GOP did to our nation, and then to make sure no Trump wannabee can ever repeat his attempt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/how-a-serial-killer-set-the-stage-for-today-s-gop/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last weekend Senator Pat Toomey went on Jake Tapper’s State of the Union to try to clean up Republican sabotage of a bill to provide healthcare to millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. He didn’t do himself or his party any favors as he tried to weasel out of responsibility; America knows that after the bill was defeated Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley fist-bumped in celebration of screwing our vets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How is it that Republicans can casually embrace such cruelty? Why have 12 GOP-controlled states refused to this day to expand Medicaid for their 30 million minimum-wage working people when the federal government covers 90 percent of the cost?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why are Republicans so committed to destroying Medicare and Social Security? Why do they go so far as to use the disrespectful slur “democrat party” when there’s no such thing in America and never has been?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why are Democratic members of Congress having to armor their own homes, having received over 9000 death threats so far this year, virtually all of them from domestic terrorists who Republicans refuse to repudiate? The FBI today is looking for a Matt Gaetz supporter who threatened to murder Gaetz’s Democratic opponent: why are these people attracted to the GOP?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It turns out this is not just politics; the roots of this brutal movement in today’s GOP run from a 1927 child murderer, through a greedy real-estate lobbying group, to Ronald Reagan putting both of their philosophies into actual practice and bringing morbidly rich right-wing billionaires into the GOP fold.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, Republican policies over the past 40 years not only gutted America’s middle class and transferred $50 trillion from the middle class to the top 1 percent, but also led straight to the Trump presidency and the attack on the Capitol on January 6th that he led.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Libertarians</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reporter Mark Ames documents how, back in the 1940s, a real estate lobbying group came up with the idea of creating a new political party to justify deregulating the real estate and finance industries so they could make more money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This new “Libertarian Party” would give an ideological and political cover to their goal of becoming government-free, and they developed an elaborate pretense of governing philosophy around it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their principal argument was that if everybody acted separately and independently, in all cases with maximum selfishness, such behavior would actually benefit society. There would be no government needed beyond an army and a police force, and a court system to defend the rights of property owners. It was a bizarre twisting of Adam Smith’s reference to the “invisible hand” that regulated trade among nations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1980, billionaire David Koch ran for vice president on the newly formed Libertarian Party ticket. His platform included calls to privatize the Post Office, end all public schools, give Medicare and Medicaid to big insurance companies, end all taxation of the morbidly rich, terminate food and housing support and all other forms of “welfare,” deregulate all corporate oversight while shutting down the EPA and FDA, and selling off much of the federal government’s land and other assets to billionaires and big corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan, who won that 1980 election, embraced this view in his inaugural address, saying, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He then doubled down on the idea by beginning the systematic process of gutting and crippling governmental institutions that historically had supported working people and the middle class.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The child-killer who inspired a movement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan wasn’t just echoing the Libertarian vision; he was also endorsing Ayn Rand’s “objectivist” view of the world, which traces its roots to a murderous sociopath in 1927.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 2015, Donald Trump told USA Today’s Kirsten Powers that his favorite book was Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, “The Fountainhead.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” he told Powers. “That book relates to … everything.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ayn Rand’s novels have informed libertarian Republicans like former Speaker of the House of Representatives and current Fox News board member Paul Ryan, who required interns to read her books when they joined his staff.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Powers added, “He [Trump],” told her that he “identified with Howard Roark, the protagonist who designs skyscrapers and rages against the establishment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand’s hero Roark, in fact, “raged” so much in her novel that he blew up a public housing project with dynamite.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand, in her Journals, explained where she got her inspiration for Howard Roark and the leading male characters in so many of her other novels. She writes that the theme of The Fountainhead, for example, is, “One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Trump’s hero Howard Roark, she wrote that he “has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world. He knows what he wants and what he thinks. He needs no other reasons, standards or considerations. His complete selfishness is as natural to him as breathing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It turns out that Roark and many of her other characters were based on a real person. The man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was named William Edward Hickman, and he lived in Los Angeles during the Roaring Twenties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ten days before Christmas in 1927, Hickman, a teenager with slicked dark hair and tiny, muted eyes, drove up to Mount Vernon Junior High School in Los Angeles and kidnapped Marion Parker — the daughter of a wealthy banker in town.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman held the girl ransom, demanding $1,500 from her father — back then about a year’s salary. Supremely confident that he would elude capture, Hickman signed his name on the ransom notes, “The Fox.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After two days, Marion’s father agreed to hand over the ransom in exchange for the safety of his daughter. What Perry Parker didn’t know is that Hickman never intended to live up to his end of the bargain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Pittsburgh Press detailed what Hickman, in his own words, did next.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It was while I was fixing the blindfold that the urge to murder came upon me,” he said. “I just couldn’t help myself. I got a towel and stepped up behind Marion. Then, before she could move, I put it around her neck and twisted it tightly.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman didn’t hold back on any of these details: he was proud of his cold-bloodedness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I held on and she made no outcry except to gurgle. I held on for about two minutes, I guess, and then I let go. When I cut loose the fastenings, she fell to the floor. I knew she was dead.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Hickman wasn’t finished. “After she was dead I carried her body into the bathroom and undressed her, all but the underwear, and cut a hole in her throat with a pocket knife to let the blood out.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman then dismembered the child piece-by-piece, putting her limbs in a cabinet in his apartment, and then wrapped up the carved-up torso, powdered the lifeless face of Marion Parker, set what was left of her stump torso with the head sitting atop it in the passenger seat of his car, and drove to meet her father to collect the ransom money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He even sewed open her eyelids to make it look like she was alive.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the way, Hickman dumped body parts out of his car window, before rendezvousing with Marion Parker’s father.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Armed with a shotgun so her father wouldn’t come close enough to Hickman’s car to see that Marion was dead, Hickman collected his $1,500, then kicked open the door and tossed the rest of Marion Parker onto the road. As he sped off, her father fell to his knees, screaming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Days later, the police caught up with a defiant and unrepentant Hickman in Oregon. His lawyers pleaded insanity, but the jury gave him the gallows.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To nearly everyone, Hickman was a monster. The year of the murder, the Los Angeles Times called it “the most horrible crime of the 1920s.” Hickman was America’s most despicable villain at the time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ayn Rand falls in love with a “superman”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But to Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, a 21-year-old Russian political science student who’d arrived in America just two years earlier, Hickman was a hero.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alissa was a squat five-foot-two with a flapper hairdo and wide, sunken dark eyes that gave her a haunting stare. Etched into those brooding eyes was burned the memory of a childhood backlit by the Russian Revolution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She had just departed Leninist Russia where, almost a decade earlier, there was a harsh backlash against the Russian property owners by the Bolsheviks. Alissa’s own family was targeted, and at the age of 12 she watched as Bolshevik soldiers burst into her father’s pharmacy, looted the store, and plastered on her Dad’s doors the red emblem of the state, indicating that his private business now belonged to “the people.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That incident left such a deep and burning wound in young Alissa’s mind that she went to college to study political science and vowed one day she’d become a famous writer to warn the world of the dangers of Bolshevism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starting afresh in Hollywood, she anglicized her name to Ayn Rand, and moved from prop-girl to screenwriter/novelist, basing the heroes of several of her stories on a man she was reading about in the newspapers at the time. A man she wrote effusively about in her diaries. A man she hero-worshipped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Edward Hickman was the most notorious man in American in 1928, having achieved the level of national fame that she craved.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Young Ayn Rand saw in Hickman the “ideal man” she based The Fountainhead on, and used to ground her philosophy and her life’s work. His greatest quality, she believed, was his unfeeling, pitiless selfishness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman’s words were carefully recounted by Rand in her Journals. His statement that, “I am like the state: what is good for me is right,” resonated deeply with her. It was the perfect articulation of her belief that if people pursued their own interests above all else — even above friends, family, or nation — the result would be utopian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She wrote in her diary that those words of Hickman’s were, “the best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I ever heard.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman — the monster who boasted about how he had hacked up a 12-year-old girl — had Rand’s ear, as well as her heart. She saw a strongman archetype in him, the way that people wearing red MAGA hats see a strongman savior in Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Hickman’s murder trial unfolded, Rand grew increasingly enraged at how the “mediocre” American masses had rushed to condemn her Superman.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The first thing that impresses me about the case,” Rand wrote in reference to the Hickman trial in early notes for a book she was working on titled The Little Street, “is the ferocious rage of the whole society against one man.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Astounded that Americans didn’t recognize the heroism Hickman showed when he proudly rose above simply conforming to society’s rules, Rand wrote, “It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. … It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, with a consciousness all his own.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand explained that when the masses are confronted with such a bold actor, they neither understood nor empathized with him. Thus, “a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy [was] turned [by the media] into a purposeless monster.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The protagonist of the book that Rand was writing around that time was a boy named Danny Renahan. In her notes for the book, she wrote, “The model for the boy [Renahan] is Hickman.” He would be her ideal man, and the archetype for a philosophical movement that would transform a nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He is born with the spirit of Argon and the nature of a medieval feudal lord,” Rand wrote in her notes describing Renahan. “Imperious. Impatient. Uncompromising. Untamable. Intolerant. Unadaptable. Passionate. Intensely proud. Superior to the mob… an extreme ‘extremist.’ … No respect for anything or anyone.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand wanted capitalism in its most raw form, uncheck by any government that could control the rules of the market or promote the benefits of society. Such good intentions had, after all, caused the hell she’d experienced in the Bolshevik Revolution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ayn Rand, like Hickman, found peace and justification in the extremes of her economic, political, and moral philosophy. Forget about democratic institutions, forget about regulating markets, and forget about pursuing any policies that benefit the majority at the expense of the very rich — the petty political rule-makers and rule-enforcers could never, ever do anything well or good.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Libertarianism and Ayn Rand set the stage for Trumpism</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only billionaires should rule the world, Trump has suggested.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And he tried to put it into place, installing a billionaire advocate of destroying public schools in charge of public schools, a coal lobbyist representing billionaires in charge of the EPA, an billionaire-funded oil lobbyist in charge of our public lands, and a billionaire described by Forbes as a “grifter” in charge of the Commerce Department. Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven so far have died) would actually be a public good.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Ayn Rand might say, “Don’t just ignore the rules; destroy them.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Welfare and other social safety net programs were, as Rand saw it, “the glorification of mediocrity” in society. Providing a social safety net for the poor, disabled, or unemployed, she believed, were part of a way of thinking that promoted, “satisfaction instead of joy, contentment instead of happiness… a glow-worm instead of a fire.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sociopaths of the world, unite!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand, like Trump, lived a largely joyless life. She mercilessly manipulated people, particularly her husband and Alan Greenspan (who brought a dollar-sign-shaped floral arrangement to her funeral), and, like Trump, surrounded herself with cult-like followers who were only on the inside so long as they gave her total, unhesitating loyalty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Trump, McConnell, Stefanik and their billionaire backers, Rand believed that a government working to help out working-class “looters,” instead of solely looking out for rich capitalist “producers,” was throwing its “best people” under the bus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Rand’s universe, the producers had no obligations to the looters. Providing welfare or sacrificing one nickel of your own money to help a “looter” on welfare, unemployment, or Social Security — particularly if it was “taken at the barrel of a gun” (taxes) — was morally reprehensible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Trump saying, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” for Rand looking out for numero uno was the singular name of the game — selfishness was next to godliness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later in Rand’s life, in 1959, as she gained more notoriety for the moral philosophy of selfishness that she named “Objectivism” and that is today at the core of libertarianism and the GOP, she sat down for an interview with CBS reporter Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suggesting that selfishness undermines most truly American values, Wallace bluntly challenged Rand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life,” Wallace said to Rand. “Our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will… you scorn churches, and the concept of God… are these accurate criticisms?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Wallace was reciting the public criticisms of Rand, the CBS television cameras zoomed in closely on her face, as her eyes darted back and forth between the ground and Wallace’s fingers. But the question, with its implied condemnation, didn’t faze her at all. Rand said with confidence in a matter-of-fact tone, “Yes.” (4:20 in the clip)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 8 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/ronald-reagan/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">any Americans, looking at the GOP’s position on the issues, find themselves confused.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would the party claiming to be the last bastion of reverence for “life” in America also be the party that supports 50,000 American gun deaths every year, the leading cause of death among children and more than every other developed country in the world combined? Why would they support anti-abortion laws that don’t even contain exceptions for the life of the mother? Why do they fight so hard to keep healthcare out of the reach of so many Americans (12 GOP-controlled states still refuse to offer Medicaid — 90% paid for by the federal government — to their low-income working people)?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would the party that claims patriotism and the flag as their logos work so hard to make it difficult for people to vote? Why would they vote against supporting our veterans during their time of need? Why would they support authoritarian Russia and vote against aid to democratic Ukraine? Why do they celebrate an autocrat and fascist like Viktor Orbán and invite him to speak at their CPAC convention when he’s openly taking Russia’s side in its conflict with Europe and Ukraine; has shut down independent newspapers, TV, and radio in Hungary; and now preaches against the dangers of “race mixing”?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would the party that claims to stand up for the “average American” and “the little guy” work so hard to prevent working people from having union representation in the workplace? Why do they support giant monopolistic corporations that force the average American to pay more than $5000 a year over citizens of Europe or Canada for everything from airfare to cell service to pharmaceuticals to access to the internet? Why do they constantly try to reduce taxes on the morbidly rich while only throwing the smallest of bones to average working people and sticking our children with the debt?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell recently put together a “Republican Vote Tracker” that’s become a meme across the internet. He points out that the Republican vote totals just during this congressional session tell their own story:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0% of Republicans voted for cheaper gas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0% voted for cheaper insulin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0% voted for child tax credits to help out young families</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0% voted to end gerrymanders</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">0% voted for the Voting Rights Act</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1% voted to fight domestic terrorism</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4% voted for background checks to buy assault weapons</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6% voted for more baby formula</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">13% voted to stop domestic violence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">16% voted for veteran’s cancer care</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">23% voted to keep gay marriage legal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">32% voted to uphold the 2020 election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you do a deep dive into the guts of the GOP’s policy operations, the answer to all these questions becomes crystal clear: the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s was a revolution in the truest sense of the word.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a revolution in values as much as in economic and political policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to Reaganism (aka neoliberalism), Republicans believed that their job and the work of our government they controlled was to serve the needs of the American people and keep our country united around a common set of values and goals. My dad’s GOP of the 1950s supported community and working class people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, for example, continued the work started by Republican President Teddy Roosevelt back in 1901 and his distant cousin Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teddy started the break-up of the most egregiously giant corporate monopolies, made it a felony for corporations to fund political candidates for federal office, and Franklin raised taxes on the morbidly rich to a 91% bracket on income over around $3 million a year in today’s dollars.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eisenhower embraced those anti-trust and anti-corruption laws and the egalitarian American values they reflected. He kept the top tax rate at 91% for individuals and around 50% for the very most profitable corporations, expanded GI bill benefits, supported free college, maintained and strengthened regulation of banks, built the interstate highway system, encouraged unionization, and funded brand new hospitals, schools, and airports from one end of the nation to the other.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eisenhower also embraced public education: after Sputnik went up in 1957, his Education Department helped jump-start programs for gifted kids across the country (I was in one throughout elementary school), producing a generation of engineers and scientists who revolutionized the world with the transistor, integrated circuit, and lasers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He subsidized the development of what ultimately became personal computers and the internet, and funded research that revolutionized medicine with new classes of antibiotics, cancer drugs, and imaging technologies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Eisenhower’s rightwing brother Edgar wrote him a letter in 1954 worrying that all this support for working people and government funding for science was “socialist,” President Eisenhower was blunt in his response:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[T]o attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon ‘moderation’ in government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the third year of his first term, 1955, Eisenhower’s popularity rated by Gallup was between 68 and 79 percent. When he ran for re-election in 1956, his platform was explicit:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Under the Republican Administration, as our country has prospered, so have its people. This is as it should be, for as President Eisenhower said: ‘Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America.’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The record of performance of this Republican Administration on behalf of our working men and women goes still further:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Federal minimum wage has been raised for more than 2 million workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social Security has been extended to an additional 10 million workers and the benefits raised for 6 1/2 million.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The protection of unemployment insurance has been brought to 4 million additional workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There have been increased workmen’s compensation benefits…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the mid-1960s, however, rightwing oil barons like the Hunt brothers had gained ascendance in the Republican Party. They believed that greed should be the central focus of the GOP, that great wealth should be celebrated, and that working people and their unions must be marginalized.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1964, Republican activists at the party’s convention booed and shouted down New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller when he called for Eisenhower’s “moderation,” electing instead an acolyte of Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater, who declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldwater’s buddy Friedman had a novel idea that he called neoliberalism, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Guttered America; in 1981 it became the basis of the Reagan Revolution. In its essence, it said that one of the Seven Deadly Sins — greed — wasn’t actually a sin at all. Greed, Friedman said, wasn’t even a base human impulse that had to be controlled lest it destroy society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, Friedman preached, greed was good. It animated business and drove consumers. If the economy and the government could just be turned over to those who were the most aggressively greedy, Friedman and his neoliberal colleagues argued, the result would be prosperity for all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 1980, the Republican Party had swallowed neoliberalism hook, line, and sinker.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan truly believed that greed alone could power America to success and prosperity. When Michael Douglas made his famous “greed is good” speech in the 1987 movie Wall Street, he was merely echoing the Reagan Republicans of the day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, greed has become the animating principle that drives the entire Republican Party of today. The only function of government, in their minds, should be to help the greediest in America make a buck.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public schools don’t promote greed or make anybody money, Republicans note, so they should be destroyed to pave the way for profitable private schools. This is why Republicans across the country are attacking schools and school boards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, Social Security and Medicare don’t make money for anybody so they must be privatized. George W. Bush’s invention of the Medicare Advantage scam has already privatized about half of Medicare: Senator Rick Scott has made it clear that when the GOP regains federal power they’ll end Social Security within five years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even government service, for Republicans, is a way of getting rich: just look at multimillionaire Paul Ryan. Or multimillionaire Newt Gingrich. They’ve drilled campaign finance laws so full of holes (with help from 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court) that politicians can now keep most of the dark money they raise, even when they leave office. Donald Trump turned this into an art-form: he’s raised and pocketed three-quarters of a billion dollars just since he left office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So why would Republicans support an autocrat and racist like Viktor Orbán? Why are they pushing guns on the American people while denying women and girls the right to an abortion? Why do they embrace homophobia, racism, and work so hard to further destroy our biosphere with fossil fuels?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Again, when you understand that greed is the single animating principle in the modern Republican Party — a principle they publicly embrace without shame — it all makes sense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The average American doesn’t believe greed is good: most of us still consider it a sin or at least a character flaw that must be regulated to prevent damage to society. Although Reagan was successful at convincing many in the generation coming up in the 1980s that greed was good (particularly economists like Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow, who show up on Fox), since then Republicans have learned to keep the pro-greed rhetoric to themselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why? Because they want to win elections so they can have the political power to continue to play the greed game with the wealthiest and greediest people in America. And, because most Americans still think greed is a moral failing, that requires coalition politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They already have the support of the small number of ideologues who agree with Friedman and think the neoliberal failures of Chile and Russia were just anomalies. But that’s not enough to win elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So they reached out to the white racists, which got them another dozen or so percentage points. The homophobes added even more people to their coalition. Toss in the gun freaks and forced birth crowd and you have enough — with the help of massive cash infusions from fossil fuel billionaires — to win elections and further deconstruct the America built by the Roosevelts, Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Viktor Orbán is a twofer for them. He’s already transformed Hungary into an authoritarian neofascist state with one-party rule; every major industry (including the media) is now owned by his oligarch cronies: it’s the model Republicans have been pursuing for 42 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hungary is now (along with Russia) the world’s leading exemplar of the doctrine that greed should be the organizing principle of government, a system I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Orbán’s openly harnessed the power of racism to help him stay in power, and is bringing it to a GOP conference in America next month with his warnings against “race mixing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican Party has become a rotting corpse, politically, infested with bigoted maggots and defended by wealthy vultures. It has only one single true principle, greed, and is determined to reinvent America in greed’s image.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will they succeed and complete the Reagan Revolution, turning America into an English-speaking version of Orbán’s Hungary?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That will depend on whether American voters continue to tolerate the breathtaking levels of corruption and cynicism that Republican politicians are so proud of — or if Americans show up in large enough numbers this November to turn them out of office and convince the GOP to go back to its Eisenhower roots.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stay tuned.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/economy-tanks-thank-ronald-reagan/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yesterday the Fed started something it hasn't done for quite a while. It started dumping bonds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Fed has been goosing the economy steadily since the Bush Crash of 2008, buying US and corporate bonds with money it creates out of thin air (only the Fed can "print money" like this by simply willing the dollars into existence).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By purchasing and holding those bonds over the past 14 years, the Fed has created and then flushed into our economy $8 trillion in liquid cash. This is how the Fed stimulates an economy in crisis: pouring newly-created money into the system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, our economy has been running on high-octane sugar-high stimulus (free money from the Fed, as you can see above) ever since 2008.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several trillion of that came in the last year of the Trump presidency. While Republicans scream about spending for social needs that might also stimulate the economy, they and Trump were quite happy to see that money from the Fed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But now the Fed and it's Trump-appointed Republican Chairman, Jerome Powell, are backing off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yesterday the Fed started selling those bonds, reversing the process after 14 years and now sucking money out. Instead of stimulating the economy, they're trying to slow it down in the hope that will cool off inflation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When they receive the money back from those sales they'll simply drop it into the same Schrödinger's Cat-box from which it came: it'll vanish into the icy, dark depths of fiscal interstellar space, never to be seen again. What the Fed creates, the Fed can dissolve.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This month the Fed expects to "retire" $47.5 billion from its balance sheet — retire that amount from our economy — rising to $90 billion a month by the end of the summer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While these aren't huge sums in the grand scheme of things, the very fact that the Fed has gone from pumping created-from-nothing money into the economy to pulling that money back out is a Very Big Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Add that to its plan to continue increasing interest rates, which also slows the economy, and we're looking at a potential Category 5 event.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, the Financial Times was the bearer of the predictable bad tidings yesterday. Just from that day's FT's (digital) front page's "Live News Updates" column, these were some of the headlines:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ford forecasts car industry consolidation as capital becomes constrained</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Treasuries and US stocks slip as investors gird for monetary policy tightening</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bank of Canada prepared to 'act more forcefully' after latest rate rise</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">European stocks enter June on a muted note after turbulent month</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">German retail sales fell 5.4% in April</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UK house price growth slows in May</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">China's manufacturing sector activity shrinks for third consecutive month</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Government bonds sell off as eurozone inflation hits record high</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JPMorgan chief says 'hurricane' is bearing down on economy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that last article, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who a week ago had predicted "storm clouds" on the economic horizon, became far more blunt yesterday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'I said they're storm clouds, they're big storm clouds here,' Dimon said, adding, 'It's a hurricane.'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elaborating that the war in Ukraine and Europe's disconnection from Russian fossil fuel markets could drive oil as high as $175 a barrel, Dimon worried out loud:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way. We just don't know if it's a minor one or Superstorm Sandy . . . And you better brace yourself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, how did we get here?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between the Republican Great Depression of 1929-1937 and Reagan's inauguration in 1981, the United States experienced a few recessions, but nothing as severe as Republican President Herbert Hoover oversaw back on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hoover's crash was set up by the election of 1920, when Republican Warren Harding convinced Americans to abandon the trust-busting, high tax, progressive policies of Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson in favor of that generation's version of neoliberalism or what we today call Reaganomics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harding referred to it as "Horse and Sparrow Economics" — it was the early 20th century version of what Reagan later reinvented as "trickle-down economics."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the horses (rich people and big business) were fed more oats (through deregulation and tax cuts), more of those oats would pass undigested into the horse manure that then littered the streets of American. The sparrows (working class Americans) could then pick the extra oats out of the manure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1920, Warren Harding won the presidency on a campaign of "more industry in government, less government in industry" — privatize and deregulate — and "a return to normality," his promise to drop the top tax bracket from its then-91 percent rate down to 25 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harding kept both promises, putting the nation into a sugar-high spin called the Roaring '20s, where the rich got fabulously rich and working-class people were being beaten and murdered by industrialists when they tried to unionize. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (the three Republican presidents from 1920 to 1932) all cheered on the assaults, using phrases like "the right to work" to describe a union-free nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the end, the result of the "horses and sparrows" economics advocated by Harding was the Republican Great Depression (yes, they called it that until after World War II).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FDR's response to Hoover's Depression was to raise the top income tax bracket back up to 91% and impose stiff regulations on banks and Wall Street, creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and putting Joe Kennedy in charge of it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gloria Swanson, who knew Kennedy well and intensely disliked him (he'd robbed and exploited her), told me over one of our many dinners in her New York apartment that FDR knew, "It takes a crook to catch a crook." And FDR was going after the crooks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">High taxes on the morbidly rich and aggressive government enforcement of banking and securities rules prevented another large-scale crash for a half century until Reagan came along and repeated Harding's mistakes in the 1980s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Reagan finally dropped the top tax rate from the 74% he inherited when he came into office to 28% there was a one-day 22% stock market crash — Black Monday on October 27, 1987 — that rivaled 1929's Black Tuesday for the first time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Reagan deregulated the Savings & Loan industry the banksters stole so much money they crashed S&Ls across America, the first serious bank panic since the Republican Great Depression.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We're still living in Reagan's neoliberal deregulated economy. It brought us two financial crises while he was President, the dot-com bubble-bust of 1999/2000, the Bush Crash of 2008, and arguably the trillion-dollar-heist of 2020 when Trump passed out money to his fat-cat buddies without controls (we're still trying to figure out where all that money went).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, if Dimon is right, hang onto your hat for another "event."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The core tenet of both Harding's and Reagan's versions of neoliberalism is that the economy is essentially a force of nature. It's why Harding did away with regulations on stock speculation and why Reagan deregulated everything he could as fast as he could.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The economy "operates according to its own rules," they'd tell you, and anything government does to interfere with it will simply produce a bad outcome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In actual fact, the opposite is true.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Players in the top reaches of finance, banking, and speculation are much like players in boxing or football: they're engaged in a competitive high-stakes game defined by very specific rules, and when they know they can get away with breaking those rules, they'll often do it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The difference is that instead of winning or throwing a football game or boxing match, when bankers and speculators violate the rules they can take down the entire economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The financial speculators, of course are rarely injured in the process. We bailed out the banksters and speculators in the 1980s, 1999/2000, 2008, and 2020 to the tune of trillions of dollars. Senior executives and shareholders took home hundreds of billions of those dollars, looting the system they themselves had crashed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2008, most of that money was created out of thin air by the Fed. Now the Fed wants it back, but the banksters and speculators have already stashed it in their offshore tax havens. As a result, working class Americans and small- and medium-sized businesses will largely foot the bill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dimon and the purveyors of doom may be wrong about a crisis at this particular moment, but the system is still shaky and fraud is rife across banking, brokerage and finance, as Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter continually remind us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I lay out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, it's probably going to take another 1929-type event to shake Americans up enough to reject Reagan's vision of a deregulated economy and put the nation back on the course of the stable and steady Keynesian growth that FDR gave us from 1933 to 1981.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, in addition to an economy held together with the baling-wire of Fed stimulus (that's coming to an end), both the US and the world are facing a wild spectrum of assaults that could have huge economic impacts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Republicans are committed to doing everything they can to cripple our economy, refusing to pass much of Biden's economic agenda, in their belief that a Crash will help them in the 2022 and 2024 elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between the worldwide food and oil crises the Russian invasion of Ukraine are provoking, billions in climate change damage and millions of climate change refugees, Republican intransigence, and the Fed's claiming back that $8 trillion they gave our banksters and speculators, a real crisis may be at our doorstep sooner than any of us would like.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brace yourself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 5 22</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">minority rule is killing America. This is most obvious in our Senate and Supreme Court, although it’s also hurt the credibility of the presidency and is damaging many of our states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s happening because of two issues dating back to the founding of our republic, which brought us the Electoral College and unequal representation in the US Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, here’s how the Electoral College came about, stripped of all the mythology (hint: it mostly had to do with avoiding somebody like Donald Trump ending up in the White House):</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the Revolutionary War, the nation was abuzz about one of that war’s most decorated soldiers, Benedict Arnold, once considered a shoo-in for high elected office, selling out to the British in exchange for money and a title.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arnold‘s name had been floated for president, and it raised the question of how we could make sure that a stooge working for a foreign government — or just for his own enrichment — didn’t end up in the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back then, America was so spread out it would be difficult for most citizen/voters to get to know a presidential candidate well enough to spot a spy or traitor, Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 68. Therefore, the electors — having no other governmental duty, obligation, or responsibility — would be sure to catch one if it was tried.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The most deadly adversaries” of America, Hamilton wrote, would probably “make their approaches [to seizing control of the USA] from more than one quarter, chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A hostile foreign power influencing public opinion or owning a senator was nothing compared to having their man in the White House. As Hamilton wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy [presidency] of the Union?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, Hamilton wrote, the Framers of the Constitution “have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The system they set up to protect the White House from being occupied by an agent of a foreign government was straightforward, Hamilton bragged. The choice of president would not “depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, the Electoral College would be made up of “persons [selected] for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment” of president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The electors would be apolitical because it would be illegal for a senator or house member to become one, an injunction that is still in the Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamilton wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This, Hamilton was certain, would eliminate “any sinister bias.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather than average but uninformed voters, and excluding members of Congress who may be subject to bribery or foreign influences, the electors would select a man for president who was brave of heart and pure of soul.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The process of election [by the electoral college] affords a moral certainty,” Hamilton wrote, “that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, while a knave or rogue or traitor may fool enough people to even ascend to the office of mayor of a major city or governor of a state, the Electoral College would ferret out such a con man or traitor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamilton wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence” of the men in the Electoral College who would select him as president “of the whole Union. . .”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hamilton’s pride in the system that he himself had helped create was hard for him to suppress. He wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, things haven’t worked out that way (as we can see with Trump still clinging to his loyalty to Putin and refusing to condemn Russia’s attack of Ukraine).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the time the telegraph was in widespread use in the late 19th century, the Electoral College had long outlived its usefulness. And now in the past few decades we have seen two terrible presidents, Bush and Trump, put into the White House over the objection of the majority of American voters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate is also profoundly unequal in its representation of the American people; this is mostly because different states have different sizes and resource bases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While this was a small problem at the nation’s founding, today, for example, California’s vast resources (unknown in 1787 — Lewis and Clark were still children and thus hadn’t even hit the Pacific yet) have turned it into a such an economic powerhouse that if it were independent it would be the sixth richest nation in the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California alone contains 39 million people, almost nine percent of the entire population of the United States, larger than Canada’s 37 million people, with an economy larger than Russia’s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And yet it is represented by only two senators, the same as Wyoming which has only a half-million citizens (the size of Micronesia), a tiny economy, and few natural resources.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These inequalities have been exacerbated over the past 40 years both because of these 18th century structural errors built into our Constitution, and because, over the past 40 years, a campaign has been undertaken to exploit them by a small group of rightwing billionaires and religious fanatics, with the Powell Memo as their polestar.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’ve used the wealth and power they’ve inherited or accumulated to manipulate and seize control of our lawmaking institutions at the federal level and in nearly every state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Americans have noticed that fair competition has died:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neither of the last two Republican presidents, for example, was elected by the majority of Americans; the Senate is massively out of balance; and almost every House seat has been gerrymandered to the point where it is no longer in play.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which is creating a crisis for our nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Humans, like most animals, are wired for fairness. Give five toddlers a cookie each and everything is fine; give one of them an extra five cookies and all hell will break loose.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democracy is in our genes, as is the case with virtually every other animal species on Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When fish swim, bees swarm, or birds migrate it seems like their actions are coordinated telepathically. In fact, each wingbeat or tail twitch left-or-right is noticed as a “vote” by those around them. When more than 50% of the group are twitching to the left, for example, the entire school, swarm, or flock veers to the left. Democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When a mob showed up at the US Capitol threatening to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House, it was because they genuinely believed Donald Trump’s lie that the majority of Americans had voted for him. People will put their lives and their freedom at risk to right such a perceived minority-rule wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minority rule almost always ends up producing unfair results that are resented by the majority. We’re seeing this today with a Supreme Court dominated by four rightwing justices who were appointed by presidents who lost the majority vote and who were confirmed by Republican senators who represent 41.5 million fewer Americans than the Senate’s Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minority rule has taken over the White House:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We saw it when Bush and Cheney lied us into the war in Iraq after being put in the White House by five Republicans on the Supreme Court, despite having lost the vote to Al Gore by a half-million votes. It provoked the largest demonstrations against a presidential action in the history of the world at the time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, when millions protested Trump’s inauguration it was motivated in large part by the widespread knowledge that he’d lost the 2016 election by nearly 3 million votes. Unfairness infuriates people, and rightly so.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minority rule has taken over our Supreme Court:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A small group of wealthy ideologues spent millions to pack our courts, and we’ll see the backlash in our streets this weekend as people across the nation come out to protest Alito’s assertion that Sir Matthew Hale’s 1670 interpretation of British witchcraft laws should determine the fate of America’s 21st century women.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minority rule has taken over Congress:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats in the Senate represent 41.5 million more Americans than do Republicans. Yet that minority of Republicans, using the filibuster, have been able to stop everything from voting rights to healthcare to rebuilding our nation from the damage of 40 years of Reaganomics’ neoliberalism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A total of 77.3 million Americans voted in 2020 for Democrats for the House of Representatives; only 72.8 million voted for Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Multiple states where the statewide vote is within a point or three of 50/50 (including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Wisconsin) send far more Republicans than Democrats to the US House than their votes would dictate because of Republican gerrymanders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This fall things will get even worse because of 2021 gerrymanders, meaning that when over half of Americans again (if history and polling holds) vote for Democrats for the House, the GOP will nonetheless likely take control of that body.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Minority rule has taken over multiple states:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most of the states listed above suffer from the same problem in their own legislatures. In statewide elections, because most voters choose Democrats, all but two of those states ended up with Democratic governors; nonetheless, even though only a minority voted for Republicans, their legislatures are still Republican-controlled because of gerrymandering.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whenever a minority rises up and tries to rule over a majority, particularly if that rule violates basic principles of fair play and empathy, the result is conflict.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In most minority rule situations, that conflict is managed with the power of guns and jail cells: nations that were once democracies — like Russia, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines, Hungary, Venezuela and others — become police states where dissent and political activity are not tolerated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We saw Donald Trump, who lost the majority vote in 2016, try this when he ordered Defense Secretary Mark Esper to have our military shoot protestors in the streets of Washington, DC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We humans, like most animals from the simplest to the most complex, are wired by evolution for majority-rule to make the decisions that will best serve our immediate interests as well as preserve our species.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The principal idea of democracy is that there is wisdom in numbers. That the majority is more often right than any minority. As Aristotle wrote in his Politics, “[I]t is possible that the many, though not individually good men, yet when they come together may be better, not individually but collectively…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we want to preserve this nation, we must try actual representative democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whoever wins the majority vote becomes president, as 15 states and the District of Columbia — representing 195 electoral votes — have chosen (states representing another 75 votes are needed to end the Electoral College).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Expanding and unpacking the Supreme Court would restore fairness and balance to the head of that branch of government, and adding Washington, DC and Puerto Rico as states would help ease the unfairness of representation in the Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Congress must pass a federal mandate that every state cease gerrymandering and use nonpartisan redistricting commissions like California and several other Democratic-controlled states have already done to insure fairness and equal representation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans not only cling to minority rule, they now want to go to the next step and impose a neofascist Taliban-style government on America run by the morbidly rich and fanatically religious.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the Democratic Party is serious about preserving America as a constitutional republic, they must put democracy at the top of their priority list.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican neofascists are playing a dangerous game that will rip America apart</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann April 28, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has declared war on Disney, while his colleague in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, is on a jihad against the parents of trans children.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is how fascism progresses through its later stages toward tyranny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democracies typically don’t turn into fascist oligarchies by being invaded or losing wars. It usually happens from within, and is driven by an alliance between demagogic politicians, corrupt religious leaders, bigoted street brawlers, and some of the wealthiest people in society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, fascists identify groups of people they believe are both vulnerable and sufficiently powerless that they won’t be able to fight back. Typically, these are racial, religious, political or gender/sexuality minorities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Enormous efforts go into demonizing the people the fascists have identified; members of the group who’ve committed crimes are heavily publicized, while “think tanks” and fascist allies in the media identify malicious “reasons” for those folks’ “deviance.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Efforts by members of the demonized groups to achieve parity or equality in society are characterized as a “theft” of privilege and assets from the majority, legitimizing both verbal, legal, and physical attacks on members of the group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, the billionaire Murdoch family’s top-rated morning show, Fox & Friends, recently wandered into a discussion about white people being “marginalized” by the possibility of our public schools teaching the actual racial history of America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[T]hey are not only trying to raise up minorities and make sure the playing field is even,” Brian Kilmeade said, “they’re trying to take down the white culture!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kilmeade, in full “White people are the victims!” mode, went on:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Why are we being marginalized on a daily basis…? And it’s not even subtle! It’s actually out there! It is written in black-and-white!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s played out this way in every democratic country that has fallen to tyranny from within. It’s how it happened in the 1930s in Italy, Germany, Japan and Spain, and today in Hungary, Poland, Egypt, Russia, The Philippines, and Turkey, among others.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More recently, Swanson Food Heir Tucker Carlson went on a rant about the Great Replacement Theory.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After identifying targeted minorities — for today’s GOP that includes Black people, trans kids (and their parents), pregnant women, and Democrats — and encouraging legal and physical violence against them, fascists move to the second major step: seizing enough economic and political power that they can reshape society itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This requires bringing in morbidly rich people and enlisting the aid of big business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, first, they go after the biggest businesses. One of the biggest businesses in Florida is Disney, so Ron DeSantis tried to get them on his bigoted side. They didn’t go along with it, so now, in typical strongman fashion, DeSantis feels he has to destroy them to save face.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As German industrialist Fritz Thyssen writes in his book I Paid Hitler, he pressured German President von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, and then lobbied the Association of German Industrialists, that country’s and era’s version of the US Chamber of Commerce, to donate 3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the 1933 election. It brought Hitler to power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hitler’s sales pitch to the German people was that Jews, gays, and socialists had “stabbed Germany in the back” and were trying to “strip” good white Christian Germans of their “rights” and twist society to conform with their “perverted” ideas and lifestyles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hitler blamed the 1933 economic crisis on German minorities, Jews and gays, and accused Germany’s second largest political party of complicity with them; the German people went along with him. Once the Nazis took power, they changed election laws in such a way that they would never again lose.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans and rightwing billionaires, of course, are doing much the same thing right now in America. One wonders if they’ll have the retrospective angst that haunted Thyssen until the day he died. He wrote about it in I Paid Hitler:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I am not a politician, but an industrialist, and an industrialist is always inclined to consider politics a kind of second string to his bow — the preparation for his own particular activity. In a well-ordered country, where the administration is sound, where taxes are reasonable, and the police well organised, he can afford to abstain from politics and to devote himself entirely to business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“But in a crisis-ridden state, as Germany was from 1918 to 1933, an industrialist is drawn, willy-nilly, into the vortex of politics. After 1930 the aspirations of German industry may be summed up in one phrase: ‘a sound economy in a strong state.’ This was, I remember, the slogan of a meeting of the Ruhr industrialists in 1931. …“I, too, approved this slogan, 'To surmount the crisis it was necessary to reinforce the authority of the state.’ … I believed that by backing Hitler and his party I could contribute to the reinstatement of real government and of orderly conditions, which would enable all branches of activity — and especially business — to function normally once again.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unlike Thyssen, who volunteered to support Hitler’s rise to power with massive financial and business backing, Disney is pushing back against DeSantis’ efforts to remake society in an American neofascist mode.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unless they soon cave in, Disney’s executives probably won’t one day write in their memoirs, as Thyssen did in his:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“But it is no use crying over spilled milk. The strong state of which I then dreamed had nothing in common with the totalitarian state or, rather, caricature of a state, erected by Hitler and his minions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Not for an instant did I imagine that it was possible, one hundred and fifty years after the French Revolution and the proclamation of the Rights of Man, to substitute arbitrary action for law in a great modern country, to strangle the most elementary rights of the citizen, to establish an Asiatic tyranny in the heart of Europe, and to foster anachronistic aspirations of conquest and world dominion.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is not America’s first brush with oligarchic fascism, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. President Franklin Roosevelt and Vice President Henry Wallace struggled with it in the 1930s with Charles Lindberg’s infamous Nazi-aligned America First movement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vice President Wallace’s answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As if he had a time machine and could see the “conservative” media landscape today, Wallace continued:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Disney refused to use their media platform to advance the fascists’ agenda. It has only, however, slowed them down a bit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ultimately, as fascists gain more power and grow bolder, nothing is off the table. This is the threshold we’re approaching today, where they don’t just trash minorities and march through the streets displaying weapons and huge flags, but began asserting justification for violence and even murder.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alleging crimes against the majority’s children is a fascist favorite, as Hitler charged with his repeated attacks on Jewish teachers, leading 15% of the nation’s teachers and professors (including a guy named Albert Einstein) to flee the country when he began his attacks on education in 1933.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fascist politicians start alleging the most vile of crimes by the groups they hope to destroy: words like “grooming” roll off their lips with a smarmy ease.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soon vigilante groups set out to destroy those accused, sometimes politically, sometimes physically.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">German Nazis were particularly fond of accusing people they intended to destroy or kill of sexual “crimes.” As Thyssen wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“General von Fritsch’s affair is also a good sample of the peculiar methods used by the Hitler regime. Fritsch was to be ‘liquidated.’ To achieve this, it is said, the head of the Gestapo personally reproached him with practising homosexuality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fritsch, who denied this from the very start, was ordered to call at the chancellery of the Reich, where he was to be unmasked in the presence of the Supreme Leader. … It seems certain that General von Fritsch has subsequently committed suicide. I can at least say that whatever the actual circumstances of his death may have been, he was anxious to die.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While history usually sides with the victims of fascists, as we’re seeing today with the people Putin is starving to death in Mariupol, that’s small comfort as they confront terror and death.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DeSantis, Abbott and the other Republican neofascists are playing a dangerous game, using Disney as a proxy for the racial and gender minorities they want as whipping boys. It’s a high-stakes political game that has torn societies apart and destroyed millions of lives in the past.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Standing against them are their victims and the Democratic Party, albeit hobbled in their efforts by the perfidy of Manchin and Sinema. This autumn’s elections may well be the last chance for people of good will who believe in American values and eschew fascism to rise in opposition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote, regularly double-check your own registration to make it through a voter purge if you live in a Republican-controlled state, and volunteer to help out inside the Democratic Party or through any of the great groups fighting for a more just America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Time is short, as Fritz Thyssen and Vice President Wallace would tell you were they alive today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 22 an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you want to trigger a conservative, just suggest nationalizing the US gas and oil industry. “Venezuela!” they’ll scream hysterically, perhaps adding a few, “Iran!” squeals. (Somehow, they always forget to yell about Norway…)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within minutes they’ll be croaking about that time back in 2008 when Maxine Waters — a Black woman with power and therefore the most terrifying thing Republicans can imagine — threatened oil industry CEOs who were giving Congress deliberately deceptive and incomplete answers with “socializing… taking over and the government running all your companies.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Immediately, Fox “News” was all over it, as were dozens of rightwing sites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that, they’ve completely ignored (or never knew) the long American history of taking over industries during a time of national crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, as we re-enter a cold war with Russia and face unprecedented human death and property damage from climate change, it’s hard to claim we’re not in the midst of a national crisis that has fossil fuels at its foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’re at least 40 years behind where we should be in dealing with the fossil fuel/global warming crisis because giant oil companies have run massive disinformation campaigns while funding the political careers of hacks in Congress willing to lie to the public for them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Jimmy Carter, for example, declared a national crisis in 1979 and proposed legislation to create “this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FDR had sold bonds to the public to fund a government corporation that would develop synthetic rubber for fighter jet tires back in the day, and Carter wanted to do the same to end our dependence on fossil fuels:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II,' Carter said, 'so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war.'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that same July 15, 1979 speech, he proposed the government issue bonds that would fund:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[T]he creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It all came crashing down 42 years ago this coming January when the fossil fuel industry’s candidate, Ronald Reagan, replaced Carter, killed the solar bank and the bond program, and even took Carter’s solar panels off the roof of the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If ever there was an industry that merited nationalization, the fossil fuel industry is it. They manipulate prices to both enhance profits and swing elections, bribe their way through the halls of Congress, and pump out a steady stream of lies about climate change. All while pouring hundreds of billions into the money bins of their morbidly rich CEOs, shareholders, and senior executives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. And we could acquire controlling interest of the nation’s three largest fossil fuel players — ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — for, according to Robert Pollin writing at The American Prospect, fewer than a half-trillion dollars.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump’s billionaire tax cuts we could rapidly move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction. But is it even possible? Turns out that history says an emphatic, “Yes!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country’s railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation’s radio networks and radio stations. All were returned to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the same during World War II, nationalizing airplane manufacturers, gun manufacturers, over 3,300 mines, the nation’s railroads, dozens of oil companies, Western Electric Co., Hughes Tool Co., Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and even one of the nation’s largest retail outlets, Montgomery Ward. He also nationalized 17 foreign companies doing business in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation’s steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like with Wilson’s nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who’d put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1970s, in the wake of the collapse of the Penn Central Railroad, President Richard Nixon oversaw the voluntary nationalization and transfer of 20 railroads into the newly created National Rail Passenger Corporation, now known as Amtrak.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1974 Congress created another nationalized entity to deal with freight rail, the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), which absorbed dozens of failing rail companies. Conrail was government-held until 1987, when it was privatized in the then-largest IPO in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1984, when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was in a crisis, President Ronald Reagan’s administration oversaw the FDIC nationalizing it by acquiring an 80 percent ownership share in the company; it wasn’t re-privatized until 1991, and was bought by Bank of America in 1994.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also in the 1980s, after Reagan recklessly deregulated the Savings & Loan industry, bankers made off with billions leaving the wreckage of crushed S&Ls all across the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the government agency that insured them, FSLIC, went bankrupt itself in 1987, Reagan and Congress created an umbrella agency — the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) — to nationalize 747 of America’s S&Ls with assets of over $400 billion. Their assets were sold back into the private market in 1995 as the RTC shut itself down, having averted a 1929-style banking crisis through temporary nationalization.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When George W. Bush was handed the White House by five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, the nation’s airline security system was entirely in private hands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They failed miserably on 9/11, so Bush didn’t even bother with the normal acquisition process that would protect the hundreds of small contractors running security at airports across the nation: he simply nationalized the entire system and created a government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to take over airport and airline security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Bush also partially nationalized the nation’s airlines, creating the Air Transportation Stabilization Board that traded around $10 billion in loans to airlines in crisis (air traffic collapsed after 9/11) in exchange for company stock. We (through our government) ended up holding 7.64 million shares in US Airways, 18.7 million shares of America West Airlines, 3.45 million shares in Frontier Airlines, 1.47 million shares in American TransAir, and 2.38 million shares in World Airways.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congress had deregulated the nation’s banks in 1999 when Republicans pushed through an end to the Glass-Steagall Act and Bill Clinton signed it into law. The resulting banking system crash in 2008 forced the Bush administration to nationalize the country’s two largest mortgage lenders (they held about 40% of all US mortgages), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bush administration then additionally nationalized a 77.9% share in AIG, a 36% share of Citigroup, and a 73.5% share of GMAC, forcing out GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner, who’d been a particularly terrible manager of that company and was actively lobbying against what Bush thought were America’s interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As President Barack Obama came into office in 2009, GM and Chrysler were on the brink of collapse. His administration created a new company, NGMCO, Inc., that nationalized the assets of GM and was 60.8% owned by the federal government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GM was finally fully re-privatized by the Obama administration in 2013. Chrysler went through a similar process, although both the UAW and the Canadian government were part owners when it was temporarily nationalized.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas M. Hanna, Director of Research at The Democracy Collaborative and author of Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States, compiled most of the data above in a brilliant paper titled “A History of Nationalization in the United States 1917-2009.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toward its end, he summarizes brilliantly the case for nationalizing — perhaps only temporarily — America’s largest oil and gas companies:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In such times of political and economic crisis, policymakers of all ideological persuasions in the United States have never been hesitant to use one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: nationalization of private enterprises and assets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This included the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who nationalized railroads, and the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (among others), and the Republican Ronald Reagan, who nationalized a major national bank; the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who nationalized dozens of mining and manufacturing facilities, and the Republican George W. Bush, who nationalized airport security and various major financial institutions; the Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized auto manufacturers, and the Republican Richard Nixon, who nationalized all passenger rail service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today’s climate crisis dwarfs the threat of Nazism in the 1940s, Bin Laden’s 9/11 attack, or the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan and Bush administrations. It literally threatens all life on Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to fund climate denial and lobby against any meaningful solutions, as we saw when every Republican in the Senate along with Joe Manchin killed the $500 billion investment in clean energy the Biden administration proposed in their Build Back Better legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Squeals of “socialism!” and “Venezuela!” aside, we know how to nationalize industries that are working against our nation’s interests and have done it before, repeatedly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This time it’s not just about saving our banks or fighting a war. This time, it’s about saving the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nationalize the fossil fuel industry!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/louis-dejoy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The outrageous story about the Postal Service too many know nothing about</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Louis DeJoy is plotting more moves to destroy the Postal Service — he must be stopped</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute February 12, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republicans are about to win a major battle in their war on electric vehicles, this time with the second largest vehicle fleet in America owned by the US Postal Service. It's an outrageous story that most Americans don't know a thing about.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Transportation, after all, is the single largest source of global warming emissions from the United States. And the Post Office once thought they could do something about it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To understand what's going on with the Post Office right now, you first must know the backstory that, it seems, most media outlets aren't interested in discussing. It's an issue that's hitting millions of Americans right now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of our kids, for example, recently became the first member of our family to buy a fully 100% electric car. She was so excited and has loved it driving around Portland…until she had to drive to another state for a conference, when she discovered what a problem America not having an electric charging infrastructure causes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The way to solve this problem, of course, is to have a substantial and massive increase in electric vehicles and that's exactly what the Post Office set out to jump-start back in 2006.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Transportation, after all, is the single largest source of global warming emissions from the United States. And the Post Office once thought they could do something about it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Things were going well for the Post Office in 2006.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They were making money and had a surplus. They were therefore seriously considering replacing a large part of their fleet—the largest fleet of civilian vehicles in the nation—with electric and hybrid vehicles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It would be a mighty boost for the electric car, and a huge slap in the face of the fossil fuel barons who had an outsized say in the Republican Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 17, 2006 Walter O'Tormey, the Post Office's Vice President, Engineering, unveiled a new hybrid gas/electric mail delivery vehicle in Boston to an audience of "nearly 100 industry representatives, environmentalists, and Postal Service employees," saying:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"As an agency that delivers mail to 145 million businesses and households six days a week, drives approximately 1.1 billion miles a year, and consumes more than 125 million gallons of motor fuel annually, we are in a unique position to demonstrate to the public and other businesses the growing viability and positive environmental and energy-savings benefits of alternate-fuel technologies."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their 2006 annual report the Postal Service openly bragged about their ambition to move away from relying entirely on fossil fuels:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"With more than 216,000 vehicles, the Postal Service has the largest civilian fleet in the United States. We continue to evaluate various fuel types and alternative fuel vehicles including hybrid trucks, hydrogen fuel cell vans, electric step vans and liquid natural gas delivery vehicles."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the Post Office pulled off a massive transition away from fossil fuels, it would jump-start the then-new electric, hybrid and fuel cell technologies, paving the way for wider use, a large national electric "refueling" infrastructure, and a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Americans were excited by the possibility. Speaking on behalf of a coalition of mayors from all parts of the country to the World Congress on Information Technology annual conference in Austin on May 6, 2006, Austin Mayor Will Winn proudly announced:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Transitioning the Postal fleet to plug-ins would serve as a springboard for the commercial production of delivery vehicles that could be extended to a wide variety of delivery services across America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The commercial market would also provide the economic certainty needed by automakers to make the production investments necessary for the mass production of plug-ins.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The plug-in technology is available right now and represents a realistic near-term solution to the serious problems of over-reliance on foreign oil, out of control gasoline prices, as well as greenhouse emissions."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given that postal vehicles typically have a 30-year lifespan, this would produce a huge tilt in the balance of alternative-versus-fossil-fuel vehicles on the road.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the possibility of that transition happening to the nation's largest vehicle fleet was, in a word, intolerable to the morbidly rich rightwingers who'd made their fortunes drilling, refining, shipping and selling fossil fuels, particularly oil, diesel and gasoline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Post Office had to be stopped, and Republican Congressman John McHugh (NY) was just the man to do it. He'd been a member of the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and was deeply in the pocket of right-wing interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Wikipedia notes in an exercise of gentle understatement:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[McHugh] was chairman of the Oversight Committee's Postal Service Subcommittee for six years and worked to pass legislation to significantly reform the U.S. Postal Service for the first time since it was demoted from a Cabinet-rank department with passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (Pub.L. 109–435) in 2006."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ALEC, which writes corporate-friendly legislation and relies on its membership of Republican lawmakers around the nation to pass that legislation, just happened to have a model 2006 bill known as the Unfunded Pensions Liabilities Act, which called on state governments to account for exactly how they plan to fund future retiree benefits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adapting that ALEC concept to the Post Office, McHugh's bill was passed by a voice vote in a Republican Congress and signed by Republican President George W. Bush. There is no record whatsoever of who voted or how they voted on the legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was preceded, however, by a virtual waterfall of op-eds and PR efforts by groups affiliated with the Koch network including the Reason Foundation, the National Taxpayer's Union, and the CATO Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What the law did was ram a poison pill down the throat of the Post Office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It required the USPS to pre-fund its Retiree Health Benefits Fund for seventy years into the future, forcing the Post Office to take the money they planned to spend on electric vehicles and set it aside for the health benefits of future retirees who weren't even born yet (and should be eligible for Medicare, anyway).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's an obligation that no other private business or government agency has ever had to comply with before.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Costing the Post Office $5 billion a year, it succeeded in stopping their plan to electrify their fleet dead in its tracks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it set it up more cleanly for eventual privatization, once enough infrastructure like postal drop boxes and million-dollar high-speed sorting machines was destroyed—a process Reagan called "Starve the Beast"—that "customers" were complaining about the service and public opinion finally agreed the Post Office would work better in private hands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan had tried to do the same thing to Social Security and the IRS, and Trump doubled down on that plan, offering tens of thousands of staffers early retirement to gut both agencies; they're now so hobbled by underfunding and worker shortages that Social Security disability claims can take two years, and extremely wealthy people are no longer generally audited at all because of the cost and manpower needs determined by their complexity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which brings us to Louis DeJoy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Post Office is finally on the verge of getting out from under that $5 billion-a-year prefunding burden so they can now start buying that new fleet they proposed in 2006.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Postmaster General DeJoy was strongly encouraged by the Biden administration to give the contract to a company that would manufacture electric and electric/hybrid vehicles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But DeJoy essentially told Biden to go screw himself: he's going to buy fossil-fuel vehicles for 90% of the fleet instead.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post laid it all out in the open to an article last week titled: Biden Officials Push to Hold Up $11.3 Billion USPS Truck Contract, Citing Climate Damage, noting:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Biden administration launched a last-minute push Wednesday to derail the U.S. Postal Service's plan to spend billions of dollars on a new fleet of gasoline-powered delivery trucks, citing the damage the polluting vehicles could inflict on the climate and Americans' health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The dispute over the Postal Service's plans to spend up to $11.3 billion on as many as 165,000 new delivery trucks over the next decade has major implications for President Biden's goal of converting all federal cars and trucks to clean power."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's not just the White House that's outraged. CNN reported yesterday:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, called for DeJoy's resignation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"'Postmaster General DeJoy's plan to spend billions on brand new gas-powered vehicles is in direct contradiction to the stated goals of Congress and the President to eliminate emissions from the federal fleet,' Connolly said in a statement. 'If Mr. DeJoy won't resign, the Board of Governors has got to fire him -- now.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because Republican senators are holding up confirmation of Biden's Postal Board of Governors' appointees, DeJoy can't be fired by the current Trump-appointee-dominated board, a fact that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out last week, demanding the Senate move the Democratic nominees forward over GOP objections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But DeJoy is itching to sign the contract for all those gas and diesel vehicles, and he still has the power to do so.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, now that the possibility of electrifying the nation's (now second) largest fleet of vehicles is pretty much dead and they're planning to go ahead with fossil fuels, Republicans in Congress are fine with eliminating the retirement prefunding dead weight on the Post Office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The vote in the House this week was 342-90 to end the prefunding requirement and give DeJoy the money to buy the gas-powered vehicles. Now it goes to the Senate, where the AP noted:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he expects his chamber to 'move quickly' on the measure. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he's planning a vote before a recess that starts after next week. The bill has 14 GOP sponsors and, with strong Democratic support expected, seems on track to gain the 60 votes most bills need for Senate passage."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When asked Wednesday night on MSNBC why Congress had crippled the Post Office with that bizarre prefunding requirement in the first place, Senator Peters—one of the truly good guys in the US Senate—answered that he had no idea.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As is the case with most members of Congress; the pre-funding was essentially slipped into the bill at the behest of the fossil fuel industry and, at the time, got virtually no publicity. Thus, I tweeted him:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was incomplete on my part to miss the privatization bonus in the tweet, and the vendor will supply gasoline vehicles as well, but you get the point.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like so many other weirdnesses in American politics, when you pull back the veil you find the hands of a fossil fuel industry that values profits and right wing ideology over the future of our children, our nation and the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/don-t-look-up-movie/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My wife and I recently watched on Netflix the brilliant Don’t Look Up! starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, written and produced by Adam McKay and David Sirota.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s being lauded as a metaphor for how we’re dealing with climate change in the face of petrobillionaire- and corporate-funded disinformation campaigns, but it’s so much more than that:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Conservatives” on the Supreme Court don’t want Americans to look up at how they legalized political bribery with their 1970s Buckley and Bellotti and 2010 Citizens United decisions that have turned politicians into shills for the same billionaires and giant industries that spent millions putting them on the Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Small government” freaks don’t want you to look up at how trust in our government has fallen from over 80% in the 1960s to fewer than 30% today, or how that’s the direct result of Reagan’s “government is not the solution to your problems, it is the problem” hustle that led to Trumpism and is today tearing America apart.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican governors don’t want their citizens to look up at how they continue to use racist tropes and dog-whistle appeals to frighten and thus hang onto a majority of the white vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those governors and legislators don’t want you to look up at how they’re rewriting history and threatening teachers, passing laws that either outright ban teaching the actual history of race relations, slavery, and the Civil War, or, as in Florida, empower parents to sue teachers who mention a word about race.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giant monopolistic corporations don’t want you to look up and realize the average American family pays $5,000 a year, on average, more than Canadians or Europeans for everything from cell phone and internet service to airfare and drugs — all because Reagan stopped enforcing the anti-trust laws in 1983 and no president since has brought them back.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big Ag doesn’t want you to look up and see that you and your children are being poisoned by chemicals ranging from pesticides and herbicides to hormone-bending plasticizers used in food packaging, thousands of them outlawed in Europe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans don’t want Americans to look up at how they gifted a handful of billionaires and GOP-donor corporations $2 trillion in tax cuts in 2017 at the same time that America is the only country in the developed world where young people carry almost $2 trillion in student debt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The NRA doesn’t want you to look up at how, over just the past two years, 17 million more people — including 5 more million children — now have easy access to guns in their own homes as the result of a Trump-driven explosion of weapons purchases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They don’t want you to look up at how, as a consequence, our US homicide rate went from 6 per 100,000 to 7.8 per 100K during that same short period of time, what CNN labeled “the highest increase recorded in modern history” beating records going all the way back to 1904 when we started keeping them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coal baron legislators don’t want us to look up at the poverty across America as they drive their Maseratis and tell us that young West Virginia families will use the child tax credit to “buy crack.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big pharma executives don’t want us to look up at how they rip us off, as Americans struggle to pay $500 for the same insulin that Canadians can buy for $25</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Sakler family of drug pushers don’t want us to look up at how they just walked away with billions and not a single person in the family went to jail over the death of 600,000 Americans from opioids.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican secretaries of state don’t want us to look up at how they’ve purged over 17 million people, more than 10 percent of all of America’s active voters, off the voting rolls just between 2016 and 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">North Carolina’s GOP doesn’t want you looking up at how, immediately after five “conservatives” on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, they permanently closed 158 polling places in the 40 counties with the most African American voters just before the 2016 election, producing a 16 percent drop in the Black vote in that state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his Trump-humping toadies in Congress don’t want America to look up at the treason they incited their followers to commit on January 6th, invading the Capitol with Confederate flags and Christian fascist crosses while trying to assassinate Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giant “health insurance” banksters don’t want seniors to look up at how they’ve already privatized over 40% of Medicare through the “Medicare Advantage” scam George W. Bush gifted them, increasing their profits by tens of billions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Billionaires don’t want Americans to look up at how they’re paying less than 3% in income taxes while the rest of us foot the bill for the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Religious hustlers don’t want us to look up at their mansions and private jets as they run ads for “prayer lines” on TV and push parishioners to vote for politicians who will help them keep their rich lifestyles going as they break the law with no taxes or oversight.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, of course, the fossil fuel industry doesn’t want us to look up at the remote but very real possibility that the global warming they are causing could free ancient methane trapped in permafrost and undersea clathrate beds and trigger a mass extinction event (as DiCaprio and I pointed out in this short video):</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DiCaprio, Lawrence, McKay and Sirota’s new Don’t Look Up! movie is funny, entertaining, and sure to provoke useful conversations with friends and family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It accomplishes this by cleverly satirizing a crisis turned into a disaster by the corrupt power of big money bribing government, amplified by the banality of the infotainment “news” culture Reagan gifted us when he destroyed the Fairness Doctrine as the Murdoch clan came to town.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If ever there was a time when we all need to look up, it’s now!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30+ other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/trumps-beliefs/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The completely shocking things Trump and his followers now believe</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute January 07, 2022</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This story first appeared on The Hartmann Report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With the Republican Party turning to Trumpism, and the Democratic Party returning to their progressive roots, will we have an honest debate this election year in our media?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What you see is what you get” is an old cliche, but it’s endured all these centuries because there’s so much truth in it. “Don’t listen to what people say, instead look at what they do” is another truism we can apply to inform us about today’s politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The past forty years have seen three Republican and three Democratic presidencies, and the modern priorities and values of each Party are now quite clear.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the Republican side, Reagan laid the foundation for Bush and Trump to hand over $10 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and giant corporations while spending an equal amount on senseless, unwanted and unwinnable wars, leaving us with a $20 trillion national debt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has since merged the Grand Old Party with the anti-democratic, oligarchic and male/white-supremacist values of the pre-Civil War South, leading his followers to proudly fly Confederate flags and strut around with as many large guns as they can carry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the Democratic side, there’s been a steady revival of the progressive movement, along with its efforts to lift up working class and poor Americans while cleaning up the environment and protecting the social safety net.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Democratic Party embraced neoliberalism for a while, from 1992 until 2016, the majority of elected Democrats today are committed to extending the benefits, freedoms and privileges of citizenship to all Americans, regardless of race, religion or gender identification.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s an uncredited meme that’s been floating around the internet in various forms for a while, generally titled “Shocking Things Liberals Believe” that summarizes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People who work full time shouldn’t live in poverty</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Homelessness shouldn’t exist in the richest country in the world</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Women deserve both equal rights and equal pay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporations and rich people shouldn’t be able to legally bribe politicians</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trashing the planet for profit is wrong and must stop</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every American should have world-class healthcare at little or no cost</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Free higher education (and quality public schools) unlock human potential which benefits the entire country</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Children should learn the true racial history of America so they can empathize with their peers who are still experiencing these problems and grow up to become well-informed adults</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Women should make their own medical decisions, not politicians</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Massively profitable industries, from oil/coal/gas to Walmart and Amazon, shouldn’t get billions in subsidies and tax breaks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Children shouldn’t fear getting shot at school</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Wall Street banksters steal from us all, they should be imprisoned instead of bailed out</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No CEO is worth $100,000 an hour ($20 million a year) or more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s actually a pretty reasonable summary of the perspectives and positions of most Democrats who’d describe themselves as liberal or progressive today and, while not descriptive of every elected Democrat, shows the direction the Party is moving.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it immediately provokes the counter-question: Now that Trumpism has taken over the GOP, what do they believe?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the Party stopped publishing a Platform or clear positions on issues after the 2016 election, we pretty much have to look at their behaviors, but those, at least, have been consistent. Here’s what’s obvious, based on “what they do”:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Free and fair elections” are for suckers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">White men should run the country and the world</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Violence is a legitimate tool in politics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conspiracy theories like the one suggesting Democrats drink children’s blood as an “elixir of youth” are probably real</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rich people and their kids shouldn’t have to pay taxes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More guns means less crime and fewer deaths</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The darker your skin, the more likely you’re a criminal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Leadership is about instilling fear, not vision</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Women are men’s property</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate change and evolution are tricks to take away our freedoms and ruin religion</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Education makes people stupid</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Going into politics is the ticket to riches and fame</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rich people should make a buck off everything the government does through privatization</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helping people who’re going through a rough patch is a waste of time</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “rule of law” only applies to minorities and the poor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Money and power are the only truly important things in life</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teaching the true racial history of America is a plot to make white children feel sad</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LGBTQ people don’t deserve respect or rights</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wealth is proof of goodness; poverty is proof of moral failure</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Giving” citizens things like healthcare, education, family leave, etc. are all “socialism” and will destroy “the American way of life”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Government has no right to regulate pollution or protect consumers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fiscal responsibility” is a phrase that can justify just about anything</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both are obviously partial lists, an attempt to define our political parties based on their behaviors instead of just their words.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is an election year, and these differences should be the basis of our national conversation about who leads the country in 2023 and beyond.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is our “reality TV” news media up to the task of comparing and contrasting the two political parties, and judging the most likely outcomes of the directions they’ve chosen?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s going to be a challenge as long as Republicans keep spewing crap like John Kasich saying on CNN yesterday, when discussing the January 6th attack, that “we have seen hatred on both sides.” Or Joe Manchin grandstanding, using long-discredited “but the deficit!” and “but the filibuster!” GOP talking points, every time a camera shows up on Capitol Hill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the other hand, if enough of us are active in holding our Fourth Estate to account, particularly on social media, and can amplify truthful messages of compassion, clarity and sanity to our friends and neighbors, perhaps we can actually have a meaningful election year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tag, you’re it!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To End Systemic Racism, Ensure Systemic Equality ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">QAnon believes California's recall election could trigger 'the storm ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evangelicals scrambling to oust belief in Trump as congregations ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where President Trump stands on the issues in 2020 | PBS NewsHour ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump policies: Where does the president stand on key ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12 21 no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This 232-year-old power has never been used by Congress — but it could save the republic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Joe Biden departs the U.S. Capitol after speaking at the House Democratic Caucus meeting, Thursday, October 28, 2021.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute December 23, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Founders of this nation, and the Framers who wrote our Constitution, created (as Ben Franklin famously said) a constitutional republic: a government “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed” through citizens’ (then white men) right to vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They referred to this as “republicanism” because it was based on the Greek and Roman republics (then thousands of years in the past but still remembered and idealized), and when put into law they called it “a Republican Form of Government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today that form of government in crisis in America, as that core right to vote that defines republicanism is under attack by Republican legislators in red states across our nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In emergency, break glass” is the almost-never-used option available should a building catch fire or otherwise be in crisis. There’s a similar alarm and safety valve built into the US Constitution that, like that glass in so many buildings, has never before been used to protect our republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: New report says 'evidence is mounting' for a disturbing reason the National Guard failed to act on Jan. 6</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s called the Guarantee Clause, and it’s the basis of the Right To Vote Act that has passed the House and is stalled by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Guarantee Clause, however, has never been used as a part of our everyday politics or law: most people, in fact, have never heard of it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s never been used or adopted as law by the courts so it’s essentially “potential power,” a powerful but tightly coiled force quietly waiting for a real emergency, buried deep in our Constitution for 232 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it comes alive when Congress activates it for the first time, which could be right now because the Freedom to Vote Act does just that, explicitly firing it up by name.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: 'This speech is unhinged': Russia expert explains why he was truly scared by Putin's recent remarks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Manchin is one of its co-sponsors, although it’s mostly an effort by Senators Klobuchar (its main sponsor), Kaine, King, Merkley, Padilla, Tester, and Warnock. On the Republican side, it appears to have support from Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And when you understand the background of the Guarantee Clause, the urgency and the consistency of The Right To Vote Act with the Framer’s vision about the possibility of this political moment is unmistakable:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 18, 1787</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a brutally hot summer in Philadelphia that year, and a week and a day after a mob chased down Mrs. Korbmacher on the streets outside Independence Hall (then the seat of the Pennsylvania legislature) and beat her to death for witchcraft.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inside the Hall, the delegates were writing the Constitution for a new nation, and the question had come up whether the new US government should have the power — or the obligation — to “guarantee” that no state could so change its laws as to deprive its citizens of a “Republican Form of Government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: The real reason right-wingers get so triggered by Dr. Fauci</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was particularly important, as British law at the time specifically outlawed republicanism: only monarchy was allowed, and citizens had to swear fealty to the king. Nowhere in the “civilized world” of 1787, in fact, was it legal for a nation to elect their own representatives and live under their own laws, all made and enforced “by the consent of the governed” through “a Republican Form of Government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of the long, intense day, James Madison wrote a short letter to Thomas Jefferson, who was then the US envoy to France and living in Paris, assuring him he was taking “lengthy notes” but couldn’t fill his mentor in on the details because he was “still under the mortification of being restrained from disclosing any part of their proceedings.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, those notes taken during the Convention wouldn’t see publication for another roughly 50 years, after all the men in the Hall were dead, a concession to numerous delegates who’d essentially sold out their wealthy acquaintances by ensuring a republican democracy or allowing slavery to continue (there were compromises on both sides, some of which, like the electoral college and setup of the 2-votes-only-regardless-of-population Senate, cripple us to this day).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before them for debate that day was proposed constitutional language: “That a republican constitution and its existing laws ought to be guarantied to each state by the United States.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: Madison Cawthorn says he and his wife are getting divorced after being married 8 months</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An immediate objection came up from both New York’s Gouverneur Morris and New Jersey’s William Houston, because that language would allow the new states to keep laws that some delegates thought weren’t “republican” in nature.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Morris, in particular, was an outspoken abolitionist and (from the left) wanted slavery phased out, and also opposed (from the right) laws like the one Rhode Island’s legislature was then debating that would have equalized all wealth in that state every 13 years. That “Jubilee” idea was a prescription for chaos, Morris believed, and thus a threat to the new republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The judgment of history weighed on Morris. Madison later recounted that, “He came here as a representative of America; he flattered himself he came here in some degree as a Representative of the whole human race; for the whole human race will be affected by the proceedings of this Convention.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus it was no surprise when Morris rose to object that the proposed language could keep terrible state laws in place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ: Unvaccinated NFL player slams league's COVID protocols after testing positive for the virus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS thought the resolution very objectionable,” Madison wrote. “He should be very unwilling that such laws as exist in Rhode Island should be guarantied.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Jersey’s William Houston, a mathematics professor and abolitionist who served as a Captain in Washington’s army, concurred — although he was more concerned with not wanting to encourage laws that maintained slavery and debt peonage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. HOUSTON,” Madison noted, “was afraid of perpetuating the existing constitutions of the states. That of Georgia was a very bad one, and he hoped would be revised and amended.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At which point several men rose to point out they were debating the power of the federal government to “guarantee a Republican Form of Government” to all the states — but what if power-hungry people in a particular state were to rise up in rebellion and seize control of that state’s government, thus ending statewide republicanism and creating a minor dictatorship or cult?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then, what if that state then threatened other states’ ability to have a government reflecting the will of the people?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or tried to take them over either by corrupting them from within or invasion? (This was not an idle fear: both happened just 74 years later in 1861.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Massachusetts’ Nathaniel Gorham was particularly outspoken about this, given how there had been attempts by both rich landowners and Pilgrim clergy in his state over the past century to turn the state into a dictatorial theocracy (leading Roger Williams to flee and split off Rhode Island in the 1670s).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If such a thing were to happen again and succeed, Gorham wondered, shouldn’t the federal government have the power to intervene so it could guarantee the states around Massachusetts and its residents a republican form of government where those with political power had to answer to “the people” rather than just the clergy or the rich? What if a wealthy oligarch declared himself a monarch?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. GORHAM thought it strange that a rebellion should be known to exist in the empire,” Madison wrote, “and the general government should be restrained from interposing to subdue it. At this rate, an enterprising citizen might erect the standard of monarchy in a particular state; might gather together partisans from all quarters; might extend his views from state to state, and threaten to establish a tyranny over the whole,—and the general government be compelled to remain an inactive witness of its own destruction.” [emphasis added]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response, Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, a scholar of Greek democracy and an abolitionist, suggested different language for the Fourth Section of the Constitution’s Fourth Article:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[T]hat a republican form of government shall be guarantied to each state; and that each state shall be protected against foreign and domestic violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That did the trick.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This seeming to be well received,” Madison noted, “Mr. MADISON and Mr. RANDOLPH withdrew their propositions, and, on the question for agreeing to Mr. Wilson’s motion, it passed, nem. con.” The convention then adjourned for the day and Madison went home to write his letter to Jefferson.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That day’s debate is what gave us Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s an amazing sentence, that could be as sweeping in its power as the Commerce Clause (which JFK and LBJ used to force integration of the South), but has never really been used in any meaningful way since it was written on that hot summer day in 1787.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first time this “Guarantee Clause” came before the Supreme Court, slavery was the law of the land and Chief Justice Roger Taney, a former slaveholder, was determined to keep it that way by bottling up that Clause’s power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Seven years before he tried to cement slavery into the law of every state in the union with his Dred Scott decision, Taney ruled in Luther v Borden (1849) that his Supreme Court would never be allowed to interfere with state’s rights on the basis of the Guarantee Clause.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Under this article of the Constitution,” Taney wrote, “it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a state.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, Taney said: The definition of what a ‘Republican Form of Government’ actually means isn’t yet laid out in the law or previous interpretations of the Constitution: therefore, it’s politics. And politics is the province of Congress, not the Supreme Court, which must limit itself to law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On that foundation, later Supreme Courts repeated Taney’s assertion that the question was political and not one to be decided by the courts: instead it was up to the politicians in Congress if they were going to “guarantee a Republican Form of Government” to — or within — any particular state at any point in the future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Taney was quoted “lucidly and cogently” in Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph v Oregon (1912) and Chief Justice John Roberts noted in 2019 that, “This Court has several times concluded that the Guarantee Clause does not provide the basis for a justiciable claim.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, to this day, it’s up to Congress, not the Court, to decide what a “Republican Form of Government” is and how Congress will guarantee it to and/or within every state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which brings us to today, and how Congress can end partisan gerrymanders, dial back the power of money in politics, and guarantee the right of every American citizen to vote without undue difficulty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The opening of the Freedom To Vote Act lays it out clearly:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Congress also finds that it has both the authority and responsibility, as the legislative body for the United States, to fulfill the promise of article IV, section 4, of the Constitution, which states: ‘The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a “Republican Form of Government.”’” [emphasis added]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The proposed law even notes as justification for its existence how the Supreme Court has dropped — or laid down — the ball and therefore Congress must pick it up:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Congress finds that its authority and responsibility to enforce the Guarantee Clause is clear given that Federal courts have not enforced this clause because they understood that its enforcement is committed to Congress by the Constitution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Freedom To Vote Act ensures a “Republican Form of Government” in America by providing:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Automatic voter registration and online registration for 16 year olds who will be 18 and thus eligible to vote in the next election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Same day voter registration nationwide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ends partisan gerrymandering</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Limits campaign contributions to a maximum of $10,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Criminalizes “pass through” groups to get around campaign finance laws</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires companies to fully and rapidly disclose all election spending over $10,000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires all websites (like Facebook) with more than 50 million users to create a publicly available and publicly searchable archive of political ads</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brings web-based election expenditures under the same disclosure rules as TV</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Makes it a federal crime to prevent a person from registering to vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires 14 consecutive days for early voting, at least 10 hours each day</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires easy access to polling places for rural and college campus voters, and easy access to voting for all voters by public transportation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guarantees that all voters, nationwide, can vote by mail with no excuses necessary</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guarantees that all voters can put themselves on a permanent vote-by-mail list and automatically receive a ballot in the mail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires states to give voters the ability to track their mail-in ballots to be sure they’re counted or contest any challenge to their ballot</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forbids states from forcing mail-in voters to have their ballots witnessed, notarized or jump through other onerous hoops</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires secured and clearly labeled ballot drop boxes in all jurisdictions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires the Post Office to process all ballots on the day they’re dropped off and without postage</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires states to keep voting lines shorter than 30 minutes in all cases and places</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allows people waiting in line to vote to receive food or water from others</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gives the right to vote to all felons who have served their sentences, in all states</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prohibits voter “caging” where failure to return a postcard gets you purged</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prohibits states from deleting voters from the rolls because they haven’t recently voted</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Empowers voters to sue in federal court any state or local officials who interfere with their right to vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Criminalizes intimidating, threatening or coercing any election official or election worker</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires federal prosecution of anybody who tries to harm or undermine public officials by doxxing the personal information of an election worker or their immediate family</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Makes it a federal crime to publish or distribute false information about elections (when, where, etc.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Increases federal penalties for voter intimidation or otherwise interfering with your absolute right to vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Keeps partisan “poll watchers” at least 8 feet from voters in all circumstances, including while voting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires paper ballots in all cases and all elections (there are exceptions for disabled voters)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Requires post-election audits</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Provides criminal penalties for any candidate or campaign that fails to fully and immediately report any interactions with foreign governments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gives lower income individuals $25 they can use to give to candidates in $5 or more increments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Freedom To Vote Act is more urgently needed with every passing day, as multiple Republican-controlled states openly (and ironically) tear down actual “republican principles” of representative government by continuing to pass laws that pre-rig election outcomes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some have even gone so far as to introduce laws that authorize their legislatures to ignore or reject votes they don’t like, in anticipation of the 2024 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Passing this law must now be the Senate’s first priority because, “It’s a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/ronald-reagan-era-neoliberal/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Do we stand on the edge of a grand new progressive era, with good wages for all, racial and gender equality and justice, and a reduction of the political power of reactionary forces in America? Or will the next president gleefully overthrow American democracy, shutter the free press, and imprison those who object?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Mussolini put Antonio Gramsci, the founder of Italy’s Communist Party, in prison in 1927, Gramsci wrote from his prison cell that, “[T]he old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two forces in American politics are similarly on a collision course today: neoliberalism and progressivism. In the friction zone between the two, the “morbid symptom” of Trump’s white-power neofascism is claiming territory and has largely seized the power structures of the GOP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether American history goes in cycles, as Strauss and Howe posit in The Fourth Turning, or merely “rhymes” as in the apocryphal quote from Twain, we can identify periods when a particular political and economic philosophy holds court — and the periods when that philosophies or regimes begin to collapse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Fourth Turning posits roughly 80-year cycles in American history, each ending with an economic crash and a war, then each rebooting into a new progressive era: the Depression of the early 1770s and the American Revolution, the Panic of 1856 and the Civil War, the 1930s Republican Great Depression and World War II.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s been about 80 years since the end of that war, indicating, if this theory is right, that a crash and war may be around the corner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another way of looking at the cycles of American history is through the lens of “regimes,” as articulated by Stephen Skowronek in his 1993 book The Politics Presidents Make and recently revived in The New York Times by Professor Corey Robin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Jeffersonian regime lasted from 1800 to 1828,” Robin writes, “the Jacksonian regime, from 1828 to 1860; the Republican regime, from 1860 to 1932; the New Deal order, from 1932 to 1980.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Reagan order is thus now almost certainly in its calcification stage, becoming brittle, more fragile, and less vigorous as inevitably happens with every turn of regimes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In my opinion, the progressive movement — for example the unionization effort where Kellogg’s fired their workers and irate young people crashed their job-application server — is the ascendant group that will soon take power and hold the country for another turn of history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unless, of course, Trump’s neofascists succeed in closing off that option by utterly destroying our system of government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evidence abounds that the Reagan era or regime is rapidly disintegrating; that the Trump neofascist movement isn’t strong or broad-based enough to replace it (although they can cause considerable violence and distress); and, like in the 1930s and 1960s, that a young progressive movement is rapidly acquiring and consolidating political power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If I’m right and that’s what’s happening, it’s almost certainly because Americans are realizing that Reagan’s neoliberalism regime (which was carried on by the following five presidents) was largely a scam designed to disempower the working class while enriching the already well-off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All its vaunted rhetoric about “fiscal responsibility” and “conservative values” was just a smokescreen to hide naked theft, racism and misogyny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In overthrowing FDR’s New Deal politics and economics, Reagan’s era:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Destroyed most of the American labor movement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shifted trillions in both income and wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consolidated business and the wealth it creates into the hands of monopolies in every sector of our economy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moved over 60,000 factories and tens of millions of good-paying jobs to low-wage countries</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All while fattening the money bins of the morbidly rich with the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan, of course, had what he thought was a good rationale: he was holding back a growing tide of social change that intimidated wealthy older white men like himself and, he believed, threatened “The American Way.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It started back in 1951, when Russell Kirk electrified a small coterie of conservatives like William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater with his prediction that the middle class was growing too rich, and the inevitable result would be massive and widespread social upheaval in this country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This little band of conservatives predicted that if the middle class continued to gain income and wealth faster than the top 1% (which was the case in 1951), soon “the rabble” of working class people would be so wealthy that they’d feel safe challenge the institutions and social norms of America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Racial minorities would demand parity with white people, these conservatives warned us, women would disobey their husbands and leap into competition in the nation’s workplaces, and young people would openly defy their elders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result, they predicted, would be social chaos and out of that chaos would come a new and perhaps even communist — certainly more socialist — America, unrecognizable to the John Wayne-loving white men of America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Few in America took Kirk’s warnings seriously at the time, as I laid out in detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. Buckley was sidelined to public broadcasting and Goldwater lost the 1964 election in an historic landslide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But then came Jane Fonda, Tim Leary and the Beatles:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 1968 the birth control pill was in widespread use and the women’s movement was well underway.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Martin Luther King was leading marches across America even as cities kept erupting in violence in response to white police beating and murdering unarmed Black people (which triggered literally every single one of the “race riots” of the ’60s and ’70s).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And young people were smoking pot, exploring spirituality, joining SDS, and refusing to go to Vietnam.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suddenly, every conservative in America was reading Russell Kirk, as right-wing foundations and billionaires were rushing to fund “conservative think tanks“ and groups to influence the media and the courts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Richard Nixon rode the white fear of this change into office that year and set the stage for the 1971 Powell Memo and the rise of Reagan ten years later. Reagan then brought to a screeching halt much of the forward motion of those three movements, along with the gay rights movement, by stripping working-class people of wealth and political power while demonizing gays around AIDS.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But nothing stays the same. Circumstances change, failures are exposed, new generations acquire power as old generations pass away. If there’s a constant to politics it is this: every new cycle is eventually rejected and replaced as time moves forward.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Mussolini used state violence to imprison the progressive workers’ movement that was then sweeping both America and Europe, Gramsci wondered out loud: “Will the interregnum, the crisis whose historically normal solution is blocked in this way, necessarily be resolved in favor of a restoration of the old?” Or, will this “lead in the long run to widespread skepticism and a new ‘arrangement’”?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all, Gramsci noted, that “new arrangement” would require “a reduction of the highest superstructures” of politics and society, “in other words, the possibility and necessity of creating a new culture.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, indeed, it appears that’s just what’s happening today in America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starbucks just got their first unionized American store in their 50 years of existence. Kellogg’s is engaging in extreme union-busting, firing and replacing striking workers, while Amazon is facing a renewed effort to unionize their warehouses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much like with Mussolini’s state violence, the only reason there’s not been a widespread and successful wave of unionization efforts in America is because multiple Supreme Court decisions since the 1960s have eroded union rights in this country so severely, tilting state power against workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While last-gasp-reactionary states like Texas are fighting to put women back into the bedroom and kitchen, progressive states like California are preparing for a post-Roe America by expanding and institutionalizing women’s rights to healthcare, contraception and abortion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Progressive states like Oregon have decriminalized all drugs and provide terminally ill people with a “right to die with dignity,” while reactionary Red states are doubling down on their death penalties and Nixon-era anti-drug laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bifurcation, a splitting apart, appears to be the current state of America, but significant social change always happens just as “opposite” forces like these battle for the approval of the larger culture and its media, to soon be followed by its voters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corey Robin points out in The New York Times how “regimes grow brittle” and, much like the way the Reagan regime replaced FDR’s New Deal regime, we may be at the end of our generation’s 40-year neoliberal experiment (my phrase, not his).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For this to actually happen, though, is going to take not just a cultural shift but an actual change in the political and legal structures Reagan’s neoliberalism and its reactionary predecessors erected.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It will require, as Robin notes, ending the filibuster, overcoming the resistance of a small handful of sold-out Democrats in Congress (from Sinema/Manchin in the Senate to the “corporate problem solvers” in the House), expanding voting rights while ending partisan gerrymanders, and returning to an explicit right to unionize. I’d add overturning Citizens United and breaking up corporate monopolies to Robin’s list.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of these are within our grasp and, for the first time in over 50 years, are supported by the administration in power and the Democratic Party overall.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question is whether the forces arrayed against such change, from corporate media (and social media) to packed courts to cranky billionaires, can be overcome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a brilliant little (63 page) book (The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born) whose title came from Gramsci’s famous quote, Nancy Fraser argues that progressive populism is today on the verge of replacing neoliberalism in its several forms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She makes a strong argument, although notes candidly that it will take all of us, particularly requiring a widespread mobilization of the young people who will face the worst outcomes, from the ravages of climate change to the rise of neofascist bullies, if we fail.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We stand on the verge of major social and political change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GOP has embraced the oligarchic strong-man police-state values that reigned in the South between 1830 and 1865.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democratic Party is returning to its progressive and populist roots more rapidly than anybody would have thought possible just five years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the old cliché goes, we face a moment of great danger, but also one of great opportunity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12 21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're doubling down on death as a political strategy, a process Trump began the week of April 7, 2020 (as I documented in damning detail eight months ago).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Meadows' book is right and Trump was willing to infect then-77-year-old Biden at the debate, we have one more data point in the evil Trump/GOP Death Cult's plan to leverage the Covid pandemic as a political weapon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now they're accusing Dr. Fauci of behaving like the notorious Nazi death camp doctor, Josef Mengele. Seriously: former "real news" reporter Lara Logan laid out that unhinged rant on Fox News this week using the old "people are saying" rhetorical trick propagandists so love.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is what people say to me," Logan told an audience of millions, "that he doesn't represent science to them. He represents Joseph Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps. And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this…"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over 800,000 Americans are now dead from Covid, as we track daily at TrumpDeathToll.org.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Multiple studies suggest as many as a third of the roughly 50 million Americans who've contracted Covid are now disabled by having had the disease, many for life. These mostly unvaccinated people are now crippled with "long Covid" conditions ranging from chronic exhaustion to dementia to life-shortening heart and kidney disease, which can't be helping the labor shortages across key sectors of our economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dr. Fauci has been working for two years to try to reduce that death toll, and on Fox they're calling him Dr. Mengele? As the Auschwitz Memorial museum tweeted after Logan's comments:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful. It is disrespectful to victims & a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's also a huge distraction from a very real tragedy that could largely have been avoided if Trump had merely encouraged people to wear masks and social distance before the vaccine was available, and pushed his followers hard to get inoculated after the vaccine was available.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the GOP math is simple. When economies sag, voters choose the other party to take over: it's worked that way for 200+ years in American politics. So in 2020 Trump pushed Americans to ignore the virus and keep things "normal," leading to tens of millions of infections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump was apparently even willing to infect his 77-year-old opponent in the 2020 election: his Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, writes in his new book that Trump tested positive for Covid three days before his debate with Joe Biden and lied about it after getting a second, negative test. Thankfully, Biden kept his distance from Trump throughout the debate, as Trump would be in the hospital with Covid within two weeks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When that didn't work, Biden survived, and Trump lost anyway, starting the week that Biden was inaugurated Trump and his followers began discouraging people from getting vaccinated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And that's their strategy now: if they can keep America sick and on-edge, that'll keep the economy soft, which will work to Democrats' disadvantage in the 2022 and 2024 elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Democrats treat public health emergencies as serious issues, Republicans see them as a way to gain political advantage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember when President Obama let an American with Ebola into the country to receive treatment? The GOP went totally hysterical, some even calling for his impeachment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One conservative commentator wrote, "Today, his ambition to be a hero to Africa is undermining common sense approaches to protecting Americans from the Ebola virus." Republican Senator Joni Ernst called for Obama's impeachment for behaving like a "dictator" and railed against him over Ebola.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My old debating opponent, Phyllis Schlafly, proclaimed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That was the purpose of Ellis Island—to have a waiting place where it was decided whether people were healthy enough or responsible enough to come into our country. The idea that anybody can just walk in and carry this disease with them is just an outrage, and it is Obama's fault because he's responsible for doing it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now, as Mark Sumner reports at Daily Kos, four Trump-appointed federal judges have put a hold on President Biden's July efforts to make sure even hospital workers are fully vaccinated through OSHA workplace mandates:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In July, President Joe Biden issued a series of rules requiring that federal workers, and workers at companies that receive federal contracts, must be vaccinated. That included health care workers who work for hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, earlier this month, a three-judge panel in Texas blocked the implementation of the mandate for many large companies. Now, as The Washington Post reports, a federal district judge in Missouri has acted to block even the mandate for health care workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All are Trump judges, and the most recent decision from Trump-appointed District Court Judge Matthew Schelp quotes extensively from lies told almost daily on Fox and other right-wing media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His decision claimed that there's such widespread opposition to vaccination that: "The loss of [vaccine-refusing hospital] staffing in many instances will result in no care at all, as some facilities will be forced to close altogether."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's another lie, designed to keep the pandemic going in America. It completely ignores the success that vaccine mandates have had from United Airlines to the New York Police Department to the largest hospital chain in Houston. In every case, a tiny minority of people yelled and squealed and then got vaccinated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result of these GOP lies and a steady campaign in right-wing media and among Republican politicians casting doubt on vaccines, however, we have the worst Covid numbers and the highest Covid death toll in the developed world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And we're all forced to interact with 60 million people who refuse to get vaccinated or even wear masks because they either are willing to lay down their lives and health to help the GOP or were simply suckered into false beliefs by "friends" on social media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As David Leonhardt documents at The New York Times:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In October [2021], 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every one of those deaths was a loss to a family, a human tragedy. And the majority of them were preventable — if only Republican politicians had decided that human lives were more important than political power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, they chose the classic tactic of tyrants throughout history: lie to the people no matter how many die as a result.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/gop-southern-strategy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on Wednesday, all but two Republicans in the House of Representatives went on record saying it's okay to openly encourage the assassination of one of their own, a person of color and elected Member of the House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That part about Representative Ocasio-Cortez not being white was no coincidence, by the way. It was really at the core of the issue: Republicans now openly refer to her and the women of color who call themselves "the Squad" as the "Jihad caucus." As in "Muslim terrorists," as in "the Other."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earlier in the day, known antisemite and racist Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called for her followers to prepare for war because "Joe Biden didn't win the 2020 election" and "the only way you get freedom back after you've lost it is with the price of blood."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We heard this rhetoric, too, many years ago when a much earlier generation of white supremacists tried to gin up bloodshed in America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The time for war has not yet come," Stonewall Jackson said in a speech to cadets at the Virginia Military Institute in March, 1861, "but it will come, and that soon; and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson and his ilk frequently tried to pretend the Civil War was about some high principle instead of just being a naked defense of legal enslavement, but their own proclamations of secession betrayed them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No matter how much Republicans — and some white Democrats — want to try to pretend that the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties today isn't primarily about race, it is. And it's only a small part of a much larger Republican political strategy that, itself, is also all about race.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was a time in America when straight white people lived in nice, comfortable white bubbles. I grew up in one of them in the 1950s; the most "exotic" people in our lower-middle-class Lansing, Michigan neighborhood were Jewish, and I didn't even realize that distinction until I was a teenager.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only people of color we saw were on TV; even the milkman, mailman and delivery people were white. And the non-white folks we saw on TV were always, always depicted as either criminals or buffoons. And gay people? Even discussing Liberace's sexuality was a no-no.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mom was in the kitchen or pregnant, and knew her place. One white man with a union job could raise a family without debt beyond a mortgage and car payment. People of color need not apply for the American Dream.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the straight white world today's Republican Party wants to take America back to. They're all but shouting it with slogans like "Make America Great Again!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the GOP went nuts about six Dr. Seuss books being dropped by the author's family from publication, it was — no coincidence — the six books in which Seuss had drawn racist caricatures. And he wasn't violating the norms of his day: caricatures of buck-toothed Asians, swarthy gun-toting mustachioed Mexicans, and big-lipped Black people were all over the cartoons we watched as children in the 1950s. They are shocking today, but they were normal and common then, and the GOP wants to go back to that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When we studied American history in elementary school the 1950s, we learned that Christopher Columbus was a great man who defied conventional wisdom and monsters at the "edge of the earth" to discover this golden land, just waiting for white people to show up and tame it. (A woman around my age who called into my program yesterday noted that she was "really pissed off" when, in her first year of college, she took a history course and discovered Columbus was actually a rapist, child-trafficker and a slaver.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We also learned that most slave-masters (particularly the Founding Fathers) were really, really nice and thoughtful people who took good care of the poor, uneducated, primitive folks they "had under their care." To this day, there are still some textbooks in America that emphasize how slaveholding white people generously provided not only housing, food and clothing but also medical care for their charges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans today want to go back to that type of history for their children. They dress it all up with fancy language about "Critical Race Theory" but the bottom line for these white people is that they don't want their kids to grow up knowing that Black people and other people of color are just like them but with a different amount of pigment in their skin. They want that pigment difference to be THE defining characteristic, and they want teachers, police, and other authority figures to enforce segregation based on it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the years after the Brown v Board decision in 1954, entire public school systems shut down to avoid racial integration; one Virginia county went five years without a public school opening.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was an explosion of "religious schools," from private elementary and high school "academies" to centers of higher education like Bob Jones University that were explicitly and entirely whites-only. Promoting these types of functionally all-white schools continued from the 1950s right through Betsy DeVos's time as Trump's Secretary of Education.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When white people show up at school board meetings shouting that "We know where you live!" and leaving death threats on people's home phones, it's not because they're flipped out by historic and legal nuances having to do with past discrimination: it's because they want their safely segregated schools back.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they're getting them: American schools are more racially segregated now than they were in 1968.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And when those schools are almost entirely "whites only" (the school districts where we're seeing the majority of these "protests"), those "parents" want them purged of anything that might shatter for their white children the idea held by white people in this country for 400 years that everybody who's not white — from genocidally slaughtered Native Americans to Africans brought in chains to Mexicans whose land we also stole to Asians we once excluded from immigration — are all basically sub-human.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is how these Republican white supremacists think, and if that sounds outrageous simply check out their literature and behavior. A good starting point is with the Southern Poverty Law Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The news media sanitized the Virginia election, saying that Republican Youngkin won "on education issues." That's patently false: he won on racism. And it's damn well time that the media start pointing it out. It took them three years to start calling Trump's lies "lies" — how long will it take to call Republican racism "racism"?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I went into the job market in the 1960s, the headings in the "Help Wanted" part of the newspaper were "Help Wanted – Men" and "Help Wanted - Women." There was no "Help Wanted – Black People" because everybody knew there was a very, very narrow range of jobs for which Black people could be hired. Like in much of America then, Black people (and most other minorities) were limited in where they could work, get a mortgage, live, and even walk or drive; if they pushed the boundaries, they risked violence and a horrible, painful death at the hands of police or vigilantes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I was a kid, Richard and Mildred Loving were rousted from their wedding bed by police for the crime of getting married; he was white and she was Black. They were sentenced to a year in prison: interracial marriage was a crime in parts of America until 1967.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When I got my first job in 1965 as a teenage hamburger-flipper in an all-white burger joint, there were large parts of Lansing where Black people simply couldn't go. I still remember my parents taking me to a fancy downtown hotel's restaurant for some celebration in the mid-1950s and there was a sign off to the side of the door that pointed toward the rear of the building and said, "Colored Entrance." That, at the time, was considered enlightened: at least the hotel let Black people into its public areas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But race has always permeated politics, and voting is at the foundation of the political process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1993, no state in the union required ID to vote, even though Paul Weyrich (co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and then with the Reagan campaign) said right out loud that, "I don't want everybody to vote. … As a matter of fact, quite candidly, our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But then Democrats in Congress pushed through the 1993 "Motor Voter" law that required states to let people register to vote when they got their drivers' licenses. Republicans went insane, charging that "millions" of brown-skinned "illegals" would now get drivers' licenses, get registered to vote in the process, and begin flipping elections toward Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We then used signature-matching to confirm identity (you showed ID to register to vote, and your signature was kept on record), which is the most secure form of identity confirmation easily available. You can buy a reasonably good fake ID for $50, but try forging somebody else's signature while an election official is watching you: it's pretty much impossible. Signatures are called "biometric markers" and they're even more secure than ID.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Republicans were so certain that hoards of Brown people were going to show up at the polls that they passed laws in state after state to require ID at the polls on top of comparing the voter's signature. It's a pathetic and futile effort: those "illegals" never showed up. Virtually all of the extremely rare "voter fraud" that happens in America is done by white people (most Republicans, based on those busted after 2020) or ex-felons who didn't realize they couldn't vote in their state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I lay out in The Hidden History of the War on Voting: Who Stole Your Vote and How to Get It Back, the past thirty years have seen a grotesque orgy of laws, regulations and policy changes designed specifically to make it easier for white suburban voters — and harder for college students, Black city dwellers, and social security voters — to cast a ballot.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Using the political power they get from skewing elections, Republicans want schools to help their children to grow up like many in my generation did, thinking at some unconscious (and often conscious) level that those racist caricatures were depictions of reality and only white people could be thoughtful, intelligent, peaceful problem-solvers like Dad on Leave It To Beaver or Gunsmoke's Matt Dillon or Superman. Or members of Congress or presidents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">White is good, they want their kids told: everybody else is weird, odd, comical, dangerous or "one of them." Or a Democrat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The last Democrat running for president who won a majority of white people in his election was Lyndon Johnson.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While it's sometimes mentioned tangentially that Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden all lost the white vote, a sort of parenthetic footnote to election results, it's the foundation of the entire Republican strategy and has been since Nixon invented it with his "Southern Strategy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964/1965 he left the white racists who'd supported the Democratic Party since before the Civil War without a home. Nixon prepared one, Reagan fluffed up the pillows, and Trump stood out front with a bullhorn and a "whites only" sign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As it's becoming increasingly obvious to these "racially apprehensive" white people that America as a whole is never returning to the Leave It To Beaver era, they're falling back on their old intimidation and segregation strategies. Red counties in Oregon, for example, are teaming up with white voters in next-door Idaho and won nonbinding ballot measures to secede from Oregon. That sort of thing is popping up all over the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It won't work, any more than liberal fantasies of avoiding the armed and angry racists by having California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii split off into their own country will work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Red/Blue rhetoric aside, America is one country. The Mike Flynn's and Donald Trump's of the world realize this and are calling for straight white people to rise up and take over by force, imposing a single religion, rigid gender roles, putting women "back in their place," and re-marginalizing all nonwhite minorities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The "battle for the soul of America" so often highlighted, headlined, and bemoaned by the media is real, but they almost always miss the real story, the signal, for all the noise (to paraphrase Steve Bannon). It's actually a battle between a vision of America that's once again entirely under the thumb of straight white people versus one where everybody has an equal voice and an equal chance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are a hell of a lot of white racists out there; enough to put Trump in the White House, put race-baiting Republicans in the House and Senate, and secure control over thirty states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But culture is inexorably changing. People from a multitude of hues and gender identities are showing up in media and business, and their numbers are growing. White supremacist school board assaults aside, educators and their students are teaching and learning the true racial history of America. (It's increasingly hard to avoid!)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No matter how much people like Marjorie Taylor Greene talk up civil war and bloodshed, they can't stop progress. They may win for a short while, maybe even a few years or election cycles, but time and history run against them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fight for democracy and humanity will continue, no matter how many people vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse or the cops kill, no matter how many racist white Republicans threaten the lives of their nonwhite colleagues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Genuinely patriotic Americans who want a country that pulls together for the good of all — an E Pluribus Unum ("Out of Many, One") America — are on the ascent across America, even as the GOP has gone insane.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, it will take a lot of involvement and work to overcome both our racist history and the forces (both domestic and foreign) that seek to exploit racial divisions in this country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Racism and violence are the GOP's brand these days, and if the media doesn't start calling them out explicitly for it, things are going to continue to get worse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new poll by the Marquette Law School found that while the GOP is largely united behind a 2024 Trump run for the White House, only 28 percent of all Americans agree. Seventy-one percent of Americans want Trump to leave our politics alone and go back to being a billionaire grifter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Racist Republicans are the outliers, but they are motivated and well armed with significant white billionaire backing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we want democracy and decency to ultimately prevail, we have an enormous amount of political and restorative work to do before we rest. Don't lose faith: as Winston Churchill famously said, "Never give up!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon-doomsday-cult/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today I'm starting a new feature for the Hartmann Report. Every week I'll publish an excerpt from one of my books, trying to pick ones that are particularly relevant to the issues of the day. The entire excerpt will be available to our paid subscribers, who can also comment on it. Our free subscribers will get at least the first third and optimally the first half of the excerpt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today's excerpt is from The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part One: The Hidden History of Judicial Review</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To understand the Supreme Court, one must understand the zeitgeist of the Founding Fathers' generation and the philosophical history that led the founders and framers to create the Court itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Part 1 of this book looks at the founders' intents and concerns—and how quickly the Court seized the power of judicial review to become a nearly despotic branch of government. The conclusion of part 1 explores how one man sparked a right-wing movement to seize control of the American government—including the outsized power of the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Founders' Vision</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">—James Madison</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In May 1787, a group of men in Philadelphia began to gather to debate and discuss what would become the template for the new United States of America: a new constitution. The youngest was New Jersey's 26-year-old Jonathan Dayton (although James Madison was in his 30s, as were several other delegates), and the oldest was Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin, who at 81 was so infirm that he had to be carried to and from the meetings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Five men who were not in the room influenced the convention tremendously. Thomas Jefferson was stationed in Paris as the US envoy to France; John Adams was in London as our envoy to the UK. But even more important, Thomas Hobbes was 108 years dead, John Locke had been dead for 83 years, and Baron de Montesquieu had been dead for 32 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Hobbes tutored King Charles II and wrote Leviathan, which triggered the earliest stages of the Enlightenment, and also the big split away from monarchy and toward liberal democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hobbes's ideas, with their faith in hierarchy and patriarchy, also formed a basis for today's conservative movement. He believed that the essential nature of humans was evil (because, the Bible tells us, we're all "born of woman") and that man's "original state" was a life of continual warfare and fear: "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe . . . [they have no] arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only escape from our brutish and fearful existence in the state of nature, according to Hobbes, was under the iron-fisted institutions of church or state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is still the primary conservative narrative: without the restraining force of church or state, human life will devolve into chaos. A strong father figure, the story goes, is necessary, both in the form of leaders and rulers, and in the form of a tutelary (to use Alexis de Tocqueville's word) state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This view also led to the formation of the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Glue That Binds Us Together</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two generations after Hobbes, in the 1600s, King James II's tutor, John Locke, saw things differently. He saw balance and democracy in nature and believed that humans could live in the then-modern world without submitting to some "dear leader." Instead, he wrote that humans could live "in society." He described it as the collection, both biological and voluntary, of people living in proximity and united for a common goal with a shared philosophy of social organization.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Locke's Two Treatises of Government tore the "divine right" argument1 for ruling to pieces in 1690, making Locke famous and vaulting him to the front of the philosophers who were arguing for something more egalitarian to replace royalty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His Second Treatise laid out the basis of democracy, as he saw it, and set the stage for today's modern liberal democracies and the overall arc of the US Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Locke argued against the king's supreme power over person and property, declaring, "Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom . . . hath by nature a power . . . to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nearly a century later, Locke's language informed Thomas Jefferson's drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Because Locke conceived of law as being above any individual (such as a king), his argument called for a court system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another towering figure who influenced the creation of the Supreme Court was Charles-Louis de Secondat, aka the Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu. Long gone but still well remembered, he was simply referred to by the founders and framers as Montesquieu.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Montesquieu argued in his 1748 The Spirit of Laws that egalitarian, democratic societies could work,2 and Jefferson wholly embraced Montesquieu's ideas about the separation of powers within a government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One could argue that Montesquieu was the godfather of the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Bold Experiment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Delegates also considered the form of democratic government held by the Iroquois Confederacy, as evinced by Ben Franklin, who wrote to his partner in the publishing business in New York, James Parker:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.3</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Iroquois had a court system that, in some ways, also inspired our Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jefferson knew the Indians of Virginia well; as a young boy and early teen, he had traveled from remote tribe to tribe with his father, who spoke several of their languages, while his father was mapping the state. In his 1785 Notes on Virginia, Jefferson vigorously defended the Iroquois, and the Native Americans in general, against those Hobbesians who argued that they were uncivilized brutes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jefferson dismissed the racist rhetoric of the day, explaining, "In short, this [uncivilized] picture is not applicable to any nation of Indians I have ever known or heard of in North America." Favoring history over racist myths, Franklin and Jefferson each looked to aspects of the Iroquois Confederacy to inform our own Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, most of the contemporary "civilized" world still operated with the assumption of the divine rights of kings: the idea of private ownership of property as a normal thing for white working men was only about a century old (and wouldn't appear for women until the 20th century).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the failure of the Articles of Confederation to hold the nation together, the framers knew that there were lessons to be learned from scholarly Western sources, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans, but also from more novel sources, including the Iroquois elders they invited in for the opening days of the Convention.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These men were embarking on a bold experiment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Debating the Supreme Court</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From the founding of our republic in 1789 until 1803, the Supreme Court was only the final court of appeals. After all, the buck had to stop somewhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1788, when James Madison and Alexander Hamilton published a long series of newspaper articles promoting to the American people the idea that they should ratify the Constitution (which happened in 1789), Hamilton took on the job of selling Article III, which created the court system, including the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that sales pitch, Hamilton, on May 28, 1788, wrote in a newspaper article we today call the Federalist, no. 78, that the courts, including the Supreme Court, were the weakest of the three branches created by the Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[T]he judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power," he wrote, adding in the same sentence that "it can never attack with success either of the other two [branches]."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He even footnoted that sentence with a quote from the famous French judge Montesquieu, who had first clearly articulated the idea of a separation of powers between governmental branches as a check and balance. Hamilton's footnote read, "The celebrated Montesquieu, speaking of them, says: 'Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He explained why the Court's judges had lifetime appointments and the judiciary had its own section of the Constitution, writing in the Federalist, no. 78, "[F]rom the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lifetime appointments and Montesquieu's "separation of powers" would insulate the Court from being "overpowered, awed, or influenced" by the president or Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But some Americans (and many of the newspapers of the day) weren't convinced; the idea of lifetime appointments and being a branch of government independent from the other two sounded too much like the European monarchies that the colonists had just fought a revolutionary war against.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"What would prevent the Supreme Court from rising up and taking over the country?" they asked. "You're concentrating too much power in one branch!" others essentially said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, a month later, in June 1788, Hamilton published what is now known as the Federalist, no. 81, answering directly their objections, again arguing that the Supreme Court couldn't make laws and couldn't strike down laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Hartmann Report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If President Biden's Build Back Better plan goes down in flames, you can blame the US Supreme Court. Their Citizens United decision, in fact, is destroying both American politics and the planet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Case in point: Oil industry executives testified before Congress this week, suffering a barrage of questions, including particularly intense ones from Reps. Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Katie Porter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CEOs exhibited the same sort of arrogant insolence Mark Zuckerberg displayed in July of last year when he was hauled before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. It was, basically, a smug, "Screw you, Congressperson."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why were the representatives of Big Oil and Big Tech unafraid of the power of Congress?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because, at the end of the day, they own that power. The Supreme Court gave it to them with their poisonous Citizens United decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It turns out that Big Oil has spent, just over the past decade, over $450 million lobbying the federal government. We used to call this political corruption or even bribery until the Court ruled in Citizens United that money in politics isn't money: it's "free speech."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, the Court added, corporations aren't corporations: they're persons, complete with a First Amendment right to free speech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Representative Khanna repeatedly asked the CEOs of Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, and BP America if they'd stop funding advertising and PR efforts that are filled with outright lies about climate change. Pretty much every time he asked, he was met with a "screw you" silence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These CEOs effectively own multiple members of Congress, as the world could see when it was the turn of the meek and obeisant Republican members to ask questions that mostly amounted to, "May I fluff the pillow you're sitting on, sir?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's not just Big Oil. Every industry in America laughs at Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our elected representatives are there, in the minds of corporate America, to hand out subsidies and tax breaks, but if they take the smallest step toward protecting the American people from giant corporations or predatory billionaires they're simply brushed aside like troublesome lint.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans don't want Medicare privatized: but we're more than 40% of the way there through Bush's "Medicare Advantage" scam.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans don't want our Post Office gutted: Congress sucked tens of billions out of its budget in 2006 after the PO said they were going to electrify their fleet of cars (the largest in America) and DeJoy is using that as an excuse to cut service and raise prices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like debt-free college like every other developed country in the world: the $1.5 trillion student loan industry just makes a few phone calls and the effort dies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans want a national healthcare system that actually works at little cost to citizens: the health insurance industry hands Joe Lieberman over a million dollars and he kills the public option so we're left with an entirely corporatized Obamacare with $5000 annual deductibles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans want something done about high drug prices: Big Pharma calls up Kurt Schrader, Scott Peters, Kathleen Rice, Kyrsten Sinema and a few other wholly owned members of Congress and that's the end of that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans want their banks to stop hitting them with absurd fees for the smallest errors and would like some occasional customer service: Big Banking pulls a few strings and Senators are dancing like marionettes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans want something done about climate change before our planet becomes uninhabitable: Big Coal and Gas light a fire under Joe Manchin and the entire GOP and that's the end of that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like open and transparent elections and for their democracy to work like in other countries, without barriers to voting or bought-off politicians: neofascist rightwing billionaires will have the final say on that and it's not looking good.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like net neutrality and for corporations to stop spying on them: Big Tech just leans on the members of Congress they own and that effort comes to an abrupt halt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like well-funded public schools that teach things like civics and critical thinking skills: the multi-billion-dollar Charter School industry gets last word.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like to be free of gun violence in our homes and streets: the gun industry gets final say here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like good union jobs: the nation's giant employers have paid off politicians to gut union protections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The majority of Americans would like a food supply free of toxic chemicals that harm children and cause cancer: giant fast- and processed-food companies laugh at us while their buddies in the chemical industry hold their beer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hell, the President of the United States would like all these things and a few more. He will almost certainly not get them because the Supreme Court gave corporations and rightwing billionaires final say over every single piece of legislation that goes through Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We're ripped off left and right, from airline tickets to cell phone service to cable TV and the internet: citizens of Europe, South Korea and Japan pay, on average, about half of what we do because they all enforce competition and don't allow monopolies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here, every industry is now dominated by 3-5 major corporations that function as a monopoly or oligopoly, which is why the average American family pays around $5000 a year more for everything as I documented in The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US Supreme Court brought us all of this with the vile Citizens United decision and its progenitors, Boston v Bellotti, Buckley v Valeo, and Santa Clara County.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, we now face a real crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Court gave control of Congress over to billionaires and their companies, and only Congress can overrule the Court (Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution). But how does Congress do that when none of the corporations or billionaires who now own Congress want it to happen?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is only one force that can make this happen now: citizen outrage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People are genuinely disgusted by this corruption, and they're voting with it in mind.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even Donald Trump was elected on a promise to "drain the swamp" of big money corruption in DC. He claimed that he knew how the game was played because he played it himself, buying off politicians whenever necessary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the August 2015 GOP primary debate, he called out all the other Republicans on the stage, saying: "I gave [money] to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In September he ran that line again at the next primary debate, saying: "The donors, the special interests, the lobbyists have very strong power over these people," as he waved at the other Republicans on stage. "I am not accepting any money from anybody. Nobody has control of me other than the people of this country."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sadly, enough Americans believed that professional grifter to get him into the White House (with a little help from Russian oligarchs), but the principle remains: even Republican voters are disgusted by this crisis of corruption the Supreme Court has foisted upon us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than a decade ago I did a fundraiser for the Congressional Progressive Caucus with its then-chair, Rep. Raúl Grijalva. It was a small affair with a half-dozen politicians and around 100 activists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because of citizen outrage with how corrupt and bought-off our politics have become since the Supreme Court rewrote the rules of politics, today almost 100 members of Congress have been elected on "no corporate PAC money" pledges and become members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today we're watching an epic battle to rebuild America being fought valiantly by progressives like Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They may lose this one battle, but the path they're on is steadily upward.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the only way we can now claw back our democratic republic from the corrupt billionaires and corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We have to get money out of politics and the only way to do that is to get more people in office who are not addicted to or corrupted by money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's an election coming up in a year, and primaries will be conducted in the months ahead. We must do everything we can to identify, elect and support politicians who openly and sincerely pledge never to sell their souls to the devil of Big Money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 10 21&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">senator Joe Manchin, echoing the rightwing billionaire's think-tanks' PR and every Republican in Congress, recently said his objection to free college for students and eyeglasses for seniors was that such things created an "entitlement society," a slur that means "a nation of welfare recipients."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that, he displays a fundamental ignorance about what governments do and how societies work, as well as the difference between what we usually call the "social safety net" and things people should expect simply as a "right of citizenship" in a first-world country. He also misunderstands the difference between expenses and investments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A "social safety net" is there to catch you when you fall. Unemployment insurance keeps you from becoming homeless when capitalism has one of its periodic hiccups. Food stamps tide you over in rough times. FEMA programs provide mobile homes and a stipend to keep people rendered homeless by natural disasters like hurricanes, forest fires, and floods alive and well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are the sorts of things that we generally refer to as "welfare." They're there to "catch us" and keep us from falling through society's "floor."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They also prevent people from "breaking" when they fall, whether it's a temporary hiccup in capitalism (recession, depression), a natural disaster, or a region that's failed to invest in itself so long that there are simply no jobs available. We know, for example, that inequality, along with the poverty and mental illness it causes, drive up costs to society that can be covered with these kinds of help.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So these shorter-term programs (or, in some cases, even longer-term for already-wounded people) keep society stable. Finland, for example, is providing free housing for all their homeless; it's cheaper than the police, hospital and mental health services that houseless people otherwise use. But these are still programs to "catch" people and regions who've fallen or been injured by life, not to grow and expand society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A "citizenship right" is something altogether different. It's what nations provide as rights of citizenship to keep a society functioning on a normal plane, and to help that society grow and improve socially and economically.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As citizens of America, for example, we expect good public schools, decent roads, police and fire protections, and a functioning government funded by tax dollars to keep it all going. We expect as citizens that when we pay into Social Security and Medicare our entire lives, those systems will be maintained in a way that can keep us healthy, productive, and out of poverty when we retire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the "safety net" protects us from personal, family or community disasters, the "rights of citizenship" provide the foundation for society itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The physical infrastructure of a nation makes possible normal life, and the more sophisticated and functional that infrastructure is, the more vibrant a nation's economy will be.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was the core rationale for Republican President Dwight Eisenhower building the interstate highway system: it not only made it easier to visit grandpa and grandma, it also made it easier to transport goods and thus facilitated commerce leading to the economic boom of the 1950-1980 era.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ditto for an advanced air traffic system, quality public transportation, and a national high-speed rail system like in every other advanced country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same is true for the "human infrastructure" of a nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The more citizens a country has who are college-educated, the more competitive and prosperous that nation becomes. The better the health of a country, the more reliable and efficient its workforce. When government helps young parents care for their children, it frees them up to more fully participate in the commercial and civic life of the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, infrastructure — be it physical or human — is not welfare. It doesn't produce an "entitlement society." Instead, it's the core foundation on which a functional society rests, the soil in which business can root itself, and the launching pad for a horizon-free future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another way to think of it is through the lens of economics and accounting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Welfare" is an expense. It doesn't make things better: when appropriately funded it simply keeps them from becoming worse. It pays dividends in that it keeps people alive and functional, but just barely. The "return on investment" to the government is minimal outside of its moral duty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Rights of citizenship" like infrastructure, on the other hand, are investments. They pay returns and dividends. Invest "x" and over years or decades you'll get multiples of "x" in return. Even police and fire, when run right, keep neighborhoods crime-free and facilitate commerce, growing the local economy. New transportation, education, and healthcare infrastructure build prosperity and attract investment in the larger community.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not understanding this simple distinction is the major failure of neoliberal and "conservative" politicians, guided, in large part, by so-called "think tanks" and pundits funded by rightwing billionaires who, frankly, don't care about either "welfare" or "rights of citizenship/infrastructure."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all, being morbidly rich billionaires, they don't need either.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They can afford the best healthcare in the world with their pocket change; they travel on private jets outside of public airports (never even having to go through security); and they send their kids to the best private schools in the world regardless of the local tax base.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And since welfare and infrastructure are both are funded by tax dollars — which the morbidly rich go to great lengths to avoid paying — pushing politicians to reject both only adds more dollars to their money bins that otherwise would have gone to taxes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Joe Manchin's understanding of these fundamental, high-school-civics differences in government programs is disappointing, it shouldn't be surprising. He was born into wealth and is, himself, a multimillionaire coal baron, living on the largest yacht at my old home, the Capital Yacht Club (among his other homes).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Joe Biden — who spent his life traveling home from DC to Delaware every weekend on public transportation via Amtrak — understands this at a gut level. New roads, bridges, and broadband infrastructure are investments that will return dividends to both society and our economy. He knows that strengthening our infrastructure strengthens our nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden understands that replacing fossil fuel-based energy infrastructure with made-in-America renewables like solar and wind both reduce our dependence on brutal foreign oligarchs like Saudi Arabia's murderous MBS while producing power for generations with little more than simple maintenance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He knows that sending young people to college at no or little cost — as is done in every other advanced democracy in the world — is a simple investment in our nation's families and intellectual infrastructure that will pay dividends for generations into our future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Progressives working on his legislative agenda realize that providing people with a robust and low-cost healthcare system is an investment in our ultimate infrastructure: our people. Without healthy workers there is no reliable economy; with healthy workers an economy becomes ever-more vibrant, which is why every other developed country in the world except the US provides free or low-cost universal healthcare and takes care of all their seniors' medical needs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rightwing billionaire propaganda aside, these are not "welfare" or "entitlements," and they don't cause people to "become lazy" or "refuse to work." As we strengthen and "Build Back Better" our physical and human infrastructure, we simultaneously strengthen our nation while moving us into a cleaner, safer, and more reliable future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In every other developed country in the world, these things are simple rights of citizenship. They should be here, too, if we want to compete in the 21st century and improve our (slipping) status as a First World nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 10 21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It happened three times yesterday, and I only watched or half-watched a few hours of TV news. It happens every day, it seems. Somebody wonders out loud (yesterday's most prominent was Alex Witt with Dr. Anthony Fauci) why over 60 million Americans who are eligible to be vaccinated are still refusing — including hospital workers in some parts of the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Everybody treats it like it's a confounding question with no easy answer. The actual answer, though, is pretty straightforward: the psychopaths running the rightwing media ecosystem dominated by Fox "News" and social media, and echoed by 1500 radio stations across the country, have decided people dying and being disabled is both profitable and politically advantageous to them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Joe Biden was elected president the Republican Party and their joined-at-the-hip rightwing media did a sudden about-face from praising Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" to encouraging their followers to remain unvaccinated so President Biden would struggle to get the economy back on sound footing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That, they figured, was their best bet to take back Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, and they've stayed on-message ever since Biden took office on January 20th. As I noted in considerable detail back in July, death is their political strategy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now, as if to put a punctuation point on it, the headline at Raw Story warns: Fox News host uses Colin Powell's death to launch anti-vax rant: "Fully-vaccinated are dying of Covid."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost 750,000 Americans have died of Covid and recent research published by the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that at as many as half of the 45 million Americans who've been diagnosed with the disease will suffer long term consequences, the main ones being dementia, exhaustion and damage to the heart and kidneys.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It used to be in American business that you knew where the psychopaths were: tobacco. It's an industry producing a product that, when used as directed, kills around a half-million Americans every year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Being able to comfortably fall asleep every night knowing that the product of your workday had killed another 1,300 people is a rare competence that typically requires the mental illness of psychopathy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About 1% of Americans are psychopaths, although such people tend to be concentrated in some areas: as many as 12% of major corporate CEOs are believed to be psychopaths, and about 15% of people in prison.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A psychopath, for all practical purposes, believes that he's quite literally the only "true human being" on planet Earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Everybody else is an actor of some sort, a prop, in the grand play of the psychopath's life. Everybody else is here to make him happy and meet his needs, and he doesn't have to worry about hurting them or not meeting their needs because they are not "real people" like he is.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The clinical terminology is that psychopaths "lack the ability to feel empathy." Weirdly, this lack of empathy can make them more successful in big business and politics, as well as in criminal and prison environments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, the CEO of Fox "News" — the network that daily spreads vaccine misinformation leading to deaths that are tearing apart American families — tells the Hollywood Reporter that she sleeps "well at night." Just like the tobacco CEOs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, people who watch Fox and all its imitators across various media are taking the implicit advice of Fox's primetime hosts and avoiding vaccination…and getting sick and in some cases dying.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're embracing quack cures promoted on the network and across rightwing media, including hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, giving their viewers the false sense of security that if they get sick with this awful disease there's a ready cure at hand…so there's no need to get vaccinated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even worse, consumers of this media are doing their best to disrupt rational public health efforts like mask and vaccine mandates by harassing public health officials, school boards, and elected representatives across the country — all leading to even more disease and deaths.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Americans realized, mostly as the result of massive lawsuits in the 1990s, that the CEOs of the tobacco industry were knowingly killing people (and even reaching out to addict children) we took action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We limited access to this death-dealing product, from outlawing television advertising to limiting placement of cigarette vending machines and strict enforcement of age-limited retail sales. We also required that the product be honestly labeled: "Tobacco kills."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This isn't an option for media, and rightly so because of our First Amendment protections of the press (including this article). And nobody wants to take those freedoms and protections away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the most important and effective campaign our nation embarked on to cut tobacco use was the nationwide campaign to educate people about the dangers of tobacco use. We taught adults and schoolchildren alike how the industry was trying to addict them and showed them the consequences of using that deadly product.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now that rightwing media has arguably caused more Americans to die in the past year than has tobacco, it's time to consider a similar strategy to balance the lies and misinformation streaming out of them every day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we can't rely on the news and social media industries' content producers or executives to stop spreading death-dealing misinformation, we can at least wake people up to the dangers of their products.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">#RightwingMediaCausesDeath</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30+ other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/kyrsten-sinema-environment-climate-change-2619538159.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">when Bobby Kennedy went after organized crime in the early 1960s, one of the things he learned was that the Mafia had a series of rituals new members went through to declare their loyalty and promise they'd never turn away from their new benefactors. Once in, they'd be showered with money and protection, but they could never leave and even faced serious problems if they betrayed the syndicate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which brings us to the story of Kyrsten Sinema.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a republican democracy to actually work, average citizens with a passion for making their country better must be able to run for public office without needing wealthy or powerful patrons; this is a concept that dates back to Aristotle's rants on the topic. And Sinema was, in the beginning, just that sort of person. But I'm getting ahead of myself…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the Nixon and Agnew bribery scandals were fully revealed with a series of congressional investigations leading to Nixon's resignation in 1974, Congress passed and President Jerry Ford signed into law a series of "good government" laws that provided for public funding of elections and strictly limited the role of big money in campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just like the 1/6 attack on the Capitol produced a "select" committee to investigate the anti-democracy crimes of Donald Trump and his cronies, Congress authorized the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to look into Nixon's abuses and make recommendations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee's 100-page report documented how Nixon had taken bribes (most notably $400,000 from ITT to squash an antitrust lawsuit); used "dark" money from wealthy friends and corporations to set up astroturf "citizens committees" (an early version of the Tea Party) to make it appear he had widespread support among the American public; and used off-the-books money to both support loyal Republican politicians whose help he needed as well as to pay for his "opposition research" surveillance which included the Watergate break-in of the DNC's headquarters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the report, Congress passed an exhaustive set of new laws and regulations, most significantly creating from scratch the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), outlawing secret donations to politicians while providing for public funding of federal elections to diminish the power of big money. (Jimmy Carter was the only presidential candidate to win using such public funding.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the years since, conservatives on the Supreme Court have repeatedly gutted provisions of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), most famously in 2010 with their notorious Citizens United decision,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">with that stroke, over the loud objections of the four "liberals" on the Court, corporations were absolutely deemed as "persons" with full constitutional rights, and billionaires or corporations pouring massive amounts of money into campaign coffers was changed from "bribery and political corruption" to an exercise of the constitutionally-protected "right of free speech."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Into this milieu stepped Kyrsten Sinema, running from a seat in the Arizona Senate for the US House of Representatives in 2012 as an "out" bisexual and political progressive. The campaign quickly turned ugly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the Citizens United script, the Republican she confronted in that race (Vernon Parker) used corporate and billionaire money to carpet-bomb their district airwaves with ads calling her "a radical left-wing activist promoting hatred toward our country, our allies, and our families" and warning people that she "engaged in pagan rituals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the district was heavily Democratic (Obama handily won it that year) but the race was close enough that it took six full days for the AP to call it for Sinema. And that, apparently, was when she decided that if you can only barely beat them, you'd damn well better join them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sinema quickly joined other Democrats who'd followed the Citizens United path to the flashing neon lights of big money, joining the so-called "Problem Solvers" caucus that owes its existence in part to the Wall Street-funded front group "No Labels."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quietly and without fanfare, she began voting with Republicans and the corporate- and billionaire-owned Democrats, supporting efforts to deregulate big banks, "reform" Social Security and Medicare, and make it harder to for government to protect regular investors or even buyers of used cars from being ripped off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She voted with the Chamber 77 percent of the time in her first term; in return, political networks run by rightwing billionaires and the US Chamber of Commerce showered her with support. In her first re-election race, in 2014, she was one of only five democrats endorsed by the notoriously rightwing Chamber.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She'd proved herself as a "made woman," just like the old mafiosi documented by RFK in the 1960s, willing to do whatever it takes, compromise whatever principles she espoused, to get into and stay in the good graces of the large and well-funded rightwing syndicates unleashed by Citizens United.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So it should surprise precisely nobody that Sinema is parroting the Chamber's and the billionaire network's line that President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan is too generous in helping and protecting average Americans and too punitive in taxing the morbidly rich. After all, once you're in, you leave at your own considerable peril, even when 70 percent of your state's voters want the bill to pass.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And this is a genuine crisis for America because if President Biden is frustrated in his attempt to pass his Build Back Better legislation (that is overwhelmingly supported by Americans across the political spectrum) — all because business groups, giant corporations and rightwing billionaires are asserting ownership over their two "made" senators — there's a very good chance that today's cynicism and political violence is just a preview of the rest of the decade.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But this isn't as much a story about Sinema as it is about today's larger political dysfunction for which she's become, along with Joe Manchin, a poster child.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Increasingly, because of the Supreme Court's betrayal of American values, it's become impossible for people like the younger Sinema to rise from social worker to the United States Senate without big money behind them. Our media is absolutely unwilling to call this what even Andrew Jackson would have labeled it: political corruption. But that's what it is and it's eating away at our republic like a metastasized cancer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A guest on Brian Stelter's CNN program yesterday pointed out that there are today more autocracies in the world than democracies and, generally, democracies are on the decline. This corruption of everyday politics by the rich and powerful is how democracies begin the shift to autocracy or oligarchy, as I document in gruesome detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the naked corruption of Sinema and Joe Manchin is a source of outrage for Democrats across America, what's far more important is that it reveals how deep the rot of money in American politics has gone, thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Justice Stevens' dissent in Citizens United, he pointed out that corporations in their modern form didn't even exist when the Constitution was written in 1787 and got its first ten amendments in 1791, including the First which protects free speech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"All general business corporation statues appear to date from well after 1800," Stevens pointed out to his conservative colleagues on the Court. "The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans they had in mind.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it…. Unlike natural persons, corporations have 'limited liability' for their owners and managers, 'perpetual life,' separation of ownership and control, 'and favorable treatment of the accumulation of assets….' Unlike voters in U.S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Noting that corporations "inescapably structure the life of every citizen," Stevens continued: "It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even worse than the short-term effect of a corporation's dominating an election or a ballot initiative, Stevens said (as if he had a time machine to look at us now), was the fact that corporations corrupting politics would, inevitably, cause average working Americans — the 95 percent who make less than $100,000 a year — to conclude that their "democracy" is now rigged.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result, Stevens wrote, is that average people would simply stop participating in politics, stop being informed about politics, and stop voting…or become angry and cynical. Our democracy, he suggested, would be immeasurably damaged and ultimately vulnerable to corporate-supported demagogues and oligarchs. Our constitutional republic, if Citizens United stands, could wither and could die.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices," Stevens wrote in 2010, "there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter. Corporate 'domination' of electioneering can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders 'call the tune' and a reduced 'willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.' To the extent that corporations are allowed to exert undue influence in electoral races, the speech of the eventual winners of those races may also be chilled." (Emphasis mine)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As if he were looking at Kyrsten Sinema facing a tough choice about her own political survival leading up to the 2014 election, Stevens added:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, again looking into his time machine to today, the now-deceased Stevens pointed to the frustration of average Americans with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to 'hold officials accountable to the people,' and disserve the goal of a public debate that is 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stevens and his fellow "liberals" on the Court were both prescient and right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They warned in their dissent that foreign money would corrupt our elections and we saw that in a big way in 2016. There's apparently no way of knowing how much of today's political turmoil — from school board to election commission to hospital and airplane violence — is being orchestrated and amplified by foreign players on social media masquerading as Americans to weaken our country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They warned that because of the Citizens United decision Americans would become cynical and reactionary; that's happening today. Armed militias are in our streets, people are regularly assaulted for their perceived politics, and rightwing media demagogues make millions (literally) promoting hate and fear.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, they warned, it could doom our republic, something that's now within our sight.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30+ other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New report says Kyrsten Sinema insists on taking vacation even as ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyrsten Sinema had a curt response to major dissent brewing ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Setting her political future on fire': Sinema gets caught fundraising ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hey, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, it's happening here, and you ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From Radical Activist to Senate Obstructionist: The Metamorphosis ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kyrsten Sinema's Grapes of Wealth | The Nation ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America The Hidden History of the War on Voting The Hidden History of Monopolies The Hidden History of American Oligarchy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/violent-oligarchy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I'm sitting in my home office working on the next morning's Daily Rant when I hear what sounded like a man in my driveway yelling, at the top of his voice, "You fcking c*nt!" and other female-specific obscenities. Walking to the window, I saw a guy in his 40s, red-faced, giving my wife the finger with both hands and cursing her out as he climbed into his car and squealed out of the driveway.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Louise, it turns out, had invited a local contractor to give us a bid on some repairs and she'd (very nicely) asked him, before letting him into the house, if he was vaccinated. He exploded and marched back to his car screaming curses at her.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In all her years on this planet, including as CEO of three different companies, that was the first time in her life a man had behaved like such an ass toward her.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Tennessee a high school student testifies to a school board meeting that his grandmother has just died of Covid and he begs his school to mandate masks so his other grandmother isn't next; he's shouted down, laughed at and heckled by smirking, unmasked adults.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Jet Blue what's become a new rite of passage for flight attendants blows into life as a man screams obscenities when asked to leave the plane because he refused to properly wear his mask.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Tacoma, Washington a group of thugs goes looking for a fight when "antifa" fails to show up for the brawl the "Boys" had advertised. Undeterred, they march around town with clubs, flags and baseball bats looking for people to pick fights with until a local (not-antifa) man, apparently disgusted and feeling threatened by their behavior, finally pulls out a gun and shoots one of them in the foot (the story is still evolving; it's possible the guy shot himself in the foot).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Ft. Collins Colorado a man harasses a group of women suntanning on the beach for wearing "pornographic" bathing suits, refusing to leave when they ask him to go away because, he says, "This is America!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Across the nation, hundreds of poll workers and election officials endure daily death threats and violent harassment just for doing their civic duty. And school boards are under daily assault in similar fashion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And these are just the stories from the past week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This continuous and increasing use of violence and threats of violence has become an epidemic across America since 2016 and it's not because of frustration with the pandemic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is what happens in every country when it begins making the transition from being a democratic and generally polite and respectful culture into one that embraces authoritarianism or fascism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it always starts from the top down: leadership sets the initial tone in countries, just like in companies and families.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In our case, these people are imitating Donald Trump; our best hope is that President Biden's reasonable and compassionate example can help the nation turn against it, although Trump-imitating governors and other elected officials are making it very difficult.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican leadership of Texas, for example, just legally embraced vigilantism against women, and a dozen GOP-controlled states are planning to follow suit this month. This is how it starts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Hungary, roaming bands of thugs with torches threatened to burn the homes of Roma people as Viktor Orbán rose to power a bit over a decade ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In The Philippines, President "Little Donald Trump" Duterte praised vigilantes roaming the streets with clubs and guns looking to beat or kill people "linked to drugs" including "more than 150 judges, mayors, lawmakers, police and military personnel" he viewed as political opponents. Duterte told his followers: "Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun - you have my support."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Russia roaming bands attack and kill suspected-LGBTQ people as the government's leadership ramps up otherizing language against its own citizens. Across former Soviet states advocates for democracy or gay rights are routinely hunted, beaten and often killed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Mussolini came to power in Italy in the early 1920s his civilian vigilantes, known as Blackshirts for their garb of that color, took to the streets regularly. Historian Michael R. Ebner writes: "Thus, life for labor leaders became terror-filled, especially because Fascists did not limit their attacks to the public sphere. Nowhere was safe. Late at night, 10, 30, or even 100 Blackshirts, as these squad members became known, sometimes traveling from neighboring towns, might surround a home, inviting a Socialist, anarchist, or Communist outside to talk. If they refused, the Fascists would enter forcibly or threaten to harm the entire family by lighting the house on fire."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Germany in 1921 Hitler organized a volunteer, unpaid civilian militia he called the Sturmabteilung (Storm Unit) who roamed across Germany looking for labor leaders, gays and Jews to beat up.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Brazil today roaming bands of thugs called "militias" beat and kill people they believe are political enemies of strongman and Trump imitator President Jair Bolsonaro. According to reporting in The Intercept and The Guardian, they're led by Bolsonaro's eldest son Flávio.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In every case, around the world and throughout history, regular citizens were first surprised, then shocked, then intimidated, and finally dominated by the emerging authoritarian or neofascist movements led or encouraged by ambitious politicians in their nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In every case, everyday interactions like traveling on a train, bus or airplane, hiring a contractor, or just walking through town became a minefield filled with unpredictable eruptions of threat, intimidation and violence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Chicago reporter Milton Mayer wrote after returning from Germany just after World War II: "If I - and my countrymen - ever succumbed to that concatenation of conditions, no Constitution, no laws, no police, and certainly no army would be able to protect us from harm."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are witnessing today in America the symptoms of a culture going through the early stages of transition from pluralistic democracy to violent oligarchy, as I lay out in far more detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It quite literally starts with "average people" randomly exploding and behaving like asses while political demagogues promote self-styled militias, lawlessness and vigilantism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We ignore or minimize them at our own peril.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-vaccines/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week, "A surprising amount of death will occur soon..." But why, when the deadly Delta variant is sweeping the world, are Republicans and their media warning people not to get vaccinated?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's always a reason. People don't do things — particularly things involving a lot of effort and a need for consistency — without a reason. It just doesn't happen. No matter how bizarre, twisted or dysfunctional the reason may be, there's always a reason.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dr. Anthony Fauci told Jake Tapper on CNN last Sunday, "I don't have a really good reason why this [unwillingness to get vaccinated] is happening."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But even if he can't think of a reason why Republicans would trash talk vaccination and people would believe them, it's definitely there.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which is why it's important to ask a couple of simple questions that all point to the actual reason why Republicans and their media are discouraging people from getting vaccinated:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. Why did Trump get vaccinated in secret after Joe Biden won the election and his January 6th coup attempt failed?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. Why are Fox "News" personalities discouraging people from getting vaccinated while refusing to say if they and the people they work with have been protected by vaccination?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. Why was one of the biggest applause lines at CPAC: "They were hoping — the government was hoping — that they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated and it isn't happening!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Why are Republican legislators in states around the country pushing laws that would "ban" private businesses from asking to see proof of vaccination status (they call it "banning vaccine passports")?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. Why, when President Biden suggested sending volunteers door-to-door into low-vaccination communities to let people know how and where they could get vaccinated, did rightwing media go nuts about "government thugs" coming to your door to "force" vaccines on you?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6. Why are about half of all the Republicans in Congress refusing to say if they've gotten a vaccine or not? For that matter, why do the CPAC speakers who are trashing vaccines refuse to say if they're vaccinated or not?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7. Why would a Newsmax host trash-talk vaccines saying, "I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature"?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8. Why did Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota downplay the dangers of Covid last week by bragging that she never shut her state down (and Ron DeSantis did) when SD has 230 Covid deaths per 100,000 people while similar low-population states like Vermont and Oregon are at 41 and 66 deaths per 100,000 respectively?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I hope I'm proven wrong on this, but the only possible explanation I can see for all this activity that seems so well-coordinated and largely consistent is that they all think there's something in it for them. And what might that be?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political power. And, of course, the eventual wealth that often comes with political power, particularly corrupt power. Retired Republicans make a lot of money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Put simply, I believe these Republicans are trying to promote outbreaks of Covid in America to soften or damage Joe Biden's red-hot economy on the assumption that if the economy tanks then people will vote out Democrats and vote in Republicans in 2022 and 2024.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Pat Buchanan wrote today: "Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're not just willing to let tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans die just to win the next two elections, they're actively encouraging that outcome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Death is their electoral strategy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is there any other possible explanation?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're not stupid (although they're banking on their audience being, at least, poorly informed) and most have college degrees (and Lauren Boebert finally got her GED). Even if a few of them fell down the Facebook or YouTube rabbit hole into anti-vaxxer territories, they still have no shortage of actual medical experts and staffers who know how to use Google available to them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's remotely possible they just hate and want to damage the US, and a few who are pushing vaccine "hesitancy" like Ron Johnson and John Kennedy recently celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow, but it's unlikely that they'd take the chance of coordinating with a foreign power to kill Americans (even if much of the foreign troll activity on social media is also trashing vaccines to American social media users).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A bizarre faux masculinity could be behind it, the way Trump tried to promote the idea that only wimps wear masks, but, seriously, do you really think these folks are taking fashion/appearance tips from an obese geriatric guy with a huge comb-over who wears absurd amounts of makeup, contacts, men's diapers and false teeth? And what's "masculine" about slowly dying by drowning in your own snot? Or becoming unable to get an erection, as happens to a significant number of men who get Covid?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's certainly not fear of, or concern about, the vaccine itself; whether they'll admit it or not, virtually all of these Republicans and media stars telling people to be afraid of getting a shot have been secretly vaccinated themselves, just like Trump and his family were in January. As CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, said, "Over 100 members of Congress, all of them GOP members, refuse to tell their constituents whether they have been vaccinated. They've all been vaccinated, every single one of those characters have been vaccinated."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This also has nothing to do with "conservative" ideology. Vaccination has been a part of the American landscape since George Washington ordered his troops inoculated against smallpox during the Revolutionary war, and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower (and his VP, Richard Nixon) had schoolchildren across the nation get the polio vaccine in the 1950s (I was one of them who lined up in school to get it and remember it well).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As California governor, Ronald Reagan oversaw a public school system that required vaccination for admission and conservatives like Bill Kristol and George W. Bush are proudly vaccinated against Covid. Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, said, "As a victim of polio myself, I'm a big fan of vaccinations, and if I were a parent who had a child … being subject to getting any particular disease, I would come down on the side of vaccinations." This is not about fearing or not understanding vaccines.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They're certainly not being paid by "big Pharma" to trash vaccines, and you can bet your last dollar that the billionaires who pay for big Republican events are not only themselves vaccinated but have made sure the entire staff of their multiple mansions, from the cooks to the pool boys to the masseuses and the live-in chefs are all vaccinated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, what's left?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politics, and the power and money that derive from it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reason why Donald Trump spent much of 2020 desperately encouraging people to keep shopping and working was because he knew that when an economy collapses in the 18 months before an election, the party in power always loses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his desperation to get the economy back in shape, Trump even issued an executive order forcing mostly Black and Hispanic meat-packing and slaughterhouse employees back to work under threat of imprisonment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, sure enough, the economy tanked anyway and Democrats now control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, it appears that today's entire GOP strategy of encouraging "vaccine hesitancy" is to try to replicate that dynamic, to tank the economy, only this time in a way that works in favor of Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Encouraging Americans to die so they can win elections. That's how low today's GOP has sunk.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">721 noem&nbsp; brag on covid fail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/19-republicans/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The corruption that overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point — and it's killing people</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greg Abbott speaking at FreePac, hosted by FreedomWorks, in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute June 16, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texas is showing us all how the corruption that has overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point, and it's killing people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Dwight Eisenhower said, "If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sadly, Eisenhower's Republican Party is now there: they haven't governed to protect or help the people at the federal or state level since the Reagan Revolution. Today, instead, they simply engage in a corrupt form of political performance art while stuffing their pockets with corporate money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today's example: Greg Abbott.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corrupt Texas Governor Greg Abbott is the poster child for corrupt Republicans' sellout to the fossil fuel industry. And the consequence of that will almost certainly kill hundreds of Texans this summer. But Abbott really, really doesn't want you to be thinking about that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His latest scam to divert Texans' attention away from this malfeasance is to proudly declare that Texas is asserting its rights under the 10th Amendment to reject oversight or even advice from the federal government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texas, like most red states, takes in more federal dollars then they send to Washington DC; instead of merely calling Governor Abbott "corrupt" it's probably also time to call him a "welfare queen," a phrase much beloved of Republicans, at least when they apply it to Black women.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the real "welfare" that Abbott and the whole collection of corrupt Texas Republicans have been living off for decades is the cash the fossil fuel industry and the billionaires it has created pour down their throats every year by way of campaign contributions and dark money support.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, back in 2014 the good citizens of Denton County Texas, sick of air and water pollution from fracking, passed a ballot initiative banning it in their county by over 60%.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texas' sold-out Republicans immediately responded with House Bill 40, which Governor Abbott enthusiastically signed, that "gives the state exclusive jurisdiction over oil and gas operations and prohibits local municipalities from creating ordinances that ban, limit, or regulate oil and gas operations…"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's the Texas Republicans' motto: "Screw the people; we just do what's necessary to help out the fossil fuel billionaires who own us."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 1999, then-Governor George W. Bush, himself of fossil-fuel multimillionaire, separated almost all of the Texas power grid from those of neighboring states to avoid federal oversight. He put the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in charge of the largely then-privatized grid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bush called it, "The nation's most extensive experiment in electrical deregulation."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It turned out to be an extraordinary expensive and deadly experiment, one that burdens Texas to this day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As The Wall Street Journal noted a few months ago: "Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state's traditional utilities, according to the Journal's analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Administration."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That money, of course, went mostly into the pockets of wealthy investors, power company CEOs, and filled the campaign coffers of Texas Republican politicians. It certainly didn't do much to reinforce or make the state's power generation systems or distribution grid more robust.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result was that this past winter when climate change sent a massive cold wave down into Texas, an estimated 800 people died and the state suffered billions in property damage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Individual Texans and small businesses are now picking up the lion's share of that tab, of course. It's the Republican way, after all: privatize profits, spread them amongst corrupt Republican politicians, and stick the public with the costs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now NOAA is forecasting one of the hottest and driest summers in the history of Texas because of the climate crisis, and already, with temperatures this week only in the 80s and 90s, ERCOT and Abbott have had to ask Texans to keep their air conditioners set above 78 to keep the grid from failing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abbott — with much pomp and ceremony — issued an executive order banning private and public entities from requiring masks to protect against a deadly pandemic, but he sure seems fine telling people they can't enjoy their air-conditioning so he can keep the fossil-fuel money flowing into Texas' awesomely corrupt Republican Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The prospect of enduring brutal heat and facing the probability of massive power blackouts throughout the summer is not endearing Abbott and his Republican cronies to average Texan voters. As a result, Abbott has come up with a flurry of activity to make it look like he's actually doing something.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As mentioned, he just declared the state "sovereign" under the 10th amendment, as if that were a thing. When he announced it on Twitter, he was buried in ridicule and questions from Texans about what this has to do with making sure their lights don't go out this summer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Burrowing deeper and deeper into the warm embrace of fossil fuel billionaires, the Texas legislature just passed SB 13, which "would require the State of Texas and its entities (including state pension funds and the state's huge K-12 school endowment) to cut ties with companies that refuse to invest in fossil fuels."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's right. If your company wants to do business with the state of Texas, or have them invest in your company's stocks or bonds, you damn well better make sure that you're throwing money at the fossil fuel industry or at least own a huge pile of their stock.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Indivisible Texas notes: "SB 13 creates an intricate system of lists, reports, and oversight of companies that prefer not to transact with fossil fuel companies for whatever reason. This bill actually treats business interactions with certain business sectors in the state as it does enemies of the United States!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corruption like this is not a joke; it's already cost Texas ratepayers $28 billion and 800 lives, and more is on the way. And the Texas Republican politicians' response is just to make it harder for Texans to vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In state after state, Americans are seeing how the GOP has transformed itself from a legitimate political party into an arm of giant corporations and the billionaires they have created, all while rigging the system to keep themselves in office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In some states the GOP is mostly dancing with the fossil fuel industry that's destroying our climate and poisoning us; in others it's the health insurance or big drug industries they're helping to bankrupt and addict Americans, or the student or payday loan industries that are destroying the American Dream.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The gun industry is making billions while America experiences daily mass shootings that Republicans refuse to do anything about.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their wake every year are over 30,000 gun deaths, 500,000 bankruptcies because somebody in the family got sick, young people who can't escape debt for decades if ever, and a landscape littered with destroyed lives and suicides.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">None of these things are happening in any other developed nation. But no other developed nation has a major political party that has become a serial killer of its nation's people and governs like the Mafia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GOP has become, as Eisenhower warned, "merely a conspiracy to seize power." And the tragic result is a weakened, potholed, polluted and impoverished America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the party can't reform itself, it needs to go the way of the Whigs and be put out of its misery. The American people — even voters who consider themselves Republicans — deserve better.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is white supremacy a rising problem in the US?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/billionaire/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we're struggling to recover from Trump's half-million unnecessary Covid deaths here in America, fighting to get a clear picture of how extensive the sedition was among Republicans in Congress around January 6th, and trying to pass legislation to ensure clean and safe elections and put the country back into shape, dark money, foreign oligarchs and rightwing media groups are hard at work tearing this nation apart.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was originally published at The Hartmann Report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they're having considerable success.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to "do what is right" when polled during most of the last years of the Eisenhower 1950s administration and early years of Lyndon B. Johnson's 1960s presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2019, when the Pew Research Center released its most recent poll of public trust in the government, only 17 percent of Americans trusted their government. It's so bad that throughout 2020 armed protesters showed up nationwide to protest the "tyranny" of having to wear masks during a pandemic, and then stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election, all cheered on by the then-President of the United States and multiple rightwing media outlets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is no accident; it's the result of a five-decades-long campaign by some of America's richest people to tear apart the governing fabric of our nation, formally kicked off by their man, Ronald Reagan, proudly proclaiming at his January 20, 1981, inauguration that, "[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Put yourself in the place of the heirs to a multimillion-dollar fossil fuel empire, a situation akin to the "heroic" brother and sister who inherited a railroad from their dad in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you don't have to pay to dispose of cancer-causing byproducts from your refineries but can simply vent them into the air, and you make more money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you can cut wages and threaten employees because they don't have a union, you make more money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you can run a pipeline across sacred Native American land atop a major national aquifer with minimal safety oversight, you make more money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you can hide your money from the IRS because the agency has had its budget slashed so badly that it can no longer do expensive audits of morbidly rich people, you can keep more of the money you've made.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you can get the government to cut social programs and public education, thus lowering your taxes, you can keep more of the money you've made.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So how do you pull this off, when every one of these things hurts average Americans?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Easy. Just embark on a 50-year-long campaign, through think tanks, right-wing media, and massive PR efforts to convince average Americans that government is the cause of, not the solution to, their problems. Convince working-class Americans that gutting government is a good thing that will ultimately help them in some mystical, magical way through the incredible "invisible hand" of the marketplace.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lewis Powell, a lawyer for Big Tobacco, launched the movement to do just this with his infamous memo in 1971, and billionaires have funded and promoted politicians who jump on board the "government is evil" bandwagon ever since.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's largely worked, if the "trust in government" statistics compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958 are accurate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Years ago I was up late one night watching, as I recall, Bloomberg News on a hotel TV. The American host was interviewing a very wealthy German businessman at a conference in Singapore.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amidst questions about the business climate and the conference, the host asked the German businessman what tax rate he was "suffering under" in his home country. As I recall, the businessman said, "A bit over 60 percent, when everything is included."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"How can you handle that?" asked the host, incredulous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The German shrugged his shoulders and moved the conversation to another topic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A few minutes later, the American reporter, still all wound up by the tax question, again asked the businessman how he could possibly live in a country with such a high tax rate on very wealthy and successful people. Again, the German deferred and changed the subject.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reporter went for a third try. "Why don't you lead a revolt against those high taxes?" he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American rebellion-making.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He stared at the man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, "I don't want to be a rich man in a poor country."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are a few wealthy Americans who understand this. But the billionaires and foreign oligarchs who fund the Republican Party and right-wing media think it's perfectly fine to rip the financial and political guts out of their own nation and turn its people against each other if it makes them a few extra bucks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They've funded and facilitated movements like the Tea Party and rightwing paramilitaries, media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart, and organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and ALEC. They throw piles of money at Republican politicians, so long as they never stray far from the "deregulate, cut, denigrate" line about American government. They sponsor climate denial to increase their own profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And over and over again, they've been successfully pulling this off for the past 50 years. The most recent example is the disaster we're seeing in Arizona where the majority of Republicans in the Arizona Senate, totally owned by rightwing billionaires, went along with Trump and started a phony "audit" to further erode Americans' faith in our government. Reaganism has become Trumpism, and it's all pointing toward destroying faith in democracy in America just to make a buck.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, a Morning Consult poll about saving Americans from the Covid crisis a few months ago had this headline: "With Congressional Stimulus Fight Looming, 76% of Voters Back $1.9 Trillion Plan, Including 60% of Republicans." Yet every single billionaire-owned Republican in Congress opposed it, and now they're opposing President Biden's efforts to rebuild our infrastructure, both hard and soft.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As this nation recovers from a deadly pandemic that — unnecessarily — killed more than 500,000 of our fellow citizens, and struggles with rightwing hate groups that are trying to provoke a second Civil War, let's remember how this all came about. And all for a few extra pieces of gold.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-corporations/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's been a lot of talk lately about fascism, generally in the context of Republicans denying people their right to vote or Donald Trump sending an armed mob to murder five people at the U.S. Capitol to try to install him as America's first strongman dictator.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, authoritarian governance is a major aspect of fascism. But there's another piece to the puzzle, and it is playing out right now across America, and getting almost no coverage whatsoever.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's when giant corporations are able to control government and thus stop things like a national healthcare system, rational gun control laws, free college, or even the tiniest tax on carbon. When they're able to push through "criminal justice reform" that makes it nearly impossible to prosecute corporate CEOs when their companies kill workers, consumers, or even poison entire communities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's when they don't do it through presenting strong and defendable ideas in the public realm and before Congress, but by pouring cash into the pockets of individual politicians and their parties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's when corporations and the very rich have seized control of the political process through the use of their considerable economic power, after having used that power to change laws so they can legally buy politicians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When government gives corporations this core power to write laws, and, in exchange, corporations facilitate government power to suppress dissent and marginalize non-fascist political parties, a country finds itself on the edge of classical fascism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The word fascism comes from the Roman fasces, a bundle of sticks with a rope around it, typically adorned with a hatchet on the top. There's one carved into the podium in the United States Senate, an homage to the ancient Roman Republic which originated it and partly inspired our Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea is that a single stick can easily be broken, but a bundle of sticks is almost impossible to break. Similarly, a single state may be vulnerable, but a collection of states, united together, is unbreakable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Roman fasces, although that symbol was used throughout history as a symbol of the ancient Roman Republic, took on a completely different meaning in the late 1920s when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini derived from it the word fascism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To him, fascism met something quite different than just the strength of a united country. It meant the literal merger of corporate and state interests, ultimately facilitating a strongman authoritarian government. Corporations and the government becoming interpenetrated and intertwined, ruling the country together, with a "tough guy" in charge.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The "tough guy" or authoritarian leader would then shower his own beneficence on the corporations that funded his political power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mussolini was so enthusiastic about this that he declared the essential merger of state and corporate power. As he said in The Labour Charter (Promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism on April 21, 1927, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, April 3, 1927, p. 133):</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organized in their respective associations, circulate within the State.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giant corporations across Italy competed for Mussolini's favor, and for the government contracts that could doubly flow from it. Not to mention the political power that could grant profits, tax cuts, and immunity from being held responsible for everything from industrial accidents causing the death of workers to deadly pollution killing entire communities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, as a substantial number of Republican politicians are actively working to subvert democracy and establish a merger of corporate and strongman rule, what Mussolini called fascism, those politicians are also being supported and encouraged by large numbers of major American corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In exchange for that support, particularly during the Trump administration but also on a state-by-state basis where Republicans control state governments, those corporations get everything from tax cuts to assistance in avoiding unions to a pass on pollution or even corporate malfeasance that kills people, like we just saw with the for-profit corporate power grid in Texas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are moving from the early technical dimensions of fascism to the true realization of Mussolini's vision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If these Republican politicians and the corporations supporting them are successful, and a Republican strongman like Trump or his imitators (Scott, Hawley, Cruz, Cotton, etc.) again achieves the presidency, we will fully enter an American version of that which Mussolini created in Italy in 1927.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over 120 American corporations vowed, after the January 6 insurrection, that they would no longer make campaign contributions to those Republicans who fought certifying the 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the lure of fascism for a corporation is extraordinary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AT&T, CIGNA Health, Ford Motor, and Pfizer have broken their commitment not to support insurrectionists. More will, no doubt, follow soon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The benefits of fascism include huge profits for the company and its stockholders; massive payouts to senior executives and members of the board of directors; not just tax breaks but actual subsidies with taxpayer's dollars of a whole variety of activities including R&D and even free land; complete immunity for the executives when their decisions destroy communities or even kill people; and a steady flow, back-and-forth, between government regulatory agencies and the very corporations regulated by them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It shouldn't surprise us, therefore, that as long as Republicans are offering this fantastic dream world to America's corporations, those companies might toss out a few news releases saying they're not going to support fascistic Republican politicians, but that that seemingly moral stand would collapse almost instantly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Daily Beast investigative reporting found, corroborating the groundbreaking reporting that Judd Legum has been doing for weeks on his popular.info website, at the very least AT&T, CIGNA Health, Ford Motor, and Pfizer have broken their commitment not to support insurrectionists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More will, no doubt, follow soon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But how could they do otherwise? Modern corporations are an altogether different animal from those in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s when corporations went out of their way to be, or to at least seem to be, good citizens of the community and the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Reagan administration in the 1980s essentially re-wrote the rules of corporate governance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It used to be the corporations had a responsibility to their local community, to their workers, to their shareholders, and to their customers. Their senior executives and Board of Directors had a responsibility to the institution of the company itself. Prior to 1980, the average CEO in a large American corporation had worked in that company for about 30 years, typically climbing from the bottom to the top. And the average CEO only earned 30 times what the most poorly paid employee made.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was the norm in America up until the 1980s. But the Reagan administration, through a series of administrative law changes, re-wrote those rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They adopted an idea that had been kicking around among rightwing cranks like Robert Bork and Milton Friedman for years, that had been scorned by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and even President Richard Nixon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was that a corporation has only one, single obligation to only one, single entity: to increase profits and thus dividends and its share price for its shareholders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court, stacked with corporate shills by bought-off politicians, has since ratified that new perspective in a series of decisions peripheral to it, as I lay out in my book The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America. CF</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So now corporations don't have to answer to their communities, their employees, their customers or even the idea of the permanence of the institution. All they have to answer to is profits for stockholders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the stockholders frankly don't give a rat's ass about how the corporation is run or what it does, so long as it keeps cranking out cash every quarter so the dividend checks continue to arrive. Which is why corporate CEOs now make over 300 times what their lowest-paid employee makes, and in some sectors it's thousands of times more.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As many of us pointed out back in the 1980s, and I wrote about at length in my book Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People, this was almost certain to cause American business and the American government to reconfigure themselves along the lines of the classical, Mussolini definition of fascism. It would lead to the merger of corporate and state interests, and the end of electoral democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America does have a serious fascism problem, but it goes way beyond the kinds of authoritarianism displayed by people like Donald Trump, Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, or Tom Cotton. It goes deep, now, into the very structure of corporate America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If America is to survive as a democratic republic, we not only must repudiate strongman authoritarianism; we also must change federal rules regarding corporate governance to repudiate shareholder primacy, block fascism, and thus restore corporate behavior to something resembling sanity and responsibility.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This piece initially appeared on The Hartmann Report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-war-on-democracy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney being booed in his own home state raise an urgent question: Are the Redcoats back?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican party has now introduced over 300 pieces of legislation designed to make it more difficult for American citizens to participate in the process of selecting their representatives, the core function of a democratic republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They've also proposed or passed numerous laws criminalizing protest and dissent, primary American values written into the First Amendment, and given a "get out of jail free" card to people who kill protesters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today's Republican party does not believe in democracy or the core idea on which this nation was founded:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" and "that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we see with their support of Trump's Big Lie, they have a serious problem with that "consent of the governed" part of the Declaration of Independence. And they're pretty sketchy about that whole human "rights" thing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If it seems like America is re-fighting the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, it's because there's a sizeable group of rightwing Americans who say that's what they think they're doing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In both of those past wars, one group of Americans believed in the ideal of democracy and a republic deriving its authority from the will and consent of its people. On the other side, there were people who believed that democracy was a dangerous experiment and a grave mistake.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the Revolutionary War the anti-democracy folks were called Tories or Loyalists, because they were loyal to the British king and believed that the best form of government was a kingdom, and that letting average people participate in democratic governance would lead to disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That was solidly a third, perhaps even half, of the white people then living in North America: they were willing to fight and die to keep America part of the United Kingdom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those who opposed democracy on this continent had a lot of history on their side.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For most of the 7,000 years of recorded human history at that point, governments had been run either by kings who seized power through violence, or priestly theocrats who claimed that their authority to rule came from God. (In most cases, regardless of who ended up on top, there was an unholy alliance between the two.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The British United Kingdom was just the latest, in 1776, in a long series of kingdoms that ruled every part of Europe; the Greek experiment with democracy was 3000 years old at that time, and the Roman experiment with a republican form of government had failed almost 2000 years earlier.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There were a lot of reasons back then to think that a democratic republic would be a terrible mistake.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The main one was that it hadn't worked in thousands of years, and the ancient Greek and Roman experiments were considered by many — most, actually — to have been failed experiments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People believed so strongly either in the Loyalist necessity of a royal family, or the Founders' hope of a people engaged in self-rule, that families were literally torn apart, brother killing brother, neighbors turning firearms against each other.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the time of the Civil War, 80 years later, there was still a debate about whether democracy was anything more than some kind of liberal, airy-fairy idea that really didn't work out all that well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But this time, those Americans who took up arms against democracy were not fighting on behalf of a church or a king. They were fighting to support the rich, the oligarchs of the deep South.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I lay out in detail in my new book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, between 1820 and 1860 the South underwent a radical consolidation of wealth and property.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The invention of the Cotton Gin and its adoption in the early 1820s allowed the few plantations wealthy enough to buy one to effectively wipe out their smaller competitors and buy up their land.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, by 1860 virtually all of the most productive land, wealth and political power of the South was consolidated in the hands of just a few thousand families.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They did not believe in democracy either; they declared war on America specifically to end democracy and establish a continent-wide oligarchy: rule by the rich in an oligarchic police state as the South had become.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The North won and democracy prevailed, but the idea of oligarchy survived and has been persistent throughout American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is what the Republican party now represents: Oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rule by the rich and ignoring "the consent of the governed."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The suppression of dissent, the oppression of minorities, and replacing the ballot box with the iron fist of a police state run of, by and for the wealthy few.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they're pushing us there really hard and really fast:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A political network run by a group of right-wing billionaires has a larger budget and more employees than the entire Republican party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A family of billionaire oligarchs from Australia crank democracy-hating propaganda into the American political bloodstream nearly every day on cable television and in print.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Voices openly denigrating democracy and promoting hate and intolerance — the hallmarks of oligarchy — are on local radio and television in every American city every single day, and dominate the Internet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The single largest source of threats and murders by terrorists in America are today committed by white-supremacist right-wingers who hate and fear the idea of a pluralistic, democratic society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tragically, for the third time in our history, Americans who believe in democracy find themselves again having to defend themselves against Americans who don't.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several of these hard-right groups have openly declared their intention to start a second American Civil War.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They say they want to see Americans killing each other in the name of white supremacy and rule by the rich, and some have followed their suggestion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They declare their loyalty to a white-supremacist real estate oligarch from New York, get their news from Australian and Ukrainian oligarchs, and have embraced an ideology championed by Germans in the 1930s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They even adorn themselves in red and wear funny hats like the British loyalists did in revolutionary times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Biden presidency represents America's third, and perhaps final, chance to prove democracy is not merely an idealistic fantasy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If his administration and the Democrats in Congress can succeed in conquering the coronavirus, putting the American economy back on track, and rebuilding the civil society that 40 years of Reaganism has so devastated, American democracy — and, indeed, democracy around the world — may well endure and even grow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Republicans are doing everything they can to keep that from happening, from discouraging vaccination and public health measures, to sabotaging our election systems, to amplifying their rhetoric of hate and terror across multiple media platforms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When "moderate" voices within their ranks, like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, dare pop their heads up, the majority of the Republican Party viciously attacks them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dissent is no longer allowed in the GOP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Authoritarianism has prevailed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oligarchy has completely seized the party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These, as Thomas Paine (a fervent believer in democracy) said, "are the times that try men's souls."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Long before actual conflict broke out, Paine wrote: "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered…"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We must not let the right-wing Redcoat/Redhat terrorists, who have openly proclaimed their goal of Americans killing Americans in an ideological and racial war, prevail.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bill Moyers: Historian traces the influence of oligarchs in US ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A GOP lawyer's admission unintentionally revealed why the ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOP's 'anti-democratic' rhetoric on HR 1 signals a disturbing battle ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Holder: GOP is waging “multi-pronged war on democracy” through ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOP accused of waging 'war on democracy' with anti-voting measures ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opinion | Georgia's voter suppression bills show Republicans' war ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/mcconnell-destroy-gop/?rs=182</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why Mitch McConnell is about to destroy the GOP</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute May 05, 2021</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nobody's asking, "Why?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just like he did with the Covid rescue bill a few months ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just said that there will not be one single Republican vote in support of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would McConnell do this?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would he give away any bargaining leverage the GOP might have?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would he essentially encourage Democrats to make the legislation as expansive, effective and popular as possible? And then let them get all the credit for it?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all, now that the Democrats know there's no possibility of any Republican votes, there's no need for them to negotiate with any GOP senators. There's no need for Democrats to worry about their Republican colleagues' feelings, thoughts, concerns or even ask their opinions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That simple reality has been noted by a number of commentators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But nobody is asking the bigger question: "Why would a professional, lifelong politician and master tactician like Mitch McConnell make such a huge mistake?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I believe the answer is that McConnell does not think he's making a mistake. He thinks he's right. He thinks he's going to win.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I believe he has completely deluded himself. He has bought his own BS. And it won't be the first time senior Republican leadership has done this and then destroyed the GOP in the process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a guy, after all, who spent decades proclaiming Reaganomics and supply-side economics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He's probably asserted a thousand times that when taxes on rich people are cut and government spending goes down, good things will happen to the American economy. He's repeatedly assured his voters that when unions are destroyed the working class prospers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He's embraced and endorsed 40 years of de-funding and ignoring America's infrastructure, even to the point of frustrating Trump's own infrastructure plan attempts. Over and over again, when proposed by Clinton and Obama, McConnell has suggested that rebuilding our country at the expense of taxing rich people would create an economic disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For most Americans, forty years of experience with these theories that McConnell's been promoting have proven that they're largely crackpot BS. They're fantasies sold to the American public by billionaires and the think-tanks they fund, amplified by right-wing radio and media, to keep the billionaire's taxes down, their companies deregulated and unions out of their workplaces.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But they've been sold so aggressively — from the efforts in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by people like Hayek, von Misis and Milton Friedman, to Ronald Reagan and the institutional Republican party from 1980 to this day — that many Republicans actually do believe them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Particularly multimillionaires — who hang out with billionaires — like McConnell.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And McConnell's is not alone in this belief, even among significant Republican figures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I regularly invite conservatives on my radio/TV program to defend propositions like those above, and there are several who I've come to know personally, and I know for a fact, that they actually believe these things.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reaganomics hasn't worked out, they say, because it hasn't really been tried.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's been too much government spending clouding things. Taxes have never really been low enough. There's never been a true libertarian experiment in America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we want to see if these theories actually work, they say, first we have to do away with Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, public schools, public health departments and the whole plethora of government-supported institutions. Those things, they say, have so muddled up and distorted our economic systems that partial measures like partial deregulation and occasional tax cuts promoted by Republicans over the last 40 years haven't had the success that they could have had in a "pure free-market economy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These people, who I know personally, are not saying what they're saying because their paychecks depend upon it (although that is true of a few others that I know and have met in the media). They're saying it because they believe it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They studied it in college from Econ professors whose chairs were funded by right-wing billionaires and conservative foundations. They've read it over and over again in conservative books and magazines, and on conservative websites. They've been hearing it preached from the highest towers of conservatism their entire lives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Mitch McConnell is at all like them, he believes it's true, too. He believes that rebuilding America using tax dollars from people earning over $400,000 a year will produce a disaster. He's internalized that message.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another clue that Mitch McConnell and many of his Republican colleagues actually believe this stuff was revealed at last weekend's Utah Republican party meeting, where Mitt Romney was booed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's another sign that the ideology has taken deep hold and spread in the party. It's become more important than the good of the party itself, as happened in 1964.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Mitch McConnell is a true believer, he may well be in the "true believer mold" of Barry Goldwater.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If so, this is the second time this has happened in the Republican party in my lifetime. And it may presage the exact same kind of disaster that Barry Goldwater brought down upon the party in 1964.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was only 13 at the time, but I remember watching the 1964 Republican convention with my dad when Nelson Rockefeller got up and gave a speech calling for moderation, compromise and a commitment to do what was best for the nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Referring to Goldwater and the right-wing true-believers who followed him, much like Mitt Romney referred to Trump and MAGAs, Rockefeller said, "These extremists feed off fear, hate and terror. They encourage disunity." He was booed off the stage, as you can see in this short clip.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nelson Rockefeller denounces Republican "extremists" at the 1964 Republican National Convention</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">youtu.be]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then Barry Goldwater stepped up to the microphone and loudly proclaimed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!!"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barry Goldwater: Extremism In The Defence of Liberty Is No Vice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">youtu.be]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He brought down the house. The standing ovation lasted for minutes. They really believed him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to Goldwater's 1964 candidacy, the Republican party of Dwight Eisenhower had been a pretty moderate place (including VP Nixon's 1960 race against JFK).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eisenhower advocated unionization and bragged about how many new union members had joined during his presidency. In 1956, when he ran for reelection, he highlighted how he'd helped increase the number of people on Social Security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his farewell address he prayed — literally prayed (14:55 on the recording) — for world peace, in the same speech he used to warn us about the Military-Industrial Complex.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eisenhower Farewell Address (Best Quality) - 'Military Industrial Complex' WARNING</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">youtu.be]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But then the True Believers took over the GOP — to this day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldwater went on to lose to LBJ in a massive landslide, and McConnell may well be leading his own party in a very similar direction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldwater believed what he was saying. I've read both his autobiographies and there's no doubt in my mind.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I can't say that I am as much of a student of Mitch McConnell as I was of Barry Goldwater back in 1964 when, along with my dad, I went door to door for him in that presidential campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the first possible and most rational explanation for Mitch McConnell openly stating in advance that there will not be a single Republican vote for Biden's plan is that McConnell thinks if Biden's plan passes it will create a disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He thinks that inflation will spike, the national debt will lead to some terrible national default, and/or the stock market along with the entire economy will go in the tank.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all, that's what he's been preaching for 40 years. How hard is it to imagine that he's come to believe his own sales pitch?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sadly, for Mitch, all the empirical evidence indicates that his belief is just as misplaced as were Goldwater's fears of communists in the State Department and the viability of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican party tried a very similar shtick back in 1920, when Warren Harding was elected President on a platform of dropping the 91% top tax rate down to 25%, deregulating industry and privatizing most government functions. He won that election, and kept those promises.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It led to the "Roaring Twenties" — a time when the very rich got very much richer and working people got screwed — and then straight to the stock market crash of 1929 and what was called for a generation the "Republican Great Depression."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps McConnell doesn't know the history. Perhaps he thinks that era was an anomaly, or an incomplete experiment, or there were other factors that caused the crash.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or, if you've read this far, there's one other possibility worth considering. Perhaps McConnell's trying to implode the party to purge it of Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's pretty far out, but maybe he's letting folks trash Romney and Cheney and the rational few left in the party so it'll fall so low in the 2022 election that Trump will be discredited and purged from the party himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That possibility, though, is a stretch. It still appears that the only reasonable explanation for Mitch McConnell refusing in advance to go along with anything Biden is proposing that might help America is that he truly believes that, at the end of the day, Biden's plans will be a disaster and he wants to have no part of them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He's wrong, but — in either case — he's certainly not lacking in conviction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McConnell claimed Democrats are 'addicted to divide and conquer ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch McConnell flat-out tells Republicans to use Manchin and ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Oliver slams Republicans with hilarious take-down of Mitch ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand Paul's dire prediction for the GOP - CNNPolitics ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 Opinion How Republicans will try to destroy a Biden presidency ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand Paul says convicting Trump would 'destroy' GOP | | kctv5.com ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trojan horse for long awaited tort reform?!&nbsp; never waste a crisis?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Probably the most under-reported story of the year has been how Mitch McConnell is holding Americans hostage in exchange for letting big corporations kill Americans without any consequence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch took you and me hostage back in May, when the House of Representatives passed the HEROES act that would have funded state and local governments and provided unemployed workers with an ongoing weekly payment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch refused to even allow the Senate to discuss the HEROES Act until or unless the legislation also legalized corporations killing their workers and customers. To this day, he refuses to let it even be discussed in the Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We've seen companies fire people for refusing to take their lives in their hands, executives organize betting pools on which employees are going to die first, and companies lying openly to their workers and customers about the dangers of Covid-19.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch McConnell wants to protect them all. Even worse, his immunity can extend well beyond the pandemic and sets up a process that could put corporations above the law permanently, across every community in America, in ways that state and local governments can never defy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Republicans have fought against raising the minimum wage or letting workers unionize for over 100 years, what McConnell is doing now is giving corporations the ultimate right: the right to kill their employees and customers with impunity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And McConnell's holding your local police and fire departments, public schools, and state healthcare programs hostage in exchange for his corporate immunity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is beyond immoral. This is ghastly, and should have been at the top of every news story in America for the past six months. But many of the corporations that are looking forward to complete supremacy over their workers include the giant corporations that own our media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America has suffered for over 40 years under Reaganism's neoliberal mantra, picked up from Milton Friedman, that when corporations focus exclusively on profit an "invisible hand" will guide them to do what's best for people and communities. It's a lie.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is an assault on workers' rights, but, even greater, it's a corporate assault on human rights. McConnell is saying that a corporation's right to kill its workers and customers is more important than the lives of human beings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As unemployment benefits are running out, evictions loom, small businesses are dying left and right, millions of families have been thrown into crisis and more than 10 million Americans have lost their health insurance, McConnell continues to hold us all hostage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's time to fight back. If corporate media continues to refuse to discuss McConnell's blackmail, we must individually speak up among friends and communities, and also let our lawmakers know what we think. It's time to raise some hell.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch McConnell finally recognizes Biden's win — leaving Trump ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In private call, Mitch McConnell tries to shut down GOP plan to ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch McConnell slammed for repeatedly sabotaging stimulus ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Mitch McConnell Became Trump's Enabler-in-Chief | The New ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/mitch-mcconnell-2649519136/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/republican-party-funding/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">it's time to defund the GOP, and there's precedent and strategy for the effort.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The need to cut the party's access to both private and government money is seen in the reaction by some extremist Republicans to news like a New York State lawmaker's proposal to make vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory. Predictably, the far right is freaking out. "Freedom!" they scream as they run around maskless, assaulting their fellow citizens with potentially virus-laden breath.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Large parts of the Republican base now join conspiracists in the misguided belief that vaccine manufacturers are participating in mind-control experiments and that public health measures like masks are "un-American," while we're being sickened and dying from the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and death in the developed world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans on the Supreme Court even say the founders of our republic and the framers of the Constitution would never go along with preventing churches and synagogues from holding superspreader events during a pandemic, but, like so many things GOP, it's a lie.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1798, President John Adams signed the first public health care legislation—it was to pay for medical care and hospitalization not just for the Navy but also for civilian sailors. And both he and President George Washington had participated in quarantine events during epidemics in the summers of 1793 and 1798, and both promoted inoculation against smallpox.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From 1790 to 1800, Philadelphia was the nation's capital. When the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 recurred in 1798, that city's board of health, with no objections raised by President John Adams or any member of Congress, ordered a block-by-block evacuation of parts of Philadelphia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most signers of the Declaration and Constitution were still alive, and many were in Congress and on the Supreme Court. None opposed the lockdown. Churches not only couldn't meet; a few in the quarantine areas were closed down entirely for much of the year in America's capital city.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From their bans on teaching sex education and evolution in our schools, to denying climate change, to this latest campaign against public health, far-right Republicans' fight against science has damaged America's standing in the world and destroyed the lives of millions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Paine, in his time, wrote about "The Age of Reason." Today we have "The Age of Intentional Republican Stupidity." And they don't just embrace it for themselves; they're hell-bent on imposing it on every American, from schoolchildren on up.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have rigged elections by making it hard to vote, seditiously tried to overturn the 2020 election, promoted racial and religious bigotry and violence, destroyed our public school systems, gutted our unions, and rewritten our tax system to screw the middle class.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have damaged America more in 40 years than our worst enemies could have dreamed of by other means.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These Republicans are not patriots; they're traitors to reason, science, education, human rights, democracy and now, unbelievably, public health. They're traitors to humanity itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only way to deal with a death-dealing cult is to end it; thus, we must embark on a campaign to defund the Republican Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party, and actually pulled it off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Republican Party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions. So Ronald Reagan, as part of his "Reagan Revolution," figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America's unions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His first shot was to destroy PATCO, the air traffic controllers' union, and he did it in less than a week in August of 1981. He, along with Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court, then embarked on a campaign to eliminate unions from the American landscape, thus gutting the Democratic Party's ability to win elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It worked, and by 1992, American union membership, and union's ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party turned to giant corporations and billionaires to win that election year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan's plan not only kneecapped the Democratic Party for the next 40 years but also changed the party at its core, turning it from President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society party into Bill Clinton's corporate-friendly Democratic Leadership Council/New Democrats, now in bed with big banks, insurance companies, etc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Defunding the Republican Party may even force it to start focusing on the needs of regular people rather than just billionaires and corporations, which only adds to the urgency of the job. There are just a few steps through the process, which include:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">End "Red State Welfare."&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kentucky gets $2.41 for every dollar they send to Washington, D.C. Most other red states are similarly "taker" states, so let's fight for a law limiting states to no more than, say, $1.50 for every buck they sent to D.C. in tax revenues. Call it welfare reform!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">End corporate welfare that gets recycled to GOP politicians. This includes $700 billion a year to fossil fuel companies, and nearly $1 trillion a year we give to Big Pharma, as well as support for insurance companies (like subsidies for the "Medicare Advantage" scam) and "Big Ag."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">End corporate monopolies. Break up giant corporations and make America safe again for small businesses while rejuvenating local economies. From airlines to tech to banking and retail, giant monopolies rip off working-class Americans and use some of that money to fund the GOP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bring back Eisenhower's 91 percent top tax rate, or at least something north of 50 percent. America's strongest economy was during the 30 years from 1950 to 1980, with a top tax rate of 91 percent to 74 percent. Progressive taxation on the super-wealthy was openly supported by Republican presidents like Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford. With that tax revenue, we built highways, schools and hospitals, and put men on the moon, while the best way CEOs could avoid the tax was to use the money to pay their workers better wages. Reagan cut that top rate to less than 30 percent, and the billionaires it produced now pour money into the GOP to keep it that way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Follow Europe's example and impose a wealth tax on great fortunes. Average Americans pay a wealth tax every year—the property tax on their largest store of wealth, their homes. Billionaires should pay a similar annual tax on their money bins.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">End campaign contributions from corporations, end super PACs, and limit billionaires' ability to skew our politics with their money. We did this in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals, but the Supreme Court blew it up. There are multiple ways around that, and the Democratic Party should make this job one.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These simple "Progressive Contract with America" steps, along with restoring the ability of American workers to unionize, will not only revive the Democratic Party, but also restore America to economic greatness and give us a far more honest political system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is America's number one progressive talk-show host and the New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His online writings are compiled at HartmannReport.com. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yes, the election was rigged -- but by the Republicans</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann&nbsp; November 17, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It turns out that Donald Trump was right: the election was rigged. He would know, of course, because he and Louis DeJoy were the ones who rigged it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Historically, "conservative" (e.g. "white racist") efforts to rig the vote were almost entirely focused on preventing people of color from voting. For almost a century, this involved literacy tests, guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar, and other low-tech, blatant strategies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1960s, William Rehnquist and friends launched "Operation Eagle Eye" in the Southwest where they would send "poll watchers" to threaten and intimidate Native American, Hispanic and Black voters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the 1980s, Republicans had rolled out "caging," where they'd send a postcard to voters and if it wasn't returned they'd remove you from the voting rolls; the Democratic Party got a restraining order against caging that just expired a few years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2000, George and Jeb Bush, the governors of Texas and Florida, used the Texas felon list to purge mostly Black and Hispanic people from the Florida voter rolls. Jeb knocked 90,000 African-Americans off the rolls, just in time to steal the 2000 election for George.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kris Kobach turned this into a system, called Interstate Crosscheck, and took it nationwide over the last 15 years, comparing states' voting rolls in ways that would largely disenfranchise Asians, Blacks and Hispanics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, in 2020, Trump came up with a new scheme that benefited from the Covid virus, and the worse the virus got, the better his scheme worked.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Letting the pandemic run wild while telling his supporters they should only vote in person, Trump and DeJoy dismantled over 600 multimillion dollar high-speed mail sorting machines, hitting swing states the hardest, so mailed ballots would arrive too late to count.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recent reporting suggests that if the courts had not intervened when and how they did, the mail would have been so slowed in several critical swing states that Trump would've been declared the winner. We were saved by a federal judge.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now the scam Republicans are promoting is to challenge the signatures on the outside of mail-in ballots from big cities, and this has helped them throw out literally millions of ballots just this month.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nobody is sure what the next conservative scheme will be to disqualify votes in American cities, but you can bet they're working on it. Which is why we need a law or Constitutional amendment that unambiguously asserts a "right to vote."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Governor Brian Kemp wants to take away the home of a person who lives in Atlanta, he has to go to court and prove his case: our property rights are intact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Governor Ron DeSantis wants to take away a gun from a person who lives in Miami, he has to go to court and prove his case: the Supreme Court has recently affirmed Americans' right to own a gun.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But if any governor wants to take away your vote, they don't even have to tell you, they just kick you off the voting rolls, because right now voting is not a right in America, it's merely a privilege.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America needs to join the rest of the developed world and put the right of citizens to vote into law. Since everything from pandemic relief to education to foreign policy flows out of the democratic process, this must be Job One in the new Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'No bigger fraud than Trump': President blasted for desperate tweets ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here's how elections are actually stolen in Russia - Alternet.org ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bidens-presidency-could-be-the-last-gasp-of-democracy-says-hartmann-unless-democrats-dump-neoliberal-economics-thom-hartmann/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America is in limbo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is the good: Joe Biden is president-elect. He has defeated Donald Trump, winning the highest percentage of eligible voters since Richard Nixon in 1972. Biden also received the highest number of votes in American history — approximately 77 million. It is clear that the American people have given Biden a mandate to lead the country into a better future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As expected, Donald Trump continues to claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him through "voter fraud" and is attempting to use the courts to overturn the election results. To this point these efforts have completely failed. Biden has announced a committee of esteemed experts who will lead the country's efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. Pfizer recently announced that it has developed a vaccine against the coronavirus which should be ready for mass distribution in 2021. Despite all of Donald Trump and his movement's assaults on the country's democracy, social cohesion and even its future, there is a sense that President Biden could both return the country to "normalcy" and then make it better and stronger.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then there is the bad. Donald Trump received approximately 72 million votes in the 2020 election, about 10 million more than he did in 2016. The ideology of Trumpism, built on white supremacy, nativism, collective narcissism, misogyny, greed, corruption, right-wing Christian extremism, anti-intellectualism, cruelty and other pathologies were enthusiastically endorsed, rather than rejected, by tens of millions of Americans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump is also attempting an obvious slow-motion coup, in which he is purging senior national security officials who have shown themselves unwilling to do his bidding, for example, by turning the country's military against the American people. Trump's coup plot is part of a much bigger effort to delegitimize the very idea of democracy and free elections in America. Breaking from centuries of tradition in the United States, Trump has refused to concede defeat or assist in the lawful transfer of power to Biden. Trump's right-wing paramilitaries and other political thugs remain "standing by" to engage in acts of violence against his "enemies." Trump will not surrender his efforts to remain president for life. The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread uncontrollably. The country's economy is still in ruins.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Biden is a much better human being than Donald Trump. That fact is indisputable. But just because Biden is a good person does not mean that he will have any advantage in successfully managing the deeply entrenched forces of social inequality, injustice, societal alienation and loneliness, plutocracy, gangster capitalism, white supremacy and pathocracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Nation, Tom Engelhardt describes the myriad challenges Biden will soon inherit:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trumpism has split America in two in a way that hasn't been imaginable since the Civil War. The president and the Senate are likely to be in gridlock, the judicial system a partisan affair of the first order, the national security state a money-gobbling shadow empire, the citizenry armed to the teeth, racism rising, and life everywhere in an increasing state of chaos.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Welcome to the (Dis)United States. Donald Trump led the way and, whatever he does, I suspect that this, for at least the time being, is still in some sense his world, not Joe Biden's. He was the man and, like it or not, we were all his apprentices in a performance of destructive power of the first order that has yet to truly end.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How should the American people navigate such a state of personal and national limbo and the feelings and emotions which come from such a deep lack of certainty about the future of the country?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann, a radio host, bestselling author, and leading progressive voice counsels that the American people — and liberals and progressives in particular — should be both optimistic and cautious about Joe Biden's presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hartmann's newest book is "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream." The Thom Hartmann Show can be heard from 12 to 3 p.m., Eastern time, via the nonprofit Pacifica Network and on commercial radio stations all across the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In this conversation, Hartmann explains that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have the potential to enact a progressive policy agenda if they are sufficiently pressured and held accountable. Hartmann also explains that the Democratic Party has for too long run away from its winning message on the economy by embracing neoliberalism instead of the history and legacy of the New Deal and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Such bad habits still linger after Biden's victory over Trump, as even now some mainstream Democrats are complaining that the party has gone too far left, which is why it lost seats in the House and failed to win the Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hartmann also issues an ominous warning: Biden's presidency may be the last opportunity to save American democracy from the Republican Party and a global right-wing authoritarian movement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can also listen to my conversation with Thom Hartmann on my podcast "The Truth Report" or through the player embedded below.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is this what victory feels like?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is like a moment when the child in the story says, "But the emperor has no clothes!" We got rid of the emperor, but the empire is still here, in the form of the Republican Party and conservatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is also a worldwide coalition of governments run by strongman leaders who do not like democracy and see it as a threat to their rule, wealth and power. That group will continue to do everything they can to destroy democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right now, their useful idiots are the Republican Party and particularly these Republican senators who are feeding the whole Trump narrative that "Our democratic institutions have been corrupted" and "You can't trust democratic institutions, you can't trust democracy." These are messages carefully calibrated to destroy our faith in democratic institutions. And yes, it is absolutely true that America is not so much a democracy any longer, we are an oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican senators represent about 25 percent of the American people. The Electoral College is not reflective of America as a whole. The Supreme Court has handed over to billionaires and big corporations the keys to the kingdom, essentially. They can own and buy and sell politicians and they do so every day..</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is a struggle for democracy in this democratic republic. This is the last gasp of that struggle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I keep trying to remind people that the 2020 election and Biden's victory was a battle and not a war. Declaring victory is premature. Do you think that the American people are going to stay engaged, or are they so exhausted that they have convinced themselves that they won and Trumpism is defeated?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I suspect that we are going to see the normal drop-off that one sees after a presidential election. The runoff in Georgia is probably going to be more like a midterm. That having been said, people want a return to normalcy, or at the very least not having to compulsively check their news sources five times a day to see what new, fresh hell Donald Trump just rolled out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think that all the elections going forward are going to be somewhat different than elections in the past few decades. Up until the 2020 election, the Republican Party had been successful, starting with the Reagan revolution, in arguing that they had new ideas. They knew what would work and what wouldn't work. They were good at governing. They were prepared to take leadership. The Republicans were going to campaign on their ideas. In this election, people figured out that the principal tool that the Republican Party uses to win elections is not ideas, it is voter suppression.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The spectacle of the 24/7 news media and the commentariat is always something to behold. They seemed to be shocked and dismayed at how much support for Donald Trump there is in America. They could not believe how close this election was. One would think that the mainstream news media and its commentators would understand the reality of the sheer amount of rage and white supremacy there is in the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was expecting a tighter race than the polls were predicting, although I was expecting Biden to win. I think that a lot of us, particularly a lot of whites of goodwill, had completely misread the level of malevolence or toxicity of white racism in America. I was guessing that the really hardcore white racist vote in the United States was 10%, 15% or maybe 20%. I am now thinking it is more like 35% or 40%, which horrifies me. I do not know how else to explain this. I understand that Trump's populist economic message was very successful after 40 years of neoliberalism and shipping our jobs to China. The tragedy is that it is a process begun by Reagan and Bush.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats never talk about that because Clinton continued it and nobody wants to trash Bill Clinton. But I believe that it is really time that we trash Bill Clinton and reject the neoliberalism that he introduced into our party. The other issue that must be confronted is how extraordinarily toxic Facebook is. Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues have used algorithms in a way that has really amplified the hard-right echo chamber and hate message.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead of becoming more progressive and forward-thinking, the Democrats over the last few decades have too often retreated from those ideas. I worry that will be the lesson of the 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have to recognize the economic component. And that is the problem: the Democrats have the winning economic message. Consider those places around the country where a $15 minimum wage was on the ballot — it typically won. Economic messages are great for Democrats, but the Democratic Party does not want to run on them because there is this internal debate between the corporate Democrats who want to protect the oil industry and the banking industry and the insurance industry, and the people-funded Democrats, the progressive Democrats, who are perfectly willing to take those industries on because the latter are basically parasites. = EXTRACTION</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We pay twice as much for health care as any other country in the world. That is a $3,000 to $5,000 a year tax on the average American family. We pay more than twice as much than any other country in the developed world for internet, for telephone service, for cable TV, for health insurance, and for airfare.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The average family in America pays $5,000 a year more than in other developed countries just because our business systems have become so monopolized. We are in the grip of this neoliberal corporate monster that has just been draining the wealth out of the middle class, out of working-class people's pockets, and putting it into the top 1%. And Democrats are perfectly positioned to talk about that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But oddly, Donald Trump has been the one for the last five years talking about that issue. The Democratic Party is leaving so many voters behind by not taking on these economic issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I want Joe Biden to succeed and be a great president. How do we hold Joe Biden accountable, given his track record as a corporate Democrat?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that Kamala Harris is his running mate, and that Karine Jean-Pierre is her chief of staff -- she is one of the best progressives out there, and also one of the most well-informed progressives I've ever seen in the media. That gives me a lot of hope.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Biden did run on a far more progressive platform than Obama or Clinton. We really need to get back to the values of the Great Society and the New Deal. I am not expecting any big initiatives to come until after the inauguration and possibly until after the election in Georgia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden has been openly reaching out to Trumpists and other Republicans with his language about "healing" and saying we are not "enemies" of one another here in America. There are also the persistent discussions of Biden perhaps even including Republicans in his new administration. What about accountability? I am deeply concerned about Biden's temperament and willingness to compromise with Republicans and in doing so betraying the American people and the mandate they have given him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I suspect that if Joe Biden reaches out to Republicans, he is going to get his hand slapped. And once again, much is going to depend on the election in Georgia. We just have to keep the pressure on him. I am not willing to prejudge Biden on how he is going to govern. I am willing to give it a couple of months and then let us see what happens. We can't just go to sleep. We can't just go on vacation. This is the immediate, small but noisy cancer that may have been excised from our republic or will be hopefully by Jan. 20.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the metastasis of it, all the thousands of cancer cells throughout the body, they're still there. And we really need the chemotherapy of an aggressive progressive agenda, the Green New Deal, eliminating student debt and Medicare for All, as a starting point.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will the corporatists and plutocrats and other members of the financial elite have more or less power after Trump?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They are to a certain extent above it all. They are going to continue making their money no matter. The system has been so rigged to the advantage of very wealthy people since the 1980s. They have not seen any real serious challenges to their power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, with Medicare for All, the only rich people who are going to be hurt are the multi-millionaires in the insurance industry. Good riddance. It's a relatively small number of people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Green New Deal is actually going to be a money-making opportunity for people in business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eliminating student debt can be done by using government funds. If we can hand a trillion and a half dollars to the top 15% of Americans in a Trump tax cut and the republic survives, there is only a trillion and a half dollars worth of student debt and we could just literally pay it all off and say, "That's it, no more, nor in the future."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And nobody would be hurt. The main battle in that regard is going to be against the libertarian billionaires, the Charles Kochs of the world who are funding all these groups, the state policy groups, ALEC, FreedomWorks and the like in what is an ideological battle between libertarians and people who believe in democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There will be opposition. There will be people screaming, "Socialism!" — but they were screaming "Socialism!" around Medicare. They screamed "Socialism!" around Medicaid. They screamed "Socialism!" around Social Security. I think we can get past that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What does accountability and reckoning look like for the Trump regime?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I want prosecutions. Kellyanne Conway should be facing jail for breaking the Hatch Act. Ivanka Trump should be facing jail. They knew that what they were doing was illegal. They flaunted it intentionally. The campaign finance violations. I also believe that we really need to be looking into Wilbur Ross playing the stock market with inside information. It is time that the rule of law has to apply to rich white people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump and the pandemic: Wannabe fascism meets ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author Noam Chomsky explains why the 'neoliberal doctrine' has ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why the neoliberal agenda is a failure at fighting coronavirus ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coronavirus and the end of globalization: The 'neoliberal' model got ... ›</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 920</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;only winner of last night's 'debate' was dictatorship and oligarchy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann Common Dreams&nbsp; September 30, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we saw last night was the dictator's playbook.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tell violent white supremacist racists to "stand by" and encourage them to s...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-gop-reshaped-american-democracy-to-hold-onto-power-can-the-democrats-do-the-same-thing-to-save-it/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the power grab to fill the Supreme Court seat announced the same evening as the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mitch McConnell didn’t do anything new. The GOP has a long history of playing hardball power politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the late 19th century, Republicans added four states (Nevada, Colorado, North Dakota, and South Dakota) purely to gain eight new Republican senators, a trick Democrats could duplicate today by bringing statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico (and maybe even Guam).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in 1877, Republicans installed their presidential candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, into the White House after he had lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote to Democrat Samuel Tilden, a case Trump may have been referring to in a press conference on September 16, saying, “at a certain point, it goes to Congress.” (This is the 12th Amendment nightmare I wrote about in March and Greg Palast has recently pursued.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans have also reduced the size of the Supreme Court specifically to deny a Democratic president a nominee before. (And, of course, there’s the sordid tale of what they did to Merrick Garland.) Democrats can easily change the composition of the court with a simple majority if they control the House and Senate after the election and choose to end the slavery-era filibuster rule.&nbsp; The closest any Democrat has ever come to this sort of thing was in 1937 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt threatened to “pack” the court as Republicans had done 71 years earlier. (The threat and widespread public opinion in its favor worked, forcing the court to change its position on the New Deal, so the issue never came to a vote in Congress.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pushing the boundaries even further, over the course of now-Chief Justice John Roberts’ career working for President Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, he proposed a nuclear option that Republican lawmakers could use to legislatively overturn Brown v. Board and Roe v. Wade whether the Supreme Court liked it or not. Roberts’ plan was never implemented, but it’s still a long-shot option.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McConnell knows the first lesson of power politics: when representing only a minority, you must ruthlessly grab every bit of power you can, every time you can.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans in the U.S. Senate represent about 15 million fewer Americans than do Democrats. The last Republican president initially elected with a majority vote from the American people was George H.W. Bush, 32 years ago in 1988; George W. Bush lost by about a half-million votes, and Trump lost by almost 3 million. In the U.S. House in 2018, 9 million more Americans voted for a Democrat than a Republican, a margin (8.6 percent) far larger than their actual governing majority.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, Republicans tenaciously hang onto power and do whatever it takes to both hold and increase that power at every opportunity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats must learn from this history and consider all of these options if they win the White House and the Senate, and hold the House this November. Being elected with solid majorities will enhance their credibility when they seize and wield that power, so it’s doubly important now to strike when the opportunity arises.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s a deeper dive into the background, largely drawn from my books The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and The Hidden History of the War on Voting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Packing the Court in 1801</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Jefferson beat John Adams in the election of 1800, and so, during the lame-duck session of 1801, Adams’ Federalists (the conservative party at that time) passed the Judiciary Act of 1801 to cut the size of the Supreme Court from six members to five, purely to deny Jefferson an opportunity to make an appointment. (Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans—today’s Democratic Party—increased the number of members of the court to seven in 1802.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The law also created 16 new federal judgeships, which Adams sought to quickly fill before Jefferson took office in March; that created a mess that led to the Marbury v. Madison decision, which authorized the court to strike down laws passed by Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Packing the Court in 1866/1869</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1866, Republicans in the House and Senate passed a law to reduce the number of justices on the Supreme Court from 10 to 7 to deny Democratic President Andrew Johnson an opportunity to fill a seat opened up with the 1865 death of Associate Justice John Catron. Johnson was furious, but there was nothing he could do.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three years later, with Johnson out of the White House and Republican President Ulysses Grant safely in charge, they passed the Judiciary Act of 1869 that raised the number of justices up to nine, where it has stood till today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Packing the Court in 1937</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During FDR’s presidency, four of the Supreme Court’s justices, Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter, were collectively known as the Four Horsemen. They were invariably joined by one of the other justices, particularly Justice Owen Roberts, to strike down New Deal legislation that attempted to address unemployment and poverty, no matter how popular it was.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the preceding decades during the Lochner era, the court had struck down dozens of state laws protecting workers, including women and children.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled that both the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act were unconstitutional, gutting Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Agricultural Adjustment Act had passed in 1933 with 76 percent of the House of Representatives voting for it. The bill passed the Senate, also with 76 percent of the Senate voting for it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Historian William Leuchtenburg wrote for Smithsonian magazine that after the Agricultural Adjustment Act was struck down, “Many farmers were incensed. On the night following [Justice Owen] Roberts’ opinion, a passerby in Ames, Iowa, discovered life-size effigies of the six majority opinion justices hanged by the side of a road.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Industrial Recovery Act had likewise passed with 71 percent of the House voting for it and 81 percent of senators voting for it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the Supreme Court used its power of judicial review to overturn these laws, it wasn’t viewed just as an assault on FDR’s New Deal. It was, in the opinion of many Americans (and FDR himself), an assault on the very basis of our democratic republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then, shortly before Roosevelt was reelected in 1936, the court struck down a New York state law that established a minimum wage for women and children in Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The pendulum of popular opinion swung hard against the court almost overnight. One Republican newspaper in New York declared its opposition to the ruling: “The law that would jail any laundryman for having an underfed horse should jail him for having an underfed girl employee.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as historian David B. Woolner, author of The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace, noted, “Over… 13 months, the court struck down more pieces of legislation than at any other time in U.S. history.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1937, the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act (both passed in 1935) were on their way to the court. Considering how the Four Horsemen had ruled during FDR’s first term, Roosevelt knew that he needed to do something or risk losing both pieces of legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With the New Deal on the line, Roosevelt went on the attack. On February 5, 1937, just months after his landslide reelection, he announced his plan. He asked Congress for the authority to appoint one justice for each justice over 70 who would not retire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1937, the average life expectancy for men in the United States was only 58 years old. The average age of the Supreme Court justices at the time was 71 years old, and six of the justices were age 70 or older. A book mocking the court, called The Nine Old Men, “was rapidly moving up the bestseller lists,” as Leuchtenburg wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FDR directly called into question the “capacity of the judges themselves” to dispose of the growing number of cases facing federal courts. The United States’ population had increased nearly 70 percent between 1900 and 1936, and the number of cases facing federal court dockets had exploded. Citizens were waiting longer and longer to go in front of older and older judges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roosevelt’s plan would have immediately given him six appointments to the Supreme Court and up to 44 appointments for federal lower courts. Roosevelt argued that “[a] constant and systematic addition of younger blood will vitalize the courts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On March 9, 1937, Roosevelt told the nation that the court was ruling not just against himself and Congress, but against the will of the American people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Courts,” Roosevelt told the nation, “have cast doubts on the ability of the elected Congress to protect us against catastrophe by meeting squarely our modern social and economic conditions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roosevelt’s critics were aghast at his plans. They claimed he was trying the “pack the court” with justices who would simply be his yes men.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reacting to his critics, Roosevelt cut to the heart of the matter:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[I]f by that phrase the charge is made… that I will appoint Justices who will not undertake to override the judgment of the Congress on legislative policy, that I will appoint Justices who will act as Justices and not as legislators—if the appointment of such Justices can be called ‘packing the Courts,’ then I say that I and with me the vast majority of the American people favor doing just that thing—now.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congress never voted on the plan. It’s unclear whether it would have succeeded, or if a more moderate plan that would have given him only two or three justices might have passed more easily.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, on March 29, 1937, a Washington state minimum wage law came before the Supreme Court in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. The law in question was nearly identical to the New York state law that had come before the court a year earlier when it had outlawed minimum wage laws as being unconstitutional.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But this time, Justice Owen Roberts abandoned the Four Horsemen to uphold Washington’s minimum wage in a 5-4 decision. In a further series of 5-4 decisions two weeks later, the court upheld the National Labor Relations Act as constitutional. The nation was astonished.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Labor Secretary Frances Perkins was close friends with Justice Roberts’ wife, Elizabeth. When the decisions came down, according to Kirstin Downey’s biography of Perkins, “she rushed that afternoon to Roberts’ home” and “threw her arms around the man and hugged him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Owen, I am so proud of you,” Perkins told the Supreme Court justice. “A man of your standing and intelligence who is not afraid to change his mind!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Downey wrote of how Roberts was embarrassed by the affection but also very pleased. “Really, do you think so?” he replied to Perkins.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Less than two months later, the court declared that Social Security was constitutional.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New Deal had been saved from execution on the Supreme Court’s bench. Social Security had been salvaged, and the National Labor Relations Act gave labor and unions a lifeline after generations of fighting to stay afloat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts’ about-face in West Coast Hotel case was referred to at the time as “the switch in time that saved nine,” rendering FDR’s proposal unnecessary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Packing the Senate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was looking at the potential future composition of the U.S. Supreme Court after the war, concerned that Democrats might end up controlling the judicial body.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back then, it took roughly 125,000 citizens in a territory to qualify it for statehood, and the Nevada Territory only had 40,000 residents, but almost all were GOP-aligned. So, ignoring the 125,000-person requirement (it was more a matter of policy than law), Lincoln proposed statehood for Nevada and Congress approved it, adding two new GOP senators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the Civil War, as Southern (and Democratic-controlled) states were reintegrating into the Union, Republican President Ulysses Grant was worried that Democrats might end up controlling the Senate, and so in 1876 Grant and Republicans in Congress added Colorado—with fewer than 40,000 residents—as a new state, gaining two more GOP senators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats were rising in power again when Democrat Grover Cleveland won the White House in 1884 and won the popular vote (but lost the Electoral College) in 1888. Popular-vote loser Republican President Benjamin Harrison, in 1889, successfully proposed the Dakota Territory—which then had 134,000 residents—be split into two territories, North Dakota (pop. 36,000) and South Dakota (pop. 98,000), and each of them become states with two senators each.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, in 25 years, the GOP added eight senators, largely cementing their control of the Senate until the Great Depression; from Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 until FDR’s inauguration in 1933, Democrats controlled the Senate for only 10 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts’ Nuclear Option to Get Around the Supreme Court</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The year 1981 was a big one for court-stripping—or, as it’s sometimes called, jurisdiction-stripping. No fewer than 30 pieces of legislation were introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Republican congressmen that included court-stripping provisions. It was a huge topic of discussion and legal activity among Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And a young lawyer working in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, an up-and-comer named John Roberts, was hot on the trail.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Court-stripping is based on the idea that Congress has the power, under the Constitution, to pass laws that include provisions that specifically prevent (or strip the jurisdiction of) the Supreme Court (or any other federal court, if stipulated) from ruling on that particular law or issue’s constitutionality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s based on Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution, which says, “[T]he [S]upreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled, in Brown v. Board, that states had to racially integrate their schools. Southern states promised “massive resistance” in defiance, and entire school districts were shut down; many Southern states opened private all-white “segregation academies” such as the one Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith famously went to and sent her daughter to.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brown provoked a mini-industry among right-wing white racists: Fred Koch’s beloved John Birch Society was putting up “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards across the nation and publishing articles and pamphlets tying civil rights activists to communism; hundreds of all-white private schools opened; and conservative scholars of the Supreme Court and the Constitution searched through old books and debates from the founding era to that day looking for rationales to overturn the decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other than years of disruption to public education and a redoubled effort by conservatives to keep public schools funded with local property taxes (so that poor and/or Black schools would continue to turn out poorly educated students), not a great deal came of the opposition to Brown v. Board.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But defying the Court became a much bigger business in 1973, when the court in Roe v. Wade ruled that women have the right, at least in the first trimester of a pregnancy, to choose to have an abortion pretty much anywhere in the country, for any reason.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a speech about education and states’ rights to a predominantly white crowd near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists had been murdered in 1964. Willing to say and do whatever it took to take the White House, Reagan was the perfect vessel for a white supremacy message opposing forced integration, welfare for Black people, and abortion for white women.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan’s administration brought together a constellation of conservative white men to change the face of America. Ted Olson, who later argued Bush v. Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court, led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. As an assistant attorney general, Olson worked with counselor to the attorney general Ken Starr (appointed to that job in 1981), who was later (1989-1993) George H.W. Bush’s solicitor general. Other new faces Reagan hired included Samuel Alito and John Roberts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starr tasked Roberts, a staunchly antiabortion Catholic, with reviewing the entire history of the U.S. Supreme Court for cases that suggested a legislative or administrative way to overturn Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts wrote an extraordinary 27-page document that’s largely unknown, in the form of a memo on the letterhead of the Office of the Attorney General, to Ken Starr, signed by Roberts as special assistant to the attorney general. It is titled, “Proposals to Divest the Supreme Court of Appellate Jurisdiction: An Analysis in Light of Recent Developments.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts wrote that he had found “over twenty bills [pending in Congress] which would divest the Supreme Court (and, in most instances, lower federal courts as well) of jurisdiction to hear certain types of controversies, ranging from school prayer and desegregation cases to abortion cases.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What Roberts and his researchers had discovered was substantial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Court-stripping is based on the exceptions clause of Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution, which stipulates that the courts exist “with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts noted in his memo that “[t]he exceptions clause by its terms contains no limit… This clear and unequivocal language is the strongest argument in favor of congressional power and the inevitable stumbling block for those would read the clause in a more restricted fashion.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts was looking at the nuclear option. If he could build a strong case for Congress passing a law against abortion or desegregation, and persuade Congress to use the exceptions clause to render the courts moot, then this could be the magic bullet to restore segregation and recriminalize abortion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts concluded with a 1968 comment from Sam Ervin of North Carolina, one of the Senate’s most outspoken opponents of racial integration and abortion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He wrote, “As Senator Ervin noted during hearings on the exceptions clause, ‘I don’t believe that the Founding Fathers could have found any simpler words or plainer words in the English language to say what they said, which was that the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is dependent entirely upon the will of Congress.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts agreed: “[W]e are not considering a constitutional clause that is by its nature indeterminate and incapable of precise or fixed meaning, such as the due process clause or the prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was clearly the original intent, Roberts argued, because “the exceptions clause ‘was not debated’ by the Committee of Detail which drafted it or the whole Convention.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citing Federalist, no. 81, Roberts wrote, “Hamilton noted that the clause would enable ‘the government to modify [appellate jurisdiction] in such a manner as will best answer the ends of public justice and security,’ and that appellate jurisdiction was ‘subject to any exceptions and regulations which may be thought advisable.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Section III of Roberts’ screed on court-stripping dives deep into Supreme Court decisions to find rulings explicitly saying that Congress can regulate the Supreme Court and block the court from ruling on particular issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Beginning with the 1869 decision Ex parte McCardle, Roberts wrote, “A unanimous Court upheld the power of Congress to divest the Supreme Court of jurisdiction. The Court clearly based its decision on Congress’ power under the exceptions clause. Chief Justice Chase began the opinion by recognizing that the appellate jurisdiction of the Court ‘is conferred “with such exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make.”’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quoting Chase again, Roberts added his own emphasis: “We are not at liberty to inquire into the motives of the legislature. We can only examine into its power under the Constitution; and the power to make exceptions to the appellate jurisdiction of this Court is given by express words [underline Roberts’].”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He continued his historical exposé of court-stripping with another 1869 decision, Ex parte Yerger, and then United States v. Klein (1872), Wiscart v. Dauchy (1796), Durousseau v. United States (1810), Daniels v. Railroad (1865), and The Francis Wright (1881).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In The Francis Wright, Roberts found that Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite (whose court oversaw the infamous 1886 “corporate personhood” Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case) wrote for a unanimous court, quoting him as follows: “Not only may whole classes of cases be kept out of the jurisdiction altogether, but particular classes of questions may be subjected to re-examination and review, while others are not.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Each case strengthened the idea that Congress could simply pass a law, without even needing a supermajority, that barred the Supreme Court from ruling on a set of issues—like Reagan’s hot-button issues of school desegregation and abortion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moving toward late-19th-century decisions, Roberts quoted the court in Colorado Central Consolidated Mining Co. v. Turck (1893): “[I]t has been held in an uninterrupted series of decisions that this Court exercises appellate jurisdiction only in accordance with the acts of Congress upon the subject.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts, in his own voice, added, “Again, it bears emphasis that the basis for this theory is the implicit exercise by Congress of its exceptions power when it makes a limited grant of jurisdiction.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still building his case, Roberts jumped into 20th-century rulings, starting with National Mutual Insurance Co. v. Tidewater Transfer Co. (1948). Writing for the majority, Justice Felix Frankfurter noted in the decision, “Congress need not give this Court any appellate power; it may withdraw appellate jurisdiction once conferred and it may do so even while a case is sub judice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About the 1944 Yakus v. United States case, Roberts wrote, “Justice Rutledge noted… that ‘Congress has plenary power to confer or withhold appellate jurisdiction.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regarding Flast v. Cohen (1968), Roberts quoted from Justice William O. Douglas, who wrote, “[A]s respects our appellate jurisdiction, Congress may largely fashion it as Congress desires by reason of the express provisions of Section 2, Article III. See Ex parte McCardle.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Section IV of his memo, Roberts again covered the span from the framing of the Constitution to the time of his writing the memo, quoting another dozen or so cases that referenced, less directly, the power of Congress to exempt the Court from certain issues or decisions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roberts also noted that the original Judiciary Act of 1789 (which created the federal court system) also refers to Congress’ power of exception.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Time to Play Hardball</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both demographics and popular political opinion are moving against the Republican Party, and Republican politicians know it. Democrats should use this moment—if we can succeed in fighting back the GOP fascist tide—to use historical precedent to reconfigure our government so it represents the will of a majority of Americans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No more Mx. Nice Guy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/177002</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...It also meant that workers were often stripped of appropriate compensation for their work. “You take the new lumber companies that want to start on this wonderful process of making print paper out of yellow pine,” FDR continued. “One reason for the low wages of the workers in the pulp mills of Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina is that practically all profits go north; they do not stay south. If the profits stayed south, the whole scale of living would go up.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then he brought it all back to the word fascism, which the dictionaries of the day defined as the merger of state and corporate power, a process that was well underway in Italy— where Mussolini had dissolved the elected parliament and replaced it with the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations, where the Italian equivalent of each congressional district was represented by its largest industry instead of an elected member—and Hitler and Tojo had both moved to bring powerful business leaders and industrial tycoons into government.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I am greatly in favor of decentralization,” FDR wrapped up his answer to that question, “and yet the tendency is, every time we have trouble in private industry, to concentrate it all the more in New York. Now that is, ultimately, fascism.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nine days later, President Roosevelt brought up the issue again in his April 29, 1938, “Message to Congress on the Concentration of Economic Power.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unhappy events abroad have re-taught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaking of the captains of industry who, in the election two years earlier he had said, “hate me, and I welcome their hatred,” FDR laid out the state of things that three previous Republican administrations (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover) and their deregulatory fervor had brought about:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shifting from the rhetorical to the concrete, he gave a few startling examples:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following amazing figures for 1935:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ownership of corporate assets: Of all corporations reporting from every part of the nation, one-tenth of 1 percent of them owned 52 percent of the assets of all of them.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And to clinch the point: Of all corporations reporting, less than 5 percent of them owned 87 percent of all assets of all of them.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Income and profits of corporations: Of all the corporations reporting from every part of the country, one-tenth of 1 percent of them earned 50 percent of the net income of all of them.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And to clinch the point: Of all the manufacturing corporations reporting, less than 4 percent of them earned 84 percent of all the net profits of all of them.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FDR pointed out that the Republican Great Depression (what it was called until the early 1950s) had played a role in this process by weakening small businesses and often forcing them to sell out to larger interests or to mortgage themselves to big players, generally in distant cities.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican policies he was noting produced vast wealth for a small number of monopolists and stripped workers of their wages and security. And the monopolists were, throughout the Roaring Twenties, using the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover deregulation of the marketplace to concentrate ownership of America’s productive enterprises in their own tiny hands. The peak of the trend had been in the summer of 1929, when the market was at its top. ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/not-shocking-gops-covid-19-plan-puts-corporate-greed-before-human-need/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not shocking: GOP’s COVID-19 plan puts corporate greed before human need</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams July 29, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It should be called the HEELS Act, not the HEALS Act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/we-have-now-reached-peak-libertarianism-and-it-is-literally-killing-us/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We have now reached peak Libertarianism, and this bizarre experiment that has been promoted by the billionaire class for over 40 years is literally killing us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in the years before Reagan, a real estate lobbying group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) came up with the idea of creating a political party to justify deregulating the real estate and finance industries so they could make more money. The party would give them ideological and political cover, and they developed an elaborate theology around it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was called the Libertarian Party, and their principal argument was that if everybody acted separately and independently, in all cases with maximum selfishness, that that would benefit society. There would be no government needed beyond an army and a police force, and a court system to defend the rights of property owners.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1980, billionaire David Koch ran for vice president on the newly formed Libertarian Party ticket. His platform was to privatize the Post Office, shut down all public schools, privatize Medicare and Medicaid, end food stamps and all other forms of “welfare,” deregulate all corporate oversight, and sell off much of the federal government’s land and other assets to billionaires and big corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since then, Libertarian billionaires and right-wing media have been working hard to get Americans to agree with Ronald Reagan’s statement from his first inaugural address that, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Trump is getting us there now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Every federal agency of any consequence is now run by a lobbyist or former industry insider.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Labor Department is trying to destroy organized labor; the Interior Department is selling off our public lands; the EPA is promoting deadly pesticides and allowing more and more pollution; the FCC is dancing to the tune of giant telecom companies; the Education Department is actively working to shut down and privatize our public school systems; the USDA is shutting down food inspections; the Defense Department is run by a former weapons lobbyist; even the IRS and Social Security agencies have been gutted, with tens of thousands of their employees offered early retirement or laid off so that very, very wealthy people are no longer being audited and the wait time for a Social Security disability claim is now over two years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The guy Trump put in charge of the Post Office is actively destroying the Post Office, and the bonus for Trump might be that this will throw a huge monkey wrench in any effort to vote by mail in November.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has removed the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, and fossil fuel lobbyists now control America’s response to global warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our nation’s response to the coronavirus has been turned over to private testing and drug companies, and the Trump administration refuses to implement any official government policy, with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar saying that it’s all up to “individual responsibility.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result is more than 140,000 dead Americans and 3 million infected, with many fearing for their lives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Libertarian ideas and policies promoted by that real estate lobbying group that invented the Libertarian Party have made CEOs and billionaire investors very, very rich, it’s killing the rest of us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1930s and 1940s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt put America back together after the Republican Great Depression and built the largest and wealthiest middle class in the history of the world at the time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, 40 years of libertarian Reaganomics have gutted the middle class, made a handful of oligarchs wealthier than anybody in the history of the world, and brought an entire generation of hustlers and grifters into public office via the GOP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When America was still coasting on FDR’s success in rebuilding our government and institutions, nobody took very seriously the crackpot efforts to tear it all down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now that they’ve had 40 years to make their project work, we’re hitting peak Libertarianism and it’s tearing our country apart, pitting Americans against each other, and literally killing hundreds of people every day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If America is to survive as a functioning democratic republic, we must repudiate the “greed is good” ideology of Libertarianism, get billionaires and their money out of politics, and rebuild our civil institutions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That starts with waking Americans up to the incredible damage that 40 years of libertarian Reaganism has done to this country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pass it on.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Oligarchy and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 520</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">next death wave from COVID-19 will be the poor, rural and white</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What do you call a crisis that kills a hundred thousand Americans? It all depends on who does the dying. At first, it seemed like it was mostly white people…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s official national emergency declaration came on March 11, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome. The economy crashed and millions of Americans were laid off, but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then came April 7, 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I remember that week vividly; it was as if a light switch had been flipped, and I commented on it on the air at the time (and many times since).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">April 7 was the day that America learned that the majority of the people who were dying from COVID-19 were either elderly, black or Hispanic. Not so many white guys, after all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exactly one month earlier, on March 7, Trump had played golf at his club in West Palm Beach, met with Brazilian strongman Jair Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago, and visited the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. Over the previous week, U.S. deaths had risen from single digits to more than 20.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the following month, all hell broke loose in the United States and around the world. Italy and Spain were melting down, as was the U.S. economy; cases were exploding in New York. The nation was united in the hope that the disease could be stopped dead in its tracks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then came April 7, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: “Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States.” Across the American media landscape, similar headlines appeared at other outlets, and the story was heavily reported on cable news and the network news that night.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American conservatives responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rush Limbaugh declared soon after that “with the coronavirus, I have been waiting for the racial component.” And here it was. “The coronavirus now hits African Americans harder—harder than illegal aliens, harder than women. It hits African Americans harder than anybody, disproportionate representation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Claiming that he knew this was coming as if he were some sort of a medical savant, Limbaugh said, “But now these—here’s Fauxcahontas, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris demanding the federal government release daily race and ethnicity data on coronavirus testing, patients, and their health outcomes. So they want a database to prove we are not caring enough about African Americans…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It didn’t take a medical savant, of course. African Americans die disproportionately from everything, from heart disease to strokes to cancer to childbirth. It’s a symptom of a racially rigged economy and a health care system that only responds to money, which America has conspired to keep from African Americans for more than 400 years. Of course they’re going to die more frequently from coronavirus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously publishing front-page articles about that disparity with regard to COVID-19, both on April 7, echoed across the right-wing media landscape like a Fourth of July fireworks display.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tucker Carlson, the only primetime Fox News host who’d previously expressed serious concerns about the death toll, changed his tune the same day, as documented by Media Matters for America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, he said, “we can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest, the countless Americans who have been grievously hurt by this, by our response to this. How do we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That’s our task.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">White people were out of work, and black people were most of the casualties, outside of the extremely elderly. And those white people need their jobs back!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brit Hume joined Carlson’s show and, using his gravitas as a “real news guy,” intoned, “The disease turned out not to be quite as dangerous as we thought.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Left unsaid was the issue of whom it was not “quite as dangerous” to, but Limbaugh listeners and Fox viewers are anything but unsophisticated when it comes to hearing dog-whistles on behalf of white supremacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 12,000 Americans had died from coronavirus by April 7, but once we knew that most of the non-elderly victims were black, things were suddenly very, very different. Now it was time to quit talking about people dying and start talking about white people getting back to work!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It took less than a week for Trump to get the memo, presumably through Fox and Stephen Miller. On April 12, he retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci and declared, in another tweet, that he had the sole authority to open the United States back up, and that he’d be announcing a specific plan to do just that “shortly.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On April 13, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a policy paper titled “Implementing a National Return to Work Plan.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unspoken but big on the agenda of corporate America was the desire to get the states to rescind their stay-home-from-work orders so that companies could cut their unemployment tax losses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When people file unemployment claims, those claims are ultimately paid for by the companies themselves, and with a high number of claims, a company will see a substantial future increase in their unemployment insurance premiums/taxes. If the “stay home” orders were repealed, workers could no longer, in most states, file for or keep receiving unemployment compensation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On April 14, Freedomworks, the billionaire-founded and -funded group that animated the Tea Party against Obamacare a decade earlier, published an op-ed on their website calling for an “economic recovery” program including an end to the capital gains tax and a new law to “shield” businesses from lawsuits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three days after that, Freedomworks and the House Freedom Caucus issued a joint statement declaring that “it’s time to re-open the economy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Freedomworks published their “#ReopenAmerica Rally Planning Guide” encouraging conservatives to show up “[i]n-person” at their state capitols and governors’ mansions, and, for signage, to “Keep it short: ‘I’m essential,’ ‘Let me work,’ ‘Let Me Feed My Family’” and to “Keep them homemade.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the first #OpenTheCountry rallies to get widespread national attention was April 18 in New Hampshire. Over the next several weeks, rallies had metastasized across the nation, from Oregon to Arizona, Delaware, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and elsewhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One that drew particularly high levels of media attention, complete with swastikas, Confederate flags and assault rifles, was directed against the governor of Michigan, rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Rachel Maddow began reporting on meatpacking plants that had become epicenters of mass infection, the conservative Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court pointed out that the virus flare wasn’t coming from the “regular folks” of the surrounding community. Although the majority of the meat plant workers were Hispanic and the majority of the surrounding communities were white, her defenders suggested it was just a slip of the tongue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, the conservative meme was now well established.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About a third of the people the virus killed were old folks in nursing homes. Which, right-wing commentators said, could be a good thing for the economy because they’re just “useless eaters” who are spending our Medicaid and Social Security money and are on death’s door anyway.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, Texas’s Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick told Fox News, “Let’s get back to living… And those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A conservative town commissioner in Antioch, California, noted that losing “many elderly [people]… would reduce burdens in our defunct Social Security System” and “free up housing.” He added, “We would lose a large portion of the people with immune and other health complications. I know it would be loved ones as well. But that would once again reduce our impact on medical, jobs, and housing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It came to Trump’s attention that the biggest outbreaks were happening in prisons and meatpacking plants, places with few white people (and the few whites in them were largely poor and thus seen as disposable). Trump’s response to this was to issue an executive order using the Defense Production Act (which he had hesitated to use to order the production of testing or PPE equipment) on April 28 to order the largely Hispanic and black workforce back into the slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">African Americans were dying in our cities, Hispanics were dying in meatpacking plants, the elderly were dying in nursing homes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the death toll among white people, particularly affluent white people who were less likely to be obese, have hypertension or struggle with diabetes, was relatively low. And those who came through the infection were presumed to be immune to subsequent bouts, so we could issue them “COVID Passports” and give them hiring priority.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only thing Republicans had overlooked in their master plan to help out the master race was the very real consequence of Reaganomics across the states of the former Confederacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Southern states had fought against any sort of state- or federally-funded health care plans since Reconstruction, claiming libertarian ideology while, in fact, their animus was directed at people of color.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Caught in those crosshairs, however, just as had been the case prior to the Civil War, were poor whites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the same political and economic factors that put African Americans at risk for the past two centuries were also used against poor whites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1930s when Huey Long was Louisiana’s senator and governor, he explicitly reached out to impoverished white people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “Always the champion of poor whites, he effected a free-textbook law, launched a massive and very useful program of road and bridge building, expanded state university facilities, and erected a state hospital where free treatment for all was intended. He was opposed to excessive privileges for the rich, and he financed his improvements with increased inheritance and income taxes as well as a severance tax on oil…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Long’s “every man a king” stump speech was particularly intolerable to Louisiana’s wealthy oligarchs, opening as it did with the line, “Is that a right of life, when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men than it is by 120 million people?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1935 Long was assassinated, and it wasn’t until 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson would try to get any aid to poor Southern whites with Medicaid and food stamps; that, too, was offensive to the conservative white political structure in the South.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, poor whites in the South are likely to suffer from the diseases and lack of access to health care that make African Americans throughout the country so vulnerable to COVID-19.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, over the past 40 years, Reaganism has encouraged the spread of deep white poverty from red state to red state. White obesity, diabetes and hypertension are, therefore, overrepresented in poor rural areas as far away as Nebraska and Mississippi.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, the Brookings Institution just reported that of the counties where the virus has most recently exploded, 151 of them went for Trump in 2016 (by an average of 12 percent) and only 25 backed Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, Trump, Fox and his followers think COVID-19 just kills the elderly, blacks and Hispanics—and they seem comfortable with the needless deaths of people they think are different from themselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As it spreads into rural white America, however, they’re about to learn otherwise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the War on Voting and more than 30 other books in print. His most recent project is a science podcast called The Science Revolution. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 320</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">we need to plan now in case Trump loses in November — but refuses to leave the White House</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Constitution provides a couple of mechanisms for Trump to lose the 2020 election—both the popular vote and the Electoral College—and still hold the office of president for a second term. It’s…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Big Pharma twists the law to its will and leaves Americans worse off</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute January 10, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big Pharma spends a small fortune every year buying politicians to make sure we can’t import prescription drugs from Canada, but they’re more than happy to sell us contaminated medications from countries with weak manufacturing controls and exploitable labor that ensure high-profit margins....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-america-broke-up-with-the-democratic-party/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How America broke up with the Democratic Party</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute December 17, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many grassroots Democrats separated from their party in the 1990s, and the 2020 election may be the last chance to save the marriage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the GOP has been trying to establish a semi-permanent ruling majority through bigotry, gerrymandering and voter suppression, Democrats had long-term majority control of American politics pretty much continuously for more than a half-century.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times to the presidency and brought with him a Democratic Party sweep so complete that, with the exception of two brief two-year periods, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives from 1931 to 1995. FDR built the modern-day Democratic Party and launched it toward the 21st century.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Working-class Americans had fallen in love with Roosevelt and Democratic Party policies in the 1930s, and that love affair persisted across the better part of three generations. In the past few decades, though, they “fell out of love” with the Democratic Party and began regularly putting Republicans in charge of the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What happened?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in the 1980s, sociologist Diane Vaughan did some remarkable research about how people fall in and out of love that she compiled in her book Uncoupling. Her surprising but commonsense findings, now used by psychotherapists and marriage counselors around the world, apply to politics as much as they do to intimate relationships.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At some point during most relationships, one partner will become dissatisfied with the behavior of the other. When this dissatisfaction is so fundamental that the unhappy partner might consider dissolving the relationship if it’s not changed, they will almost always say something or otherwise signal their dissatisfaction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This signal of dissatisfaction is referred to by therapists as “the cry,” as in “the announcement” (think town crier, not sobbing). If the “offending” partner ignores or doesn’t understand the gravity of this “cry out” about how the relationship is going, it’s referred to as “the cry unheard.” The most common occurrence is that the partner “hears” the cry, but doesn’t think it’s a big deal and so ignores it; in other cases, it’s missed altogether.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the “cry” isn’t heard or is misunderstood as a routine small disagreement, the dissatisfied partner will begin noticing other things that are offending, and, over time, compile a list of reasons to leave the relationship that outnumbers the reasons to stay.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the offending partner—not having heard, or having misunderstood the “cry”—is oblivious and thinks everything is just fine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first turning point in the relationship comes when the dissatisfied partner, having put out the cry unheard and not seeing changes in behavior, starts to share the grievance with others, complaining (often subtly) about their partner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After a (typically relatively short) time, having gotten feedback from others that, “Yes, that behavior would bother me, too,” the dissatisfied partner, concluding the relationship can’t be salvaged, begins an emotional separation process, moving past bargaining and anger into grieving the loss, accepting that the relationship is not salvageable, and then, finally, announcing that they are pulling the plug on the relationship.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hearing for the first time this announcement that the relationship is dead, the clueless partner who didn’t hear the cry is blindsided, shocked, and devastated. While their partner has already gone through all the stages of unhappiness, deciding to leave, grieving the failure of the relationship, and accepting it as over, the clueless partner is forced to begin the process (similar to Kubler-Ross’ stages of dying) for themselves from a cold start.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Applying this model to the Democratic Party, the first really loud “cry unheard” from the Democratic electorate came in 1992.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to 1992, the Democratic Party had been FDR’s and LBJ’s party of big government, big projects (from legalizing unions to creating Social Security and Medicare to putting a man on the moon), and the great defender of working people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, many Democrats and their union allies strongly opposed Nixon’s 1974 Trade Act (ultimately signed by Gerald Ford) that gave fast-track authority to the president to encourage offshoring American jobs (we’ve lost more than 80,000 factories just since then) by cutting protective tariffs on imports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was living in Michigan running an advertising agency and reporting news part-time in the mid-1970s, and I remember well how dangerous it was to drive one of the cheap imported (mostly Japanese) cars that began flooding the country that decade as a result of the Nixon/Ford trade policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Working people were furious with the job losses, and when Jimmy Carter didn’t reverse Nixon’s trade policies, they turned to Reagan, who had promised, in the election of 1980, that he would protect workers’ jobs, even securing the endorsement of PATCO, the air controllers union he would famously betray in his first year in office. While union leaders were wary and opposed Reagan, many rank-and-file members believed the charismatic actor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But instead of standing up for working people, in 1981 Reagan declared war on the unions (then the largest funders of the Democratic Party nationwide), and began negotiations with Mexico and Canada to speed up the rate at which American companies were moving factories and, thus, union jobs out of the U.S.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This picked up steam with the NAFTA agreement itself, which was finalized by the George H.W. Bush administration in 1992, although it was yet to be ratified by Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1971, when Walmart was a regional retailer operating in only five states, its stores often had banners proclaiming what became the title of Sam Walton’s autobiography: “Made in America.” By the election year of 1992, four years after Sam had stepped down as CEO, it was getting hard to find anything in a Walmart that was still made in the USA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it wasn’t just Walmart—the 1970s trickle of foreign cars had become a flood by the end of the Reagan and Bush years in 1992, and union jobs all across America were vanishing, along with the factories that provided for them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, the “cry unheard” of America’s working people—most of them Democrats back then (even if they’d had an “affair” with Reagan)—was, “Please stop these insane ‘free trade’ deals that Nixon started and Reagan/Bush put on steroids!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But by this time the leadership of the Democratic Party wasn’t listening, or dismissed union concerns as something that would pass. As Reagan planned, union jobs evaporated throughout the 1980s and with them went the ability of big unions to support Democratic politicians with either cash or boots-on-the-ground.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With the unions dying under Reagan’s assault, Bill Clinton, planning to run for president in the election of 1992, knew he had to find other sources of financial support (the Supreme Court had opened the floodgates to corporate money in 1976 and 1978, exploding the cost of a presidential campaign). This was before anybody knew how to raise individual contributions on the internet, so Clinton had to figure out how to finance his campaign without relying on the unions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Al From lays out in his book The New Democrats and the Return to Power, he and Bill Clinton worked “to rescue the party from the political wilderness, redefine its message, and, most importantly, win presidential elections.” And that would take a lot of cash.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bank robber Willie Sutton famously said that banks were “where the money is,” and the money available for politics in 1992 had moved from the pockets of working people (wages had been flat for more than a decade) and their unions (unionization was in freefall) into the pockets of banks, insurance companies, drug companies, defense contractors, and other big corporations. And the Supreme Court had legalized taking their money in exchange for favors just before Reagan’s election in 1976 and 1978 (and tripled down on it in 2016).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In April 1989,” From’s book notes, he “traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, to recruit the state’s young governor, Bill Clinton, to be chairman of the DLC.” The result of their partnership was the creation of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and a new mantra for the Democratic Party: “[E]conomic centrism, national security, and entitlement reform…” that brought with it a flood of corporate and billionaire money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The party of big government solutions had become the party of big corporate money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, that first Clinton election year, 1992, was also the year when the “cry unheard” of American working people became a primal scream.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nearly one in five voters that year cast a ballot for an eccentric billionaire from Texas, Ross Perot, whose mantra was that the NAFTA free trade agreement negotiated by Reagan/Bush but also supported by the newly baptized DLC chair Clinton would lead to “a giant sucking sound from the South” as factories and jobs moved to Mexico.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clinton suggested that blue-collar jobs weren’t the future of America, and his running mate, Al Gore, said that moving automotive and other factories to Mexico would actually be good for America because Mexican workers would no longer have an incentive to cross our southern border and “we [could] cut down on illegal immigration.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democratic Party now led by Clinton thus embraced a behavior that most working Americans knew would be a disaster for them, and that they had cried out loudly against with their Perot vote in 1992.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the next eight years, as Clinton ignored them, many began considering having another affair with the GOP. After all, if Clinton was going to embrace Reagan/Bush trade policies, why not just go right to the source—the GOP itself—for policy prescriptions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Bob Woodward, during a meeting in the Oval Office, Clinton said sarcastically, “Where are all the Democrats? I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added, “We’re Eisenhower Republicans here. Here we are, and we’re standing for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Further turning his back on the FDR/LBJ Democratic Party principles, Clinton went on to heartily embrace Republican policies of cutting the social safety net. “The era of big government is over,” he proclaimed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putting the knife hilt-deep into the spine of LBJ’s Great Society, Clinton said, “Today we are ending welfare as we know it” as he signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. That law undid much of LBJ’s Great Society legislation, which had succeeded in cutting poverty rates in America from 22.2 percent in 1963 down to 12.6 percent in 1970.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the first time since LBJ’s Great Society in the 1960s, families in poverty were not guaranteed a lifeline. They had to prove they were working in order to qualify for assistance, which sounded like a good idea in theory, especially during boom times like the ’90s, when there were lots of jobs available. But during recessions, when three or four people are looking for every one available job, a work requirement for welfare does a lot of harm to already struggling families.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The stats have borne this out. In the years after welfare reform, as a series of presidents and governors have followed in Clinton’s footsteps, ever more people have been kicked off benefits, while poverty has increased. Before Clinton’s “welfare reform,” roughly 70 percent of impoverished families had access to a lifeline. But after reform, by 2016, only 23 percent did, and in some states that number was below 10 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the Reagan Revolution’s trade policy was wiping out the industrial base of America, while its tax policies were simultaneously moving trillions of dollars in wealth from middle-class families into the pockets of the top 1 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The year Reagan was sworn in, we were the richest nation in the world, and other than a few wobbles during the Civil War and two World Wars, our national debt had been relatively steady in inflation-adjusted dollars since the administration of George Washington. We were the world’s largest creditor—more countries owed us money than any other nation on earth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, after nearly 40 years of neoliberal Reaganomics, we are the world’s largest debtor nation, and our national debt nearly outweighs our annual GDP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The year Reagan was sworn into office, the United States was the largest importer of raw materials in the world, and the world’s largest exporter of finished, manufactured goods. We brought in ores for manufacturing, and shipped out everything from TVs and computers to cars and clothing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, things are totally reversed: We are now the world’s mining pit, the largest exporter of raw materials, and the world’s largest importer of finished, manufactured goods. We’ve gone from trade surpluses to trade deficits, a reflection of the fact that our factory floors had moved to Asia and Mexico.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1960, about one in four Americans worked in manufacturing, producing things of lasting wealth for our nation. Today, after jumping headfirst into one free-trade agreement after another, fewer than one in ten Americans work in manufacturing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between 2000 and 2017, 5.5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. They didn’t disappear; they just moved to low-wage factories in foreign nations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ironically, Republican President Eisenhower (1952-1960) knew that Americans loved FDR’s New Deal, and continued FDR’s trade policies. He had, after all, grown up with them (he was born in 1890), and fought World War II as the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe under FDR and led the invasion at Normandy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He told his brother Edgar in a 1954 letter, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eisenhower added, “There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are… Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Clinton and the “moderate” DLC Democrats embraced becoming Eisenhower Republicans, even as Eisenhower would have repudiated their policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“CLINTON SWIPES THE GOP’S LYRICS” read the headline of a 1996 Washington Post column by E.J. Dionne, which opened with this prescient paragraph:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“‘The good news is that we may elect a Republican president this year,’ said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. ‘The bad news is that it may be Bill Clinton.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result was the beginning of the Great Uncoupling the Democratic Party experienced in the 1990s, with formerly Democratic-voting working-class and poor people going over to the GOP, a trend we saw continued with Trump’s election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Harry Truman once said, “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As jobs and economic issues became the exclusive provenance of what the media calls “far-left” politicians like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, and the leadership of the Democratic Party stayed with Reaganomics, working people generally failed to show up in large enough numbers to keep George W. Bush out of the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But George W. Bush didn’t repudiate Reaganomics, so the working class continued to stagnate economically. Frustrated Americans decided to take another try with the Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This set up Senator Barack Obama, who promised “hope and change,” to beat John McCain’s “steady as she goes” approach to the presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But, vague rhetoric aside, Obama’s “change” was largely a continuation of Clinton’s Eisenhower-like corporate- and billionaire-friendly DLC policies. He restored dignity and sanity to the presidency, but also pushed hard to expand NAFTA-like outsourcing policies by throwing several years of political capital into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was ultimately as unpopular among a majority of Americans as was NAFTA in 1992. And his support of organized labor was weak, at best.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 1981, not one American president has seriously challenged the neoliberal basis of Reaganomics. Billionaires and corporations now largely run our politics, to the point that average working people’s desires are about as likely to be made into law as random chance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, Pew found that only about half of Americans qualified as “middle class” by the beginning of the Obama presidency. “From 1971 to 2011, the share of adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points,” they noted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With fewer than half of Americans qualifying as middle class by 2015, Pew concluded their study: “The hollowing of the middle has proceeded steadily for the past four decades.” Four decades earlier, of course, the Democratic Party began a course that culminated in Bill Clinton leading the party to turn its back on FDR and LBJ, and embrace Republican-lite economic and trade policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like a partner whose cry was still unheard, America’s still-wounded working-class and newly poor voters decided to take another chance with a new Republican partner, this time a mobbed-up New York City real estate hustler and reality TV star who promised to reverse so-called “free trade” and “bring those jobs home.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump had reached back into the old Democratic playbook, picking up where LBJ (who maintained protective tariffs and brought us Medicare and Medicaid without a single Republican vote) had left off, promising to reinstate protectionist trade policies to bring factories back to America. He also promised to reinstate LBJ’s emphasis on the quality of life for working-class and poor people through a national health insurance plan that would be “better” than Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which was floundering after being gutted by the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump told the Washington Post. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” Then-Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price added, on “Meet the Press,” that “nobody will be worse off financially” with the new Trumpcare plan. Trump tweeted that there would be “no cuts… to Medicaid” and said that “no one will lose coverage.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And while Trump’s trade efforts have been ham-handed, his trade war with China is—outside of farming communities—still popular in the industrial heartland, particularly among current and former union workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His health care plan was a scam, making available on Obamacare exchanges formerly 90-day (now three-year) emergency “bridge plans” that could still cancel insurance for preexisting conditions. But with the media focused on Trump, horserace and scandal, virtually no Americans realize that the plans Trump pitched as new and cheaper are so dangerous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, working-class whites in the American Midwest and South, even those not in thrall to Trump’s pitch to white supremacists, are largely staying with him. Hope springs eternal, after all, and dies last. The Democratic Party is still locked out of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the White House, even after two of the past four presidents who served for eight years each were Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which brings us to how relationships heal and couples reunite, and how this could be applied to save the soul and electoral outcomes of the Democratic Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the partner who had ignored the “cry” now hears it, there’s a very real chance that the relationship can be saved. Doing so requires two steps, both done with a lot of commitment and hard work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, change the offensive behavior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, remember why you “fell in love” in the first place, and revisit those reasons, experiences, feelings, and activities that first brought you together.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats know how to do both of these things, party leadership notwithstanding.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democratic Party had built a three-generation governing majority once in the past. All they need do today is reimplement Democratic policies from 1933 to 1979, updated for modern times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Raise taxes on the rich, bring our factories home, expand the safety net, support GI Bill-style free education, and restore union rights. The party should know its history, after all, and should remember how well it was received by the American people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like a partner who wants to repair a wounded relationship, the Democrats must return to core principles and stay faithful to them. And we still have the template.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, the Democratic Party has two presidential nominees who carry the values and economic policies of FDR and LBJ, while embracing modern-day values of diversity and inclusion in ways neither party dared before this century. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is the second-largest Democratic caucus and the third largest in all of Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the Democratic Party follows its base and promotes progressive candidates and policies, it has a good chance of pulling America back from the brink of authoritarianism and oligarchy, and to restore our moral authority in the world. A return to big thinking and big goals like those of FDR and LBJ will put Democrats on a track to a second multigenerational governing majority.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the party uses its convention and superdelegates (on a second vote) to choose another candidate committed to DLC (now Third Way) policies, get ready for either another four years of Donald Trump or a “moderate” one-term pause in the continuing deterioration of the middle-class American Dream.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a former psychotherapist, SiriusXM talk-show host and the New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">R U S</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2019/06/24/thom-hartmann-discusses-the-hidden-history-of-guns-in-america-extended-interview/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States stands out from much of the world today in proliferating firearms at a rate that is breathtaking. The vocal demands of a gun-loving minority have led to tens of thousands of deaths a year. High profile mass shootings, particularly on school campuses, lead to outpourings of “thoughts and prayers,” but little else. Members of Congress cower in the face of the powerful gun lobby and shrug their shoulders in helplessness. We are all told over and over again that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is supreme over our right to safety. Now a new book puts the American obsession with guns into a much-needed political and historical framework.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For more information about Thom Hartmann’s ‘The Hidden History of Guns and the 2nd Amendment’ book tour visit www.thomhartmann.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">i I was booted from Facebook for no discernible reason. Is it time to rein in the massive power it wields?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Ins</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Citizens United corrupted the US Supreme Court and guaranteed Republicans will never turn on Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump honors Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during the federal judicial confirmation milestones event, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute December 4, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is a very simple reason why some Republicans voted for the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, but none have so far broken ranks against Trump. That reason is a corrupted U.S. Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1976 (Buckley v. Valeo) and 1978 (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti), the Supreme Court ruled that when corporations and billionaires purchase their very own politicians, it is constitutionally protected “free speech” rather than “bribery,” which is how we defined it from the beginning of our republic until 1976. In 2010, the Supreme Court doubled down on its betrayal of American democracy with its Citizens United decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After those twin decisions in the 1970s, money from corporations and the morbidly rich began to flow into the coffers of the Republican Party, hoisting Ronald Reagan into the White House. (Democrats were then still largely funded by unions, and thus not so easily up for sale.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The spigots of cash never turned off; the 2016 election was a $6.5 billion affair.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, today’s Republican politicians are wholly owned agents of corporations and the billionaire class, stoking extreme anger over a few social issues (immigration, guns, God, gays, race) and using it to bring in the Fox rubes that the billionaire Murdochs kindly hand them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prior to this betrayal of America by the Supreme Court, politicians generally felt a need to respond to the wants and needs of their constituents. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s people-powered election in 1932 to Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, politicians’ proposed legislation and votes tended to reflect what the people in their districts or states wanted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nixon’s impeachment hearings happened in 1974, before the Supreme Court legalized bribery—and so the Senate voted 77-0 to forward the investigation, and the House voted 412-3 to accept the Judiciary Committee’s report showing “clear and convincing evidence” of Nixon’s corruption. Republicans were more concerned about their voters than about their donors back then.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From the 1980s to today, though, as a study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page shows, the political desires of the economic bottom 90 percent of Americans are completely irrelevant to the introduction or passage of legislation. But the desires of the top 10 percent of Americans are consistently passed into law and policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans don’t want the money to stop, so they have to keep supporting Trump as he pushes the corporate- and billionaire-friendly policies of deregulation and tax cuts supported by their donors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the billionaires abandon Trump, so will the GOP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s really just that simple.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As long as the Supreme Court continues to assert that there is absolutely nothing wrong with billionaires and corporations owning politicians, the GOP will continue to be an extension of the lobbying industry and the morbidly rich. In exchange for deregulation and tax cuts, that bunch would work to keep a gerbil in the White House, if that’s what it took.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as long as their owners and funders continue to pay Republicans to keep Trump in office, they’ll continue to say, “How high?” every time Trump yells, “Jump!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of “The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America” and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/revenge-of-the-billionaires-how-an-oligarchy-of-the-morbidly-rich-can-take-down-democracy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute November 22, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The current issue of the Atlantic magazine founded itself in the years just before the Civil War, is ominously titled, “How to Stop a Civil War.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we are, indeed, on the brink of a second Civil War, it’s already being waged as a “cold war,” with the occasional armed skirmish being provoked by the so-called alt-right movement. And, as in the past, this will be a war by the very, very rich against the rest of America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is not the first time we’ve faced such a crisis as a nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Each time, forces of massive accumulated or inherited wealth have nearly succeeded in taking full control of our nation, replacing a democracy, where the will of the people is accomplished through their elected representatives, with a form of government where most government functions reinforce the power, wealth and control of the morbidly rich.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This system of government is among the most ancient, stretching back 7,000 years, and is known to political scientists as oligarchy. Aristotle put it in context: “Tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;oligarchy to totally take down democracy, only three things are initially needed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Control of (or substantial influence over) a critical portion of the media</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Legalization of bribery of public officials, so oligarchs can achieve majority control of the legislative process</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Control of the most critical parts of the court system so they can control legal processes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A fourth element, once the oligarchy is well established, is the formation of a police state, principally using selective prosecution against those agitating for a return to democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arnold Toynbee is said to have noted that “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.” Most warriors are in their late teens or early 20s; by the time they’ve died, three more generations have come of age, suggesting, if Toynbee was right, a four-generation gap between “great wars.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their book The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous With Destiny, William Strauss and Neil Howe apply the theory to the United States. The Revolutionary War began in 1775; 86 years later in 1861, the Civil War began; 78 years later in 1939, America was combatting “the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II,” write Strauss and Howe, adding: “Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with” these crises.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The three crises did not simply come out of nowhere; cycles of events had been building for the preceding generations to create the context for each.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1770s, foreign-aligned oligarchs controlled what we now call America; believers in democracy fought a war to overthrow that British oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Four generations later, in the 1850s, massive wealth was controlled by a few thousand very large plantation oligarchs in the South. The South was politically and police-wise run as a full-blown oligarchy, while the North was still largely democratic (the “Gilded Age” Northern oligarchs wouldn’t fully emerge for another 30 years). The Civil War could thus be recast as a war between oligarchy and democracy, where democracy won by a whisker.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About four generations after that, in 1921, Warren Harding and his oligarch supporters took control of our federal government, leading to the “Roaring Twenties” (in which working people’s wages stagnated, but people at the top made out like bandits), and the Great Crash of 1929. The Republican Great Depression (what they called it until the 1950s) opened the door to Franklin Roosevelt’s “war” against the “economic royalists” (oligarchs), which succeeded in putting them, at least temporarily, in a box despite their explicit efforts, exposed by Marine General Smedley Butler, to overthrow him by force.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2019, it’s been about four generations since that battle—and the groundwork has been laid for another crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1970s, America’s oligarchs succeeded in getting enough of “their guys” placed on the Supreme Court to, in 1976 and 1978, legalize political bribery for the first time in American history. This opened the door to oligarchic control of all three branches of government via the Reagan Revolution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All that was left was to get the populace to support a final transition to oligarchy, a task undertaken by oligarchs who controlled the media, largely Clear Channel/Rush Limbaugh and billionaire Rupert Murdoch with Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, we are no longer a functioning democratic republic; we are now operating as an oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The argument for oligarchic control is the same argument that’s been made by “conservatives” through history, from Thomas Hobbes to Sir Edmund Burke to Warren Harding and Donald Trump:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“With us in charge, we will keep you safe and happy and you really don’t need to concern yourself with the complicated work of governance. You don’t want to ‘tear down’ or ‘shake up’ the system: having a stable group of very wealthy people control the government has always led to the greatest level of stability and peace—look how stable Europe was for a thousand years when royal families and their landed gentry ruled. We’re the ones chosen by God or a brilliant DNA lineage to lead. Just go shopping and leave things to us.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starting in the 1980s, oligarchy was sold to us by “conservative” religious figures (“Saint Reagan,” G.W. Bush was a godly man, Trump is King Cyrus, John Calvin was right that being rich is a sign of God’s blessing so nations are best run by rich people), as well as oligarch-owned media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starting in the past decade, this sales pitch has extended itself to a massive social media ecosystem majority-owned by a handful of American oligarchs, some of whom have expressed confusion about democratic governance and all of whom have directly or indirectly bought control of large numbers of local, state and federal legislators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This led us from the “oligarch-friendly” President Reagan, to the conversion, in 1992, of the Democratic Party via the Democratic Leadership Council to become “oligarch-friendly” itself (a legacy it’s today struggling to undo). In 2016, oligarchs like Robert Mercer and Charles Koch finally put an oligarch himself, Donald Trump, in the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When, in 2015, I asked former President Jimmy Carter what he thought the consequences were of Supreme Court decisions like Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United that made all this possible, he replied:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It [the Citizens United decision] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and Congress members.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That same year, then-Vice President Joe Biden said, “you have to go where the money is. Now where the money is, there’s almost always implicitly some string attached. … It’s awful hard to take a whole lot of money from a group you know has a particular position, then you conclude they’re wrong [and] vote no.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As former Vice President Al Gore wrote in his 2013 book The Future: “American democracy has been hacked. … The United States Congress … is now incapable of passing laws without permission from the corporate lobbies and other special interests that control their campaign finances.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, in 2015 while campaigning for the Republican nomination for president, oligarch Donald Trump candidly said, “I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2014, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page (Princeton, Northwestern) demonstrated that we ceased to be a functioning democracy by classical definitions sometime in the late 20th century, and have been, as President Carter said, an oligarchy (my term, not theirs: they call it “Economic-Elite Domination”) since then.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The difference between now and the 1860s is that the oligarchic control is no longer regional; it’s national. Instead of the North and the South fighting each other, it’s now Free Speech TV viewers facing off with their Fox News–viewing neighbors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Koch oligarchy machine, for example, has branches in every state, and pretty much every county. Oligarchy-supporting media are ubiquitous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now Very Serious People are talking about the possibility of a second Civil War.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What they’re not pointing out, though, is that it won’t just be a war of white supremacists and Trump cultists against the rest of us, as they generally narrate, but a war between those comfortable with oligarchy (indeed, embracing it, as it promises them safety and stability) versus those who believe in democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a crisis point for our nation as real and critical as those we hit in 1776, 1861, and 1932. In each of those three cases—roughly four generations apart—the oligarchs lost the battle. This time they could win.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America needs an honest discussion of what’s really going on in this country right now, what the real conflict is, and who the real players are (and why they’re playing). The conflict is playing out on a series of meta-layers (race, class, religion, regionality), all designed to conceal the real war the oligarchs are waging against democracy itself, and those conflicts will continue to intensify until one side or the other has won what is now still a “cold war.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then comes the threat of a real Civil War breaking out, and an informed populace is the best defense against it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the forces of democracy can succeed in seizing enough power to temporarily hobble the oligarchs, then they need to immediately restore local control to the media (undoing the 1996 Telecommunications Act and breaking up the media conglomerates) and reinstate a ban on the “right” of oligarchs to own politicians and political parties by overturning several Supreme Court decisions since 1976. Repairing the damage done to our court systems will take longer, but needs to begin immediately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the other hand, if the oligarchs decide to promote an actual “hot” Civil War on the forces of democracy—as Southern oligarchs did in 1861—then parts of America that are still functioning democracies (California comes to mind—there has been discussion of various “compacts” between the three West Coast states, possibly joining with a few Eastern Seaboard states) must consider some form of independence, whether it be “soft independence” like California declared when they established their own air quality standards or some form of partial independence or succession.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This moment of oligarchy-caused crisis is a time of great danger to America, and, thus, also to still-functioning democracies all over the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As oligarchs reach out and extend their control over nation after nation (now having seized, in just the past few decades, either soft or hard control over Russia, India, the Philippines, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and dozens of other nations) the battlegrounds are shifting to Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because the oligarch’s campaign is now international, a third world war is not impossible, particularly as China allies itself with the oligarch-controlled nations against those that are still functioning or nearly functioning democracies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The stakes couldn’t be higher.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by Economy for All,...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/radio-host-thom-hartmann-explains-how-we-could-slide-into-straight-fascism-in-the-next-year</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...one one thing that causes me to think that we might not — and which is the subject of my new book “The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America” — is how the United States Supreme Court has basically betrayed our country. The definition of a democracy is where the people vote for what they want and then they get that through the government. That has not been the case since 1981.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether it’s the social safety net, protecting the environment, decreasing our military activity abroad, making policing more humane, recognizing civil rights, encouraging voter rights, strengthening the middle class and protecting Social Security and Medicare, none of those things have happened. In fact, the opposite has happened.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How is Trumpism a symptom and not the cause of much bigger social, political, economic and other cultural problems in America? Renewing the country’s democracy to prevent another fascist president is going to require deep systemic change, not just voting Donald Trump out of office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The thing that concerns me the most is that in the United States we now have corporations and billionaires who have taken over our political system completely. Social scientists have shown that what the bottom 90% of income earners want in America is literally random noise for America’s policymakers. By comparison, what the top 10% want is consistently enacted through legislation. This means no more democracy. And then on top of that power dynamic the courts have swung to the far right and are hard corporatist.....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/from-nixon-to-trump-heres-how-ideologues-and-partisans-seized-the-court/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dirksen torpedo peac talks]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...While there are many ways our republic would probably be different today had Nixon not committed treason to get elected in 1968, the most consequential has been the Supreme Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nixon got four conservative appointments: Warren E. Burger, William Rehnquist, Harry Blackmun, and, most consequentially, Lewis Powell. Nixon’s vice president, Gerald Ford, appointed a fifth conservative justice, John Paul Stevens, after Nixon resigned in 1974.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without Nixon, Lewis Powell may never have been on the Court. Powell’s enduring Court legacy will be how he helped big money take over our government as the guiding force behind the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti cases. Followed by Citizens United in 2010, they essentially handed our elections over to the highest bidders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reprinted from The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America with the permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Copyright © 2019 by Thom Hartmann.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/ronald-reagan-launched-an-attack-on-the-middle-class-we-must-reverse-it-to-save-our-democracy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ronald Reagan launched an attack on the middle class. We must reverse it to save our democracy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute October 2, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/some-of-trumps-allies-and-officials-must-face-federal-prosecution-to-save-the-republic/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of Trump’s allies and officials must face federal prosecution — to save the republic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute September 10, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To save our republic, some of Trump’s enablers and political appointees may have to go to jail, just like happened with Nixon’s people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s policies are inflicting massive damage on the working class, the environment, minorities, and our economy. And the damage he’s doing to our body politic will certainly alter our form of government if there aren’t legal consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his cronies have shown present and future politicians how much corruption the Republican Party and the public will tolerate, and it’s a very bad sign for the future of the American experiment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has put the interests of foreign governments with whom he and his family have or hope to have business relationships above the interests of America; flagrantly violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause; welcomed foreign interference in our elections; lied to the American public and the world on a daily basis; committed campaign finance violations that landed his lawyer in prison; repeatedly broke obstruction of justice laws; and put children in cages, causing lifelong PTSD.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And that’s just since he’s been in office: his crimes from housing discrimination to sexual assault and rape to felony tax evasion to running a fraudulent university to real estate tax fraud are all, as of this moment, largely or entirely lacking any serious law enforcement oversight.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America has never before seen such breathtaking corruption in the Oval Office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While this has rightly sparked an extended conversation about impeachment and the powers of the executive branch, a more important conversation—that’s entirely lacking in mainstream media—is about the people enabling Trump’s corruption and criminality. If he and the people enabling him are not held to account, future Trumps are pretty much inevitable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Numerous countries have grappled with this issue in the past; the most famous are Germany after World War II and South Africa after the fall of apartheid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was this cycle of corruption that both the Nurnberg Tribunal and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought to interrupt. Today the Colombian government is running a War Crimes Tribunal specifically to warn future politicians and their functionaries from repeating the crimes committed during that nation’s previous administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In America, congressional investigations into the Teapot Dome Scandal nearly brought down the Harding administration (it was widely believed that President Harding died as a result of the stress), and Congress launched an impeachment proceeding against President Bill Clinton for lying about consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky, as then-Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia said on the floor of the House, “in order to establish a precedent that will prevent future Presidents from engaging in similar conduct.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By holding current-day accomplices accountable all up and down the chain of command, future enablers of corrupt or despotic leaders think twice before saying “Yes” to requests to bend or break the rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At its core, this is the essence of the rule of law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has put people with naked conflicts of interest in charge of major government departments and in Cabinet positions, and browbeaten other federal agencies to reroute federal dollars to his businesses or lie to help him out politically.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His attorney general, Bill Barr, has outdone his corruption in the George H.W. Bush administration, and is now using the power of his office to try to force California and other states to loosen their clean air regulations in ways that will benefit the fossil fuel donors to the GOP—at exactly the moment scientists are warning that global warming could destroy human civilization.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And these are just a few of dozens of examples of the ways that enablers within our government—from Trump’s Cabinet to his Press Office all the way down the chain of command—have been willing to lie, bend or break the rules, or simply engage in highly corrupt acts to please him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Often, as with Trump’s promotion of violence and racial hatred, these acts aren’t even explicitly illegal—they’re simply so brazen and implicitly corrupt that no other administration in the past would have considered doing them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the Nixon bribery scandals (there were 55 criminal convictions around Nixon, 16 each for Reagan and George W. Bush; one for Clinton and none for Carter or Obama), Congress passed legislation designed to prevent corruption and criminality by future presidents and other politicians. With five criminal convictions or guilty pleas by top Trump insiders so far, there’s little doubt that new laws or policies to restrain such behavior in the White House will be necessary when Trump leaves office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, like the 15 Nixon administration officials who went to prison, there are numerous as-yet-unindicted Trump functionaries who have facilitated these crimes and corrupt practices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I point out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, candidate Richard Nixon interfered with President Johnson’s efforts to negotiate peace in Vietnam; candidate Ronald Reagan interfered with President Carter’s efforts to free hostages in Iran; and George H.W. Bush loyalists on the Supreme Court corruptly disrupted the electoral process in Florida to install Bush’s son in the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Nixon had been held to account, Reagan and Bush may not have been so brazen in their willingness to subvert American democracy for political purposes and to help their campaign donors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their ability to get away with such corruption to win elections paved the way for Trump’s welcoming—indeed, soliciting—help from Russia and other foreign governments to become president. And now he’s even shut down the last “cop on the beat” for the 2020 election by crippling the Federal Election Commission. Furthermore, his chief enabler, #MoscowMitch McConnell, is blocking any legislation that will prevent our election infrastructure from being hacked while forestalling consequences by injecting more manifestly unqualified or corrupt people into our judicial bloodstream than during any administration in history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, the unwillingness of the Obama administration to investigate and publicly hold Bush and Cheney accountable for lying to the American people about Iraq and committing numerous war crimes emboldens Trump when it comes to the possibility of war with Iran or Venezuela. The choice to do little or nothing about the crimes and corruption of a previous administration, as was made by both Clinton and Obama, is also an explicit act that has its own consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his functionaries are setting an example for future presidents and their administrations that goes deeper than even electoral or war crimes; they’ve turned America (hopefully, temporarily) into a larger version of a strongman banana republic. Without corrective action, future presidents will feel a strong temptation—regardless of their political party or positions—to cut corners and break laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When not punished, this sort of corruption echoes down generations of leaders in countries on both the right and the left; no politician is immune to temptation and pressure when working in what’s perceived as a consequence-free environment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now is the time to begin a conversation about how Trump’s enablers will be held to account, to bring post-Trump America back into the realm of a functioning democratic republic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The right-wing love affair with Ayn Rand ties conservatism to one of the most disturbing sociopathic killers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Ayn Rand image via Wikipedia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute August 12, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s a direct link between a sociopathic killer in 1927 and the GOP’s willingness to embrace a sociopathic president like Trump. That link runs through the work of Ayn Rand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Donald Trump was running for the GOP nomination, he told USA Today’s Kirsten Powers that Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, The Fountainhead, was his favorite book.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” he told Powers. “That book relates to … everything.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump probably knew that anything by Rand would be the right answer for Republicans; the party has embraced her for decades, to the point that Paul Ryan required interns to read her books as a condition of employment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Powers added, “He [Trump] identified with Howard Roark, the novel’s idealistic protagonist who designs skyscrapers and rages against the establishment.” Roark raged so much in the novel that he blew up a public housing project with dynamite just to get his way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand was quite clear about the characteristics she wrote into her heroes, and in particular Howard Roark. In her Journals, she writes of the theme of the book, “One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself. Fine!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Howard Roark, she writes that he “has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world. He knows what he wants and what he thinks. He needs no other reasons, standards or considerations. His complete selfishness is as natural to him as breathing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roark seems like the kind of man who would brag about grabbing women by the genitals because, “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” But this was long before Donald Trump was on the scene.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, the man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was a real sociopath named William Edward Hickman, who lived in Los Angeles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ten days before Christmas, in 1927, Hickman, a teenager with slicked dark hair and tiny, muted eyes, drove up to Mount Vernon Junior High School in Los Angeles, California, and kidnapped Marion Parker—the daughter of a wealthy banker in town.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman held the girl ransom, demanding $1,500 from her father—back then about a year’s salary. Supremely confident that he would elude capture, Hickman signed his name on the ransom notes, “The Fox.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After two days, Marion’s father agreed to hand over the ransom in exchange for the safety of his daughter. What Perry Parker didn’t know is that Hickman never intended to live up to his end of the bargain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Pittsburgh Press detailed what Hickman, in his own words, did next.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It was while I was fixing the blindfold that the urge to murder came upon me,” he said. “I just couldn’t help myself. I got a towel and stepped up behind Marion. Then, before she could move, I put it around her neck and twisted it tightly.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman didn’t hold back on any of these details: he was proud of his cold-bloodedness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I held on and she made no outcry except to gurgle. I held on for about two minutes, I guess, and then I let go. When I cut loose the fastenings, she fell to the floor. I knew she was dead.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Hickman wasn’t finished. “After she was dead I carried her body into the bathroom and undressed her, all but the underwear, and cut a hole in her throat with a pocket knife to let the blood out.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman then dismembered the child piece-by-piece, putting her limbs in a cabinet in his apartment, and then wrapped up the carved-up torso, powdered the lifeless face of Marion Parker, set what was left of her stump torso with the head sitting atop it in the passenger seat of his car, and drove to meet her father to collect the ransom money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He even sewed open her eyelids to make it look like she was alive.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the way, Hickman dumped body parts out of his car window, before rendezvousing with Marion Parker’s father.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Armed with a shotgun so her father wouldn’t come close enough to Hickman’s car to see that Marion was dead, Hickman collected his $1,500, then kicked open the door and tossed the rest of Marion Parker onto the road. As he sped off, her father fell to his knees, screaming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Days later, the police caught up with a defiant and unrepentant Hickman in Oregon. His lawyers pleaded insanity, but the jury gave him the gallows.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To nearly everyone, Hickman was a monster. The year of the murder, the Los Angeles Times called it “the most horrible crime of the 1920s.” Hickman was America’s most despicable villain at the time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But to a young Russian idealist just arriving in America, Hickman was a hero.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And while Hickman the man has, today, been largely forgotten, Hickman the archetype has lived on and influenced our nation in a profound fashion, paving the way for Donald Trump, a man with no empathy or consideration of social norms, to one day occupy the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The kind of man who would pose with a tiny baby, the youngest survivor of a slaughter that he, himself encouraged with his hateful rhetoric, and mug for the camera with a thumbs-up sign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two years before William Edward Hickman was sentenced to death, a 21-year-old Russian political science student named Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum arrived in New York Harbor on a French ocean liner. The year was 1926, and she was on the last leg of her dream trip to the Land of Opportunity, scurrying across the Soviet Union, Germany, and France before procuring a first-class cabin aboard the S.S. De Grasse, bound for the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alissa was a squat five-foot-two with a flapper hairdo and wide sunken dark eyes that gave her a haunting stare. And etched into those brooding eyes was burned the memory of a childhood backlit by the Russian Revolution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She had just departed Leninist Russia where, almost a decade earlier, there was a harsh backlash against the Russian property owners—the people who were rich with Russian money like Donald Trump—by the Bolsheviks. Alissa’s own family was targeted, and at the age of 12 she witnessed Bolshevik soldiers burst into her father’s pharmacy business, loot the store, and plaster on the doors the red emblem of the state indicating that his private business now belonged to “the people.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That incident left such a deep and burning wound in young Alissa’s mind, that she went to college to study political science and vowed one day she’d become a famous writer to warn the world of the dangers of Bolshevism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starting afresh in Hollywood, she anglicized her name to Ayn Rand, and moved from prop-girl to screenwriter/novelist, basing the heroes of several of her stories on a man she was reading about in the newspapers at the time. A man she wrote effusively about in her diaries. A man she hero-worshipped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was the most notorious man in American in 1928, having achieved a level of national fame she craved—William Edward Hickman.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What young Ayn Rand saw in Hickman that would encourage her to base a novel, then her philosophy, then her life’s work, on him was quite straightforward: unfeeling, unpitying selfishness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was the kind of man who would revel in the pain parents would feel when their children were ripped from their arms and held in freezing cages for over a year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Hickman, Ayn Rand wrote that she had finally found the new model of the Superman (her phrase, likely borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche). Only a worldview held by a man like Hickman, she believed, could ever prevent an all-powerful state from traumatizing another generation of small businesspeople and their children as the Bolsheviks had her family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman’s words as recounted by Rand in her Journals, “I am like the state: what is good for me is right,” resonated deeply with her. It was the perfect articulation of her belief that if people pursued their own interests above all else—even above friends, family, or nation—the result would be utopian.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She wrote in her diary that those words of Hickman’s were, “the best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I ever heard.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hickman—the monster who boasted of how he had hacked up a 12-year-old girl—had Rand’s ear, as well as her heart. She saw a strongman archetype in him, the way that people wearing red MAGA hats see a strongman savior in Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Hickman’s murder trial unfolded, Rand grew increasingly enraged at how the mediocre American masses had rushed to condemn her Superman, much like today people Trump calls mediocre condemn him and the killings that may have emerged from his rhetoric, from Charleston to Charlottesville to El Paso.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The first thing that impresses me about the case,” Rand wrote in reference to the Hickman trial in early notes for a book she was working on titled The Little Street, “is the ferocious rage of the whole society against one man.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Astounded that Americans didn’t recognize the heroism Hickman showed when he proudly rose above simply conforming to society’s rules, Rand wrote, “It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. … It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, with a consciousness all his own.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, a man who lives exclusively for himself. A narcissistic psychopath. A man who could sell out his own country to foreign powers, tearing apart his nation’s people, just for his own enjoyment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand explained that when the masses are confronted with such a bold actor, they neither understood nor empathized with him. Thus, “a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy [was] turned [by the media] into a purposeless monster.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The protagonist of the book that Rand was writing around that time was a boy named Danny Renahan. In her notes for the book, she wrote, “The model for the boy [Renahan] is Hickman.” He would be her ideal man, and the archetype for a philosophical movement that could transform a nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He is born with the spirit of Argon and the nature of a medieval feudal lord,” Rand wrote in her notes describing Renahan. “Imperious. Impatient. Uncompromising. Untamable. Intolerant. Unadaptable. Passionate. Intensely proud. Superior to the mob… an extreme ‘extremist.’ … No respect for anything or anyone.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The kind of man who would tell over 12,000 lies in two and a half years, who would daily lie to the press and his nation, just because he could—and would revel in it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand wanted capitalism in its most raw form, uncheck by any government that could control the rules of the market or promote the benefits of society. Such good intentions had, after all, caused the hell she’d experienced in the Bolshevik Revolution, just like they’d caused Fred Trump to be arrested and fined for refusing to maintain apartments that black people had moved into.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ayn Rand, like Hickman, found in the extremes her economic, political, and moral philosophy. Forget about democratic institutions, forget about regulating markets, and forget about pursuing any policies that benefit the majority at the expense of the very rich—the rule-makers and rule-enforcers could never, ever do anything well or good. Only billionaires should rule the world, as Trump has suggested.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump personifies this, putting an advocate of destroying public schools in charge of public schools, a coal lobbyist in charge of the EPA, an oil lobbyist in charge of our public lands, and a billionaire described by Forbes as a “grifter” in charge of the Commerce Department. His chief of staff said that putting children in cages (where seven so far have died) would actually be a public good. Don’t just ignore the rules; destroy them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Welfare and other social safety net programs were, as Rand saw it, “the glorification of mediocrity” in society. Providing a social safety net for the poor, disabled, or unemployed, she believed, were part of a way of thinking that promoted, “satisfaction instead of joy, contentment instead of happiness… a glow-worm instead of a fire.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She, like Trump, lived a largely joyless life. She mercilessly manipulated people, particularly her husband, and, like Trump, surrounded herself with cult-like followers who were only on the inside so long as they gave her total, unhesitating loyalty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Trump and his billionaire backers, she believed that a government promoting working-class “looters” instead of solely looking out for capitalist “producers” was throwing its “best people” under the bus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Rand’s universe, the producers had no obligations to the looters. Providing welfare or sacrificing one nickel of your own money to help a “looter” on welfare, unemployment, or Social Security—particularly if it was “taken at the barrel of a gun” (taxes)—was morally reprehensible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like Trump saying, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” for Rand looking out for numero uno was the singular name of the game—selfishness is next to godliness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later in Rand’s life, in 1959, as she gained more notoriety for the moral philosophy of selfishness that she named “Objectivism” and that is today at the core of libertarianism and the GOP, she sat down for an interview with CBS reporter Mike Wallace.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suggesting that selfishness undermines most American values, Wallace bluntly challenged Rand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life,” Wallace said to Rand. “Our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will… you scorn churches, and the concept of God… are these accurate criticisms?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Wallace was reciting the public criticisms of Rand, the CBS television cameras zoomed in closely on her face, as her eyes darted back and forth between the ground and Wallace’s fingers. But the question, with its implied condemnation, didn’t faze her at all. Rand said with confidence in a matter-of-fact tone, “Yes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’re taught to feel concerned for our fellow man,” Wallace challenged, “to feel responsible for his welfare, to feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible one for the other—now why do you rebel?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“That is what in fact makes man a sacrificial animal,” Rand answered. She added, “[man’s] highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rand’s philosophy, though growing in popularity on college campuses, never did—in her lifetime—achieve the sort of mass appeal she had hoped. It was confined to college coffee shops, intellectual conferences, and true-believer journals, but never hit the halls of Congress, the mainstream television airwaves, or water-cooler political debates. There were the handful of “true believers,” but that was it… until today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a central tenet of today’s Republican Party and the moral code proudly cited and followed by high-profile billionaires and the president of the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ironically, when she was finally beginning to be taken seriously, Ayn Rand became ill with lung cancer, and went on Social Security and Medicare to make it through her last days. She died a “looter” in 1982, unaware that her sociopathic worldview would one day validate an entire political party’s embrace of a sociopathic narcissist president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-fascist-foot-soldiers-are-armed-to-the-teeth-with-weapons-of-war/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no linx many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The latest massacre shows the 2nd Amendment model of ‘slave patrols’ is still in effect</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1198949239 NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 26, 2018: Donald Trump, the President of the United States addresses reporters on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly at the Lotte Palace Hotel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams August 6, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While, in the wake of the El Paso murders, the media and most of our politicians are acting shocked—“shocked, I tell you!”—that there are armed racists in America who are trying to terrify people of color, the reality is that it’s pretty much always been that way here in the United States. And until white Americans and the media they control acknowledge that simple history, we won’t be able to do the things we must to change it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While we need rational gun control, this isn’t a gun control issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While we need economic security to be more widely shared, this isn’t an economic issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While we need universal, free, high-quality K-PhD education, this isn’t an education issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Republican Party needs to repudiate the “Southern Strategy” that has animated their racist base since 1968, this isn’t a political issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Encompassing all of the above, what we are confronting in America right now is the continuation of policies put into place by white people, to control and exploit Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans, since the arrival of Africans in 1619 and the codification of slavery into North American law in 1662.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The institution of slavery can only exist in a police state. Without a constantly vigilant and well-armed force of men (and the rare, occasional woman) patrolling the towns and roads, slaves will rebel and put an end to their own enslavement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Sally Hadden notes in her brilliant book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, slaveholding regions had institutionalized police-patrol systems specifically to “regulate” enslaved persons more than 100 years before American independence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, the colonial government passed laws in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their white male employees to be members of the Georgia militia and those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who might be planning uprisings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Davis Law Review in 1998, “The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search ‘all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition’ and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Madison even rewrote the Second Amendment into its current form during the 1788 Virginia Ratifying Convention in response to that state’s largest slaveholder, Patrick Henry, demanding that Virginia’s slave patrols be explicitly protected.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While slavery as an institution was abolished after the Civil War by the 13th Amendment (“except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”), the organized and systematic domination of people of color for the benefit of whites continues to this day. And the enforcers of that system—both formal and informal—are still very much with us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">State prisons legally enslaving “duly convicted” persons of color; Klan riders and lynching “parties”; cops killing black men for selling loose cigarettes or murdering black children for playing with toy guns; mass shooters raving about “invasion” by Hispanics; white men enforcing segregation by killing black men and boys who look ator date white women: These are the modern incarnations of the old slave patrols that most Americans recognize.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Less easily recognized is the patrolling of America’s economic racial divide, from Trump employees marking “C” for “colored” on rental applications so people of color could be denied residence, to the rigorous application of property tax funding for schools to keep poor districts poor, millions of individual corporate actions and thousands of state and local laws still conspire to “patrol” people of color.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like his presidential hero Andrew Jackson (nickname: “Indian Killer”), who owned enslaved people and bragged about murdering Native American women and children, Donald Trump speaks to an exclusively white audience, in this era via Twitter and a TV network that, judging from the ratings, programs exclusively to white people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From “very fine people” who are literally Nazis and white supremacists, to “I’ll pay for your lawyer” calls for violence, to barely speaking in code with words like “invasion” and “infestation,” Trump has cranked up a new generation of white men who, in previous centuries on this continent, would have been enthusiastic members of the police state that protected slavery from rebellion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The slave patrols never really went away. And the slave patrollers are finding in Trump the president they’ve been missing since Andrew Jackson passed away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-july-22-2019/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom mentions corp personhood</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jrnl corn? found NNN word --> bussing --> tax cuts (understoood that they help whites and hurts blks)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-a-trojan-horse-project-to-rewrite-our-constitution-could-actually-happen-if-trump-wins-in-2020/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How a Trojan horse project to rewrite our Constitution could actually happen if Trump wins in 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with the 44th President of the United States, Barack H. Obama during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2017. More than 5,000 military members from across all branches of the armed forces of the United States, including Reserve and National Guard components, provided ceremonial support and Defense Support of Civil Authorities during the inaugural period. (DoD photo by U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Cristian L. Ricardo)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute July 17, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s often said that if Trump is reelected, it’ll be the end of democracy in America. But how could Trump get reelected, and how could democracy get wiped out in the USA?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Turns out, there’s an actual project to rewrite our Constitution, turning America into a corporate-run oligarchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’d end the income tax, eliminate federal regulatory agencies like the EPA, end all labor protections (including laws against child labor), let states ignore anti-discrimination and other federal regulations, and impose term limits so the only “institutional memory” for legislatures will be the corporate lobbyists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All it needs to succeed—within just a few short years—is for Trump and the GOP to win big in 2020. And the prospects of that happening are going up every day. With a big Trump win will come a rewrite of our Constitution itself, if the billionaires funding it have their way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But how could he win? With another $2 billion worth of free publicity, just like in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One example is how Trump’s reelection campaign got a great boost recently when the media, just like in 2016, went all-Trump-all-the-time around his ICE raids, and when he told four congresswomen of color to “go home” to the countries of their ancestors—a racist trope for centuries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ICE raids were merely arrests of undocumented people who actually have committed crimes (beyond crossing the border) and currently have legal deportation orders already in place; they’re arrests like the ones Presidents Bush and Obama did daily.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was nothing unique about them, and year over year, Trump has actually deported fewer people than Obama did.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Ayanna Pressley noted Monday, the media shouldn’t “take the bait.” Nonetheless, literally every week—virtually every day—since Trump was elected, he’s gotten the media to put his name on the front page of the nation’s newspapers and at the top of the TV news shows.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in America, as P.T. Barnum (whom Trump has cited as a role model) said, it doesn’t matter if publicity is positive or negative, “As long as they spell my name right.” And they always spell Trump’s name right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we saw with the 2015–2016 Republican primary, that Barnum-like daily publicity was all he needed to take down an entire field of competent, professional, and well-financed Republicans. Taking down Democrats may be even easier if he can paint the Democrats with his “open borders” and “Soviet-style socialism” lies (among others).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NBC trained Trump well; they spent millions teaching him how to do a reality show, from cliff-hangers to pitting “heroes” against “goats.” It’s one of the few things he’s actually good at. And instead of his old “Apprentice” weekly show, he’s now producing a daily show from the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But to what end?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s looking more and more like the endgame here for Trump—and the right-wing billionaires who support him and the GOP—is not just to get reelected, but to actually rewrite our Constitution and end the American experiment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group leading this charge for the billionaires is called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), which SourceWatch.org says, “is a right-wing political organization … that is campaigning for an Article V convention to amend the U.S. Constitution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SourceWatch notes that, “Through its ‘Convention of States’ project, CSG promotes an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution pursuant to Article V, which provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths).”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They add, CSG director Eric O’Keefe “has deep ties to Charles and David Koch and has been a founder and funder of numerous right-wing groups including Wisconsin Club for Growth,” and the CSG, “Through its Convention of States project, is pushing for a constitutional convention in order to severely restrict federal power, for example by redefining the Commerce Clause to prohibit Congress from enacting child labor or anti-discrimination laws, or by adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they’re actually doing it, complete with annual dress rehearsals in the Washington, D.C., area. As Wikipedia notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In December 2013, nearly 100 legislators from 32 states met at Mount Vernon to talk about how to call a convention of states. … In February 2014, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn announced that after his retirement from Congress, he would focus on promoting the Convention of States to state legislatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In December 2015, Marco Rubio endorsed CSG’s efforts to a call [for] an Article V Convention. In January 2016, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a Convention of States to restrict the power of the federal government.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And their rehearsals now include delegates from every state in the union.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wikipedia notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In September 2016, CSG held a simulated convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in Williamsburg, Virginia. An assembly of 137 delegates representing every state gathered to conduct a simulated convention. The simulated convention passed amendments relating to six topics, including requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt, imposing term limits, restricting the scope of the Commerce Clause [to its original meaning], limiting the power of federal regulations, requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment [end the income tax], and giving the states the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Convention of States website notes that as of 2019, 15 states have signed on, and enough to hit the critical 38 are lined up, just waiting for right-wing billionaire takeovers of their state legislatures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And taking over state legislatures in 2020 just became a huge priority for those billionaires because of the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing radical gerrymandering. Expect hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into state legislative and gubernatorial races (thanks to Citizens United), with virtually no opposing funding from the handful of left-wing billionaires.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Progress to rewrite our Constitution was slow but steady when Georgia’s legislature was the first state to join, in March of 2014. States that signed on before Trump’s election included Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since Trump took over the White House, however, they’ve added Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, and, just in the first three months of 2019, Arkansas, Utah, and Mississippi.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As of now, the call for a Convention to rewrite the Constitution has also passed at least one chamber of the legislatures in New Mexico, Mississippi, Iowa, South Dakota, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And with Trump in power, the Convention of States website notes that just this year (2019) they are working to bring in Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Illinois and Hawaii.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Trump is as successful in manipulating the media as he was in 2016, and the GOP can ride his coattails (along with hundreds of millions from right-wing billionaires) to sweep the Democratic-controlled states they’re targeting, they could hit the 38 states needed to replace the Constitution in the first year or two after his reelection (there are 40 states in the lists above).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A probably apocryphal quote often attributed to Arnold Toynbee says, “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, when the last American who remembers how quickly democratic constitutions were replaced in Europe in the 1930s dies, the replacement of democracy in America becomes inevitable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It looks like Donald Trump and the leadership of the GOP are encouraging other countries to hack our upcoming 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump is sucking up to dictators, strongman oligarchs, and autocrats around the world, while Mitch McConnell is using political brute force to prevent individual states from hardening their election systems. Why?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looking at the entire picture in context, consider Karl Marx’s favorite question: “Who benefits?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who benefits when the leaders of countries with sophisticated internet hacking capabilities (North Korea, Saudi Arabia) and no democratic oversight are told by Trump that as long as he’s in office he has their backs?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Might Trump and McConnell hope they’ll intervene in our election to keep in power a political party that now disdains democracy and a free press, and embraces dictatorial behavior like calling for the imprisonment of Trump’s political rivals, and of individuals in the intelligence agencies who have investigated him and the GOP?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who benefits when countries with world-class internet hacking capabilities and less-than-democratic (Russia) or highly corrupted and oligarch-dependent (Netanyahu, Duterte, Modi) leaders become “good friends” of Trump and/or help Trump build or brand properties in their countries?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Might they intervene in our election directly or indirectly to keep in power an administration that both openly disdains the concept of “liberal democracy” and disrespects leaders of the largely European countries that practice it?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would Trump joke with Putin in front of the world about the possibility of Russians hacking American voting systems in the 2020 election? Is he expecting it, or just hoping for it?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who benefits when mostly “red” states keep their voting systems’ defenses down and continue to use 17-year-old technology running on Windows XP operating systems?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who benefits when McConnell, Pence and Trump work together to make sure that, as CBS News reported this year, “Tens of thousands of voting machines in the United States [will continue to be] vulnerable to hacking” by refusing to fund upgrades?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who benefits when repeated Democratic Party efforts to harden voting systems are blocked by Republican governors?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s no ideological argument to be made for America having easily hacked voting systems; it’s not something that conservatives like George Will or liberals like Robert Reich would reasonably disagree about.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So what could possibly be motivating Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate, other than the hope that hackers will produce another “red shift” miracle for them?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We already know that the GOP and their partisans on the Supreme Court have done and are doing everything they can to make it hard for Americans—particularly those with darker pigmented skin—to vote or otherwise participate in the political arena.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that’s probably not enough to guarantee the reelection of a man as reviled and unpopular as Trump, and thus keep the parade of corporatist-friendly right-wing judgesmoving through the Senate into lifetime appointments on the federal bench. They need more—a little help from their friends.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans have been caught manipulating voter rolls; engaging in now-legalized “political” gerrymandering that magically corresponds to race; running ads in social media filled with deception and outright lies; encouraging right-wing violence; and threatening treason charges against American law enforcement officials who’ve investigated foreign manipulation of our elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it’s not working so far. Democrats—particularly progressive Democrats—were the big winners in the 2018 midterms. The GOP needs more help from their friends if they’re to reelect Trump and hold the Senate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan turned the GOP into the Party of the Billionaires, complete with a phony “supply-side” and “trickle-down” story about fantasy economics to sell their merger of state and corporation. But by the end of the Clinton administration, most Americans had figured out Reagan’s and the GOP’s scam and, since 2002, there’s been a curious “red shift” disconnect between exit poll results and the reported totals from hackable voting machines.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There aren’t enough really rich Americans to win elections, so Lee Atwater and his business partners Roger Stone and Paul Manafort helped Reagan and Bush bring in the white racist vote. But even with all the American racists, Trump and McConnell must think they need foreign help again.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerry Falwell Jr. (and his pool boy?), Franklin Graham, and other multimillionaire “Christian” hustlers brought in the people televangelists have exploited for a generation. But are there enough religiously gullible voters to tip the election to Trump and McConnell? They seem to think not.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Add the homophobes, the xenophobes, the religious bigots, and sexually insecure white men (from incels to gun fanatics), and the GOP may have almost enough votes to win a national election—but they’re still haunted by Trump losing the last election’s popular vote by 3 million; plus, they no longer have Scott Walker and Rick Snyder to throw Wisconsinites and Michiganders off the voting rolls just before the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and the GOP will still need a little help from their overseas friends, just as Trump Jr. reached out to or tried to take help from the Russians, Saudis and Emiratis in 2016. They (and Trump’s American billionaire backers) benefited more from what President Carter correctly called Trump’s “illegitimate” presidency than anybody else in the world.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which is why Trump and McConnell are working as hard as they can to make sure those foreign oligarchs and autocrats know how much they’ll appreciate that help, should it be forthcoming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All they need is a little help from their friends, and they’re making sure their friends know in advance who will benefit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-southern-fears-of-abolition-shaped-the-second-amendment/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How southern fears of abolition shaped the Second Amendment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THOM HARTMANN / COMMON DREAMS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">13 JUN 2019 AT 13:10 ET</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Give me liberty or give me death.” —Patrick Henry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Article 1, Section 8, of the proposed Constitution had southern slave owners concerned about the future of their economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Slavery can exist only in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the antislavery folks in the North could figure out a way to disband those southern militias—or even just to move the militias out of the states—the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service the slaves of the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery—and the southern economic and social systems—altogether.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These two possibilities worried southerners like James Monroe, George Mason (who owned more than 300 slaves), and the southern Christian evangelical Patrick Henry (the largest slaveholder in the state of Virginia).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8, of the newly proposed Constitution—which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia—could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape the American South and join his forces. “Liberty to Slaves” was stitched onto the pocket flaps of the escapees’ jackets. During the war, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washington’s army.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through military service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Patrick Henry laid it out: “Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8, of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power ‘to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States.’ . . .</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither—this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Mason expressed a similar fear: “The [slave patrol] militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them [under this proposed Constitution].”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Henry then bluntly laid it out: “If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress. . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In this state,” he said, “there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given to the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority in the North opposed slavery, and he worried that they’d use the Constitution to free the South’s slaves (a process then called “manumission”).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The abolitionists would, he was certain, use that power (and, ironically, this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln ended up doing): “[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission,” said Henry. “And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper [proposed Constitution] speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added, “This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid. “I was struck with surprise,” Madison said, “when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the southern fears wouldn’t go away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patrick Henry even argued that southerners’ “property” (slaves) would be lost under the new Constitution, and the resulting slave uprising would be a disaster for them: “In this situation,” Henry said to Madison, “I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So Madison, who had (at Jefferson’s insistence) already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the Constitution, changed his first draft to one that addressed the militia issue to make sure it was unambiguous that the southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His first draft for what became the Second Amendment had said: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country [emphasis mine]: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Henry, Mason, and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word “country” to the word “state” and redrafted the Second Amendment into today’s form:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State [emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Little did Madison, Jefferson, or Henry realize that one day in the future, weapons-manufacturing corporations, newly defined as “persons” by a dysfunctional Supreme Court, would use his slave-patrol militia amendment to protect their “right” to manufacture and sell guns to individuals who would use them to murder schoolchildren.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This excerpt originally appeared in the new book The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment by Thom Hartmann. It was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/hobby-lobby-argument</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">History of Corporate Personhood</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How did we get to the point where a for-profit corporation can lay claim to religious rights? Ciara Torres-Spelliscy on the slithering history of corporate personhood.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ciara Torres-Spelliscy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">April 7, 2014</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In McCutcheon v. FEC, handed down last Wednesday, the Supreme Court built on the precedent of Citizens United by invalidating the federal aggregate contribution limit for individuals. But McCutcheon is not the only case that gives the Supreme Court chance to expand Citizens United’s reach this term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the Supreme Court has to choose whether to extend the logic of 2010’s Citizens United to allow a corporation to make a religious objection to a generally applicable law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How we got to the point where a for-profit corporation – not a church mind you – can lay claim to religious rights is a bit complicated.&nbsp; It all goes back to a legal fiction known as corporate personhood.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Generally, corporate personhood allows companies to hold property, enter contracts, and to sue and be sued just like a human being. But of course some human rights make no sense for a corporation, like the right to marry, to parent a child, or to vote. As Professor Elizabeth Pollman explains when it comes to Constitutional rights for corporations there is a hodgepodge: “corporations enjoy Fourth Amendment safeguards against unreasonable regulatory searches, but do not have a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you’re a fan of the Colbert Report, “corporate personhood” might sound familiar. Stephen Colbert got a well deserved Peabody Award for his work educating the public about campaign finance laws with his lawyer Trevor Potter. However, Mr. Colbert’s verbal tick of saying that Citizens United granted corporate personhood is a tad misleading.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citizens United did not grant corporations personhood. Corporations already had it. As lawyer David Gans has documented, despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution never mentions corporations, corporate personhood has been slithering around American law for a very long time. The first big leap in corporate personhood from mere property rights to more expansive rights was a claim that the Equal Protection Clause applied to corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War in 1868 to grant emancipated slaves full citizenship, states, “No state shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We have the likes of former U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling to thank for the extension of Equal Protection to corporations. Conkling helped draft the 14th Amendment. He then left the Senate to become a lawyer. His Gilded Age law practice was going so swimmingly that Conkling turned down a seat on the Supreme Court not once, but twice.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conkling argued to the Supreme Court in San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road that the 14th Amendment is not limited to natural persons. In 1882, he produced a journal that seemed to show that the Joint Congressional Committee that drafted the amendment vacillated between using “citizen” and “person” and the drafters chose person specifically to cover corporations. According to historian Howard Jay Graham, “[t]his part of Conkling’s argument was a deliberate, brazen forgery.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Thom Hartmann notes the Supreme Court embraced Conkling’s reading of the 14th Amendment in a headnote in 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road: “Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: ‘The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.’” This was not part of the formal opinion. But the damage was done. Later cases uncritically cited the headnote as if it had been part of the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some Supreme Court Justices objected to the Santa Clara approach. Dissenting in Wheeling Steel Corp. in 1949 Justice William O. Douglas and Justice Hugo Black noted that the corporate personhood issue was not such an open and shut case: “[In Santa Clara] [t]here was no history, logic, or reason given to support that view. … [T]he purpose of the [14th] Amendment was to protect human rights-primarily the rights of a race which had just won its freedom.” Justices Douglas and Black thought the question of corporate personhood should be decided by the people, not the Supreme Court. But they could not convince their fellow Justices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1970s, Santa Clara was used to justify granting corporations the First Amendment right to spend unlimited corporate funds on ballot initiatives in a case called Bellotti. The Court relied on Santa Clara’s reading when it stated that “[i]t has been settled for almost a century that corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Justice Rehnquist, in his dissent, questioned the wisdom of extending corporations political rights: “those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere.” Again Rehnquist could not convince his brethren.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Citizens United, when the Supreme Court held that political speech is “indispensable to decision making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation,” they cited Bellotti. Thus it’s only a hop, skip and a jump from Santa Clara to Citizens United.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the store chain is claiming that the corporation (and not just its proprietors) has a religious objection to providing certain types of birth control for its workers as required by the Affordable Care Act. Thus, the Court is contemplating expanding corporate personhood to a new logical extreme: First Amendment religious rights. It’s no surprise that Hobby Lobby’s brief relies on Bellotti and Citizens United.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are absurdities that flow from granting legal fictions Constitutional rights that were intended for humans. Corporations don’t have minds, and without one it is hard to see how a corporation “thinks” about any political issue du jour from gay rights to the budget deficit. Without a soul, it’s hard to conceptualize how a corporation could “believe” in anything whether it is transubstantiation of communion or the morality of birth control. But here we go again. A corporation makes a Constitutional claim to the righteousness of their legal position. The question is will the Justices fall for it?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-major-legal-and-political-trouble-his-desperate-attempts-escape-it-could</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/media/tom-steyer-you-want-trump-out-buy-clear-channel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-disaster-looms</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">// irish famine&nbsp; year w/o summer&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...because the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and all of Northern Europe and Scandinavia are at roughly the same latitudes as the area from central Canada to Alaska, the only thing that keeps them warm enough to sustain rich crop yields (unlike Alaska) is the heat distributed to them from the Great Conveyor Belt/AMOC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the main thing that keeps the AMOC moving is the incredible salinity that forms in the North Atlantic as the current gives up both heat and water vapor, (leaving behind the salt) into the soon-to-warm-Europe air with the warmth. Because the strongly saline water is so much denser/heavier than normal seawater, it sinks vigorously toward the deeper parts of the ocean, pulling the rest of the current behind it and helping maintain the AMOC’s flow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Should something begin to inject fresh water into that region, thus diluting the salinity of the AMOC there, it would reduce the density of that water column and thus could shut down the Conveyor Belt. And that would shut off Europe’s main heat source.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a scenario that most climate scientists—until this year—considered a remote possibility, even in the next century.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it’s beginning to happen right now, both in Antarctica and off the coast of Greenland and Western Europe, because of massive glacier melts.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One part of the thermohaline circulation of the AMOC runs around Antarctica. And, because of global warming, Antarctica is shedding hundreds of billions of tons of ice-melt fresh water into the ocean every year—which is diluting and cooling saltwater and reducing local thermohaline circulation.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Chris Mooney notes in the 4/3/18 Washington Post (“One Of The Most Worrisome Predictions About Climate Change May Be Coming True”):</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The new research, based on ocean measurements off the coast of East Antarctica, shows that melting Antarctic glaciers are indeed freshening the ocean around them. And this, in turn, is blocking a process in which cold and salty ocean water sinks below the sea surface in winter, forming ‘the densest water on the Earth’...”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the northern part of the Great Conveyor Belt—which warms Europe—is also faltering in the North Atlantic, largely as a result of hundreds of billions of tons of cold, fresh water from Greenland glacier-melt, caused by global warming, pouring into it every few minutes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New research from University College London and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (“Anomalously Weak Labrador Sea Convection and Atlantic Overturning”) found that the hiccups in the Great Conveyor Belt began around the time of the Industrial Revolution, when we—for the first time in millions of years of human evolution—started spewing billions of tons of fossil-fuel-derived carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Great Conveyor Belt has been deteriorating ever since, and the speed of its disintegration is now alarming observers worldwide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists are concerned that we may even be close to a tipping point, where this river of warm, salty water could change or collapse rapidly and with little warning—a change that probably would take tens of thousands of years to undo or reset.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Dr. Michael Mann, one of the world’s most respected climate scientists and the founder of the “hockey stick” that Al Gore popularized, told me on my radio/TV program April 24th:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a potential tipping point in the climate system, which is to say it could happen very abruptly once it starts to happen. The danger is that we’ve already seen a substantial slowdown in this ocean circulation pattern, [and that] suggests the possibility that we could be right up against that tipping point where it essentially just shuts down.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mann added that until the recent research came in, pretty much everybody thought we had 100 years or so before we needed to begin to even seriously consider this potentially catastrophic scenario:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If you talked with climate modelers even 5 or 6 years ago, they would have told you that this scenario isn’t likely to play out for at least another century or so. … So something that we didn’t expect to happen for the better part of a century is happening already.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And lest Americans think this will only be a European problem, shutting down the AMOC/Gulf Stream, which warms the American northeast, would also have a catastrophic impact on that region of the United States and Canada.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As NASA’s scientists note on one of the few climate-change web pages the Trumpies haven’t yet removed:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Without the vast heat that these ocean currents deliver—comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants—Europe's average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10°C (9 to 18°F), and parts of eastern North America would be chilled somewhat less. Such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Compare that to the damage a mere 1° C drop in the 1816 Year Without a Summer caused to both Europe and the eastern part of North America in 1816. Civilization—and billions of people—probably would simply no longer survive as we know it....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/two-santa-clauses-or-how-gop-conned-america-nearly-40-years</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">-Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-republican-party-has-conned-america-over-30-years</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How the Republican Party Has Conned America for Over 30 Years</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tax cuts initiate bubble economies, not true growth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet September 29</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The&nbsp; Republican Party has been running a long con on the American people, and Trump’s new tax cut proposals are just the latest iteration on it. This con involves getting Democrats to shoot Santa Claus (Clinton cutting welfare/Obama proposing the chained CPI cut to Social Security) and using tax policy to put a jolly old Saint Nick outfit on the Republicans.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Bruce Bartlett – one of the architects and major salespeople for Reagan’s tax cuts in the ‘80s – wrote in USA Today this week: “Virtually everything Republicans say about taxes today is a lie. Tax cuts and tax rate reductions will not pay for themselves; they never have. Republicans don’t even believe they will, they are just excuses to slash spending for the poor when revenues collapse and deficits rise. There is no evidence that tax reform raises growth, although it may improve fairness and tax administration.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So how do Republicans get away with this lie, and why does the press let them get away with it? It’s a fascinating story.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Odds are you've never heard of Jude Wanniski, but without him Reagan never would have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been impeached, and George Bush never would have become president. Ditto for Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Barry Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in 1964, most Republicans felt doomed (among them the 28-year-old Wanniski). Goldwater himself, although uncomfortable with the rising religious right within his own party and the calls for more intrusion in people's bedrooms, was a diehard fan of Herbert Hoover's economic worldview.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Hoover's world (and virtually all the Republicans since reconstruction with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt), market fundamentalism was a virtual religion. Economists from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman had preached that government could only make a mess of things economic, and the world of finance should be left to the Big Boys – the Masters of the Universe, as they sometimes called themselves – who ruled Wall Street and international finance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hoover enthusiastically followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary, multimillionaire Andrew Mellon, who said in 1931: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, the Republican mantra was: "Lower taxes, reduce the size of government, and balance the budget."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The only problem with this ideology from the Hooverite perspective was that the Democrats always seemed like the bestowers of gifts, while the Republicans were seen by the American people as the stingy Scrooges, bent on making the lives of working people harder all the while making the very richest even richer. This, Republican strategists since 1930 knew, was no way to win elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Which was why the most successful Republican of the 20th century up to that time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been quite happy with a top income tax rate on multimillionaires of 91 percent. As he explained to his right-wing brother Edgar Eisenhower in a personal letter on November 8, 1954:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[T]o attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon 'moderation' in government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldwater, however, rejected the "liberalism" of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and other "moderates" within his own party. Extremism in defense of liberty was no vice, he famously told the 1964 nominating convention, and moderation was no virtue. And it doomed him and his party. And so after Goldwater's defeat, the Republicans were again lost in the wilderness just as after Hoover's disastrous presidency. Even four years later when Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Nixon wasn't willing to embrace the economic conservatism of Goldwater and the economic true believers in the Republican Party. And Jerry Ford wasn't, in their opinions, much better. If Nixon and Ford believed in economic conservatism, they were afraid to practice it for fear of dooming their party to another 40 years in the electoral wilderness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their "big government" projects like schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers and driving economic growth. Democrats kept high taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which worked out just fine for working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and made the Democrats seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Everybody understood at the time that economies are driven by demand. People with good jobs have money in their pockets, and want to use it to buy things. The job of the business community is to either determine or drive that demand to their particular goods, and when they're successful at meeting the demand then factories get built, more people become employed to make more products, and those newly-employed people have a paycheck that further increases demand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase, "supply-side economics," and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had money and wanted to buy things with it, but instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neither concept made any sense—and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies—but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to suggest that he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, that those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories to make more stuff, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1980 GOP primary, George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans of the time – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting "Voodoo Economics," said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski's supply-side and Laffer's tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that we'd ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his "Two Santa Clauses" theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next generation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, he said, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Reagan rolled out supply-side economics in the early '80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding (mostly military) spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were "starving the beast" of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security – and this so pleased Paul Volker, the Fed chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates from 19 to 9 percent (between 1981 and 1982) and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy. Alan Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by doubling the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost $3 trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks and shoot Santa Claus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And that's just how it turned out. Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a "new covenant" with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box. A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an "end to welfare as we know it" and, in his second inaugural address, an "end to the era of big government." He was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: "We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve... But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the 'Two Santa Claus Theory' in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts..."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ed Crane, then president of the Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year: "When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they'd died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. Just cut taxes and grow the economy: government will shrink as a percentage of GDP, even if you don't cut spending. That's why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George W. Bush embraced the Two Santa Claus Theory with gusto, ramming through huge tax cuts – particularly a cut to a maximum 15 percent income tax rate on people like himself who made their principal income from sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend or capital gains checks to arrive in the mail – and blowing out federal spending. Bush even out-spent Reagan, which nobody had ever thought would again be possible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it all seemed to be going so well, just as it did in the early 1920s when three consecutive Republican presidents cut income taxes on the uber-rich from over 70 percent to under 30 percent. In 1929, pretty much everybody realized that instead of building factories with all that extra money, the rich had been pouring it into the stock market, inflating a bubble that – like an inexorable law of nature – would have to burst. But the people who remembered that lesson were mostly all dead by 2005, when Jude Wanniski died and George Gilder celebrated the Reagan/Bush supply-side-created bubble economies in a Wall Street Journal eulogy:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"...Jude's charismatic focus on the tax on capital gains redeemed the fiscal policies of four administrations. ... Unbound by zero-sum economics, Jude forged the golden gift of a profound and passionate argument that the establishments of the mold must finally give way to the powers of the mind. He audaciously defied all the Buffetteers of the trade gap, the moldy figs of the Phillips Curve, the chic traders in money and principle, even the stultifying pillows of the Nobel Prize."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski's work. They held power for over 30 years, made themselves trillions of dollars, cut organized labor's representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 6 percent of the non-governmental workforce today, and left such a massive deficit that some misguided "centrist" Democrats are again clamoring to shoot Santa with working-class tax hikes and entitlement program cuts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now Trump and the whole crowd are again clamoring to be recognized as the ones who will out-Santa Claus the Democrats. You'd think after all the damage they've done that the infotainment stars on TV would at least acknowledge this history. But that’s not convenient when you need GOP “stars” to come on your show or you lose your million-dollar job. JRNL FAIL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wanniski is gone, but his memo still lives on, particularly where he admonished Ed Crane at CATO to stop talking about cutting the federal deficit and instead promise people the Santa Claus of economic growth.&nbsp; He ended his infamous memo with:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts in order to grow the economy -- not to ‘starve the government of revenue,’ which is Milton Friedman's rationale. Let's shoot Santa Claus?&nbsp; Let's not.” Instead, let’s force the Democrats to shoot Santa!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Two Santa Claus theory isn't dead, as we can see from today's Republican rhetoric. Hopefully, though, reality will continue to sink in with the American people and the massive fraud perpetrated by Wanniski, Reagan, Graham, Bush(s), and all their "conservative" enablers will be seen for what it was and is.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the rest of us can get about the business of repairing the damage and recovering the stolen assets of our nation from these cheap hustlers who dare call themselves politicians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-pin-hand-grenade-billionaire-and-corporate-funded-coup-rewrite</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and yet a meeting scheduled next week in the Wisconsin legislature may possess even more terrifying ramifications for the future of the country.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Wisconsin.gov, Republican lawmakers will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, March 28, to determine whether Wisconsin will call for a constitutional convention. While a subject of legal debate, changes to America's governing document can be made in one of three ways: Three-quarters of the states can ratify an amendment that Congress has passed with supermajorities in both houses; three-quarters of the states, with majority votes in each, can bypass Congress by invoking Article 5 to approve an amendment; or two thirds of the states can simply use Article 5 to call a "Convention of the States" and rewrite the document as they see fit (three-quarters of the states would then need to approve their changes).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A "Convention of the States" has never been invoked before, but Republicans and Koch-backed organizations like Citizens for Self-Governance have been salivating over the possibility for years, even holding dress rehearsals in Washington, D.C., with representatives from across the country. With the federal deficit presently hovering just below $20 trillion, their ostensible plan is to add a balanced budget amendment. This alone would likely shred the country's meager social safety net, but as Assembly Minority Leader and Kenosha Democrat Peter Barca warns the Wisconsin State Journal, a constitutional convention could put citizen's very rights "up for grabs."&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scot Ross, executive director of liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, puts it more bluntly: “The balanced budget talk is a fig leaf to let them change America into a right-wing alternative universe."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an essay earlier this month, AlterNet's Thom Hartmann explored a few scenarios that were once the stuff of Federalist Society fever dreams and are now all too plausible:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imagine if the U.S. Constitution barred the EPA and Department of Education from existing. All union protections are dead, there are no more federal workplace safety standards, and even child-labor laws are struck down, along with a national minimum wage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imagine that the Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to protect you from big polluters, big banks and even big food and pharma—all are free to rip you off or poison you all they want, and your only remedy is in state courts and legislatures, because the Constitution prevents Congress from doing anything about any of it. The federal government can't even enforce voting or civil rights laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To add injury to insult, the federal government has to shut down Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, because all of these programs (along with food stamps, housing supports and any programs that help the middle class, the less fortunate or disabled) are “beyond the reach” of what the federal government can do.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">State Senator Chris Kapenga of Delafield introduced the resolution earlier this month. A second resolution requires Wisconsin delegates confine their proposed amendments to the subject of the proceeding, in accordance with convention rules established by the Assembly of State Legislatures. Kapenga has also introduced a bill that would trigger the dismissal of delegates who vote on amendments that don't meet this standard. But as Peter Barca observes, "even if Wisconsin can control its delegates, there’s no guarantee other states will."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If passed, Wisconsin would become the 29th state to call for a constitutional convention; just 34 are needed for it to become a reality. The 2016 elections have left Republicans in control of 33 state legislatures. According to the Associated Press, the Democratic Party has lost more than 1000 governorships, state legislative and Congressional seats combined since 2008.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">monsanto fox akre &&nbsp; wilson fired for insubordination by licensee of public air waves b/c refused to lie, then mgr tried to pay them off (3 bill just paid for station)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gmo bgh</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thom hartman http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jDKLFn0pty4#at=20</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ever wonder why it is that Fox News can lie over and over again - yet continue to call itself "News"? It's because Fox News is a corporation - and ever since that 1886 Supreme Court case of Southern Pacific Railroad versus Santa Clara County when a rogue court reporter named JC Bancroft Davis slipped corporate personhood into the legal record - the courts have ruled time and time again that corporations - since they have all the rights that actual people have - could also lie just like people can.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Except for one time. Back in 1998 - a political activist named Mark Kasky sued Nike alleging that Nike was lying to its customers by publishing in the San Francisco Examiner a letter assuring everyone that the corporation's workers around the world enjoy basic labor rights like a minimum wage - health and safety regulations - and equal opportunity employment. Kasky knew this claim wasn't true. A 1996 audit of the Nike revealed that workers in Vietnam were routinely exposed to cancer-causing chemicals that were illegal in the United States. And a Mothers Jones article later cited a Nike-funded study that found, "evidence of physical and verbal abuse and sexual harassment at nine of its contract factories in Indonesia." After realizing he and thousands of other Nike customers were lied to and were buying Nike products under false assumptions - Kasky took the corporation to court. And in 2002 - Kasky won his case before the California Supreme Court which ruled that Nike did indeed break laws against unfair competition and false advertising.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">but appeal scotus 2003 freedom of sp = lie; rhenquist suddently dismissed case, nike settled w. kasky, fox corp about to defend right to lie (akre) 6 jurors all agreed; falsified news; appeals reversed, fox has right to lie, and force reporters to; control vocab, gw; fairness doctr 1987; const amend to bal budget, but we need mta cali t GOPTV as ailes imagined in 70's</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rbst gmo fox killed akre and wilson investigation on milk monsanto hired lawyer who sent letter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JL1pKlnhvg0&nbsp; invest rept</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/bluedog-294/blog/2015/02/why-did-obamas-justice-dept-recently-argue-against-don-siegelmans-rel</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>