Hartmann, Thom

=belatedshort list co-authorbadass video?see bak zombied sigelamn?=<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1 22 an hartmann</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/corporate-crime-in-america/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/corporate-crime-in-america/</a></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[list of damage]...Those who perpetrated the lies that led to this must be held to account, both financially and with the force of criminal law.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On top of that, now that climate change is here and walloping us, we must harden our nation’s infrastructure and relocate both vulnerable people and those who lost their homes and communities to wild weather, drought, and floods.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shouldn’t the fossil fuel companies and the millionaires and billionaires they’ve created pick up that bill, too?...>We’ve been having a similar conversation around other 20th century corporate crime for decades, and generally we’ve screwed it up....America is pock-marked with mansions and estates owned by families enjoying multi-generational wealth that came from their ancestors or parents lying to the American government and the public in ways that killed people....For example, in 1943 Samac Laboratory told the nation’s largest asbestos producer, Johns-Manville, that  caused the excruciatingly painful and always-fatal lung cancer called mesothelioma. The company’s executives made the corporate decision to cover the science up and then lied about it to their employees, customers and the government for two generations.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That was eight years before my father dropped out of college in 1950 and went to work in a Grand Rapids steel mill because Mom got pregnant with me; he was surrounded every day with a cloud of asbestos dust that his bosses told him was “safe.” Dad died of mesothelioma in 2006.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of the best known of the many fabulously rich heirs to the Manville fortune was Tommy Manville, who became famous for marrying eleven blonde 20-something showgirls thirteen times. Seriously. The first paragraph of his obituary in The New York Times reads: “Tommy Manville, who took 11 wives in 13 marriages and was heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune, died of a heart attack yesterday at his estate in Chappaqua, N.Y. He was 73 years old.”</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To this day, no asbestos fortunes have been attached and none of the criminal liars went to prison: we missed that opportunity a generation ago.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Similarly, thousands of million-dollar estates across our country are owned by heirs or current executives of the tobacco industry, which also knew their product killed Americans and lied to us. We missed that chance to do right, too: none of these wealthy executives have ever gone to prison, even though their product continues to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When it finally came out a few years ago that Roundup causes cancer, none of the multimillionaire heirs to the Monsanto fortune lost their mansions and none of Monsanto’s executives went to jail.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Neither did the owners of chemical companies that left behind deadly Superfund sites like the one that caused birth defects and stillbirths at Love Canal; others do so to this day across the nation.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When it came out that the Sackler family decided to lie that their new Oxycontin drug was less addictive than normal opioids they walked away with billions; none have seen the inside of a jail cell for even an hour.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Owners and operators of mining operations across the country lied to communities for generations that they’d clean up their poisonous waste: instead, they routinely bankrupt their companies and walk away with millions, leaving behind moonscape-like devastation.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Even banksters like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, who reveled in “earning” around $200 million by throwing over 36,000 of California families out of their homes while his Wall Street buddies stole trillions of dollars, continues to troll us with his twitter pontifications like he’s some kind of elder statesman worthy of our respect.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As Honoré de Balzac noted in 1834 (in slightly less compressed language), “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime”:</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Americans are quick to forget about the families of the thousands of small businessmen John D. Rockefeller destroyed before Congress outlawed and Teddy Roosevelt broke up his predatory monopoly.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Seven tobacco CEOs lied to Congress and took home millions in bonuses; their families are still morbidly rich and their children and grandchildren are the toast of high society.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Defense contractors take over half of our Pentagon budget and steal billions from us every year; their mansions, complete with servants’ quarters and riding stables, still ring Washington, DC. and we haven’t literally never been able to successfully audit them.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Historically, the only corporate criminals we hold to account are those who rip off rich people: Ken Lay, for example, defrauding his Enron investors, and Bernie Madoff scammed millions from Wall Street oligarchs.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On the other hand, if you can make billions exploiting, poisoning, misinforming, or ripping off working-class Americans you’re generally guaranteed a soft landing.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We have to change the rules.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We’re now confronted with a crisis that goes far beyond this routine orgy of corrupted capitalism: climate change isn’t just killing a few Americans; it’s threatening civilization itself and perhaps even the future of the human race.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fossil fuel companies have known for two generations that their products would at the least disrupt society and at worst produce a great extinction on the order of what killed off the dinosaurs.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Not only did they cover it up: they actively funded climate change “disinformation” campaigns with front groups and bought-off scientists openly lying in the press and before Congress.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And now, like with asbestos, tobacco, and dozens of other known-as-deadly products, the bill is coming due.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the face of this fossil-fueled climate change we need immediate and expensive action: America needs to harden its infrastructure, and fast.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If high-tension power lines had been buried underground in California and Colorado, for example, the worst of the wildfires would have been avoided, as they were caused by wind-downed wires.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cities from Miami to New York are regularly crippled by sea-level-rise flooding and therefore must spend hundreds of billions on levees, pumps and reconfiguring water, power, mass transit, and sewage systems.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So many American homes have been destroyed by global-warming-worsened fires and freezes (see: “Texas”) that building materials have exploded in price and fireproof “intumescent” house paint is the hot new product.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The bad guys should be paying for this. We’ve certainly established a legal framework for it.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Before my dad died, he joined an asbestos lawsuit that, after lawyer fees, got his estate around $40,000 which eased life for my mom. Similarly, states have received compensation from tobacco companies for their costs treating lung cancers and the federal government steps in to remediate old mines and superfund sites.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While the majority of people injured by the kind of raw capitalism we practice in this country never see a penny, there is precedent for holding lying industries responsible for the harms they intentionally and knowingly cause.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the very least, this could take the form of a carbon tax, with the revenue going to reimburse victims and harden our infrastructure.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But given how egregious these companies have behaved — and how many are still, to this day, funding climate denial and lobbying against green energy — Congress should extract restitution and recompense from the companies and punish the psychopathic executives who oversaw their campaigns of deadly lies.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This goes way beyond garden variety crime, even dwarfing the damage caused by asbestos or tobacco. These are quite literally crimes against the American people and crimes against our larger humanity.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It’s time to hold the perpetrators to account and make them pay.</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/ronald-reagan-era-neoliberal/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/ronald-reagan-era-neoliberal/</a></div><div>
</div><div>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?</div>When Mussolini put Antonio Gramsci, the founder of Italy’s Communist Party, in prison in 1927, Gramsci <a href="https://ia600503.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/17/items/AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks/Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_jp2.zip&file=Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_jp2/Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_0370.jp2&id=AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks&scale=4&rotate=0" 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 from his prison cell</a> that, “[T]he old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”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.Whether American history goes in cycles, as Strauss and Howe posit in <a href="https://www.powells.com/book/fourth-turning-an-american-prophecy-9780767900461" 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 Fourth Turning</a>, 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.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.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.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 <a href="https://www.powells.com/book/politics-presidents-make-leadership-from-john-adams-to-bill-clinton-9780674689374" 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 Politics Presidents Make</a> and recently revived in The New York Times by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/opinion/joe-biden-political-time.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;">Professor Corey Robin</a>.“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.”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.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.Unless, of course, Trump’s neofascists succeed in closing off that option by utterly destroying our system of government.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.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.All its vaunted rhetoric about “fiscal responsibility” and “conservative values” was just a smokescreen to hide naked theft, racism and misogyny.In overthrowing FDR’s New Deal politics and economics, Reagan’s era:<ul class="ee-ul" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.438px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li>Destroyed most of the American labor movement</li><li>Shifted trillions in both income and wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent</li><li>Consolidated business and the wealth it creates into the hands of monopolies in every sector of our economy</li><li>Moved over 60,000 factories and tens of millions of good-paying jobs to low-wage countries</li><li>All while fattening the money bins of the morbidly rich with the Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts.</li></ul>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, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dutch-Memoir-Ronald-Edmund-Morris/dp/0394555082/" 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;">he believed</a>, threatened “The American Way.”It started back in 1951, when <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Mind-Burke-Eliot/dp/0895261715/" 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;">Russell Kirk</a> 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.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.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.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.Few in America took Kirk’s warnings seriously at the time, as I laid out in detail in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Oligarchy-Reclaiming/dp/1523091584/" 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 Hidden History of American Oligarchy</a>. Buckley was sidelined to public broadcasting and Goldwater lost the 1964 election in an historic landslide.But then came Jane Fonda, Tim Leary and the Beatles:<ul class="ee-ul" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.438px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li>By 1968 the birth control pill was in widespread use and the women’s movement was well underway.</li><li>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).</li><li>And young people were smoking pot, exploring spirituality, joining SDS, and refusing to go to Vietnam.</li></ul>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.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.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.When Mussolini used state violence to imprison the progressive workers’ movement that was then sweeping both America and Europe, <a href="https://ia600503.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/17/items/AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks/Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_jp2.zip&file=Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_jp2/Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_0370.jp2&id=AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks&scale=4&rotate=0" 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;">Gramsci wondered out loud</a>: “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’”?After all, <a href="https://ia600503.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/17/items/AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks/Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_jp2.zip&file=Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_jp2/Antonio-Gramsci-Selections-from-the-Prison-Notebooks_0370.jp2&id=AntonioGramsciSelectionsFromThePrisonNotebooks&scale=4&rotate=0" 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;">Gramsci noted</a>, 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.”And, indeed, it appears that’s just what’s happening today in America.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.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.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.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.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.Corey Robin points out in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/opinion/joe-biden-political-time.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;">The New York Times</a> 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).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.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.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.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.In a brilliant little (63 page) book (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Old-Dying-New-Cannot-Born/dp/1788732723/" 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 Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born</a>) 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.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.We stand on the verge of major social and political change.The GOP has embraced the oligarchic strong-man police-state values that reigned in the South between 1830 and 1865.The Democratic Party is returning to its progressive and populist roots more rapidly than anybody would have thought possible just five years ago.As the old cliché goes, we face a moment of great danger, but also one of great opportunity.<div>=</div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon-doomsday-cult/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon-doomsday-cult/</a>
=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.Today's excerpt is from <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;">The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America.</a><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Part One: The Hidden History of Judicial Review</h2>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.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.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Founders' Vision</h2>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.—James MadisonIn 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.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.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.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."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.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.This view also led to the formation of the Supreme Court.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Glue That Binds Us Together</h2>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.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.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.<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);">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."
</blockquote>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.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.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.One could argue that Montesquieu was the godfather of the Supreme Court.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A Bold Experiment</h2>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:<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);">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
</blockquote>The Iroquois had a court system that, in some ways, also inspired our Supreme Court.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.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.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).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.These men were embarking on a bold experiment.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Debating the Supreme Court</h3>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.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.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.<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.531px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);">"[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]."
</blockquote>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.'"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."The lifetime appointments and Montesquieu's "separation of powers" would insulate the Court from being "overpowered, awed, or influenced" by the president or Congress.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."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.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.=10 31 21<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-insidious-cancer-at-the-core" 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 Hartmann Report</a>.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.Case in point: Oil industry executives <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59083395" 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;">testified before Congress</a> this week, suffering a barrage of questions, including particularly intense ones from Reps. Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and <a href="https://youtu.be/T-PzCRhi0aY" 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;">Katie Porter</a>.The CEOs exhibited the same sort of arrogant insolence <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG-116-JU05-Wstate-ZuckerbergM-20200729.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;">Mark Zuckerberg displayed</a> 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."Why were the representatives of Big Oil and Big Tech unafraid of the power of Congress?Because, at the end of the day, they own that power. The Supreme Court gave it to them with their poisonous <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-citizens-united-is-a_b_449230" 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;">Citizens United decision</a>.It turns out that Big Oil has spent, just over the past decade, <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/535716209/House-Report-on-Big-Oil-Lobbying" 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 $450 million lobbying</a> 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."And, the Court added, corporations aren't corporations: they're persons, complete with a First Amendment right to free speech.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, <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/28/2060773/--Weasel-words-flood-a-congressional-hearing-on-fossil-fuel-company-disinformation" 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;">he was met with a "screw you" silence</a>.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?"And it's not just Big Oil. Every industry in America laughs at Congress.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.The majority of Americans don't want Medicare privatized: but we're more than 40% of the way there through Bush's <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/time-to-end-the-medicare-advantage" 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;">"Medicare Advantage" scam</a>.The majority of Americans don't want our Post Office gutted: Congress sucked tens of billions out of its budget in 2006 after the <a href="https://www.reader.us/the-usps-media-fail/" 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;">PO said they were going to electrify </a>their fleet of cars (the largest in America) and DeJoy is using that as an excuse to cut service and raise prices.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.The majority of Americans would like to be free of gun violence in our homes and streets: the gun industry gets final say here.The majority of Americans would like good union jobs: the nation's giant employers have paid off politicians to gut union protections.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.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.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.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 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Monopolies-Business-Destroyed/dp/1523087730/" 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 Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream</a>.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.Thus, we now face a real crisis.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?There is only one force that can make this happen now: citizen outrage.People are genuinely disgusted by this corruption, and they're voting with it in mind.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.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."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."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.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.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.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.This is the only way we can now claw back our democratic republic from the corrupt billionaires and corporations.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.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.
an 10 21 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 "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opinion/joe-manchin-biden.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;">entitlement society</a>," a slur that means "a nation of welfare recipients."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.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.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."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.So these shorter-term programs (or, in some cases, even longer-term for already-wounded people) keep society stable. Finland, for example, is <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homelessness-finland-housing-first_n_5c503844e4b0f43e410ad8b6" 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;">providing free housing for all their homeless</a>; 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.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.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.While the "safety net" protects us from personal, family or community disasters, the "rights of citizenship" provide the foundation for society itself.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.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.Ditto for an advanced air traffic system, quality public transportation, and a national high-speed rail system like in every other advanced country.The same is true for the "human infrastructure" of a nation.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.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.Another way to think of it is through the lens of economics and accounting."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."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.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."After all, being morbidly rich billionaires, they don't need either.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.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.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).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.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.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.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.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.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.=an 10 21It 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.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.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.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, <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/death-is-their-election-strategy" 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;">death is their political strategy</a>.And now, as if to put a punctuation point on it, the headline at Raw Story warns: <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/colin-powell-fox-news/" 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;">Fox News host uses Colin Powell's death to launch anti-vax rant: "Fully-vaccinated are dying of Covid.</a>"Almost <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/" 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;">750,000 Americans have died</a> of Covid and recent research published by the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that at as many as <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2784918?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=101321" 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;">half of the 45 million Americans who've been diagnosed with the disease will suffer long term consequences</a>, the main ones being dementia, exhaustion and damage to the heart and kidneys.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, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm" 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;">kills around a half-million</a> Americans every year.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.About 1% of Americans are psychopaths, although such people tend to be concentrated in some areas: as many as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-psychopathic-ceo/?sh=28d0df1d791e" 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;">12% of major corporate CEOs</a> are believed to be psychopaths, and about 15% of people in prison.A psychopath, for all practical purposes, believes that he's quite literally the only "true human being" on planet Earth.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.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.Thus, the CEO of Fox "News" — the network that daily spreads vaccine misinformation leading to deaths that are tearing apart American families — tells the <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/suzanne-scott-fox-news-25th-anniversary-1235025880/#!" 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;">Hollywood Reporter</a> that she sleeps "well at night." Just like the tobacco CEOs.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.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.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.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.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."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.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.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.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.#RightwingMediaCausesDeathThom Hartmann is a <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" 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;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Healthcare-Bankrupts/dp/1523091630/ref=thomhartmann" 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 Hidden History of American Healthcare</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" 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;">30+ other books in print</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" 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;">Independent Media Institute</a> and his writings are archived at <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/" 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;">hartmannreport.com</a>.This article was produced by <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/economy-for-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;">Economy for All</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/kyrsten-sinema-environment-climate-change-2619538159.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/kyrsten-sinema-environment-climate-change-2619538159.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>thom h</div><div>
</div><div>when <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/01/20/09-25-1963.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;">Bobby Kennedy went after organized crime</a> in the early 1960s, one of the things he learned was that the <a href="https://people.howstuffworks.com/mafia.htm" 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;">Mafia had a series of rituals</a> 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 <a href="http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/R%20Disk/Roselli%20John/Item%2013.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;">could never leave and even faced </a>serious problems if they betrayed the syndicate.</div>Which brings us to the story of Kyrsten Sinema.<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>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<a href="https://ukdiss.com/examples/aristotle-views-of-democracy.php" 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;"> dates back to Aristotle's rants </a>on the topic. And Sinema was, in the beginning, just that sort of person. But I'm getting ahead of myself…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.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 <a href="https://www.cop.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/watergate.htm" 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;">Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities</a> to look into Nixon's abuses and make recommendations.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.In response to the report, Congress passed an exhaustive set of new laws and regulations, most significantly <a href="https://www.fec.gov/about/mission-and-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;">creating from scratch the Federal Elections Commission</a> (FEC), outlawing secret donations to politicians while providing for public funding of federal elections to diminish the power of big money. (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/15/jimmy-carter-calls-for-return-to-publicly-financed-elections/" 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;">Jimmy Carter was the only presidential candidate to win using such public funding</a>.)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,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."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.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.
[vid]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.Sinema quickly joined other Democrats who'd followed the Citizens United path to the flashing neon lights of big money, joining the so-called "<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/12/14/no-labels-and-problem-solvers-are-wolves-wall-street-sheeps-clothing" 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;">Problem Solvers</a>" caucus that owes its existence in part to the <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/12/14/no-labels-and-problem-solvers-are-wolves-wall-street-sheeps-clothing" 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;">Wall Street-funded front group</a> "No Labels."Quietly and without fanfare, she began voting with Republicans and the corporate- and billionaire-owned Democrats, supporting efforts to <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03/kyrsten-sinema-transformation-democrat-arizona-minimum-wage" 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;">deregulate big banks, "reform" Social Security and Medicare, and make it harder to for government to protect regular investors</a> or even <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/democratic-candidates-chamber-commerce-endorsement/" 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;">buyers of used cars</a> from being ripped off.<div class="proper-ad-unit postContent15" style="margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; text-align: center; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_3" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;">She <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/how-they-voted-2013-house" 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;">voted with the Chamber 77 percent of the time</a> 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 <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/democratic-candidates-chamber-commerce-endorsement/" 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;">one of only five democrats</a> endorsed by the notoriously rightwing Chamber.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.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, <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/10/08/cruel-and-unfathomable-sinema-pushing-100-billion-climate-cuts-reconciliation-bill" 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;">even when 70 percent of your state's voters want the bill to pass</a>.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.<div class="proper-ad-unit" style="margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_4" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;">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.Increasingly, because of the <a href="https://amzn.to/3v4N2oL" 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;">Supreme Court's betrayal of American values</a>, 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 <a href="http://projects.leadr.msu.edu/youngamerica/exhibits/show/andrew-jackson-real-or-fraud/spoils-system" 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;">even Andrew Jackson</a> would have labeled it: political corruption. But that's what it is and it's eating away at our republic like a metastasized cancer.A <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/10/10/how-to-help-reverse-democratic-decline.cnn" 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;">guest on Brian Stelter's CNN program</a> 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 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Oligarchy-Reclaiming/dp/1523091584/ref=thomhartmann" 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 Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class</a>.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, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Supreme-Betrayal-America-Hartmann/dp/1523085940/ref=thomhartmann" 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;">thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court</a>.<div class="proper-ad-unit" style="margin: auto; position: relative; width: 654.938px; min-width: 100px; box-sizing: border-box !important;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_5" style="position: relative; margin: auto; box-sizing: border-box !important;">In <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZX.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;">Justice Stevens' dissent in Citizens United</a>, 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."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."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."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."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.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."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."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."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)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:"Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation."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."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.'"Stevens and his fellow "liberals" on the Court were both prescient and right.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.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.And, they warned, it could doom our republic, something that's now within our sight.Thom Hartmann is a <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" 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;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Healthcare-Bankrupts/dp/1523091630/ref=thomhartmann" 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 Hidden History of American Healthcare</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" 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;">30+ other books in print</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" 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;">Independent Media Institute</a> and his writings are archived at <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/" 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;">hartmannreport.com</a>.This article was produced by <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/economy-for-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;">Economy for All</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="text-align: left; font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.438px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/kyrsten-sinema-infrastructure/" 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;">New report says Kyrsten Sinema insists on taking vacation even as ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/sinema-2655176969/" 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;">Kyrsten Sinema had a curt response to major dissent brewing ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/kyrsten-sinema-2655179630/" 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;">'Setting her political future on fire': Sinema gets caught fundraising ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="text-align: left; font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.438px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/newsletter/2021-06-05/kyrsten-sinema-save-democracy-opinion" 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;">Hey, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, it's happening here, and you ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/from-radical-activist-to-senate-obstructionist-the-metamorphosis-of-kyrsten-sinema/" 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;">From Radical Activist to Senate Obstructionist: The Metamorphosis ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/sinema-internship-wine/" 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;">Kyrsten Sinema's Grapes of Wealth | The Nation ›</a></li></ul></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>=cfThe 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=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/violent-oligarchy/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/violent-oligarchy/</a>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 cnt!" 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.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.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.In Tennessee a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mask-student-bullied-covid-death-b1916717.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">high school student testifies</a> 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.On Jet Blue what's become <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/couple-removed-mask-jetblue/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a new rite of passage for flight attendants</a> blows into life as a man screams obscenities when asked to leave the plane because he refused to properly wear his mask.In Tacoma, Washington <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/8/2051124/-A-shooting-in-Olympia-Proud-Boys-went-hunting-antifa-in-streets-ending-with-Toese-wounded" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a group of thugs goes looking for a fight</a> 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).In Ft. Collins Colorado a man <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/man-confronts-girls-beach-bikini-pornography-video-tiktok-1627007" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">harasses a group of women</a> 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!"Across the nation, hundreds of poll workers and election officials <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/officials-face-sustained-campaign-intimidation-far-right-n1278826" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">endure daily death threats and violent harassment</a> just for doing their civic duty. And <a href="https://demcastusa.com/2021/09/08/our-school-boards-are-under-attack-january-6-showed-the-way/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">school boards </a>are under daily assault in similar fashion.And these are just the stories from the past week.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.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.And it always starts from the top down: leadership sets the initial tone in countries, just like in companies and families.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.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.In Hungary, roaming bands of thugs with <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-gops-shameless-plot-against-democracy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">torches threatened to burn the homes of Roma people</a> as Viktor Orbán rose to power a bit over a decade ago.In The Philippines, President "Little Donald Trump" <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/philippines-president-duterte-vigilante-drug-war-you-cant-stop-me/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Duterte praised vigilantes</a> 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."In Russia <a href="https://world.time.com/2014/02/05/watch-russias-anti-gay-vigilantes-exposed-in-their-own-shocking-videos/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">roaming bands attack and kill suspected-LGBTQ people</a> as the government's leadership ramps up otherizing language against its own citizens. Across <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/kyrgyzstan-unrest-idUSLDE63800S20100409" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">former Soviet states advocates </a>for democracy or gay rights are routinely hunted, beaten and often killed.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. H<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/01/how-italian-fascists-succeeded-in-taking-over-italy.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">istorian Michael R. Ebner writes</a>: "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."In Germany in 1921 Hitler organized a volunteer, unpaid civilian militia he called the <a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/sturmabteilung-brownshirts" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Sturmabteilung</a> (Storm Unit) who roamed across Germany looking for labor leaders, gays and Jews to beat up.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 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/28/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-paramilitaries-corruption-david-miranda" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">and The Guardian</a>, they're led by Bolsonaro's eldest son Flávio.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.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.As Chicago <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/12/19/frightening-ways-trumps-america-mirrors-hitlers-germany_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reporter Milton Mayer wrote after returning from Germany just after World War II</a>: "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."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 <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523091584/ref=thomhartmann" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Hidden History of American Oligarchy</a>.It quite literally starts with "average people" randomly exploding and behaving like asses while political demagogues promote self-styled militias, lawlessness and vigilantism.We ignore or minimize them at our own peril.Thom Hartmann is a <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Healthcare-Bankrupts/dp/1523091630/ref=thomhartmann" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Hidden History of American Healthcare</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">30 other books in print</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Independent Media Institute</a> and his writings are archived at <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">hartmannreport.com</a>.
<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-vaccines/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-vaccines/</a></div><div>
</div><div>thom h</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/12/2039394/-MD-Dr-Reiner-CNN-Health-Expert-Surprising-Amount-of-Death-Will-Soon-Occur-from-COVID" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week,</a> "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?<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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, <a href="https://2wz7603jj73w2s7jpn27zxpe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Maslows-Theory-of-Human-Motivation.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">there's always a reason</a>.</div>Dr. Anthony Fauci <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/fauci-says-horrifying-see-cpac-144239590.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">told Jake Tapper on CNN last Sunday</a>, "I don't have a really good reason why this [unwillingness to get vaccinated] is happening."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.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:1. Why did <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-got-covid-vaccine-january-1135185/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump get vaccinated in secret</a> after Joe Biden won the election and his January 6th coup attempt failed?2. Why are Fox "News" <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/business/media/vaccines-fox-news-hosts.html?campaign_id=154&emc=edit_cb_20210712&instance_id=35147&nl=coronavirus-briefing&regi_id=26417886&segment_id=63261&te=1&user_id=57a4837d7a219a6a30a2aa87dc7652ef" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">personalities discouraging people from getting vaccinated</a> while refusing to say if they and the people they work with have been protected by vaccination?3. Why was one of the <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fauci-cpac-vaccines_n_60eb70f6e4b0cb627483a9ae" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">biggest applause lines at CPAC</a>: "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!"4. Why are Republican legislators in states around the country <a href="https://www.axios.com/republicans-coronavirus-vaccines-discrimination-law-states-533503fb-fa83-43d0-bd51-2d614483d241.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">pushing laws that would "ban" private businesses from asking to see proof of vaccination</a> status (they call it "banning vaccine passports")?5. Why, when President Biden suggested <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/07/06/biden-introduces-door-to-door-vaccination-effort/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">sending volunteers door-to-door</a> into low-vaccination communities to let people know how and where they could get vaccinated, did rightwing media go nuts about "<a href="https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/07/08/abc-news-conservatives-distort-president-bidens-door-to-door-vaccination-plan-as-well-as-balk-at-the-idea/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">government thugs</a>" coming to your door to "force" vaccines on you?6. Why are about <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/covid-vaccine-house-congress-republicans-b1849804.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">half of all the Republicans in Congress refusing to say if they've gotten a vaccine</a> or not? For that matter, why do the CPAC speakers who are trashing vaccines refuse to say if they're vaccinated or not?7. Why <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/rob-schmitt/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">would a Newsmax host </a>trash-talk vaccines saying, "I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature"?8. Why did Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota downplay the dangers of Covid last week by <a href="https://www.politicususa.com/2021/07/11/kristi-noem-credit-covid.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">bragging that she never shut her state down </a>(and Ron DeSantis did) when SD has <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">230 Covid deaths per 100,000 people</a> while similar low-population states like <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Vermont and Oregon are at 41 and 66</a> deaths per 100,000 respectively?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?Political power. And, of course, the eventual wealth that often comes with political power, particularly corrupt power. Retired Republicans <a href="https://fortune.com/2018/04/12/paul-ryan-net-worth/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">make a lot of money</a>.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.As <a href="https://buchanan.org/blog/are-the-good-times-over-for-biden-149810" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Pat Buchanan wrote today</a>: "Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought."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.Death is their electoral strategy.Is there any other possible explanation?They're not stupid (although they're banking on their audience being, at least, poorly informed) and most have college degrees (and Lauren Boebert <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/boebert-ged-months-before-election/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">finally got her GED</a>). 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.It's remotely possible they just hate and want to damage the US, and a few who are pushing vaccine "hesitancy" like <a href="https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/in-2018-why-did-8-republican-u-s-senators-spend-july-4th-in-moscow-2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Ron Johnson and John Kennedy recently celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow</a>, 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).A bizarre faux masculinity could be behind it, the way Trump tried to promote the idea that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-masks.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">only wimps wear masks</a>, but, seriously, do you really think these folks are taking fashion/appearance tips from an <a href="https://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-pol-trump-obese-20190214-story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">obese</a> geriatric guy with a huge <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/photos/2015/09/an-illustrated-history-of-donald-trumps-hair" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">comb-over</a> who wears absurd amounts of makeup, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-seen-wearing-glasses_n_5e1eac25c5b63211760b28cb" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">contacts</a>, <a href="https://www.politicalflare.com/2019/11/former-employee-says-trump-wears-adult-diapers-due-to-incontinence-from-repeated-stimulant-abuse/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">men's diapers</a> and <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trumps-teeth-become-topic-discussion-after-slurred-jerusalem-speech-740604" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">false teeth</a>? And what's "masculine" about slowly dying by drowning in your own snot? Or becoming <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/news/3242369/erectile-dysfunction-symptom-long-covid-warn-young-brits-risk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">unable to get an erection</a>, as happens to a significant number of men who get Covid?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 <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/05/tucker-carlson-covid-vaccine-skeptic" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">have been secretly vaccinated themselves</a>, just like Trump and his family were in January. As <a href="https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/12/2039394/-MD-Dr-Reiner-CNN-Health-Expert-Surprising-Amount-of-Death-Will-Soon-Occur-from-COVID" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, said,</a> "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."This also has nothing to do with "conservative" ideology. Vaccination has been a part of the American landscape since <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/GW&smallpoxinoculation.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">George Washington ordered his troops inoculated</a> 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 <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/children-receive-first-polio-vaccine" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">lined up in school to get it</a> and remember it well).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, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ike-trusted-new-vaccine" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">who had polio as a child, said</a>, "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.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.So, what's left?Politics, and the power and money that derive from it.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.In his desperation to get the economy back in shape, Trump even issued an <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2020/04/28/usda-implement-president-trumps-executive-order-meat-and-poultry" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">executive order forcing</a> mostly Black and Hispanic meat-packing and slaughterhouse employees back to work under threat of imprisonment.But, sure enough, the economy tanked anyway and Democrats now control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.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.Encouraging Americans to die so they can win elections. That's how low today's GOP has sunk.</div><div>---</div><div>721 noem  brag on covid fail</div><div>
</div><div>https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/19-republicans/</div><div>=</div>=no lnx
The corruption that overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point — and it's killing peopleGreg Abbott speaking at FreePac, hosted by FreedomWorks, in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore Thom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute June 16, 2021   Texas is showing us all how the corruption that has overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point, and it's killing people.
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."

 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.
Today's example: Greg Abbott.
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.

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.
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.
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.

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%.
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…"
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."

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.
Bush called it, "The nation's most extensive experiment in electrical deregulation."
It turned out to be an extraordinary expensive and deadly experiment, one that burdens Texas to this day.
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."

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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.
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."

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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
The gun industry is making billions while America experiences daily mass shootings that Republicans refuse to do anything about.
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.
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.
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.
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.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLESTrump Org appears 'rotten to its core' — their modus operandi was ... ›Trump and the GOP have thrown evangelical Christianity into a full ... › The GOP is the most corrupt party in living memory: Robert Reich ... ›RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEBNorth Carolina GOP Chair And Others Indicted On Corruption ... ›Opinion | Lindsey Graham's Iowa deception shows Trump's ... ›Corruption Is the Tie that Binds for Trump-Era Republicans | The ... ›Report typos and corrections to: feedback@alternet.org.Is white supremacy a rising problem in the US?
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/billionaire/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/billionaire/</a>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.<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/blowing-up-the-billionaires-con-thats" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">This article was originally published at The Hartmann Report</a>And they're having considerable success.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.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.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."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:<ul class="ee-ul" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li>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.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li>If you can cut wages and threaten employees because they don't have a union, you make more money.</li></ul><ul class="ee-ul" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li>If you can run a pipeline across sacred Native American land atop a major national aquifer with minimal safety oversight, you make more money.</li><li>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.</li><li>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.</li></ul><div style="">So how do you pull this off, when every one of these things hurts average Americans?</div>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.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.And it's largely worked, if the "trust in government" statistics compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958 are accurate.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.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.""How can you handle that?" asked the host, incredulous.The German shrugged his shoulders and moved the conversation to another topic.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.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.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.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."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.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.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.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.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.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/gilbert-chagoury/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">DOJ reveals a foreign billionaire's plot to funnel large sums of ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/hedge-fund-billionaires/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">Hedge fund billionaire mocked as a 'crybaby' after whining on air ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/robert-reich-there-are-only-5-ways-to-become-a-billionaire-and-none-of-them-involve-being-successful-in-free-market-capitalism/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">Robert Reich: There are only 5 ways to become a billionaire — and ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Bloomberg Billionaires Index ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/little-island-park-built-by-billionaire-further-transforms-manhattans-west-side-2021-05-21/" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Little Island, a park built by a billionaire, further transforms ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-20/crypto-market-prices-ass-coin-superdoge-billionaires-prosper-and-fall" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Crypto Market Prices: $ASS Coin, SuperDoge Billionaires Prosper ... ›</a></li></ul></div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-corporations/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-corporations/</a>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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.The "tough guy" or authoritarian leader would then shower his own beneficence on the corporations that funded his political power.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):<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.543px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">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.
</blockquote>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.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.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.We are moving from the early technical dimensions of fascism to the true realization of Mussolini's vision.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.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.But the lure of fascism for a corporation is extraordinary.AT&T, CIGNA Health, Ford Motor, and Pfizer have broken their commitment not to support insurrectionists. More will, no doubt, follow soon.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.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.As <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-mega-businesses-are-already-back-to-bankrolling-insurrectionists" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Daily Beast</a> investigative reporting found, corroborating the groundbreaking reporting that Judd Legum has been doing for weeks on his <a href="https://popular.info/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">popular.info</a> website, at the very least AT&T, CIGNA Health, Ford Motor, and Pfizer have broken their commitment not to support insurrectionists.More will, no doubt, follow soon.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.The Reagan administration in the 1980s essentially re-wrote the rules of corporate governance.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.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.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.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.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 <a href="https://amzn.to/2O77CUc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America</a>. CFSo 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.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.As many of us pointed out back in the 1980s, and I wrote about at length in my book <a href="https://amzn.to/3d9JJ7p" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People</a>, 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.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.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.This piece<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-do-we-stop-corporations-from" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"> initially appeared</a> on The Hartmann Report.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/completely-unreasonable-dems-push-back-against-gop-demand-for-no-corporate-tax-hike-in-infrastructure-plan/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">'Completely unreasonable': Dems push back against GOP demand ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/anti-corporate-gop/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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 'anti-corporate rhetoric' captured 'the paranoid, vindictive post ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/gop-voting/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">Republicans angered after over 100 top corporate leaders meet to ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/14/georgia-activists-pressure-big-corporations-to-oppose-voting-restrictions-.html" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Georgia voting rights activists pressure big corporations to oppose ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/04/19/biden-business-tax-gop/" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Rift between GOP, corporate America creates opening for Biden's ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-florida-gop-corporations-legislature-20210420-mytxlvdhsjgbzokejb2p34o34y-story.html" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Florida GOP leaders bash 'woke' corporations as they stumble over ... ›</a></li></ul></div>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-war-on-democracy/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-war-on-democracy/</a>Former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney being booed in his own home state raise an urgent question: Are the Redcoats back?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.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.Today's Republican party does not believe in democracy or the core idea on which this nation was founded:<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.543px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);">"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…"
</blockquote>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.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.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.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.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.Those who opposed democracy on this continent had a lot of history on their side.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.)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.There were a lot of reasons back then to think that a democratic republic would be a terrible mistake.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.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.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.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.As I lay out in detail in my new book <a href="https://amzn.to/3aYS6lN" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Hidden History of American Oligarchy</a>, between 1820 and 1860 the South underwent a radical consolidation of wealth and property.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.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.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.The North won and democracy prevailed, but the idea of oligarchy survived and has been persistent throughout American history.This is what the Republican party now represents: Oligarchy.Rule by the rich and ignoring "the consent of the governed."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.And they're pushing us there really hard and really fast:A political network run by a group of right-wing billionaires has a larger budget and more employees than the entire Republican party.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.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.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.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.Several of these hard-right groups have openly declared their intention to start a second American Civil War.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.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.They even adorn themselves in red and wear funny hats like the British loyalists did in revolutionary times.The Biden presidency represents America's third, and perhaps final, chance to prove democracy is not merely an idealistic fantasy.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.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.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.Dissent is no longer allowed in the GOP.Authoritarianism has prevailed.Oligarchy has completely seized the party.These, as Thomas Paine (a fervent believer in democracy) said, "are the times that try men's souls."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…"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.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/bill-moyers-historian-traces-the-influence-of-oligarchs-in-us-democracy-from-the-civil-war-to-donald-trump/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">Bill Moyers: Historian traces the influence of oligarchs in US ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/democratic-democracy/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">A GOP lawyer's admission unintentionally revealed why the ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/anti-democratic-gops-rhetoric-on-hr-1-signals-a-disturbing-battle-to-maintain-americas-fragile-democracy/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">GOP's 'anti-democratic' rhetoric on HR 1 signals a disturbing battle ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/04/05/holder-gop-is-waging-multi-pronged-war-on-democracy-through-voting-restriction-bills/" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Holder: GOP is waging “multi-pronged war on democracy” through ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-accused-waging-war-democracy-anti-voting-measures-n1258847" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">GOP accused of waging 'war on democracy' with anti-voting measures ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/georgia-voter-suppression-bills-hr-1/2021/02/24/0c283eba-76e7-11eb-9537-496158cc5fd9_story.html" class="around-the-weblink" 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;">Opinion | Georgia's voter suppression bills show Republicans' war ... ›</a></li></ul></div>=https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/mcconnell-destroy-gop/?rs=182no lnxWhy Mitch McConnell is about to destroy the GOPThom Hartmann and Independent Media Institute May 05, 2021   Nobody's asking, "Why?"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.Why would McConnell do this?Why would he give away any bargaining leverage the GOP might have?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?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.That simple reality has been noted by a number of commentators.But nobody is asking the bigger question: "Why would a professional, lifelong politician and master tactician like Mitch McConnell make such a huge mistake?"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.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.This is a guy, after all, who spent decades proclaiming Reaganomics and supply-side economics.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.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.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.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.Particularly multimillionaires — who hang out with billionaires — like McConnell.And McConnell's is not alone in this belief, even among significant Republican figures.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.Reaganomics hasn't worked out, they say, because it hasn't really been tried.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.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."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.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.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.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.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.If Mitch McConnell is a true believer, he may well be in the "true believer mold" of Barry Goldwater.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.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.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.Nelson Rockefeller denounces Republican "extremists" at the 1964 Republican National Conventionyoutu.be]Then Barry Goldwater stepped up to the microphone and loudly proclaimed:"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!!"Barry Goldwater: Extremism In The Defence of Liberty Is No Viceyoutu.be]He brought down the house. The standing ovation lasted for minutes. They really believed him.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).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.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.Eisenhower Farewell Address (Best Quality) - 'Military Industrial Complex' WARNINGyoutu.be]But then the True Believers took over the GOP — to this day.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.Goldwater believed what he was saying. I've read both his autobiographies and there's no doubt in my mind.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.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.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.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?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.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.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."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.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.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.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.He's wrong, but — in either case — he's certainly not lacking in conviction.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.This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLESMcConnell claimed Democrats are 'addicted to divide and conquer ... ›Mitch McConnell flat-out tells Republicans to use Manchin and ... ›John Oliver slams Republicans with hilarious take-down of Mitch ... ›RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEBRand Paul's dire prediction for the GOP - CNNPolitics ›4 Opinion How Republicans will try to destroy a Biden presidency ›Rand Paul says convicting Trump would 'destroy' GOP | | kctv5.com ›=trojan horse for long awaited tort reform?!  never waste a crisis?!Probably the most under-reported story of the year has been how Mitch McConnell <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/12/08/time-running-out-millions-progressives-rally-peoples-bailout-mcconnell-pushes" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">is holding Americans hostage in exchange for letting big corporations kill Americans</a> without any consequence.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.
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.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.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.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.And McConnell's holding your local police and fire departments, public schools, and state healthcare programs hostage in exchange for his corporate immunity.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.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.
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.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.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.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/joe-biden-mitch-mcconnell/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">Mitch McConnell finally recognizes Biden's win — leaving Trump ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/mitch-mcconnell-2649505691/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">In private call, Mitch McConnell tries to shut down GOP plan to ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/mitch-mcconnell-second-stimulus-check-2649491047/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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;">Mitch McConnell slammed for repeatedly sabotaging stimulus ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief" class="around-the-weblink" 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 Mitch McConnell Became Trump's Enabler-in-Chief | The New ... ›</a></li></ul></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/mitch-mcconnell-2649519136/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/mitch-mcconnell-2649519136/</a>=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/republican-party-funding/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/republican-party-funding/</a>it's time to defund the GOP, and there's precedent and strategy for the effort.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 <a href="https://www.fox5ny.com/news/new-york-legislation-would-make-covid-19-vaccination-mandatory" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">make vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory</a>. Predictably, the far right is freaking out. "Freedom!" they scream as they run around maskless, assaulting their fellow citizens with potentially virus-laden breath.Large parts of the Republican base now join conspiracists in the misguided belief that vaccine manufacturers are participating in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/12/fact-check-bill-gates-isnt-planning-implant-microchips-via-vaccines/3171405001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">mind-control experiments</a> and that public health measures like masks are "un-American," while we're being sickened and dying from the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/opinions/coronavirus-us-death-toll-trump-sachs-opinion/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">highest rates of COVID-19</a> infection and death in the developed world.Republicans on the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/supreme-court-religious-restrictions-ruling-covid/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Supreme Court even say</a> 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.In 1798, President John Adams signed <a href="https://bit.ly/2LAQnta" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the first public health care legislation</a>—it was to pay for medical care and hospitalization not just for the Navy but also for civilian sailors. And both he and <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8jhbhtj" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">President George Washington</a> had participated in quarantine events during epidemics in the summers of 1793 and 1798, and both <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1775%E2%80%931782_North_American_smallpox_epidemic#Quarantine_methods" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">promoted inoculation</a> against smallpox.From 1790 to 1800, Philadelphia was the nation's capital. When the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/yellow-fever-outbreak-philadelphia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">yellow fever epidemic of 1793</a> recurred in <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N26572.0001.001/1:5?rgn=div1;view=fulltext" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">1798, that city's board of health</a>, with no objections raised by President John Adams or any member of Congress, ordered a block-by-block evacuation of parts of Philadelphia.Most signers of the Declaration and Constitution were still alive, and many were in Congress and on the Supreme Court. <a href="https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/download/25548/25317/0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">None opposed the lockdown</a>. 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.From their bans on teaching <a href="https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2015/07/08/house-republicans-sneak-sex-ed-restriction-child-left-behind-rewrite/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">sex education</a> and <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/godzooks/2019/02/darwin-day-republicans-evolution/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">evolution</a> in our schools, to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/opinion/climate-change-republicans.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">denying climate change</a>, 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.Thomas Paine, in his time, wrote about "<a href="https://www.ushistory.org/Paine/reason/reason1.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Age of Reason</a>." 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.They have rigged elections by making it <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/11/republicans-are-laying-the-groundwork-to-make-it-harder-to-vote/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">hard to vote</a>, seditiously tried to <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/106-republican-members-of-congress-sign-on-to-shambolic-texas-lawsuit-looking-to-overturn-2020-election?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">overturn the 2020 election</a>, promoted <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/racism-republican-party-stuart-stevens/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">racial</a> and <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-defends-amy-coney-barretts-religion-stayed-silent-on-muslims_n_5f86245bc5b6c4bb5470b27b" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">religious</a> bigotry and violence, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/27/betsy-devos-trump-republicans-education-secretary" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">destroyed our public school</a> systems, gutted our <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/10/23/why-republican-party-wants-destroy-labor-unions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">unions</a>, and rewritten our tax system to <a href="https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/trump-gop-tax-plan-middle-class-parents-refund/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">screw the middle class</a>.Since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/19/trumps-destruction-of-america-started-with-ronald-reagan_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">damaged America more in 40 years</a> than our worst enemies could have dreamed of by other means.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.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.Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party, and actually pulled it off.While the Republican Party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/features/listen-liberal-thomas-frank-democratic-party-elites-inequality.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions</a>. So Ronald Reagan, as part of his "Reagan Revolution," figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America's unions.His first shot was to <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/winging-it-battle-between-reagan-and-patco/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">destroy PATCO</a>, 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 <a href="https://bit.ly/3oPqlAD" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">campaign to eliminate unions</a> from the American landscape, thus gutting the Democratic Party's ability to win elections.It worked, and by 1992, American union membership, and union's ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/12/18/how-america-broke-up-with-the-democratic-party_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party turned</a> to giant corporations and billionaires to win that election year.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 <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/recruiting-bill-clinton/281946/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Democratic Leadership Council/New Democrats</a>, now in bed with big banks, insurance companies, etc.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:<ul class="ee-ul" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px;"><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">End "Red State Welfare." </li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaharziv/2020/05/12/blue-state-bailout-red-state-residents-received-largest-stimulus-checks-and-millions-in-federal-aid/?sh=3445f5798352" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Kentucky gets $2.41</a> 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 <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/12/18/how-america-broke-up-with-the-democratic-party_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">welfare reform</a>!</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</li><li style="">End corporate welfare that gets recycled to GOP politicians. This <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/walvanlierop/2019/12/06/yes-fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-real-destructive-and-protected-by-lobbying/?sh=412710c8417e" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">includes $700 billion a year to fossil fuel companies</a>, and nearly $1 trillion a year we give to <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2019/08/30/473911/big-pharma-reaps-profits-hurting-everyday-americans/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Big Pharma</a>, as well as support for insurance companies (like subsidies for the <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/14/1977397/-Beyond-the-Medicare-Advantage-Scam" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">"Medicare Advantage" scam</a>) and "<a href="https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/how-farm-subsidies-became-americas-largest-corporate-welfare-program" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Big Ag</a>."</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Monopolies-Business-Destroyed/dp/1523087730/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">giant monopolies rip off working-class Americans</a> and use some of that money to fund the GOP.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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 href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Federal%20Tax%20Brackets.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a top tax rate of 91 percent to 74 percent</a>. 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 <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-signs-economic-recovery-tax-act-erta" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">cut that top rate to less than 30 percent,</a> and the billionaires it produced now pour money into the GOP to keep it that way.</li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</li><li style="">Follow Europe's example and <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/norway-wealth-tax-what-america-can-learn_n_5fac2082c5b68707d1fb6391" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">impose a wealth tax</a> 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.</li><li style="">
</li><li style="">End campaign contributions from corporations, end super PACs, and limit billionaires' ability to skew our politics with their money. We did this <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Federal-Election-Campaign-Act" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">in the 1970s</a> 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.</li></ul>These simple "Progressive <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Contract with America</a>" 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.Thom Hartmann is America's <a href="https://tinyurl.com/v2xzs8v" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">number one</a> progressive <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">talk-show host</a> and the New York Times bestselling author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Oligarchy-Reclaiming/dp/1523091584/?tag=alternorg08-20" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Hidden History of American Oligarchy</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">30 other books in print</a>. His online writings are compiled at <a href="https://hartmannreport.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">HartmannReport.com</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Independent Media Institute</a>.
=
yes, the election was rigged -- but by the Republicans
Thom Hartmann  November 17, 2020It 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLESTrump is claiming that Democrats will try to rig the election in their ... ›'No bigger fraud than Trump': President blasted for desperate tweets ... ›Here's how elections are actually stolen in Russia - Alternet.org ›The Massive Election-Rigging Scandal the Media Ignored - Alternet ... ›RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEBFor Trump's 'rigged' election claims, an online megaphone awaits ›US election 2020: 'Rigged' votes, body doubles and other false claims ›How We'll Know the Election Wasn't Rigged | WIRED ›==<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bidens-presidency-could-be-the-last-gasp-of-democracy-says-hartmann-unless-democrats-dump-neoliberal-economics-thom-hartmann/?">https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/bidens-presidency-could-be-the-last-gasp-of-democracy-says-hartmann-unless-democrats-dump-neoliberal-economics-thom-hartmann/</a>America is in limbo.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 <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-lost-denial-pompeo/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the American people have given Biden a mandate to lead the country into a better future.</a>As expected, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/15/trump-says-biden-won-as-he-again-spreads-baseless-conspiracy-theories-about-a-rigged-election_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Donald Trump continues to claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him</a> 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 href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/12/health/covid-vaccine-timeline-slower/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a vaccine against the coronavirus which should be ready for mass distribution in 2021</a>. 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 <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/15/joe-biden-cant-bring-back-normal-politics--no-one-can-we-need-to-reinvent-it_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">President Biden could both return the country to "normalcy"</a> and then make it better and stronger.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 <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/04/however-the-election-ends-white-supremacy-has-already-won/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trumpism, built on white supremacy</a>, 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.Trump is also attempting an obvious slow-motion coup, in which <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/12/dont-panic-trumps-coup-will-fail--but-hes-turning-gop-voters-against-democracy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">he is purging senior national security officials</a> 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, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/trump-gums-up-the-transition-works_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump has refused to concede defeat or assist in the lawful transfer of power to Biden</a>. Trump's right-wing paramilitaries and other political thugs remain "standing by" to engage in acts of violence against his "enemies." <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/11/12/trump-plans-vote-count-rallies-to-wreck-fox-news-in-bid-to-launch-competing-network-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump will not surrender his efforts</a> to remain president for life. The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread uncontrollably. The country's economy is still in ruins.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.At the Nation, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-election-america/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Tom Engelhardt describes the myriad challenges Biden will soon inherit</a>:<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.543px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);">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.

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.

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?
</blockquote>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.Hartmann's newest book is "<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9781523087730" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream</a>." 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.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.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.You can also <a href="https://radiopublic.com/the-truth-report-with-chauncey-de-GyorDQ/s1!c7b8f" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">listen to my conversation with Thom Hartmann on my podcast "The Truth Report"</a> or through the player embedded below.Is this what victory feels like?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.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.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.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..There is a struggle for democracy in this democratic republic. This is the last gasp of that struggle.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?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.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.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.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.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.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.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. = EXTRACTIONWe 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.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.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.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?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.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.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.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.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.Will the corporatists and plutocrats and other members of the financial elite have more or less power after Trump?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.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.The Green New Deal is actually going to be a money-making opportunity for people in business.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."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.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.What does accountability and reckoning look like for the Trump regime?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.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/donald-trump-and-the-pandemic-wannabe-fascism-meets-neoliberal-capitalism-and-it-could-hardly-be-worse/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Donald Trump and the pandemic: Wannabe fascism meets ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/author-noam-chomsky-explains-why-neoliberal-doctrine-has-intensified-the-deadly-effects-of-covid-19/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Author Noam Chomsky explains why the 'neoliberal doctrine' has ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-the-neoliberal-agenda-is-a-failure-at-fighting-coronavirus/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Why the neoliberal agenda is a failure at fighting coronavirus ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/coronavirus-and-the-end-of-globalization-the-neoliberal-model-got-us-into-this-mess-most-americans-already-believe-in-a-better-way/" class="from-your-sitelink" 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; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Coronavirus and the end of globalization: The 'neoliberal' model got ... ›</a></li></ul></div><div>=</div><div>an 920</div><div><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-only-winner-of-last-nights-debate-was-dictatorship-and-oligarchy/" aria-label="The only winner of last night's 'debate' was dictatorship and oligarchy" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" outline="outline" px="px" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height"> only winner of last night's 'debate' was dictatorship and oligarchy</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/thom-hartmann" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Hartmann</a> <a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Common Dreams</a></div> <div class="social-date" style="margin-top: 8px; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> September 30, 2020</div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2647869008" style="margin-top: 10px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; text-overflow: ellipsis; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; overflow: hidden; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">What we saw last night was the dictator's playbook.Tell violent white supremacist racists to "stand by" and encourage them to s...</div></div></div><div>=</div>=<a href="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/">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/</a>In the power grab to fill the Supreme Court seat announced <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/four-reasons-doubt-mitch-mcconnells-power/616416/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">the same evening</a> 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.In the late 19th century, Republicans <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-adding-new-states-helped-republicans/598243/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">added</a> 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 <a href="https://www.statehoodforguam.com/page/page/170538.htm" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Guam</a>).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 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-briefing-september-16-2020/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">press conference</a> on September 16, saying, “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8741449/Donald-Trump-says-House-decide-election-paints-doomsday-scenario.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">at a certain point, it goes to Congress</a>.” (This is the 12th Amendment <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/we-need-to-plan-now-in-case-trump-loses-in-november-but-refuses-to-leave-the-white-house/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">nightmare I wrote about in March</a> and <a href="https://www.gregpalast.com/warning-trump-and-his-rioters-can-win-using-the-xii/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Greg Palast</a> has recently pursued.)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.  The closest any Democrat has ever come to this sort of thing was in 1937 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt threatened to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937" target="blank" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">“pack”</a> 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.)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 <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/news/john-roberts/accession-60-89-0172/006-Box5-Folder1522.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">proposed</a> a nuclear option that Republican lawmakers could use to legislatively overturn <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roberts#Stare_decisis:_{:text=referring%20to%20Brown%20v.%20Board%2C&text=it%20should%20be%20overruled}" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brown v. Board</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/15/politics/john-roberts-abortion-alabama-roe-v-wade/index.html#str-1600739266412:_{:text=As%20a%20lawyer%20in%20the%20Ronald,criticized%20the%20legal%20underpinnings%20of%20Roe.}" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Roe v. Wade</a> whether the Supreme Court liked it or not. Roberts’ plan was never implemented, but it’s still a long-shot option.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.Republicans in the U.S. Senate <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/gop-senators-representing-a-minority-of-americans-are-preventing-a-fair-impeachment-trial/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">represent</a> 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, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">9 million more</a> Americans voted for a Democrat than a Republican, a margin (8.6 percent) far larger than their actual governing majority.Nonetheless, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/08/democrats-republicans-senate-majority-minority-rule" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Republicans tenaciously hang onto power</a> and do whatever it takes to both hold and increase that power at every opportunity.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.Here’s a deeper dive into the background, largely drawn from my books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Supreme-Betrayal-America-Hartmann/dp/1523085940/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-War-Voting-Stole/dp/1523087781/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of the War on Voting</a>.Packing the Court in 1801Thomas 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 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Judiciary-Act-of-1801" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Judiciary Act of 1801</a> 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.)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 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Marbury-v-Madison" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Marbury v. Madison</a> decision, which authorized the court to strike down laws passed by Congress.Packing the Court in 1866/1869In 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 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Catron" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Associate Justice John Catron</a>. Johnson was furious, but there was nothing he could do.Three years later, with Johnson out of the White House and Republican President Ulysses Grant safely in charge, they passed the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/41st-congress/session-1/c41s1ch22.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Judiciary Act of 1869</a> that raised the number of justices up to nine, where it has stood till today.Packing the Court in 1937During 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.For the preceding decades <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/the-lochner-era-is-set-for-a-comeback-at-the-supreme-court.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">during the Lochner era</a>, the court had struck down dozens of state laws protecting workers, including women and children.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.The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Agricultural-Adjustment-Administration" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Agricultural Adjustment Act</a> 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.Historian <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">William Leuchtenburg wrote for Smithsonian magazine that after the Agricultural Adjustment Act was struck down</a>, “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.”The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Industrial-Recovery-Act" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">National Industrial Recovery Act</a> had likewise passed with 71 percent of the House voting for it and 81 percent of senators voting for it.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.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 <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/298/587/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo</a>.The pendulum of popular opinion swung hard against the court almost overnight. One <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HJRXDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT313&pg=PT313#v=onepage&q=The%20law%20that%20would%20jail%20any%20laundryman%20for%20having%20an%20underfed%20horse%20should%20jail%20him%20for%20having%20an%20underfed%20girl%20employee&f=false" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Republican newspaper in New York</a> 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.”And as historian David B. Woolner, author of <a href="https://www.history.com/news/franklin-roosevelt-tried-packing-supreme-court" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace</a>, noted, “Over… 13 months, the court struck down more pieces of legislation than at any other time in U.S. history.”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.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.In 1937, the <a href="https://u.demog.berkeley.edu/_{andrew/1918/figure2.html}" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">average life expectancy for men</a> 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 <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Nine Old Men</a>, “was rapidly moving up the bestseller lists,” as Leuchtenburg wrote.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.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.”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.“The Courts,” <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y4bfgsff" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Roosevelt told the nation</a>, “have cast doubts on the ability of the elected Congress to protect us against catastrophe by meeting squarely our modern social and economic conditions.”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.Reacting to his critics, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y4bfgsff" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Roosevelt cut to the heart of the matter</a>:<blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;">“[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.”</blockquote>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.Instead, on March 29, 1937, a Washington state minimum wage law came before the Supreme Court in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/300/379" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish</a>. 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.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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v.Jones%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp.#:_{:text=National%20Labor%20Relations%20Board%20v%20Jones%20%26%20Laughlin%20Steel%20Corporation%2C%20301,known%20as%20the%20Wagner%20Act.}" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">National Labor Relations Act</a> as constitutional. The nation was astonished.Labor Secretary Frances Perkins was close friends with Justice Roberts’ wife, Elizabeth. When the decisions came down, according to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Behind-New-Deal-Unemployment/dp/1400078563" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Kirstin Downey’s biography of Perkins</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Woman_Behind_the_New_Deal/VjBKgiBwyOAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=kirstin%20downey&pg=PA264&printsec=frontcover&bsq=owen%2C%20i%27m%20so%20proud%20of%20you" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“she rushed that afternoon to Roberts’ home”</a> and “threw her arms around the man and hugged him.”“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!”Downey wrote of how Roberts was embarrassed by the affection but also very pleased. “Really, do you think so?” he replied to Perkins.Less than two months later, the court declared that Social Security was constitutional.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.Roberts’ about-face in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/300/379" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">West Coast Hotel</a> case was referred to at the time as “the switch in time that saved nine,” rendering FDR’s proposal unnecessary.Packing the SenateIn 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.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.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.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.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.Roberts’ Nuclear Option to Get Around the Supreme CourtThe year 1981 was a big one for court-stripping—or, as it’s sometimes called, jurisdiction-stripping. No fewer than <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://duckduckgo.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2375&context=vlr" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">30 pieces of legislation</a> 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.And a young lawyer working in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, an up-and-comer named John Roberts, was hot on the trail.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.It’s based on <a href="https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A3Sec2.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Article III, Section 2</a>, 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.”In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled, in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Brown-v-Board-of-Education-of-Topeka" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brown v. Board</a>, that states had to racially integrate their schools. Southern states promised “<a href="https://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/brown/resistance.htm" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">massive resistance</a>” 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 <a href="https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/23/hyde-smith-attended-all-white-seg-academy-avoid-in/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">famously</a> went to and sent her daughter to.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.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.But defying the Court became a much bigger business in 1973, when the court in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Roe-v-Wade" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Roe v. Wade</a> 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.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.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.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.Roberts wrote an <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/news/john-roberts/accession-60-89-0172/006-Box5-Folder1522.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">extraordinary 27-page document</a> 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.”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.”What Roberts and his researchers had discovered was substantial.Court-stripping is based on the exceptions clause of Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution, which <a href="https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A3Sec2.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">stipulates</a> that the courts exist “with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”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.”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.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.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.’”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.”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.”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.’”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.Beginning with the 1869 decision <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/74/506" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Ex parte McCardle</a>, 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.”’”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’].”He continued his historical exposé of court-stripping with another 1869 decision, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/75/85/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Ex parte Yerger</a>, and then <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/80/128/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">United States v. Klein</a> (1872), <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/3/321/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Wiscart v. Dauchy</a> (1796), <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/10/307/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Durousseau v. United States</a> (1810), <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/70/250/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Daniels v. Railroad</a> (1865), and <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/105/381/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Francis Wright</a> (1881).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, <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/105/381.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">quoting him</a> 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.”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.Moving toward late-19th-century decisions, Roberts quoted the court in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/150/138/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Colorado Central Consolidated Mining Co. v. Turck</a> (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.”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.”Still building his case, Roberts jumped into 20th-century rulings, starting with <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/337/582/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">National Mutual Insurance Co. v. Tidewater Transfer Co</a>. (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.”About the 1944 <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/321/414/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Yakus v. United States</a> case, Roberts wrote, “Justice Rutledge noted… that ‘Congress has plenary power to confer or withhold appellate jurisdiction.’”Regarding <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/392/83/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Flast v. Cohen</a> (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.”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.Roberts also noted that the original <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/judiciary_act.asp" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Judiciary Act of 1789</a> (which created the federal court system) also refers to Congress’ power of exception.Time to Play HardballBoth 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.No more Mx. Nice Guy.This article was produced by <a href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/economy-for-all-/gqtt5d/693891285?h=OqFAvx4bL8Z5ddqVi7yRZOBsx_19E18bg69j_GDoLmc" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Economy for All</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.Thom Hartmann is a <a href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2020-09-22/gqtt5g/693891285?h=OqFAvx4bL8Z5ddqVi7yRZOBsx_19E18bg69j_GDoLmc" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1523091584--tag-alternorg08-20/gqtt5j/693891285?h=OqFAvx4bL8Z5ddqVi7yRZOBsx_19E18bg69j_GDoLmc" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of American Oligarchy</a> and more than <a href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/Thom-Hartmann-e-B000AQ449C/gqtt5l/693891285?h=OqFAvx4bL8Z5ddqVi7yRZOBsx_19E18bg69j_GDoLmc" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">30 other books in print</a>. His most recent project is a science podcast called <a href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ith-thom-hartmann-id1488059541/gqtt5n/693891285?h=OqFAvx4bL8Z5ddqVi7yRZOBsx_19E18bg69j_GDoLmc" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Science Revolution</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://go.ind.media/e/546932/2020-09-22/gqtt5q/693891285?h=OqFAvx4bL8Z5ddqVi7yRZOBsx_19E18bg69j_GDoLmc" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a>.<a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/177002">https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/177002</a>...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.” <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">“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.” <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">Nine days later, President Roosevelt brought up the issue again in his April 29, 1938, “Message to Congress on the Concentration of Economic Power.”<p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">Unhappy events abroad have re-taught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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: <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">Shifting from the rhetorical to the concrete, he gave a few startling examples: <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following amazing figures for 1935: <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. <p class="Default" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: none;">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. ...
<div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">---</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/not-shocking-gops-covid-19-plan-puts-corporate-greed-before-human-need/</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Not shocking: GOP’s COVID-19 plan puts corporate greed before human need</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Written by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams July 29, 2020</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">It should be called the HEELS Act, not the HEALS Act.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/we-have-now-reached-peak-libertarianism-and-it-is-literally-killing-us/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/we-have-now-reached-peak-libertarianism-and-it-is-literally-killing-us/</a>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.Back in the years before Reagan, a <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2013/09/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">real estate lobbying group</a> 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.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.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.<div class="alt_ad_block true_ad_free story-page-in-content-graph-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_msg" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 10px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><div class="header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER</div></div></div>Since then, Libertarian billionaires and right-wing media have been working hard to get Americans to agree with Ronald Reagan’s <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-11" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">statement</a> from his first inaugural address that, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”And Trump is getting us there now.Every federal agency of any consequence is now run by a lobbyist or former industry insider.The Labor Department is trying to <a href="https://capitalandmain.com/trumps-secretary-of-labor-pick-is-reliably-anti-labor-0724" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">destroy organized labor</a>; 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 <a href="https://educationvotes.nea.org/2019/03/22/devos/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Education Department</a> 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 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-esper/former-lobbyist-esper-sworn-in-as-pentagon-chief-idUSKCN1UI26L" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">former weapons lobbyist</a>; even the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">IRS</a> and <a href="https://www.dcreport.org/2017/08/17/white-house-pushes-social-security-staff-cuts/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Social Security</a> agencies have been gutted, with <a href="https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2017/08/social-security-has-sent-early-out-offers-nearly-its-entire-workforce/140008/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">tens of thousands of their employees</a> 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 <a href="https://www.disability-benefits-help.org/blog/how-long-take-disability-claim-approved#:_{:text=At%20the%20initial%20stage%2C%20a,take%20more%20than%20two%20years.}" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">two years</a>.The guy Trump put in charge of the Post Office is actively <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/925637/donald-trump-destroying-post-office" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">destroying</a> the Post Office, and the bonus for Trump might be that this will <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/15/how-trumps-war-postal-service-could-create-an-election-nightmare/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">throw</a> a huge monkey wrench in any effort to vote by mail in November.Trump has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/11/04/trump-makes-it-official-us-will-withdraw-paris-climate-accord/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">removed</a> the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, and fossil fuel lobbyists now <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/14/climate/fossil-fuel-industry-environmental-policy.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">control</a> America’s response to global warming.Our nation’s response to the coronavirus has been turned over to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/under-heavy-fire-trump-administration-takes-steps-to-expand-coronavirus-testing/2020/03/13/f86b481e-6525-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">private testing</a> and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/158337/big-pharma-coronavirus-grift" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">drug companies</a>, 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 <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/506609-azar-points-to-individual-responsibility-as-answer-to-mounting-outbreaks" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“individual responsibility.”</a>The result is more than 140,000 dead Americans and 3 million infected, with many fearing for their lives.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.In the 1930s and 1940s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt put America back together after the Republican Great Depression and built the largest and wealthiest <a href="https://www.bemidjipioneer.com/opinion/disappearance-middle-class-cause-our-woes-0" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">middle class</a> in the history of the world at the time.Now, 40 years of libertarian Reaganomics have gutted the middle class, made a <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/03/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-target-saying-3-richest-have-much-w/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">handful of oligarchs</a> wealthier than anybody in the history of the world, and brought an entire generation of hustlers and grifters into public office via the GOP.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.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 <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-deaths-covid-19?country=_USA" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">killing</a> hundreds of people every day.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.That starts with waking Americans up to the incredible damage that 40 years of libertarian Reaganism has done to this country.Pass it on.<a class="" href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/imi-articles/?author=Thom+Hartmann" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Thom Hartmann</a> is a <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-American-Oligarchy-Reclaiming/dp/1523091584/?tag=alternorg08-20" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of American Oligarchy</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">30 other books in print</a>. His most recent project is a science podcast called <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-science-revolution-with-thom-hartmann/id1488059541" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Science Revolution</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a>.<div></div><div>an 520</div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-next-death-wave-from-covid-19-will-be-the-poor-rural-and-white/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">next death wave from COVID-19 will be the poor, rural and white</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/thom-hartmann/" title="Posts by Thom Hartmann" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Thom Hartmann</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/independent-media-institute/" title="Posts by Independent Media Institute" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">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…Trump’s official <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">national emergency declaration</a> 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.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.And then came April 7, 2020.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).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.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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#March" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">risen from single digits to more than 20</a>.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.Then came April 7, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States</a>.” 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.American conservatives responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/rush-limbaugh-slams-news-coverage-coronavirus-racial-disparity-how-they-stop" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rush Limbaugh declared</a> 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.”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…”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.But the New York Times and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/07/coronavirus-is-infecting-killing-black-americans-an-alarmingly-high-rate-post-analysis-shows/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Washington Post</a> 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.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 <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Media Matters for America</a>.<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/tucker-carlson-coronavirus-crisis-may-have-passed-well-see-it-looks-it-may" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Now, he said</a>, “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.”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!<a href="https://twitter.com/BadFoxGraphics/status/1247684528698777600" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brit Hume joined</a> 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.”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.<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/07/coronavirus-is-infecting-killing-black-americans-an-alarmingly-high-rate-post-analysis-shows/?arc404=true" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">More than 12,000</a> 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!It took less than a week for Trump to get the memo, presumably through Fox and Stephen Miller. On April 12, he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/13/trump-fire-fauci-coronavirus/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci</a> and declared, in <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1249712404260421633" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">another tweet</a>, 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.”On April 13, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce <a href="https://www.uschamber.com/coronavirus/implementing-national-return-to-work-plan" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">published a policy paper</a> titled “Implementing a National Return to Work Plan.”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.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.On April 14, Freedomworks, the billionaire-founded and -funded group that animated the Tea Party against Obamacare a decade earlier, <a href="https://www.freedomworks.org/content/economic-recovery-starts-lifting-small-businesses-back" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">published an op-ed</a> 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.Three days after that, Freedomworks and the House Freedom Caucus issued a joint <a href="https://www.freedomworks.org/content/freedomworks-echoes-house-freedom-caucus-call-safe-and-swift-reopening-us-economy" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">statement</a> declaring that “it’s time to re-open the economy.”Freedomworks <a href="https://www.freedomworks.org/content/reopenamerica-rally-planning-guide" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">published</a> 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.”One of the first #OpenTheCountry rallies to get widespread national attention was April 18 in <a href="https://www.fosters.com/news/20200419/protesters-plan-second-reopen-nh-rally" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">New Hampshire</a>. Over the next several weeks, rallies had metastasized across the nation, from <a href="https://www.koin.com/news/health/coronavirus/oregon-uniting-for-liberty-rally-salem-capitol-reopen-economy/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Oregon</a> to <a href="https://www.azmirror.com/2020/04/16/covid-19-rally-to-re-open-arizona-planned/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Arizona</a>, <a href="https://delawarestatenews.net/coronavirus/delaware-group-sets-may-1-rally-to-oppose-excessive-quarantine/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Delaware</a>, <a href="https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/reopennc-rally-planned-for-tuesday-in-downtown-raleigh/19062732/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">North Carolina</a>, <a href="https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/05/rally-reopen-virginia-planned-wednesday/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Virginia</a>, <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/5/1/21244518/reopen-illinois-rally-thompson-center-coronavirus-covid-19-stay-at-home-order" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Illinois</a> and elsewhere.One that drew particularly high levels of media attention, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/03/michigan-gretchen-whitmer-lockdown-protest-racism" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">complete with swastikas, Confederate flags and assault rifles</a>, was directed against the governor of Michigan, rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer.When Rachel Maddow began reporting on meatpacking plants that had become epicenters of mass infection, the conservative <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/wisconsin-gop-judge-covid-19-is-spreading-due-to-meat-packing-workers-and-not-regular-folks/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court</a> 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.Nonetheless, the conservative meme was now well established.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 “<a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/03/27/trumps-death-cult-finally-says-it-time-to-kill-the-useless-eaters-for-capitalism/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">useless eaters</a>” who are spending our Medicaid and Social Security money and are on death’s door anyway.For example, Texas’s Republican Lt. Governor <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/03/24/dan-patrick-economy-coronavirus-deaths-notdying4wallstreet/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Dan Patrick told Fox News</a>, “Let’s get back to living… And those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves.”A conservative <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/california-official-calls-for-reopening-so-coronavirus-can-kill-off-the-old-and-the-weak-it-would-also-free-up-housing/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">town commissioner in Antioch</a>, 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.”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 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-delegating-authority-dpa-respect-food-supply-chain-resources-national-emergency-caused-outbreak-covid-19/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">executive order</a> using the Defense Production Act (which he had hesitated to use to order the production of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-wont-use-the-defense-production-act-for-medical-supplies-but-hell-use-it-for-meat/2020/04/29/2ed2b170-8a4d-11ea-8ac1-bfb250876b7a_story.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">testing or PPE equipment</a>) on April 28 to order the largely Hispanic and black workforce back into the slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.African Americans were dying in our cities, Hispanics were dying in meatpacking plants, the elderly were dying in nursing homes.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 “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/immunity-passports-could-speed-up-return-to-work-after-covid-19" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">COVID Passports</a>” and give them hiring priority.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.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.Caught in those crosshairs, however, just as had been the case prior to the Civil War, were poor whites.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.In the 1930s when Huey Long was Louisiana’s senator and governor, he explicitly reached out to impoverished white people.As the Encyclopedia Britannica <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Huey-Long-American-politician" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">notes</a>, “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…”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?”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.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.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.In fact, the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/05/07/as-states-reopen-covid-19-is-spreading-into-even-more-trump-counties/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Brookings Institution just reported</a> 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.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.As it spreads into rural white America, however, they’re about to learn otherwise.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Thom Hartmann is a <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-War-Voting-Stole/dp/1523087781/?tag=alternorg08-20" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of the War on Voting</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">30 other books in print</a>. His most recent project is a science podcast called <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-science-revolution-with-thom-hartmann/id1488059541" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Science Revolution</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a>.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This article was produced by <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/economy-for-all/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Economy for All</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute</div></div></div><div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"></div></div>an 320w<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/we-need-to-plan-now-in-case-trump-loses-in-november-but-refuses-to-leave-the-white-house/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline !important;">e need to plan now in case Trump loses in November — but refuses to leave the White House</a><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/thom-hartmann/" title="Posts by Thom Hartmann" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Thom Hartmann</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/independent-media-institute/" title="Posts by Independent Media Institute" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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…</div><div>How Big Pharma twists the law to its will and leaves Americans worse off</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute January 10, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>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....</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-america-broke-up-with-the-democratic-party/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-america-broke-up-with-the-democratic-party/</a>no lnx
How America broke up with the Democratic Party
Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute December 17, 2019Many grassroots Democrats separated from their party in the 1990s, and the 2020 election may be the last chance to save the marriage.
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.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.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.
What happened?
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.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.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.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.
Meanwhile, the offending partner—not having heard, or having misunderstood the “cry”—is oblivious and thinks everything is just fine.
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.
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.
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.
Applying this model to the Democratic Party, the first really loud “cry unheard” from the Democratic electorate came in 1992.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.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.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.
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.
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!”
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.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.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.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).
“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.
The party of big government solutions had become the party of big corporate money.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”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?”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.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.
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.
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.
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.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.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.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.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.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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
But Clinton and the “moderate” DLC Democrats embraced becoming Eisenhower Republicans, even as Eisenhower would have repudiated their policies.“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:“‘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.’”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.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…”
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.
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.This set up Senator Barack Obama, who promised “hope and change,” to beat John McCain’s “steady as she goes” approach to the presidency.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.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.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.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.
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.”
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.“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.”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.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.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.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.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.First, change the offensive behavior.Second, remember why you “fell in love” in the first place, and revisit those reasons, experiences, feelings, and activities that first brought you together.Democrats know how to do both of these things, party leadership notwithstanding.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.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.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.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.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.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.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.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.R U S<div><a href="http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2019/06/24/thom-hartmann-discusses-the-hidden-history-of-guns-in-america-extended-interview/">http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/2019/06/24/thom-hartmann-discusses-the-hidden-history-of-guns-in-america-extended-interview/</a></div><div>
</div><div>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.For more information about Thom Hartmann’s ‘The Hidden History of Guns and the 2nd Amendment’ book tour visit <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out 0s;">www.thomhartmann.com</a>.</div><div>=</div>i <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/i-was-booted-from-facebook-for-no-discernible-reason-is-it-time-to-rein-in-the-massive-power-it-wields/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4; display: inline !important;">I was booted from Facebook for no discernible reason. Is it time to rein in the massive power it wields?</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/thom-hartmann/" title="Posts by Thom Hartmann" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Thom Hartmann</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/independent-media-institute/" title="Posts by Independent Media Institute" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: right; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Ins</a>no lnx
How Citizens United corrupted the US Supreme Court and guaranteed Republicans will never turn on TrumpPresident 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)Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute December 4, 2019
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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.
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.
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.)
The spigots of cash never turned off; the 2016 election was a $6.5 billion affair.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.When the billionaires abandon Trump, so will the GOP.It’s really just that simple.
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.
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!”
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.<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/revenge-of-the-billionaires-how-an-oligarchy-of-the-morbidly-rich-can-take-down-democracy/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/revenge-of-the-billionaires-how-an-oligarchy-of-the-morbidly-rich-can-take-down-democracy/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>...no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute November 22, 2019</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>This is not the first time we’ve faced such a crisis as a nation.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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…”</div><div>...</div></div><div><div> oligarchy to totally take down democracy, only three things are initially needed:</div><div>
</div><div>Control of (or substantial influence over) a critical portion of the media</div><div>Legalization of bribery of public officials, so oligarchs can achieve majority control of the legislative process</div><div>Control of the most critical parts of the court system so they can control legal processes</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Report Advertisement</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>In the 1770s, foreign-aligned oligarchs controlled what we now call America; believers in democracy fought a war to overthrow that British oligarchy.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2019, it’s been about four generations since that battle—and the groundwork has been laid for another crisis.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Report Advertisement</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>As a result, we are no longer a functioning democratic republic; we are now operating as an oligarchy.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Report Advertisement</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Report Advertisement</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>“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.</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>The Koch oligarchy machine, for example, has branches in every state, and pretty much every county. Oligarchy-supporting media are ubiquitous.</div><div>
</div><div>And now Very Serious People are talking about the possibility of a second Civil War.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>Then comes the threat of a real Civil War breaking out, and an informed populace is the best defense against it.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>The stakes couldn’t be higher.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>This article was produced by Economy for All,...</div></div><div>=</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/radio-host-thom-hartmann-explains-how-we-could-slide-into-straight-fascism-in-the-next-year">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/radio-host-thom-hartmann-explains-how-we-could-slide-into-straight-fascism-in-the-next-year</a>...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.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.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.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. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Social scientists have shown that what the bottom 90% of income earners want in America is literally random noise for America’s policymakers.</a> 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.....<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/from-nixon-to-trump-heres-how-ideologues-and-partisans-seized-the-court/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/from-nixon-to-trump-heres-how-ideologues-and-partisans-seized-the-court/</a>dirksen torpedo peac talks]...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.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.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.Reprinted from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Supreme-Betrayal-America-Hartmann/dp/1523085940" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America</a> with the permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Copyright © 2019 by Thom Hartmann. 
<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/ronald-reagan-launched-an-attack-on-the-middle-class-we-must-reverse-it-to-save-our-democracy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/ronald-reagan-launched-an-attack-on-the-middle-class-we-must-reverse-it-to-save-our-democracy/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Ronald Reagan launched an attack on the middle class. We must reverse it to save our democracy</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute October 2, 2019</div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/some-of-trumps-allies-and-officials-must-face-federal-prosecution-to-save-the-republic/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/some-of-trumps-allies-and-officials-must-face-federal-prosecution-to-save-the-republic/</a>no lnx
Some of Trump’s allies and officials must face federal prosecution — to save the republic
Written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute September 10, 2019To save our republic, some of Trump’s enablers and political appointees may have to go to jail, just like happened with Nixon’s people.
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. 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.
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.
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.
America has never before seen such breathtaking corruption in the Oval Office.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
At its core, this is the essence of the rule of law.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.no lnx many
The right-wing love affair with Ayn Rand ties conservatism to one of the most disturbing sociopathic killers Ayn Rand image via WikipediaWritten by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute August 12, 2019There’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.
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.
 “It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” he told Powers. “That book relates to … everything.”
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.
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.

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!”
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.”
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.
Instead, the man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was a real sociopath named William Edward Hickman, who lived in Los Angeles.
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.
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.”
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.
The Pittsburgh Press detailed what Hickman, in his own words, did next.
“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.”
Hickman didn’t hold back on any of these details: he was proud of his cold-bloodedness.
“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.”
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.”
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.
He even sewed open her eyelids to make it look like she was alive.
On the way, Hickman dumped body parts out of his car window, before rendezvousing with Marion Parker’s father.
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.
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.
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.
But to a young Russian idealist just arriving in America, Hickman was a hero.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
He was the most notorious man in American in 1928, having achieved a level of national fame she craved—William Edward Hickman.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
“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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Suggesting that selfishness undermines most American values, Wallace bluntly challenged Rand.
“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?”
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.”
“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?”
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.<div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-fascist-foot-soldiers-are-armed-to-the-teeth-with-weapons-of-war/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-fascist-foot-soldiers-are-armed-to-the-teeth-with-weapons-of-war/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no linx many</div><div>
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</div><div>The latest massacre shows the 2nd Amendment model of ‘slave patrols’ is still in effect</div><div> 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.</div><div>Written by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams August 6, 2019</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>While we need rational gun control, this isn’t a gun control issue.</div><div>
</div><div>While we need economic security to be more widely shared, this isn’t an economic issue.</div><div>
</div><div>While we need universal, free, high-quality K-PhD education, this isn’t an education issue.</div><div>
</div><div>While the Republican Party needs to repudiate the “Southern Strategy” that has animated their racist base since 1968, this isn’t a political issue.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.</div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-july-22-2019/">https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-july-22-2019/</a>thom mentions corp personhoodjrnl corn? found NNN word --> bussing --> tax cuts (understoood that they help whites and hurts blks)<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-a-trojan-horse-project-to-rewrite-our-constitution-could-actually-happen-if-trump-wins-in-2020/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-a-trojan-horse-project-to-rewrite-our-constitution-could-actually-happen-if-trump-wins-in-2020/</a>no lnx many 
How a Trojan horse project to rewrite our Constitution could actually happen if Trump wins in 2020
 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)written by Thom Hartmann / Independent Media Institute July 17, 2019It’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?
Turns out, there’s an actual project to rewrite our Constitution, turning America into a corporate-run oligarchy. 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.
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.
But how could he win? With another $2 billion worth of free publicity, just like in 2016.
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.
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.
There was nothing unique about them, and year over year, Trump has actually deported fewer people than Obama did.
But Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.
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.
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.
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).
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.
But to what end?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.
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.”
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).”

Report AdvertisementThey 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.”
And they’re actually doing it, complete with annual dress rehearsals in the Washington, D.C., area. As Wikipedia notes:
“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.
“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.”
And their rehearsals now include delegates from every state in the union.
Wikipedia notes:
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.”
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.
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/</a>It looks like Donald Trump and the leadership of the GOP are encouraging other countries to hack our upcoming 2020 election.<div class="p1_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Donald Trump is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/trump-xi-jinping-dictators/554810/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">sucking up to</a> dictators, strongman oligarchs, and autocrats <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/29/politics/g20-donald-trump-bin-salman-putin-xi-dictators/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">around the world</a>, while Mitch McConnell is using political brute force to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/opinion/mcconnell-hr1-democrats-ethics-voting-rights.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">prevent individual states from hardening</a> their election systems. Why?Looking at the entire picture in context, consider <a href="https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2015/05/13/karl-marxs-conception-of-alienation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Karl Marx’s favorite question</a>: “Who benefits?”<div class="p3_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Who benefits when the leaders of countries with sophisticated internet hacking capabilities (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/world/asia/north-korea-hacking-cyber-sony.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">North Korea</a>, <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/saudi-arabia-hacked-jeff-bezos-035516374.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Saudi Arabia</a>) and no democratic oversight are told by Trump that as long as he’s in office he has their backs?<div class="p4_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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 <a href="https://politicaldig.com/trump-threatens-to-jail-fbi-officials-who-investigated-russia-interference-gets-brutal-response/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">imprisonment</a> of Trump’s political rivals, and of individuals in the intelligence agencies who have investigated him and the GOP?Who benefits when countries with world-class internet hacking capabilities and less-than-democratic (<a href="https://www.inquisitr.com/4489075/donald-trump-tower-moscow-russia/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Russia</a>) or highly corrupted and oligarch-dependent (<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Real-Estate/Trump-Tower-Israel-takes-step-forward" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Netanyahu</a>, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y4go5gae" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Duterte</a>, <a href="https://www.trump.com/residential-real-estate-portfolio/trump-tower-mumbai-india" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Modi</a>) leaders become “good friends” of Trump and/or help Trump build or brand properties in their countries?<div class="p6_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Might they intervene in our election directly or indirectly to keep in power an administration that both openly disdains the concept of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/opinion/trump-putin-william-burns.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">liberal democracy</a>” and disrespects leaders of the largely European countries that practice it?<div class="p7_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Why would <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/opinion/trump-putin-william-burns.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump joke with Putin</a> 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?<div class="p8_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Who benefits when mostly “red” states keep their voting systems’ defenses down and continue to use 17-year-old technology running on <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/09/dismal-state-americas-decade-old-voting-machines/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Windows XP</a> operating systems?<div class="p9_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="proper-ad-unit" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; display: block; min-width: 100px; text-align: center;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_2" data-google-query-id="CN2j3sPdqOMCFRB3AQodPIUIUQ" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; min-width: 300px; min-height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/5376056/alternet_content_2_0container" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/#report-ad" data-aid="proper-ad-alternet_content_2" class="call-modal report-ad" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; left: 0px; right: 0px; line-height: 23px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration-line: none !important; position: relative !important; display: block !important;">Report Advertisement</a></div></div>Who benefits when McConnell, Pence and Trump work together to make sure that, as <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-voting-machines-in-the-u-s-are-easy-targets-for-hackers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">CBS News reported</a> this year, “Tens of thousands of voting machines in the United States [will continue to be] vulnerable to hacking” by refusing to fund upgrades?<div class="p10_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Who benefits when repeated Democratic Party <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/democrats-line-up-for-election-security-funds" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">efforts to harden</a> voting systems are <a href="https://www.govtech.com/dc/GA-Panel-Chooses-Voting-Machines-Tied-to-New-Govs-Deputy.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">blocked</a> by Republican governors?<div class="p11_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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.<div class="p12_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So what could possibly be motivating Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate, other than the hope that hackers will produce another “<a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/6/16/1100706/-Red-Shift-why-it-s-important" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">red shift</a>” miracle for them?<div class="p13_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">We already know that the GOP and their partisans on the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-voting-idUSBRE95O0TU20130625" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Supreme Court have done</a> 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.<div class="p14_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-14" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="proper-ad-unit" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; display: block; min-width: 100px; text-align: center;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_3" data-google-query-id="CODvzMPdqOMCFQUDPwodengBgQ" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; min-width: 300px; min-height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/5376056/alternet_content_3_0container" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/#report-ad" data-aid="proper-ad-alternet_content_3" class="call-modal report-ad" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; left: 0px; right: 0px; line-height: 23px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration-line: none !important; position: relative !important; display: block !important;">Report Advertisement</a></div></div>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 <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/trump-and-the-rhetoric-of-fascism.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">corporatist-friendly right-wing judges</a>moving through the Senate into lifetime appointments on the federal bench. They need more—a little help from their friends.<div class="p15_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Republicans have been caught <a href="https://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">manipulating voter rolls</a>; engaging in now-legalized <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-gerrymandering.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“political” gerrymandering</a> that magically corresponds to race; running ads in social media <a href="https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-the-trump-campaign" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">filled with deception</a> and outright lies; <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-incitement-violence/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">encouraging right-wing violence</a>; and <a href="https://politicaldig.com/trump-threatens-to-jail-fbi-officials-who-investigated-russia-interference-gets-brutal-response/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">threatening treason charges</a> against American law enforcement officials who’ve investigated foreign manipulation of our elections.<div class="p16_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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.<div class="p17_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-18" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="proper-ad-unit" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; display: block; min-width: 100px; text-align: center;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_4" data-google-query-id="CMOwysPdqOMCFcJvAQodzM8HUw" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; min-width: 300px; min-height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/5376056/alternet_content_4_0container" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none; display: inline-block; width: 300px; height: 250px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/#report-ad" data-aid="proper-ad-alternet_content_4" class="call-modal report-ad" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; left: 0px; right: 0px; line-height: 23px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration-line: none !important; position: relative !important; display: block !important;">Report Advertisement</a></div></div>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 <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/trump-and-the-rhetoric-of-fascism.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">merger of state and corporation</a>. 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 “<a href="https://tinyurl.com/yylr2wv7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">red shift</a>” disconnect between exit poll results and the reported totals from hackable voting machines.<div class="p18_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There aren’t enough really rich Americans to win elections, so <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Lee Atwater and his business partners Roger Stone and Paul Manafort helped</a> 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.<div class="p19_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jerry Falwell Jr. (<a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/12/jerry-falwell-jr-wife-met-young-pool-boy-vacation-started-helping/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">and his pool boy</a>?), <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/franklin-graham/527013/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Franklin Graham</a>, and other <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hosts-televangelists-who-fleece-their-flocks" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">multimillionaire “Christian” hustlers</a> brought in the people <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hosts-televangelists-who-fleece-their-flocks" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">televangelists</a> 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.<div class="p20_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Add the <a href="https://thetruthwithnorestriction.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/republican-platform-confirms-homophobia-and-racism/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">homophobes</a>, the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/123930/obama-saved-his-harshest-words-for-republican-xenophobes-he-was-right-to-do-so" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">xenophobes</a>, the <a href="https://www.niacouncil.org/first-vote-trumps-muslim-ban-republicans-fail-test/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">religious bigots</a>, and sexually insecure white men (from <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/04/27/the-online-incel-culture-is-real-and-dangerous/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">incels</a> to <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2013/12/men-do-not-need-guns-or-violence-to-be-men/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">gun</a> 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.<div class="p21_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-22" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="proper-ad-unit" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; display: block; min-width: 100px; text-align: center;"><div id="proper-ad-alternet_content_5" data-google-query-id="CJe99ObdqOMCFROZAQod1PgHWg" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: auto; padding: 0px; position: relative; min-width: 728px; min-height: 90px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe/5376056/alternet_content_5_0container_" style="box-sizing: border-box !important; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0pt none;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/trump-and-the-gop-are-blatantly-encouraging-foreign-dictators-to-hack-the-2020-election/#report-ad" data-aid="proper-ad-alternet_content_5" class="call-modal report-ad" style="outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; left: 0px; right: 0px; line-height: 23px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box !important; text-decoration-line: none !important; position: relative !important; display: block !important;">Report Advertisement</a></div></div>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 <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mueller-report-trump-russia-collusion-20190418-story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Russians</a>, <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180520-trump-jr-met-uae-saudi-and-israel-emissary-offering-illegal-campaign-help/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Saudis and Emiratis</a> in 2016. They (and Trump’s American billionaire backers) benefited more from what <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/jimmy-carter-donald-trump-illegitimate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">President Carter correctly</a> called Trump’s “illegitimate” presidency than anybody else in the world.<div class="p22_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Which is why Trump and <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27259438/oleg-deripaska-kentucky-aluminum-mitch-mcconnell-rand-paul/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">McConnell</a> are working as hard as they can to make sure <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/trump-i-think-i-d-take-foreign-help-for-2020-61802565891" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">those foreign oligarchs and autocrats know</a> how much they’ll appreciate that help, should it be forthcoming.<div class="p23_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">All they need is a little help from their friends, and they’re making sure their friends know in advance who will benefit.<div class="p24_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Thom Hartmann is a <a href="https://www.thomhartmann.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">talk-show host</a> and the author of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Second-Amendment-Hartmann/dp/1523085991/?tag=alternorg08-20" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment</a> and more than <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thom-Hartmann/e/B000AQ449C" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">25 other books in print</a>. He is a writing fellow at the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a>.<div class="p25_26" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This article was produced by the <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Independent Media Institute</a>.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-southern-fears-of-abolition-shaped-the-second-amendment/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-southern-fears-of-abolition-shaped-the-second-amendment/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>How southern fears of abolition shaped the Second Amendment</div><div>THOM HARTMANN / COMMON DREAMS</div><div>13 JUN 2019 AT 13:10 ET</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div> </div><div>“Give me liberty or give me death.” —Patrick Henry</div><div>
</div><div>Article 1, Section 8, of the proposed Constitution had southern slave owners concerned about the future of their economy.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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).</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.’ . . .</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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].”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>And why was that such a concern for Patrick Henry?</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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”).</div><div>
</div><div>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?</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>He added, “This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>But the southern fears wouldn’t go away.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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:</div><div>
</div><div>“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.”</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div><a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/hobby-lobby-argument">https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/hobby-lobby-argument</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden" style="font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h2 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.25em; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.1em !important;">History of Corporate Personhood</h2></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-bcj-summary field-type-ds field-label-hidden" style="font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">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.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-real-author field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden" style="line-height: 1.4em; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/expert/ciara-torres-spelliscy" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Ciara Torres-Spelliscy</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden" style="display: inline; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field-items" style="display: inline;"><div class="field-item even" style="display: inline;">April 7, 2014</div></div></div></div><div>
</div><div>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.In <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/" target="blank">Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores</a>, 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.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.  It all goes back to a legal fiction known as corporate personhood.Generally, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/10/24/141663195/what-is-the-basis-for-corporate-personhood" target="blank">corporate personhood</a> 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 <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1732910" target="blank">Professor Elizabeth Pollman</a> 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.”If you’re a fan of the Colbert Report, “corporate personhood” might sound familiar. Stephen Colbert got a well deserved <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/04/entertainment-us-peabodyawards-idUSBRE83314Y20120404" target="blank">Peabody Award</a> for his work educating the public about <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/421160/november-12-2012/colbert-super-pac-shh----secret-second-501c4---trevor-potter" target="blank">campaign finance laws</a> with his lawyer <a href="http://www.capdale.com/tpotter" target="blank">Trevor Potter</a>. However, Mr. Colbert’s verbal tick of saying that Citizens United granted corporate personhood is a tad misleading.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, <a href="http://theusconstitution.org/sites/default/files/briefs/A%20Capitalist%20Joker.pdf" target="blank">corporate personhood</a> 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.The <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv" target="blank">14th Amendment</a>, 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.”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. 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 <a href="http://www.bloomingtonwilpf.org/localagenda/howardjaygraham.pdf" target="blank">Howard Jay Graham</a>, “[t]his part of Conkling’s argument was a deliberate, brazen forgery.”As <a href="http://www.thomhartmann.com/unequal-protection/excerpt-theft" target="blank">Thom Hartmann notes</a> the Supreme Court embraced Conkling’s reading of the 14th Amendment in a headnote in 1886 in <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/case.html" target="blank">Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail Road</a>: “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.Some Supreme Court Justices objected to the Santa Clara approach. Dissenting in <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/337/562/case.html" target="blank">Wheeling Steel Corp.</a> 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.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 <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/435/765/case.html" target="blank">Bellotti.</a> 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.In <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html" target="blank">Citizens United</a>, 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.In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the store chain is claiming that the corporation (and not just its proprietors) has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/25/us/court-confronts-religious-rights-of-corporations.html?r=0" target="blank">a religious objection</a> 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 <a href="http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/No-13-354-Brief-for-Respondents.pdf" target="blank">Hobby Lobby’s brief</a> relies on Bellotti and Citizens United.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?</div><div>=</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-major-legal-and-political-trouble-his-desperate-attempts-escape-it-could">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-major-legal-and-political-trouble-his-desperate-attempts-escape-it-could</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/media/tom-steyer-you-want-trump-out-buy-clear-channel">https://www.alternet.org/media/tom-steyer-you-want-trump-out-buy-clear-channel</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-disaster-looms">https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-disaster-looms</a>
// irish famine  year w/o summer ...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.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.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.This is a scenario that most climate scientists—until this year—considered a remote possibility, even in the next century. 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.  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. As Chris Mooney notes in the 4/3/18 Washington Post (“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/04/23/one-of-the-most-worrisome-predictions-about-climate-change-may-be-coming-true/?utm_term=.768dd8dbe4a5" style="text-decoration-line: none;">One Of The Most Worrisome Predictions About Climate Change May Be Coming True</a>”):<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The new <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaap9467" style="text-decoration-line: none;">research</a>, 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’...”</blockquote>Meanwhile, the northern part of the Great Conveyor Belt—which warms Europe—is also faltering in the North Atlantic, largely as a result of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/climate/greenland-ice-melting.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hundreds of billions of tons</a> of cold, fresh water from Greenland glacier-melt, caused by global warming, pouring into it every few minutes.New research from University College London and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (“<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0007-4" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Anomalously Weak Labrador Sea Convection and Atlantic Overturning</a>”) 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.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.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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q48WD6_USt4" style="text-decoration-line: none;">radio/TV program April 24th</a>:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“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.”</blockquote>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:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“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.”</blockquote>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.As NASA’s scientists note on one of the few <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">climate-change web pages</a> the Trumpies haven’t yet removed:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“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.”</blockquote>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....<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/two-santa-clauses-or-how-gop-conned-america-nearly-40-years" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">
</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/two-santa-clauses-or-how-gop-conned-america-nearly-40-years" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/two-santa-clauses-or-how-gop-conned-america-nearly-40-years</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.</div>-Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976 <div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-republican-party-has-conned-america-over-30-years" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-republican-party-has-conned-america-over-30-years</a>How the Republican Party Has Conned America for Over 30 YearsTax cuts initiate bubble economies, not true growth.By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet September 29The  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. As Bruce Bartlett – one of the architects and major salespeople for Reagan’s tax cuts in the ‘80s – wrote in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/27/tax-cut-fever-republican-supply-side-theory-hogwash-bruce-bartlett-column/704464001/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">USA Today</a> 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.” 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.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.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.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.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."Thus, the Republican mantra was: "Lower taxes, reduce the size of government, and balance the budget."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.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 <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-edgar-newton-eisenhower/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">personal letter on November 8, 1954</a>:<blockquote>"[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."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."</blockquote>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.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. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.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.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.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!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.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. 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.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.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. 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.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.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. 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.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.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. 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.Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a <a href="https://www.polyconomics.com/memos/mm-990621.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">gloating memo</a> 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..."Ed Crane, then president of the Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a <a href="https://www.polyconomics.com/memos/mm-990621.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">memo</a> 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."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.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:"...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."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.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.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 FAILWanniski 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.  He ended his infamous memo with: 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?  Let's not.” Instead, let’s force the Democrats to shoot Santa!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. 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.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div>

<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-pin-hand-grenade-billionaire-and-corporate-funded-coup-rewrite" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-pin-hand-grenade-billionaire-and-corporate-funded-coup-rewrite</a>...and yet a meeting scheduled next week in the Wisconsin legislature may possess even more terrifying ramifications for the future of the country. According to <a href="http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/raw/cid/1377335" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">Wisconsin.gov</a>, 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).A "Convention of the States" has never been invoked before, but Republicans and Koch-backed organizations like <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Citizens_for_Self-Governance" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Citizens for Self-Governance</a> 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 <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/wisconsin-gop-moving-to-call-for-constitutional-convention/article_747bffa7-9290-5d07-9c6a-21b50124b57d.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Wisconsin State Journal</a>, a constitutional convention could put citizen's very rights "up for grabs." 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."In an <a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/right-wing-billionaires-have-project-going-rewrite-our-constitution-and-they-are" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">essay</a> earlier this month, AlterNet's Thom Hartmann explored a few scenarios that were once the stuff of <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Federalist Society</a> fever dreams and are now all too plausible:<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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.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.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.</blockquote>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."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 <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/21dbd1254fea4738b662a12612c5fbf1/obama-accomplished-policy-goals-his-party-floundered" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Associated Press</a>, the Democratic Party has lost more than 1000 governorships, state legislative and Congressional seats combined since 2008.===monsanto fox akre &  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)gmo bghthom hartman <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jDKLFn0pty4#at=20" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jDKLFn0pty4#at=20</a>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. 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.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
 rbst gmo fox killed akre and wilson investigation on milk monsanto hired lawyer who sent letter
 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JL1pKlnhvg0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JL1pKlnhvg0</a>  invest rept----

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http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/bluedog-294/blog/2015/02/why-did-obamas-justice-dept-recently-argue-against-don-siegelmans-rel

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