Voting rights organizations and law firms joined forces Wednesday to file a legal challenge against Wisconsin’s aggressively gerrymandered state legislative maps, which have allowed Republicans to cling to power in the Assembly and Senate for more than a decade. Filed by Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Law Forward, the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Stafford Rosenbaum LLP, and Arnold &
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On the heels of what is likely the worst heat wave across the globe in recorded history, data shows that heat-related deaths have been rapidly rising over the past decade — even without yet taking into account this year’s record-breaking heat. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data analyzed by The Guardian, heat related deaths in the U.S. nearly doubled between 2010 and 2022…
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On Wednesday, a federal judge in Delaware halted a plea deal reached between Hunter Biden and federal prosecutors in which the president’s son would avoid facing prosecution on a separate gun charge by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. Trump-appointed Judge Maryellen Noreika said the deal lacked legal precedent, and identified several sections of the agreement that were interpreted…
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The Supreme Court recently prevented Republicans from hijacking state and county election boards in its 6-3 ruling against North Carolina Republicans in Moore v. Harper. If the state GOP had been successful, they would’ve been able to run federal-level elections in North Carolina and across the country without any pathway for citizens to challenge unfair election laws. But voting rights are still…
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In nature, monocultures are not so resilient to predators or other ravages that exploit their inherent vulnerabilities. Farmers have known this characteristic of monocultures forever. (Agribusiness doesn’t care as much, given its short-term profit outlook.)
Democratic voters are at risk from the increasing political monocultures that are weakening resistance to the GOP and Big Business demands.
There are four such groups that are exhibiting similar monoculture symptoms of deteriorating power.
1. The Democratic Party itself is led by pathetic sinecurists controlling its formal national, state, and local Party structures. At the top is the PAC-greased Democratic National Committee (DNC) whose chief strategists, over decades, have steadily written off half of the nation (the Red States), and abandoned their Parties there down the line. When, for example, the Party gave up on five mountain states in the West that used to send Democrats to Congress, it started out with a deficit of ten in the Senate. It is hard to recover from such an abdication. The Party will spend far more on a Pennsylvania Senate race than on Senate races in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and the Dakotas combined. There are no local Democratic Committees in 30 of 32 counties in Wyoming.
Today, the Party raises record amounts of money and finds ways to set records in blowing it. Senator Chuck Schumer directed the spending of over $200 million in two big-time losing Senate races against Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina). The loser in South Carolina was promoted to head the DNC where he has declared himself to be part of the Democratic Party machine – a mere functionary instead of a galvanizer.
The Democratic Party doesn’t have the energy possessed by the GOP and right-wing groups that fight each other, but have managed to win many national and statewide elections that they should have lost badly. This is due to lassitude and blunders by the Dems in the gerrymandering struggle and indenturing itself to corporate campaign money that has blocked its former New Deal agenda of standing, in all the states, for working families while the GOP banded with Wall Street.
After avoidable election losses, the Dems don’t force the responsible officials out and clean house with more vigorous people. Recall the historic blunder in New York State in 2022 – dominated by the Democratic Party – that gave away four winnable Congressional seats, and failed to defeat the media-exposed charlatan George Santos (R-NY). Despite this dismal performance, the Democratic Party retained its State Chairperson.
A monoculture is resistant to outside criticism and advice, no matter how credible and pragmatic (See: winningamerica.net). Its officials on Capitol Hill and within the party apparatus rarely return calls if they don’t involve campaign donors. Ruled at the top nationally by half a dozen control freaks, it demands sycophancy from its leading organized allies, thus turning them into monocultures.
2. The AFL-CIO and national labor unions unconditionally endorse Democratic candidates long before election day. They make no action demands, such as card checks, championing a $15 national minimum wage (from the present $7.25 per hour), breaking statutory chains on organizing unions, or getting serious about workplace health, safety and one-sided limitations on contractual workers’ rights.
The main headquarters of the AFL-CIO looks out at the White House, and the AFL-CIO leadership gives Democratic presidents a blank check. A GOP president has little to fear from organized labor that is hamstrung by suffocating labor laws and global corporate extortionists. It has been decades since vigorous and feisty labor leaders were national figures.
3. The trial lawyers – an automatic honeypot for Democrats – who have lost for years in their efforts to preserve the law of wrongful injuries due to “tort law deform” – can’t even muster the will to repeal any of the handcuffs that block injured people from full access to the courts. They give the Dems a blank check and it responds by not even making the insurance industry’s atrocity a major campaign issue. The result is our constitutional right to have our day in court and trial by jury continues to be undermined and obstructed.
The long-time head of the national trial lawyer association works hard not to make news and declines to give visibility to the American Museum of Tort Law (AMTL), which we founded, to educate people about the legitimate use of tort law for the vast majority of wrongfully injured people left by the wayside. ATML’s exhibits help mobilize citizens and educate lawmakers about the importance of tort law, a pillar of our democracy. (See, tortmuseum.org).
4. Then there are some national citizen groups that used to challenge in court sweetheart settlements by plaintiffs’ attorneys, used to take Democratic politicians to task publicly, and used to expose some labor union corruption, which resulted in reforms. No more. Many national groups are willing to accommodate the corporate-infested Democratic Party and few are willing to challenge the smug, scapegoating of progressive Third Parties that historically were first to champion fundamental reforms in our country.
The Democratic Party should be landsliding the most corrupt, vicious, bigoted, chronically lying, voter suppressing, anti-labor, anti-consumer and anti-environment GOP since its creation in 1854. The GOP’s off-the-wall positions against children’s well-being, women’s rights, and the willful aiding of massive tax evasions by the corporate super-rich and by starving the IRS’s enforcement budget should make it easy for the Dems to defeat the out-of-touch Republicans. But not when the Party is dialing for the same corporate campaign cash as the GOP.
Unfortunately, mutually reinforcing monocultures produce an inability to expand serious action agendas to wage peace over military Empire, to support communities over avaricious corporations, and climate protection over Chevron, ExxonMobil, et al. Further, the Democratic Party stubbornly refuses to look itself in the mirror to renew and reinvent itself in the light of the visible onrushing omnicides confronting the nation and the world.
Instead, in 2022, it celebrated its big losses to the mad dog Republicans because those losses were less than some polls predicted.
It is not enough that the Democratic Party tells its duopoly-encircled critics to shut up and get in line saying, “Don’t you realize how terrible the Republicans are?” Now Democratic Party leaders want no primary debates by Democratic presidential candidates. They want to leave the stage in the exclusive possession of President Joe Biden. The contentious GOP must be laughing about the ways the Dems suppress their own vote by spearheading a dull, scripted coronation.
Loyal critics of your immolating Democratic Party, emerge from your lairs and speak up. You have nothing to lose but more election defeats on the horizon in 2024.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The House passed a bill this week aimed at barring schools and universities from giving shelter to asylum seekers in a time when members of both major parties are increasing their attacks on migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. The Schools Not Shelters Act, originally introduced by Republican Rep. Marcus Molinaro (New York), passed the House 222 to 201 on Wednesday, with Republicans joined by four…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the course of the recent resolution to the long-brewing debt ceiling crisis, it was congressional bickering that drew the most attention. Although it was largely drowned out by senatorial diatribes, the final June 2 debt ceiling measure included a substantive change: a modification to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), widely known as food stamps. The new SNAP policy…
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The House is set to vote on a resolution today pledging the U.S.’s allegiance to Israel in perpetuity and outright denying Israel’s human rights violations, seemingly in order to isolate and punish Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) over a comment criticizing the state over the weekend. The one-page resolution, introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), states that “Israel is not a racist or…
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State-level abortion bans are wreaking havoc across the country, criminalizing abortion seekers, putting people’s lives at risk, and eroding access to reproductive care at large. But Republicans won’t be satisfied to just stop at the state-level, one Democrat is warning: They want to ban abortion nationwide. On Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) warned of the dire consequences for abortion…
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A group of House Democrats is pushing to censure Rep. George Santos (New York) following a remarkable series of scandals regarding the Republican’s fabrications about his professional life and potential financial violations. The effort is being led by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York), who is set to introduce a resolution Monday to censure Representative Santos for “defrauding the people of the…
Republican lawmakers in the US Congress are unabashedly pro-global warming: “Bring it on! We’ve got air conditioners in our cars, offices, and homes… no sweat!” Not one Republican in Congress voted for the nation’s most inclusive climate bill of all time, the Inflation Reduction Act, not one Republican vote.
Meanwhile, here we go again, this coming fall, with Congress in another deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown. They must pass several spending bills by September 30th when current funding expires or face another ugly quasi-default situation. Leading up to this white-knuckle drop-dead deadline, Republican lawmakers have armed themselves with a plethora of “climate poison pills” inserted into spending proposals. They hope to trim the budget by hammering climate funding.
They want to stop Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act dead in its tracks, and climate change is a prime target for massive cuts, to hell with global warming. They don’t buy into the climate change/global warming song and dance routine, as they like to reference it.
According to the Clean Budget Coalition, a watchdog group of advocacy nonprofits, at least seventeen (17) “poison pill” amendments have been issued to block clean energy funding. A poison pill is an amendment that weakens a legislative bill’s effectiveness and/or destroys its chances of passing.
This brings into focus a Republican Party that purportedly represents the interests of its constituents by torpedoing bills that mitigate global warming, consequently, eliminating green jobs in red states funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. There are lots of them. 1
Accordingly, “red states will receive $337B in investments for large solar, wind, and storage projects, Democratic states $183B” (Bloomberg News), making revenue assumptions more inclusive and beyond the Inflation Reduction Act of $375B as the act multiplies private initiatives.
An analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute, extending beyond renewable projects within the Inflation Reduction Act, red states will receive investments of $623B compared to $354B for blue states between now and 2030, assuming companies and consumers adopt clean technologies to meet national targets.
However, a new amendment proposal prohibits the federal government from buying electric vehicles. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) explains it, as follows: “The military is no place to experiment with untested technology… The combat readiness and training of soldiers and equipment is jeopardized by the compelled use of electric vehicles.” 2
Another amendment would prohibit R&D funding for EV charging infrastructure or solar panels within the National Defense Authorization Act.
Another demands the Defense Dept. terminate any contracts for electric non-combat vehicles.
Another amendment blocks the Biden executive order for federal departments to reach net-zero emissions by 2045 and reduce emissions by 50% by 2032.
Another amendment blocks all U.S. funding under the Paris climate agreement to help developing countries.
US Representative Paul Gosar, DDS, proposed his own solution in an October 10, 2021, tweet: “Even if climate change were real (it isn’t) there’s obviously solutions these ‘top scientists’ are ignoring. I have an ice maker in my basement. It can make gallons of ice cubes in a day. Can’t we just make a few million of these machines and replace this allegedly melting ice?”
Of course, none of this comes as a surprise. One year ago, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the nation’s first-ever comprehensive climate legislation, allocating $375B on decarbonization and climate resilience over 10 years, not backed by one Republican vote, zero Republican votes in the House and zero in the Senate. Now, they want to take their Republican opposition to climate policy one step further by undermining/compromising last year’s legislation.
The House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, under the leadership of Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) advanced its fiscal 2024 spending bill on June 23rd including a prohibition of funding for “envoys not authorized by Congress or confirmed by the Senate.” Ipso facto, John Kerry’s position as Climate Czar will be eliminated along with his office budget of $16.7M, annually.
The Clean Budget Coalition’s Deanna Noel responded: “The disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry.” 3
What’s going on with the lack of convincing congressional support to fight climate change as global warming clobbers the planet like never before? Elizabeth Kolbert explained the root cause in The New Yorker: “After Citizens United, according to the report (ed.-Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis) ‘Bipartisan activity on comprehensive climate legislation collapsed.” 4
The 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case ruled that corporations and wealthy donors could, effectively, pour unlimited amounts of cash into electioneering. And guess what happened next? They bought a bunch of sell-outs, easy-to-buy, off-the-shelf baby-kissers. Ever since Citizens United, “billionaires are sponsoring candidates like prized racehorses.” 5 They own them.
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is a prime example, and an answer to why so many grovel at Trump’s feet: “Thiel is a particularly alarming example. Through massive donations to super PACs, which Citizens United brought to the fore, he’s using his riches to force his fringe views into mainstream political discourse. He’s supporting candidates who spread the false claim that fraud decided the 2020 election. And his money doesn’t just force a certain type of candidate into the public eye — it also silences Thiel’s ideological opponents. By working to defeat the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, for example, Thiel has deterred others from speaking out against the former president. Few politicians can afford to ignore Thiel and the threat his money holds.” 6
That is today’s American politics at work. For three-years-running America’s highest-ranking politicians focused on phony voter fraud claims, not one shred of evidence so far, in the face of the most treacherous climate in human history, where funding cuts are now proposed.
ENDNOTES
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On Friday, the House passed yet another record high Department of Defense funding bill — but, unlike previous years, the bill didn’t pass with the usual bipartisan support, due in large part to an anti-abortion rider that Republicans approved late Thursday. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed Friday morning, authorizing a sky-high $886 billion for defense for 2024.
More than a dozen economic justice groups on Friday called on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee to move forward with fully funding the Internal Revenue Service, arguing that Republican actions have nullified a debt ceiling deal struck by the Biden White House and GOP leaders. Under the terms of the handshake agreement, the nation’s borrowing limit was suspended for two years in exchange for…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In a 2021 interview with the New York Times, UPS CEO Carol Tomé made a striking claim: She no longer believed in the godfather of trickle-down economics. “For a long time, I was sort of a Milton Friedman person: ‘The purpose of the corporation is to create value for the shareholder.’ I’m very much now of the belief that if you take care of the needs of all stakeholders, you actually create value for the share price. And taking care of the needs of all the stakeholders includes your employees.”
The change of heart was a remarkable admission for a C-suite executive who had paid little public attention to the question of workers rights during her two decades as a leader in corporate America. Yet even as Tomé positioned herself as a friend of the workers who make her company run, she continued to donate money to national Republicans set on gutting worker power and maximizing salaries for America’s top earners.
Tomé has donated over $70,000 in the past decade to national politicians and committees set on rolling back union protections, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. While Tomé has also made donations in recent years to Democratic candidates like Stacey Abrams and the voting rights group Fair Fight PAC, those contributions represent just a small fraction of her overall political giving — and she has made far bigger donations to politicians who are weakening voting rights in Georgia, where UPS is headquartered.
UPS did not respond to requests for comment.
Tomé’s professed realignment follows her appointment in 2020 to the top job at UPS, a company with 340,000 members represented by the powerful, and newly revitalized, Teamsters union. Talks between UPS management and the Teamsters over a new contract broke down earlier this month, pushing the union ever closer to a strike on August 1, authorized by over 97 percent of union membership.
The Teamsters militant President Sean O’Brien, who was elected last year, said in a June statement that the Teamsters are not playing chicken with threats of a strike and that UPS should meet the union’s demands to avoid what would be the largest U.S. work stoppage since the 1950s.
“Executives at UPS, some of whom get tens of millions of dollars a year, do not care about the hundreds of thousands of American workers who make this company run,” O’Brien said. “They don’t care about our members’ families. UPS doesn’t want to pay up. Their actions and insults at the bargaining table have proven they are just another corporation that wants to keep all the money at the top.”
The unresolved issues in the contract negotiation are increased wages for part-time workers, who make up the majority of UPS employees, and offering those same employees a path to full-time employment. Workers and UPS management have already hammered out an agreement to provide cooling systems in new UPS vehicles and to eliminate the current two-tier wage system, which creates a vast difference in pay between junior and senior employees.
Photo: Brittainy Newman/AP
In 2022, Tomé’s total compensation package was valued at $19 million. That same year, she donated $36,500 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which supports the campaigns of GOP Senate candidates across the country. Tomé’s NRSC donation followed prior donations to GOP senators, including $5,600 to former Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in 2019, $5,400 to Sen. David Perdue, also of Georgia, that same year, and $1,000 hat tips to GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins. She also donated $5,400 to Florida Sen. Rick Scott in 2018.
For decades, Senate Republicans have worked to roll back union rights to lower wages and increase the profits of corporate donors, like Tomé, who fill their campaign coffers. In a testament to this commitment, Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch sponsored legislation last month to strip unions of the right to enact work stoppages at ports, one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of the West Coast longshoremen’s union, which has held stoppages and slowdowns to maintain some of the highest blue-collar wages in America.
Last year, Senate Republicans similarly lashed out at America’s rail workers by voting against a deal negotiated by former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to increase sick days and avert a widespread work stoppage with the potential to disrupt hundreds of miles of U.S. rail. And, in 2021, Senate Republicans introduced national “right-to-work” legislation, which would eviscerate unions by suspending required worker dues.
Tomé has also spread cash around Georgia state politics. In 2017, she donated $1,000 to then-gubernatorial candidate Abrams, one of the few Democrats whose campaigns Tomé has supported. (She donated $2,500 to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and in 2021, $2,900 to Sen. Chuck Schumer and $1,000 to Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Helena Foulkes.) Abrams lost to Gov. Brian Kemp, who is notorious for his efforts to gut voting rights in the state. While Tomé made a $2,500 contribution in 2020 to the Fair Fight PAC, which advocates for expanded voter rights, she went on to donate $7,600 to Kemp the following year.
In 2021, Kemp signed a law that limited absentee ballot access, placed restrictions on food and water in voting lines, and limited the use of ballot drop boxes. He also joined fellow Republican governors to oppose tax credits for workers in America’s auto unions. “We are deeply concerned that Congress is considering legislation that gives union labor a competitive advantage over non-union labor in the electric vehicle market,” the governors wrote. “This legislation is not about supporting emerging technology but is instead a punitive attempt to side with labor unions at the cost of both American workers and consumers.”
As the August 1 strike looms, UPS announced this month that it would delay Tomé’s quarterly earnings call with shareholders until August 8, the latest the call has ever been scheduled since the company first went public in 1999. On her last call with shareholders, the CEO said she was confident a deal was in reach. “While we expect to hear a great deal of noise during the negotiations, I remain confident that a win, win, win contract is very achievable and that UPS and the Teamsters will reach an agreement by the end of July.”
This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The advocacy group Food & Water Watch on Thursday called out Republicans on a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee panel for pushing a 64% cut to a pair of federal clean water funds in the next fiscal year. “House Republicans should be ashamed of themselves,” declared Mary Grant, the group’s Public Water for All campaign director, in a statement.
House Republicans have made it a top priority this year to secure cuts to nearly every federal government program, spending months taking aim at welfare programs in order to allow millions of Americans to starve and languish. But in the latest draft of their 2024 spending bill that is moving through the chamber, Republicans are seeking to raise spending for one key group: themselves.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On Monday, House Republicans introduced a sweeping voter suppression bill that the party is touting as the “most conservative election bill” considered in the House in decades. Republicans traveled to Georgia, a major front of the party’s voter suppression campaign, to unveil the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act — a combination of almost 50 standalone bills that would urge states to…
A new campaign launched Thursday aims to channel widespread anger over the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against student debt cancellation into an effort to unseat House Republicans who have opposed and attempted to sabotage debt relief every step of the way. Launched by the nonprofit Protect Borrowers Action, the campaign will focus its attention on more than a dozen Republican-held seats in…
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Daniel Ellsberg marches in the San Francisco Pride Parade to free whistleblower Chelsea Manning, June 29, 2014 (Photo by R.D. Harris)
Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, fighting to the end to warn of the existential threat of nuclear war. The 92-year-old whistleblower left a legacy of peace activism dating to his courageous release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Given the advancing security state and the atrophying peace movement, could his accomplishments be repeated today in this time of war in Ukraine?
From “defense intellectual” to peace activist
Daniel Ellsberg started his career as a brilliant “defense intellectual” working for the military and quasi-state think tanks. He helped plan, among other things, nuclear first strikes against the Soviet Union with China as a secondary target. However, with access to top secret information, he came to understand that the Vietnam War was unwinnable and the government – surprise, surprise – was lying to the US public that it could and would prevail.
Ellsberg’s geopolitical posture underwent a sea change from being a master of war to a warrior for peace. This was in the 1960s, and the transformation did not happen in isolation.
Ellsberg reportedly attended his first peace demomonstration in 1965, while still working for the RAND Corporation. He was especially inspired by the example of Randy Kehler, a draft resister willing to go to prison for his beliefs. By May 1971, the to-be whistleblower participated in a mass demonstration against the Vietnam War in an “affinity group” with known radicals Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.
Could an analyst with access to top secret information also associate with nationally prominent dissidents, attend rallies against the military, yet go undetected and undeterred by today’s surveillance state apparatus? Not likely.
Also not likely, regrettably, is the revival of a political milieux like that of the sixties. This year, the Rage Against the War Machine demonstration, organized principally by the Libertarian and People’s parties, managed to attract only a few thousand to Washington on February 19. A few weeks later, another coalition led by ANSWER, UNAC, and others staged an anti-war rally on March 18 with similarly low turnout. Since then, there has not even been an attempt to mount a national demonstration against the ever escalating war in Ukraine.
Pentagon Papers purloined and published
Back in 1969, besides attending anti-war demos on his time off, Ellsberg was busy at work photocopying what were to become known as the Pentagon Papers, revealing the truth of the US imperial effort. To be sure, such a 7,000-page duplication feat could not be accomplished undetected under present security arrangements.
By 1970, Ellsberg was contacting sympathetic Democratic Party senators such as J. William Fulbright, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and George McGovern. They could release the papers on the floor of the Senate and still enjoy immunity from prosecution. They refused, but kept the liaison confidential.
After entrusting the Pentagon Papers with New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, the Times began publishing excerpts on June 31, 1971, without Ellsberg’s prior consent. Ellsberg also provided the Washington Post and other outlets with the papers, which published excerpts.
While the Times and the Post have long practiced follow-the-flag journalism, the fourth estate was still not yet quite the stenographers for the State Department and mouthpieces for the security agencies that they are now.
And today, unlike Fulbright and especially McGovern who were questioning the Vietnam War effort, not a single Democrat in either house opposes a war in Ukraine that is heading toward a nuclear exchange. Oddly, the contemporary politicians that could most nearly pass for peaceniks on Capitol Hill are far-right Republicans.
Fugitive Ellsberg
Once the Pentagon Papers went public, Ellsberg went on the lamb, precipitating the largest FBI “manhunt” since the Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932. But the feds never caught him. After thirteen days, Ellsberg simply turned himself in.
Such a hide-and-seek scenario would be impossible these days with our every move recorded on ubiquitous surveillance cameras. Eluding the 21st century police state is no longer an option.
Case dismissed due to government misconduct
Ellsberg went to trial on January 3, 1973, charged with theft and conspiracy under the 1917 Espionage Act. He faced 115 years in prison.
His defense was that the documents were illegally classified to keep them from the American public, not from a foreign enemy. That defense was disallowed.
The government was meanwhile busy collecting evidence against him. Operatives from the Nixon White House illegally broke into his psychiatrist’s house. The perpetrators included G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who weren’t caught then. But a year later the “plumbers,” which were initiated to get Ellsberg, got their comeuppance when they were implicated in the Watergate scandal. The FBI also illegally wiretapped Ellsberg’s phone and then claimed the recordings had been lost.
In light of such government misconduct, the Nixon-appointed judge on the case, William Byrne, was compelled to dismiss the case on May 13, 1973. The back story is that while the trial was in progress, the judge was offered the directorship of the FBI, which he wanted but had to wait until the trial was concluded before accepting.
Ellsberg went free and went on to be a leading voice for peace. Byrne never got the FBI appointment.
Shifting partisan views on the security state and war
Today, with modern surveillance techniques and the NSA collecting every citizen’s electronic communications, the FBI would have no need to wiretap as they did with Ellsberg. And federal court judges no longer impartially dismiss cases of whistleblowers who dare to defy the state, as with Obama prosecuting more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all previous presidents combined.
According to polls over the last decade, partisan views on the growing surveillance state have flipflopped. The majority of Republicans now oppose the security state while most Democrats embrace it. Likewise, the Democrats are the new party of war.
The Armageddon-loving crazies in the Pentagon now serve as a calming counterpoint to the White House and the neo-con warriors in the State Department. Compared to Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland, the baddie generals of the past look like pacifists.
Nixon and Kissinger conspired to split the socialist bloc, pitting People’s China against the Soviets. In contrast, the current somnambulist in the Oval Office is working overtime to forge a union of these two supposed enemy states, while preparing for nuclear war against them both.
And no one in official circles seems the least bit concerned that the juggernaut to planetary annihilation has a fatal design flaw; no brakes to stop it.
We are living in times when the likes of far-right Republican Tucker Carlson are the ones making reasonable critiques of the unfettered security state and of the continual provocations against Russia.
Barbara Lee and the whole lot of once peace-promoting Democrats have learned to love war, voting nearly unanimously for every military appropriation to the proxy conflict on Russia’s border. Unfortunately, the fear of fascism by putative liberals does not extend to actual Nazis in Ukraine.
Progressive Democrats
How about the strategy of progressives working within the Democratic Party to move it to the left? In practice, Bernie Sanders and the Squad have worked tirelessly from one celebrity ball to next to prove that the term “progressive Democrat” is an oxymoron. Yes, the senator from the Green Mountain State is still a cut above Mitch McConnell. But that is not a very high bar.
That same Vermont career politician is now a significant cut below the maverick crusader who had in more auspicious times run for the presidency in 2016 and 2020 on the platform that the whole system was rigged including the Democratic Party. In so doing, he proved the DNC was indeed rigged. And then he proceeded to unreservedly join the Democrats, sheep-dogging Our Revolution into the party.
When the Democrats held a trifecta of the executive, House, and Senate, Mr. Sanders’ $200 billion healthcare package was off the table. Yet when the House went Republican, Bernie revived the initiative knowing that it would be defeated.
To be fair, blame for the demise of liberalism must be shared with its constituents who have become so deranged by the specter of Donald Trump that they will swallow anything the Democrats feed them. Even formerly liberal publications like The Nation run hit pieces against RFK Jr., terrified that the pro forma presidential primaries might include someone questioning party orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, they remain clueless that working class Americans are not wildly enthusiastic about another four years of Kamala Harris and her running mate. The Democrat’s frontrunner currently has a dismal 40% approval rating.
The Vietnam and Ukraine wars
The release of the Pentagon Papers revealed that the state was cognizant of the futility of the Vietnam venture and was maliciously willing to continue at a horrific cost to US troops and a still greater toll of Vietnamese lives. The paper’s publication was credited with contributing to a growing domestic disenchantment with imperial war.
Saigon “fell” two years after Ellsberg’s case was dismissed. On April 30, 1975, the Vietnamese successfully repelled the aggressor on the battlefield. With the anti-war movement mounting and the troops resisting, Washington was forced to accept defeat.
Now the US is embroiled in yet another horrific war, but a war of a different kind. The Ukraine War is a proxy war without a major commitment of US troops. However, similar to the exposés of the Pentagon Papers, it is now known that:
– The war in Ukraine was deliberately provoked by the US.
– The Minsk accords were a cynical ploy to buy time to arm Ukraine.
– US boots are being deployed on the ground.
– The US intends to eschew any negotiated peace.
– The war is unwinnable.
– The carnage is about maintaining empire, not preserving democracy.
Why haven’t those revelations mobilized the peace movement? One contributing factor is its connections to the Democrats who have wholesale converted into a party of war.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Pastor Philip Schmitter waited more than 20 years for the Environmental Protection Agency to do its job. In 1992, he’d filed a civil rights complaint to halt the construction of a power station that would spew toxic lead into the air of his predominantly Black community in Flint, Michigan. Decades passed without a response, so he joined four other groups around the country in a lawsuit to compel…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Far right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has unveiled a list of four federal agencies he would completely eliminate if he were elected president, putting on display his wish to deeply destabilize the country’s social welfare system in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. When asked if he would shutter any federal agencies, DeSantis said that “we would do Education, we would do Commerce…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An Indiana chapter of the far right hate group Moms for Liberty posted a newsletter on Wednesday featuring a quote from Adolf Hitler on the front page — and is now attacking the news outlet that first reported on the incident. As IndyStar reported this week, the Hamilton County chapter of Moms for Liberty — a group most recently in the news for being labeled an extremist group by the Southern…
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The post President Biden rolls out economic and military agreements during Indian Prime Minister’s visit; Republicans at odds with each other over impeachment resolution for President Biden; Lithium mining company sues Native American protestors: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – June 22, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would majorly restrict access to abortion pill mifepristone as part of a quiet effort to attack abortion rights at the federal level. Last week, the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee advanced funding legislation regarding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that would revoke an FDA decision finalized earlier this year that greatly…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll taken during 14-15 June 2023, shows the following net approval rating (“Favorable” minus “Unfavorable”) for all of the listed possible candidates:
+21% Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
+9% Elon Musk
+9% Tim Scott
+8% Vivek Ramaswamy
+5% Ron DeSantis
+4% Nikki Haley
-1% Bernie Sanders
-3% Donald Trump, Doug Bergum, Ted Cruz
-6% Maryanne Williamson
-7% Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson
-8% Chuck Schumer
-10% Kamala Harris, Joe Manchin, Gavin Newsom
-11% Joe Biden
-12% Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
-16% Chris Christie
-17% Hillary Clinton
-24% Mitch McConnell
Kennedy is tied with Trump for “Favorable” at 45% for each, but whereas Trump has a 48% “Unfavorable” rating, Kennedy’s “Unfavorable” is only 25%; so, if Party-affiliation were not a factor (which was the intention of America’s Founders), then Kennedy would at the present time be the most preferred person to become President.
Musk ties with them on “Favorable” at 45%, and his “Unfavorable” is 36%; so, he’s currently the second-most-preferred next President.
DeSantis’s “Favorable” is 43%, while his “Unfavorable” is 37%; but the closest whole number reflecting the difference (his “Net Favorable”) is +5% not +6%.
Sanders’s “Favorable” is 42%, while his “Unfavorable” is 43%; so, his “Net Favorable” is -1%.
Though Scott is tied with Musk at +9% “Net Favorable,” Scott’s “Favorable” is 10% less than Musk’s, at 35% “Favorable.” Scott’s “Unfavorable” is 25%, as compared to Musk’s 36% “Unfavorable.” (Scott isn’t as well-known as is Musk.)
Ramaswamy’s “Favorable” is 27%, and his “Unfavorable” is 18%; so, he’s even less-well-known than is Scott.
The most-well-known possible candidates are Trump and Biden tied at 93% known. Clinton is 90% known. Harris is 88% known. Sanders is 85% known.
Kennedy is only 70% known. That’s 30% unknown; so, though he is currently by far the leading candidate, he also is the major prospective candidate who can fall the farthest.
By contrast, Clinton is deeply disliked, at 53% “Unfavorable.”
Biden too is deeply disliked, at 52% “Unfavorable.”
Harris and McConnell are tied as both at 49% “Unfavorable.”
The fifth-most disliked is Trump at 48% “Unfavorable.”
The most-detested person on the list is McConnell at 49% “Unfavorable” and 26% “Favorable.”
Since America’s Founders failed to avoid there being political Parties, here are the answers to the Party-primary questions:
“If the Democratic presidential primary for the 2024 election was held today, who would you vote for? (Dem Voters)”: Biden 62%, Kennedy 15%, Someone else 8%, Williamson 4%, Unsure 12%.
Trump gets 77% against Scott, and 67% against DeSantis.
“TRUMP WINS A HYPOTHETICAL HORSERACE AGAINST BIDEN BY SIX POINTS, AGAINST HARRIS BY SEVEN” (The polling organization failed to indicate whether RFK Jr. would today win against Trump, because the expectation is that he would but the megadonors who control U.S. “elections” are terrified of him and so the DNC can’t stand him. However, the pollster did publish that 69% of Democrats say they’d be disappointed if the two-Party contest ends up being Biden versus Trump. BY CONTRAST: The polling organization avoided asking a comparable question of Republicans; but, of the questions they did ask, Republicans seemed to be less-dissatisfied to have Trump be their nominee than Democrats clearly indicated that they would be if Biden turns out to be their nominee. Again: the pollster seems to have tried to avoid drawing favorable attention to RFK Jr. as possibly being the nominee.)
57% of voters think “JOE BIDEN TOOK A $5 MILLION BRIBE WHEN HE WAS VICE PRESIDENT.” (No Party-breakdown on that: Presumably, most of those 57% are Republican voters anyway.)
The pollsters avoided asking respondents’ race, probably because South Carolina was the earliest Democratic Party primary that Biden won, and he won by a huge margin, over two-to-one, against Sanders, especially among black voters, who dominate that state’s Democratic Party; so, the DNC has now made that the first primary in the 2024 contest, since Biden was enormously popular among that state’s Democratic Party voters. The expectation is that RFK Jr. will get crushed in the S.C. primary, the first primary, on 3 February 2024. Next up will be February 6 with both NH and NV — two states that Sanders had won. Then February 13 with Georgia (another SC) expected to go overwhelmingly for Biden; then February 27th with Michigan being a crucial wild card. Then a slew of southern states, because it was the black voters who made Biden become the Party’s nominee. So: Blacks will again end up choosing the Democratic Party’s nominee, and Whites will end up again determining the Republican Party’s nominee, and the billionaires won’t need to worry about anything, because the public will see themselves as racially divided, instead of as being class-divided (billionaires versus the public), and things will therefore go on as they have been.
By far the most-favorably-viewed “Institution” of the eleven that are listed is “U.S. Military.” “Police” are #2. “FBI” is #3. #11 is “MAGA Republicans.” #10 is “CNN.” Tied as #s 7, 8, & 9, are MSNBC, BLM, and Fox News. In the middle are the Justice Department and U.S. Supreme Court.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.
A coalition of doctors and abortion rights advocates wants to make Ohio the first Republican-controlled state to vote to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution — but they must first defeat Republicans’ efforts to thwart the measure. Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights (OPRR), which launched in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, and Ohioians for Reproductive Freedom…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On Tuesday, Republicans voted to pass legislation that would prohibit the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning gas stoves — a proposal that was never quite on the table for the Biden administration, but that became a major moment in Republicans’ culture war nonetheless. The legislation, which passed with all Republicans and 29 Democrats voting “yes,” is largely symbolic.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
