Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones decried the “authoritarianism” of House Republicans on Monday after they voted to silence him for the remainder of the day’s floor session, using newly enacted chamber rules aimed at shutting down members who are deemed out of order. The Tennessee House’s GOP supermajority barred Jones (D-52) — a member of the so-called ” Tennessee Three” — from speaking for the…
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Child gun deaths hit a record high in 2021, breaking the previous record set just one year before, new research finds. A total of 4,752 children in the U.S. died gun-related deaths in 2021, a new study found using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. This is an 8.8 percent increase in the pediatric gun mortality rate for 2020 and a staggering 41.5 percent increase from 2018.
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The Republican Party has rarely shied from testing its powers to the fullest possible extent, up to and past the point of unscrupulousness and rank hypocrisy. Defending socioeconomic hierarchy has always been its central task, but the GOP in its current incarnation can seem particularly rabid. The Trump presidency seems to have perceptibly eroded decorum and staid political procedure while at the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A recent campaign ad targeting West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin shows the centrist Democrat standing alongside President Biden, applauding the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ominous music plays as the words, attributed to Biden, “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuel” splash across the screen. The spot, from a dark money group aligned with Republicans, paints Manchin as a…
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I should probably be ashamed to admit this but my favorite part of any presidential election season is the Republican primaries, especially the debates. Since Republicans rarely have an incumbent president running (they have only had three Republican presidents in the last 35 years) the primaries are usually a free-for-all that features some very eccentric fringe characters as well as the…
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The Far-Right takeover of the Republican Party has readied a battle plan for 2025 that will crucify commitments to fight global heat; namely, Project 2025 / Presidential Transition Project, a 920-page formal proposal to take over and reconstruct government via abandonment and/or defunding of federal agencies that protect the nation’s health and environment.
Project 2025’s call to arms: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” 1
“That ‘cultural Marxism’ is a crude slander, referring to something that does not exist, unfortunately does not mean actual people are not being set up to pay the price, as scapegoats to appease a rising sense of anger and anxiety. And for that reason, ‘cultural Marxism’ is not only a sad diversion from framing legitimate grievances but also a dangerous lure in an increasingly unhinged moment.” 2
Project 2025 wants to “save the country” by marshalling forces on “day-one” of a newly elected Republican administration, pulling the plug, deconstructing/destroying the administrative state. The Heritage Foundation, which compiled the plan, intends to speak for the people of the nation via enactment of Project 2025 hitting the ground running on the day of the swearing-in of the next Republican president, anticipated January 2025 in a hopeful repeat of the Republican idealized presidency of 1981-89 when Ronald Reagan served as “the embodiment of the ideas and principles Heritage holds dear.” 3
Heritage Foundation’s enduring influence strikes hard, but at times subtly, hidden, secretively far and wide throughout America’s political landscape, like a sponge soaking up and spewing out agenda for all of America, school boards, local, state, and federal positions of influence over lives of Americans, often times, whether they know it or not. So therefore, is Heritage positive or negative for the country? Hmm. Regardless, no other NGO’s clout compares, as Heritage buys, with hard (and dark) dollars, governmental policy as easily as shopping at Costco.
Therefore, as a result, and certainly inclusive of Heritage, America harks back to the feudal vassal socio-economic system of a 1,000 years ago, a simplistic lifestyle with the monarch providing defense for vassals that, in turn, obey the monarch’s every wish/command, rugged individualism reigns supreme, overlaying governmental functionaries not required. Grin and bear it, you’re on your own, buster!
Project 2025 has its sights set on the Biden Inflation Reduction Act with massive volleys of canon fire loaded, cocked, and directly aimed at Biden’s plans to reduce emissions and fund clean energy. “More than 350 right-wing thinkers” (hmm, really?) contributed to Project 2025 tactics designed to (1) block wind and solar power from the electrical grid (2) gut the EPA (3) eliminate the Dept. of Energy’s renewable energy offices (4) prohibit universal adoption of California’s tailpipe standards (5) transfer federal environmental duties to states (6) increase fossil fuel infrastructure.
Project 2025 is the consummate antithesis of Paris ’15, and so much more by taking a baseball bat to the federal bureaucracy and shifting very tenuous authority to individual states. In Project 2025’s own words: “If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it.” 4 Once again, repeating the obvious, it’s the primo absolute perfect antidote to Paris ’15.
Essentially, Project 2025 is a major fundamental shift in government, moving federal agencies away from public health protection and environmental regulations that interfere with free market capitalism, under a manifest plan: Why should government dictate policy to the free market? With Project 2025, this impediment of federal government regulation over free enterprise is severely reduced or removed, for example, gutting the Dept. of Energy via huge cuts in key divisions that pertain to clean renewable energy and cuts to the DOE’s Grid Development Office, stopping grid expansion of renewable resources; meanwhile, natural gas infrastructure will be expanded???
But if renewables are evil (no federal support) and natural gas is good (gobs of federal support) then where and how is a distinction drawn between governmental influence “hands on” versus “hands off” don’t tread on me? So then, is Project 2025 a case study in contradictions?
Moreover, the plan adheres to a long-standing feudalistic practice of snitching to gain favor with the mighty monarch. One proposed snitch idea offers incentives to untrained non-professional vassals that “identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.” This incentivizes opponents of governmental regulations to target research. For example, challenging EPA regulations about risks to public health from industrial pollution. Proposal 2025 will turn the screws ever harder by requiring scientific studies to be “transparent and reproducible,” making it nearly impossible to produce credible analyses of public health issues that require private data that cannot legally be disclosed to the public. Ipso facto, critical scientific studies that could/should protect the public are hog-tied and tossed into a humongous dust bin.
Already, Project 2025 is assembling thousands upon thousands of vassals that will dependably follow orders, with razor-sharp salutes, starting day-one. This is a powerful overwhelming surprising departure from the lead-up to the 2016 presidency election: “Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshalling our forces.” 5 A battle plan including 20,000+ combatant black shirts.
In tacit support of Project 2025, GOP presidential candidates, when queried about global warming, express indifference: 6 No guts, no opinion.
While in office, Trump unwound more than 100 existing environmental regulations, setting a record for dismantling federal agencies. Project 2025 is perfectly sculpted for his return with sledgehammer in hand to pummel federal agencies with much more gusto than before!
Still, a hard question remains whether Americans will vote to goose-up global heat.
Will they?
END NOTES:
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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For years, Oregon Republicans have been blocking bill after bill in the state legislature through a drastic tactic: skipping town to break quorum. Now, Oregon officials are saying that the Republicans who have obstructed votes this way at least 10 times are going to be barred from running for re-election in 2024. This week, Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade confirmed that she…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Take your pick from two definitions of modern-day Republicans: foolish hypocrites or hypocritical fools. When it comes to America’s $32 trillion federal deficit, each one is as fitting as the other. They’re hypocrites for saying one thing and doing another. They’re fools because the actions they take are driving the deficit ever higher.
Let’s listen to the words Republicans mouth. Let’s look at the laws they pass and propose. Let’s zero in on their special ways of spending—and spurning—tax dollars.
Off we go, into a world of debt created by the party that claims to be concerned about debt.
Just a couple months back, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the GOP created a debt ceiling crisis. McCarthy and President Biden ultimately forged an agreement to avoid a U.S. default, but it didn’t impress Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. “After this deal,” DeSantis warned, “our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy.”
Not two weeks later, the GOP-led House was doing everything it could to turn DeSantis into a prophet. With classic hypocrisy, it “released a plan that would slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy” and cost the government $240 billion over the next decade. With classic foolishness, it went all out to cut double-digit billions from Biden’s long-term funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Altogether, via three separate cuts, the GOP proposed slashing more than $21 billion from the IRS allocation.
Surprise, surprise: Short-changing America’s tax collection agency won’t save a penny. In fact, it’ll likely cost about $120 billion.
It’s simple arithmetic: In fiscal 2022, “the IRS collected $72.4 billion through enforcement programs, a return on investment (ROI) of about $6 to $1.” The real ROI is almost certain to be greater, since the $6 to $1 ratio doesn’t include the deterrence effect—the additional billions that come in because audit-fearing taxpayers file more honest returns.
Republicans actually delight in starving the IRS. Here’s Rep. Dave Joyce, an Ohio representative, making GOP happy talk a while back: “I know that when we were in the majority [from 2010 – 2018]…we took great pleasure in cutting the amount of money that was going to the IRS every year.”
They’re in the majority again, taking great pleasure again, and their foolishness has become more costly than ever. A new paper by tax experts and former Treasury officials Natasha Sarin and Mark J. Mazur addressed the ever-higher costs and what keeps pushing them up.
As the authors point out, “about 15% of the taxes that are owed are not voluntarily remitted and ultimately not collected.” That’s led to an annual tax gap of $600 billion—a gap that directly reflects the gutting of IRS budgets. Audit rates have been declining every year since 2010, the agency is operating with 22 percent fewer people, and it’s been forced to stick with outmoded systems and equipment.
It’s plain common sense that more money for the IRS can cut that $600 billion gap. It’s especially true when the audits focus on high-income taxpayers.
The agency’s return of $6 for every $1 spent, cited earlier, was an overall figure. According to a study published just last month, “an additional $1 spent auditing taxpayers above the 90th percentile [i.e., the top 10 percent] yields more than $12 in revenue.” Audits of high-income taxpayers do cost more money, “but the additional revenue more than offsets the costs.”
The 12:1 return includes the deterrence effect, and it’s humongous: deterrence raises an estimated three times as much revenue from high-income taxpayers as the initial audits.
Getting back to the federal deficit, the GOP is far from alone in its hawkishness. The latest long-term projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “reveal deep structural problems… that will keep the debt on an unsustainable path and diminish the opportunities and choices of future generations.”
Republicans, though, are in a class all by themselves at minimizing federal revenues. They expand the deficit by penny-pinching the IRS. They cost the Treasury trillions with tax cuts for people who don’t need them. They resist and vote down every Democratic effort to make the rich pay “their fair share”.
All of which makes them hypocritical fools or foolish hypocrites: take your pick.
Addendum: Newly-released figures underscore the folly of playing politics with IRS budgets. The agency collected $38 million in unpaid taxes from certain high-income taxpayers in the past few months, an average of roughly $215,000 per case. The revenue came in through an initiative paid for with the first infusion of new agency funding. “It just shows you,” said IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, “how much money is out there in delinquent taxes.”
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Four years ago, a gunman drove across Texas and committed a racist massacre at a Walmart in El Paso to thwart what he claimed was a “Hispanic invasion.” Now, an advocacy group launched by former Vice President Mike Pence to support his floundering presidential campaign is setting off alarm bells. The first point on the Pence group’s immigration policy platform? Direct Congress to pass legislation…
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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 &
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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…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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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.
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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.
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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…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Join The Conversation
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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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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.