Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse in the New York Times yesterday noted that House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) cannot bring his conference together behind a budget plan.
Wow! Vision of what we can be. Strategies flexible enough to work for many and not just the few. A real plan and partners willing to join from all over the world. The will to see it through. A roller coaster ride for sure. Full of scary highs and lows. And hope.
That's the major difference between Democrats & Republicans. We represent, for the most part, hope & positivity, THEY offer doom, gloom, pessimism, ignorance, negativity, TRIBALISM ( especially ! ), etc. then blame it on us / lay it at our doorstep like a sack of flaming dog - poop.
"They" believe in the strong individual...not the group, not the masses. We are here to serve them, to enrich them. "We" believe in the group, in the huddled masses...and "fairness"...not greed.
What Sullivan described is the best national/ international plan an administration has put forth since Kennedy’s idealism. The most difficult task will be to get 51% of Americans to care about people they don’t personally know.
For Rs it is to get them to have something other than greed, power, white supremacy, "Christian" theocracy, and owning the libs as their goals. Another frustration of mine are those who bellyache about the Electoral College and want representation by population only. The EC isn't going away soon and the House is population based and the Senate a compromise that every state has two Senators, also not going to change anytime soon. A lot of you report on the work you put in on helping with voting, and any other number of other good works .....things we can actually do, trying to make the ideals of our democracy real for all people. It's slow and messy and hard work, so this am I offer gratitude and kudos to all of you who are doing what you can.
Mostly, the House based on gerrymandering, unfortunately. That’s the result of 15 years of abandoning the idea of building state-level democratic parties. The Dems are just now concentrating on building state-level parties that can elect state and local democrats.
I agree with you that it is hard work and a sustained, deliberate process.
And to care about people they do know but who might not be like them and also people who might need help. I know a lot of people who believe if you can't afford a nice house and car and can't take your family on vacation twice a year, it must be because you are lazy.
Or, if you are Black, Jewish, Muslim, LBGTQ, certainly trans, have an accent, are a smart, ambitious woman, or have an advanced degree — then you are not a “Real American,” and your don’t deserve the same rights and privileges that white, male, Christians deserve.
I’m not at sll sure the GOP believes in the strong individual. They believe in certain privileged individuals, certainly. Beyond those relative few, however, I don’t think there’s a lot of human concern.
I hope we believe in individuals, and have the same level of concern for humanity at large.
when I say "strong individuals" they seem to not care about welfare, social security, medicare...it's a "do self" attitude. I'd bet that most "survivalists" are Republican or Libertarian. It's the cowboy culture. NRA culture. That's what I'm talking about...the folks who vote for the privileged folks like Trump...the ones who stormed the Capitol, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers...those guys.
Those you called strong are the weakest. They aren't rational thinkers; their actions are determined by anger and fear. The GOP like them because they are more easily propagandized and thus controlled.
They are fear driven...they think they are "strong" individuals who take care of themselves...but they ignore all that government provides for them...roads, schools, police, defense, etc.
Love thy Neighbor as Thyself? The problem is getting ourselves to accept that most of our neighbors do not live next door and do not necessarily share our beliefs, though they are just as human as we are. Future generations not excluded.
And by extension, I am strong, I will be successful if left alone, I will get mine, I will be a beacon of light for those other strong entrepreneurs with a good product and an open market ... until, I pull my share and walk away, but, I got mine. To which I add this truth: These individual pursue maximum return on their investment (and exploitation of resources, human and otherwise), always advocating "Don't fix it unless (usually until) its broke" and let government carry the cost to fix and regulate and hedge funds to suck the last drop of value from the product or service left behind by the individual economic engine. The backside of that success heap is environmental, human, and social waste. Success aspired to in this nation is getting out with your share, the rest be damned to their own failures while carrying along as well the cost to reclaim the environment, feed the poor, heal the maimed, and restore the soul of the nation.
Fred, that really does sum it up. It's the "robber baron" approach to life. I'll be the "big man" and build the railroad, with your labor, with your tickets purchased, with whatever help I can get from elected officials...bonds, lands, right of way...screw the Indians, screw whoever settled there, take advantage of immigrant labor...did it open up the country faster...yes it did...did science advance a lot...yes it did. Did a few people get crazy wealthy? yes they did...but at what expense to the average person ? Could they have paid higher wages? YES. Could they have been more caring and giving? YES.
My friend Gene Bruskin wrote and produced an historical musical, in the model of "Hamilton", titled "The Moment was Now" when America almost did the right thing. Frederick Douglass is the glue that holds the show together, set here in Baltimore.
I documented the premier performances here for the purpose of creating promo material to tour the show. Covid came along and our videos became the show, which was shared mostly via zoom performances. It has not been performed live again since Covid.
Sadly Julia Nixon who played and powerfully sang the role of Frances Harper...an amazing woman I knew nothing about until we did this show...died from Covid, just as we were considering doing more shows.
Gene has written a new musical show centered on John Brown that is in the early stages of pre-production, with a fall premier set. We intend to be a part of that. Watch for more on my page.
John, if you really listened to earth, you would hear that the economic policies of autocrats have cheated the masses, left them starving, and fighting for survival. A knowledge of history would also let you understand that the dark ages ended when ordinary people learned to read and began to design an enlightened era where they and not just a few could enjoy the benefits of their labor.
So true, Daniel. I really find it frustrating and sad that people will gravitate to the doom, gloom, etc. etc. Plus, I think the horrible message that the repuklicans keep spieling sells more papers and ad time for the media.
On the nail head Colette. Again our collective influence is not to echo the negative, support or buy from. Bargaining power lies in the consumer , numbers matter. We can boycott effectively , notice given, right.!?
I want to support the companies who standby good practices, good news media that truths will be accountable , sensationalism is soap opera mentality carefully and methodically ingrained in too many factors for over 40+ years. Stop watching . Stop buying. Stop support. Learn the alternatives, the better quality ...it’s like cooking from scratch vs instant potatoes ..get it? We CAN, we HAVE TO demand responsible marketing,news, advertising, canvassing, laws, politicians, judicial, federal and state fiscal accountability. We need to come up to speed for the good of ALL.
Loved the positive message, Heather ...this is the truth of wonderfully interesting reading ..accurate factual happenings.
Doesn’t have to be a make believe world , by known liars, and repetitious doomsayers , whose promises are as fake as their future forecasts year after year after year!
Let that ‘trickle down’ into reality with greater success! Please.
Colette, do you not believe that the media is currently making an effort to modernize and become more technologically sophisticated in light of the Internet?
From my reading of conservative publications - at least the respectable ones - they don’t offer doom, gloom and pessimism to everyone. Only to those who are already struggling and can’t use the system to their own benefit, as they do. It’s an ideology of selfishness, not despair.
In response to Daniel's original comment pointing out 'the major difference between Democrats & Republicans,' if you pause and think about it, the 'We' and the 'THEY' he mentions can represent either Republicans or Democrats and are interchangable labels, depending on one's political perspective. Economic theory is contaminated when mixed with political labels.
Unfortunately, there are some issues on which Democrats and Republicans are equally abysmal, such as U.S. complicity in the most far-reaching genocide in history.
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Yes, the rising tide lifting all boats. Imagine, thinking of ourselves as a single species instead of battling tribes. Imagine actually acting "Christian" in the original sense of the word.
The last paragraph - Sullivans summation - was really important. If one can't applaud this, then one is probably more interested in personal profits than the health of others.
"....then we’re going to build the resilience we need…so that no natural disaster or geopolitical shock can stop us from getting things we need when we need them….”
I guess the Republicans have forgotten what it was like when the Pandemic hit and the supply chains froze. We ran out of simple things like PPE and the chemicals needed for testing. Masks intended for one time, one patient use were worn all day by nurses. Life saving essentials stuck in China. And still, too many of our essential medicines come exclusively from - guess where.
Repubs, like their "dear leader," only remember the very last thing that was said to them. And since they only watch FOX or other right wing liars, they can't "remember" anything good ever done by any Dem.
I'll add, that the way republicans try to run things is like a "Jerry Springer" show. At least the late Springer admitted his was a stupid show and he knew it, but it was "entertaining" and of course it made him wealthy. That it brought a really nasty element to society doesn't seem to matter to these people. I'll take issue with "entertaining" but it sure was stupid (I never watched the show as I had to go to an office to work in those days but have seen clips over the years). Unfortunately, republicans actually believe that is how government is supposed to work. Pretty sick.
OMG! The Biden team has a plan to make life better for all of us this time. Imagine that instead of the wild chimpanzees screaming and howling and throwing things and fighting with each other, which is the Republicans' MO.
Everyone should read this powerful letter! Heather's clarity in describing Biden's brilliant vision and its shared benefits for all is compelling. Dem's working on all upcoming elections should amplify it.
What I appreciate from reading this LFAA today is a reporting on the fundamental workings of a government working on behalf of it's people. The folks doing that work and talking to Americans, rather than a talking head interpreting or the leader (president) simplifying and taking credit for what HE/HIS administration is achieving. I want to know what and how my government is working and how the delegated agencies are implementing and being accountable for the policies and practices. I need to be assured both that there is a sound (feasible) plan, not general ideas, and that what is being done (and accomplished and is effective) to make our economy buzz, benefits accrue to most of us, and see how the goals economic, societal, and technologically can be achieved whether nationally or internationally. I hear leadership in this reporting. I hear a rational plan that enables international collaboration and advantages for job creation and stable supply chains within our country and backstop resources from other nations when things get uncertain. I do hear a restoration of the American greatness, not from threats and thundering nationalism, but a real understanding of what American is and how it became great, within itself and its accomplishments, but also, and so important, being a part of the silent generation that I am, being a leader nation that fosters alliances, collaboration, invention, advancement, and competition where competition yields it's real rewards: Creations in progressive values, support for opportunity and safety, and for advancing the human spirit and potential of our present people and people who, in the future, will wish to become contributors in and American culture, an American democracy. I feel pride, reading this today, in what my government and my country are doing. I feel the possibility that we can regain our purpose, our soul, our standing because we have good and well prepared people at all levels of our national agencies.
Fake white Biden liberals, praising Biden for spending zillions of borrowed dollars for Worthwhile Projects, heedless of how their spending spree exports inflation (thanks to the Almighty Dollar as a global reserve currency), compounding the economic woes of hapless darker-skinned countries who have been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund. And then there is Biden's profligate waste of money and weapons supporting the thuggish, corrupt, undemocratic one-party right-wing regime in Ukraine, pumping up a global weapons black market with who knows what ghastly terrorist consequence in the works, while the zombified Ukrainians make payments on their unpayable I.M.F./NATO loan with pounds and pounds of bloody flesh, the latest permutation of the most far-reaching genocide in history.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
Globally, the "growing toxicity of the dollar" is pushing countries to start conducting trade in other currencies. Articles like this are becoming commonplace:
I've reported him a couple of times so far, and asked the admins that he be blocked, if possible. As he shows up in response to a comment going forward, I'll keep reporting and requesting that he be blocked.
A fine place, still voting for Democrats, with strong unions, and with an openmindedness based on its verdant academic environment including Muhlenberg College and nearby Lehigh and Lafayette as well. Where did you go wrong? From where does your bitterness come?
Thank you for that. Sometimes people on this forum get a bit heated in what they say, and I've seen them chastise each other. Like the old definition of porn, I "know it when I see it" and this guy is a troll.
Wow! You lost me at “fake white Biden liberals”. Usually, people comment on the general historical thrust of heather’s discourses and don’t attack her ideas or readers. I use her missives to inform myself and really appreciate her hard work and perspective.
Do not engage with him. Please just report him to the forum administrator. Eventually, they remove their ability to comment. It take multiple reports from multiple people.
BC. [;ease don't engage the troll. I am highly suspicious that this troll is the same one that got eliminated by the forum administrator previously. It takes multiple reports from multiple people. I no longer attempt to engage as he ALWAYS has to have the final word, no matter how inane his retort if.
Jim and Dave, as I have posted above, don't bother to engage. Just report him to the forum administrator. It takes time, but with a prior troll, once multiple people started reporting multiple times, it got removed. Report each and every post.
Thanks, Miselle. I guess I shouldn’t be indulging my impulse to amuse myself, hey!? Maybe amuse others as well. Esp since troll breakthrough is so unusual on Heather’s site.
But yeah, I’m happy to take your suggestion under advisement.
You appear to be confused about the pronunciation of my name, which is easily mocked. The correct pronunciation is here (because a lot of my Facebook friends are not native English speakers), near the top : https://m.facebook.com/john.schmeeckle
Your writing makes it very clear what a sloppy mess the Republicant party is. McCarthy got his picture all over the news for proposing the same old nasty crap— the rich get richer while the workers stay in their place.
It's had to believe that the rich getting way richer was not always the ulterior motive under the patent fairy-tale scenarios presented by "Reaganomics". The "austerity" part is bait and switch; pubic treasuries and Main St. bank accounts were billed as certain to proper as never before. Forty + years later, it's mainly mega-yachts and personal spacecraft that are riding high.
Sullivan's phase " the surest path to restoring the middle class" assumes that the reader knows that the US "middle class" has been in decline over they years "Reaganomic" policies; which was always a predictable outcome. The real modern Republican objective, besides their quest for Absolute Power, has been a return to the bad old days of "The Gilded Age", if not warmed-over feudalism.
JL I read that down near Mar a Lago as well as in New York some of the present day Gilded Agers pay $100,000-to-200,000 annually to belong to exclusive restaurants where they can easily book reservations. Personally, my wife and I find Starbucks a bit pricy.
Keith, You have showed interest in the country's banking policy. Here are the major findings of Fed Reserve's report out today, more to come.
'Fed says it must strengthen banking rules after SVB’s collapse (excerpts)
In a scathing report, the Federal Reserve on Friday outlined a series of disastrous decisions that led to the downfall of Silicon Valley Bank — including failures by the central bank’s own supervisors to ward off last month’s crisis.'
'The much-anticipated 114-page report set the stage for a new, aggressive push by the Fed to restrengthen bank regulation, in an attempt to tighten up many of the rules that were eased by Congress on a bipartisan vote in 2018 and loosened further by the Fed in 2019.'
'Barr, nominated by President Biden as the Fed’s chief banking cop in 2022, wrote the report on SVB and will lead the push for new rules. He has long been a critic of past moves to weaken oversight of the banking system, which he had helped strengthen after the 2008 financial crisis.'
‘Barr’s investigation pointed to four main culprits, with blame spanning from the bank’s reckless executives to Congress’s push to weaken oversight of the banking system. The report also characterized SVB’s meltdown as a perfect storm of compounding hazards: the bank’s explosive growth, a weak supervisory culture at the Fed, even the pandemic’s interference with routine examinations.’ (WAPO) Article printed in today’s paper. Sorry, gifted option not available.
FERN The SVB disbalance between rushed outflow of hot deposits and long-term low-interest assets is a harbinger for further bank panics.
You may have heard of the collapse of over 7,000 banks as FDR took office in March, 1933. Banks then (and now) do not have sufficient cash to pay customers who rush to withdraw their deposits.
The S&L debacle in the 1980s reflected this. S&Ls were limited as to the interest on their deposits. When money market funds evolved, during high inflation of the late 70s-early 80s depositors rushed to move their deposits into money funds. The S&L, with long-term, low-interest assets went bust. I recall that the government ended up with a $150+/- bill.
Currently the first tier banks are under rather strict SEC regulations. This has been weakened under Trump for the $50-250 billion banks, and is even worst for the smaller banks. These smaller banks are most vulnerable on local commercial loans, including real estate.
Especially if there is a national debt default, I foresee another bank crisis. Most recently the Fed/Treasury stepped in to guarantee deposits over the $250,000 FDIC limit. Were this to become a repeat government finger in the bad bank dike again, longer term this will cause a further disbalance in our banking system/
Ah, 'short-term', there is the rub. How do you answer your question, Keith? I respond by recommending stronger regulation and examining the details provided by the Fed's Report.
'Warren, Senators, Call on Fed to Strengthen Rules for Banks with Assets Over $100B
“In order to restore sufficient safety practices to the banking system and restore consumers’ confidence in the soundness of their banks, the Fed must immediately exercise its authority to apply enhanced prudential standards and supervision to banks with $100-$250 billion in assets,” the senators wrote.'
'Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Angus King (I-Maine), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve (Fed) Michael Barr, calling on him to exercise the Fed’s authority to apply stronger regulation and supervision to banks with assets totaling $100 to $250 billion. ' See link below.
‘The review spanned hundreds of pages and painted a picture of a bank that grew rapidly in size and risk with limited intervention from supervisors who missed obvious problems and moved slowly to address the ones they did recognize. And it outlined a range of changes to bank oversight and regulation — from stronger deterrents against risk-taking to possible curbs on incentive compensation for executives at poorly managed banks — that the Fed will consider in response to the disaster.’ (NYTimes) Sorry, gifting option not available.
Nancy Yes! Years ago we invested in a Jura cappresso machine.I remember years of commuting to NYC on the 6:36 a. M. Express where we got a cup of hot coffee for 10 cents. Tasted pretty good.
Yes, their ulterior motive is a permanent, white-supremacist, male-dominated, theocratic oligarchy in which as much money as possible is funneled upward as fast as possible. To support that, government spending on anything but the military and strategic infrastructure is to be eliminated, as are taxes on the "makers" and all regulations. But that approach favors only a small minority of the population, at the expense of the great majority, thus the population must be controlled: Only the "right" people can be allowed to vote; women and people of color must not have autonomy of any sort or meaningful opportunity lest they gain a bit of political and economic power; non-traditional religious views and gender roles/definitions are to be shunned and forcefully sent to the margins, if not oppressed altogether; only the "right" information is to be disseminated publicly and taught to the younger generation.
I'd have said that the ideal was a return to the plantation economy and social structure of the antebellum South, but warmed-over feudalism is a good way of putting it as well.
The Hartmann Report had an eye opening letter about how religious competition has always led to theocratic suppression and even killing of women. This always happens when men start fearing that there is not enough of the economic pie for themselves. They don't like the idea of sharing with women or minorities and can't conceive of growing the pie bigger (in contradiction of what they claim tax cuts will do.) This goes all the way back to the Salem with trials.
Jaci Statton wanted her baby, but the fetus wasn’t developing properly and was dying inside her. If it wasn’t removed from her uterus it might kill her, too. She was experiencing vaginal bleeding, high blood pressure, debilitating cramps, and “intense nausea.”
As reporter Ben Felder wrote for The Oklahoman:
“The longer the fetus remained inside her, the higher risk she would be for internal bleeding, kidney and liver failure, and even a stroke.”
She and her husband first went to a nearby hospital, but — like one-in-six hospital beds in America — it was run to earn money for the Catholic Church and so refused to provide her with any help beyond fluids.
Next up was the hospital at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center but that, too, was a dead end. As Felder reported:
“They said, ‘We can't touch you because of the Oklahoma law,’ Statton recalled the doctors telling her husband, even as they acknowledged the pregnancy posed serious health risks and removing the fetus was the best medical decision.”
To save her life, Jaci’s husband drove her to an abortion clinic in Kansas where she was forced to walk through a gamut of jeering anti-abortion protestors carrying signs proclaiming their followers should “STONE ALL THE WHORES!”
If it seems to you like women in Red states are the subjects of witch hunts, you’re right. And it has nothing to do with “life”: it’s all about economic and political power.
Prior to the 1980 election, the official position of the GOP was the same as the Democratic Party. Pre-viability abortions were a decision to be made by a woman alone, with consultation — if she wished — with her physician, spouse, and/or religious counselor.
California Governor Ronald Reagan had, in fact, signed into law the nation’s most permissive abortion regulation in 1967, a full six years before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision. And Reagan’s 1980 running mate, former Texas Congressman George HW Bush, had supported Planned Parenthood — including abortion rights — all the way back to the 1960s as well.
But leading up to the election of 1980, the Reagan campaign determined that the growing backlash to Roe v Wade was a great issue to help ride to victory in the polls. It combined a general Republican distrust of the Supreme Court — dating back to the 1954 Brown v Board decision desegregating public schools — with an embrace of both Catholic and Evangelical Protestant positions that were ardently opposed to abortion.
In this, the Reagan campaign was following a long tradition of men seizing political power on the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) backs of women. The first widespread witch hunts in the 1500s, in fact, were the Catholic Church’s response to the growing Protestant Reformation competing successfully for church membership.
As researchers Peter T. Leeson and Jacob W. Russ noted in The Journal of the Royal Economic Society:
“Europe’s witch trials reflected non-price competition between the Catholic and Protestant churches for religious market share in confessionally contested parts of Christendom. By leveraging popular belief in witchcraft, witch-prosecutors advertised their confessional brands’ commitment and power to protect citizens from worldly manifestations of Satan’s evil.
“Similar to how contemporary Republican and Democrat candidates focus campaign activity in political battlegrounds during elections to attract the loyalty of undecided voters, historical Catholic and Protestant officials focused witch-trial activity in confessional battlegrounds during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to attract the loyalty of undecided Christians.”
But there was also an economic dimension to the witch hunts, one that is also resurgent today.
In the late 1500s and early 1600s, women who performed abortions or provided birth control were most of the early victims of witch hunts because children were a source of cheap labor for the feudal lords, who essentially owned their serfs and their children.
Multiple studies of that era now show that times of economic insecurity most closely correlated with upsurges in witch hunts and the often gruesome murders of women who practiced reproductive medicine. Times of economic prosperity, on the other hand, tended to go hand-in-hand with more permissive attitudes toward birth control and abortion, and a pause in the witch hunts.
Which may account for the modern era’s swing back toward witch hunts against women seeking or providing abortion.
In 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, the American middle class was prosperous.
Wages and wealth of working-class people were growing at a rate faster than that of the morbidly rich, who were restrained by a top 74 percent income tax bracket. A single breadwinner could buy a house and car, raise a family, take an annual vacation, and even set aside money for a comfortable retirement.
In the midst of this prosperity, progressive attitudes toward abortion prospered.
Outside of Catholic circles, in fact, the Roe decision wasn’t even particularly controversial in 1973. It would be another few years before the label “right to life” would be appropriated from the anti-death-penalty movement and used to rebrand the anti-abortion movement.
Reagan’s imposition of neoliberal “trickle down” economics ended the expansion of the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class, which had reached almost 65 percent of American families by 1980.
With a series of massive tax cuts on corporations and the morbidly rich, along with 18 tax increases on average working people, the Reagan administration began the collapse of the middle class to the roughly 45 percent of Americans in it today.
As working class Americans became more impoverished by Reaganism, racist and misogynist sentiments blossomed, becoming mainstream within the GOP by the time Rush Limbaugh gave them voice with his condemnation of “Feminazis!”
The unspoken rallying cry in response to the simultaneous impoverishment and browning of America was, “More white babies!”
Working class white men increasingly saw brown-skinned immigrants, African Americans, and women as economic competitors. The growing national prosperity pie that had once seemed unlimited quickly became perceived as a zero-sum game in the post-Reagan era.
Reaganomics produced a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the homes and savings accounts of America’s working class into the money bins of the morbidly rich, where that money remains to this day. It set off a scramble for what little was left.
If white men could knock out more than half the population — the 51 percent women and the roughly 15 percent Blacks — there was more money to split up among themselves.
While most white men merely intuited that forbidding women abortions would reduce their representation in the workplace both through parenthood and pregnancy-related deaths, social scientists were proving it.
Five states had legalized abortion prior to the Roe decision: in addition to Reagan’s California, the procedure was also available in Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington state. As researchers found comparing statistics from those states with similar states where abortion was still criminalized prior to 1974:
“Abortion legalization reduced the number of women who became teen mothers by 34% and the number who became teen brides by 20%... [L]egalization reduced maternal mortality among Black women by 30-40%...”
Today, however, abortion is becoming less and less available in the United States, and it’s literally killing women. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American women between 20 and 24 years old, and the third-leading cause of death among women 25-34.
A new study published three months ago in the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA Psychiatry found that in the years between Roe and 2016 — as so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws went into place in state after state making it harder to get an abortion, closing clinics, and mandating invasive rape-like ultrasounds — those laws led to a measurable increase in female suicide:
“Enforcement of TRAP laws was associated with higher suicide rates among reproductive-aged women (β = 0.17; 95% CI, 0.03 to 0.32; P = .02) but not women of postreproductive age (β = 0.06; 95% CI, –0.11 to 0.24; P = .47) nor to deaths due to motor vehicle crashes (β = 0.03, 95% CI, –0.04 to 0.11; P = .36). Among reproductive-aged women, the weighted average annual-state level suicide death rate when no TRAP laws were enforced was 5.5 per 100,000. Enforcement of a TRAP law was associated with a 5.81% higher annual rate of suicide than in pre-enforcement years.”
Religious freaks and workplace-insecure men are no longer burning women at the stake for the heresy of having or providing abortions.
Instead, they’re using the power of the state to set them up to die often agonizing deaths, all while bragging about their brutality to win elections.
For more information on the state of abortion in America today, I highly recommend Jessica Valenti’s newsletter, Abortion Every Day.
Barbara S WOW! What a detailed history of the projection onto women of the need to resolve essentially competitive religious problems most recently morphed into political difficulties. An amazing tangle with a LONG history.
How ironic that TFG cries "witch hunt" every time he's held to account; yet another example of projection of his own deficits and moral vacuousness!
Yes! I love your addition of TFG's trite reliance on the phrase witch hunt. You are so right. THe Hartmann Report has been doing some fabulous writing on gun control lately, including a whole book on the history of guns in America. I'm ranking him right up there with Heather as daily required reading, though he is more openly left wing partisan in his languaging. (Which I'm OK with since he backs it up with facts and reasoning.)
Here is today's Hartmann Report, which links economically and politically to Naomi Klein's Shock Capitalism, which details how thr Rich have been able to leverage economic and political shocks that devastate the poor and Middle classes into great wealth and even more power for the rich.
Why the GOP May Actually Want a Second Great Depression by Thom Hartmann Apr 23 2023
This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.
In yesterday’s Daily Take, I laid out a scenario where Kevin McCarthy and congressional Republicans could crash our economy by forcing a default on US debt, producing what could easily be a depression as deep and deadly as the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s.
When I discussed this with people on the radio yesterday, several responded with incredulity.
“Why would the Republicans,” they asked, “who generally represent the interests of corporations and the rich above all else, risk crashing the stock market and economy where those very same wealthy people have their money invested?”
The question itself reveals a misunderstanding of how things work for the morbidly rich.
They are, uniquely, in a position to profit from the same economic downturns that wipe out average working people or those who’ve put their money into 401Ks locked into the market or certain stocks.
This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.
Joe Kennedy, who’d made a pile of money manipulating the stock market, bailed out as the market began its slide and even shorted the market, increasing his wealth. But once it had crashed, when everybody was broke, he bought stock with a vengeance. “Cash is king” was the phrase of the day, and Kennedy was well stocked in cash (he even bought a movie studio). By the end of the Depression, he was one of the richest men in the nation.
J. Paul Getty’s favorite phrase was, “Buy when everyone else is selling, and hold on until everyone else is buying.” It’s something you can only do at scale if you’re fabulously rich to begin with.
The afternoon of the Great Crash — Black Tuesday — under Republican President Hoover in 1929, Getty skipped his parents’ golden wedding anniversary to head to Wall Street where he began buying stocks, particularly in small oil companies that were in trouble.
“It is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing,” Getty later wrote. Out of that, he became one of the richest men in the world.
Flash forward to the modern era.
When Wall Street banks — exploiting Republican-demanded deregulation of banking and investment rules — crashed the American economy in 2007, home prices (and, thus, homeowner equity) collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to banking predators like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, and tens of millions of others were underwater.
The stock market plummeted by over 50%. On October 9, 2007 the Dow was at its all-time peak of 14,164.53 but by March 5, 2009 it had collapsed to 6,594.44.
While over 8 million Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out as the Bush Crash started today’s homelessness crises, the top 1 percent saw it as a buying opportunity.
People were desperately unloading stocks in their 401Ks at a loss just to pay the bills, as wages plummeted in the face of a loose labor market.
But the morbidly rich were doing great.
Between 2009 — the bottom of the Bush Crash — and 2012 when the recovery really began, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31 percent. Fully 95 percent of all the income increases in the country were seized by the top 1 percent of Americans during that period.
As the economy recovered, rich people who’d used their increased income to buy stocks at the market bottom rode the S&P 500 up by 462 percent to 2020. A billion dollars invested in 2009 became 462 billion in just 11 years, a period during which the combined wealth of American billionaires went up by over 80 percent.
The Trump/Covid Crash of 2020 presented America’s morbidly rich with another brand new and huge opportunity to get richer on top of a crisis brutalizing the rest of America.
Once again the market collapsed and working people, now out of work, were selling their stocks at a loss just to pay the mortgage and buy food. But for the wealthy, it was a gift from God.
March 16, 2020 — just after Trump declared a pandemic and lockdown — the Dow sustained the largest single-day crash in its entire history. For the investor class, Trump and his billionaire buddies, this was an even better opportunity than the Bush crash of 2007!
Fewer than three months later, on June 4th, we learned that the seven richest people in America had seen their fortunes increase by fully 50 percent. And with Trump’s massive tax cut for his fellow billionaires, they could keep most all of it: by that time the average American billionaire was paying less than 3 percent in income taxes (a situation that persists to this day).
Just during that one single terrible pandemic year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, the world's 2,365 billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%, as U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone.
Billionaire’s taxes have fallen by a full 79 percent since Reagan’s election in 1980, and a 2012 analysis found that as much as $32 trillion was safely squirreled away in tax-fraud offshore shelters.
This is why Kevin McCarthy’s proposed legislation to raise the debt ceiling would strip $80 billion from the IRS: the morbidly rich tax cheats who own him (with the Supreme Court’s blessing in Citizens United) don’t want to get caught.
They want to hang onto the trillions they made during the last two crashes.
And, apparently, they’re happily anticipating the next crash that their boy McCarthy and their bought-off Republicans in Congress are working hard to bring to pass with their debt ceiling manipulations.
— Economic downturns not only cut wages and present buying opportunities for the wealthy and corporate America, they also give massive companies far more leverage when negotiating with vendors, who are typically desperate smaller businesses.
— They retain access to credit so they can leverage their buying opportunities in ways smaller companies and working class individuals can’t.
— And their power to fight unionization increases exponentially as workers scramble and compete for jobs that have become vanishingly rare.
But the average American can be forgiven for thinking that Republicans would be reluctant to crash the economy. Their lived experience is very different from that of Elon Musk (532% increase in wealth during the single year of 2020), Mark Zuckerberg (86% increase), or Jeff Bezos (65% increase).
During the Bush Crash, average income for the poorest 10% of Americans fell by a full 23%, making business (and billionaires) much more profitable while working people were skipping meals and cutting pills in half.
Thirteen years later, the Trump Crash threw 8,500,000 Americans out of work: according to the World Economic Forum, the adjusted unemployment rate hit 22.7 percent in 2020, higher than even during the Bush Crash, and it’s taken a full three years for working people to get back to where they started before Trump so badly mismanaged the pandemic.
Small business revenue collapsed by more than a fifth under Trump, new business formation cratered, and by July 2020 one-in-five American families were behind on their rent. The rate of hunger in America doubled at the same time the GOP sought to cut food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid benefits.
The Bush and Trump crashes, in other words, did the work the morbidly rich have been demanding for years. Wages fell, unions struggled, corporate profits hit highs literally never before seen in America, and hedge funds bought up millions of distressed single-family homes to flip into high-priced rentals.
The stock market became absurdly cheap with both crashes, providing both the multimillionaire members of Congress and their billionaire backers with what used to be once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunities.
So don’t be so sure Republicans in the House and Senate won’t drag America into default and a second Republican Great Depression if they have a chance.
They and their billionaire backers have almost nothing to lose and a fortune to gain.
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You’ve wrapped up the evolution of American conservatism over the last 40+ years quite succinctly, pts. I so wish I’d seen it coming. Not a bit of suspicion. I honestly did not realize conservatism in the US could ever be that diabolical. I’ve been gobsmacked these past 3, 4 years. Wow.
a big part of the problem is how media giants frame it. headline suggest that Biden should negotiate with GOP, that it is on him not them to fix what they broke. Look at how they frame their headlines and focus their stories.
Dr Richardson, words cannot express my joy at reading this letter. This is the world as it should be. Thanks to President Biden for the foresight to see this clearly and get us back on the track. This train wreck has been a constant and painful problem since 1981. Now if we can just reclaim both the House and Senate by electing sensible, civic minded, persons to fill those 535 seats we may finally pull ourselves out of the abyss into which we have fallen. These new civic and honorable people don't need to be all Democrats. Sane, intelligent, and freedom loving Independents and Republicans can round out the Legislative branch too. We just need to cut out the cancerous rot of the trumpster maggots, bring back the REAL Constitution, do away FOREVER with gerrymandering, voter suppression, and rampant greed.
...and yet another reason, Fay, to apply the Biden global strategy of cooperative competition to the Republican Party. Democracy NEEDS a viable 2nd party (at least) in which all those newly enlightened others may have a voice in helping steer our democracy rather than destroy it by turning it into chaos.
What Jake Sullivan had to say gives me, and should give US all hope. What a lovely and exciting path forward for US and for our world - if we can make it happen.
He sounds progressive. The corporate Democrats usually run like scared rabbits from such thinking, which is why they shoved Bernie off of the stage & the Orange Ogre won.
I have always been a big fan of Jake Sullivan but this piece about his economic vision is just I have been advocating for years. The Laffer economic message of "Tax Cuts" and "Trickle Down Economics" that still resonates with Republicans is dead or should be dead. The Sullivan message of investing in supply chain building and infrastucture development is the way government can help
Professor, you capture the essence of how a healthy world economy is as necessary as a productive domestic economy. And America must pay attention.
“But today at the Brookings Institution, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan outlined a very different vision of the global economy and American economic leadership.” Calling for a bipartisan approach to restore middle class, a clean energy transition....this is not new, but it definitely counters the repubs’ approach to cut services and programs that strengthen all citizens. “We’re all in this together” quoting President Kennedy. At home and abroad. Can we make this happen in today’s political climate? Hoping step by step we get beyond partisan politics and move forward. A healthy economy helps everyone.
To most Republicans, they'd rather toss themselves into a wood - chipper than be bipartisan. They see it as a weakness. Much like their Evangelical brothers & sisters don't like acknowledging the validity of other faiths / belief systems. Which is WHY I want as little as possible to do with either one.
I was unaware the phrase originated with JFK. I heard it repeatedly as the Reagan Administration's metaphor for how enriching and further empowering the richest of the rich would someone enrich and empower us all. Yet, while the JFK phase makes sense as far as it goes, the GOP formula, which warps our economy, our politics, and our future to this day, has seemed utterly incongruous with it.
I like the phase too & wonder how people who have never experienced the tidal exchange feel about the saying & if there is something comparable for non tidal people?
Fake white Biden liberals, praising Biden for spending zillions of borrowed dollars for Worthwhile Projects, heedless of how their spending spree exports inflation (thanks to the Almighty Dollar as a global reserve currency), compounding the economic woes of hapless darker-skinned countries who have been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund. And then there is Biden's profligate waste of money and weapons supporting the thuggish, corrupt, undemocratic one-party right-wing regime in Ukraine, pumping up a global weapons black market with who knows what ghastly terrorist consequence in the works, while the zombified Ukrainians make payments on their unpayable I.M.F./NATO loan with pounds and pounds of bloody flesh, the latest permutation of the most far-reaching genocide in history.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
Globally, the "growing toxicity of the dollar" is pushing countries to start conducting trade in other currencies. Articles like this are becoming commonplace:
Don't feed the troll, just report him. Report every comment without answering him. Trolls do eventually get removed. The more who report him, the quicker it will happen. ANYTIME you engage him, he absolutely cannot control himself and will have to have the "last word"
For me to make sense of Heather's Letter, I drew this analogy. It comes from an article written by Tom Silva's This Old House:
"Building a good foundation requires a lot more than digging a hole and pouring some concrete into forms. It must be tailored to its site like a custom suit, taking into account soil conditions, water tables, even the quality of the backfill.
"And as with a custom suit, every detail must be perfect: the base properly compacted, the formwork set up right, the concrete free of voids. Neglect even one of these, and the most carefully poured foundation can fail."
I would argue that our Declaration of Independence and Constitution with its accompanying amendments provide us with that good foundation. I would also argue that the Biden Administration is tending to perfecting the details that are necessary to protect our foundation for ourselves and the generations to come.
Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution have the serious flaws that allowed/allow for genocide of Native Peoples and slavery. "4/5 of a person": this must be remedied going forward.
Agree, Martyrita. I did include the subsequent amendments to fill in the gaps in the original document . I also included, I thought, future tweaking to get us to a "more perfect union." If we scuttle these two documents we, to my mind, cease to exist as a United States of America. Just my opinion.
Ruth Brinton -- Thanks, I am aware of that very welcome activity, and have done it many times with the trolls who invade this space! Sometimes many times with the same troll.
Marjorie seems to be wearing out her welcome within her own caucus because of incendiary statements she's been making in committee hearings. She may be a has-been before long.
Synopsis; Every person, every nation on Earth is connected. Like it or not. We rise or fall together. All or none.
Conclusion; Giving the wealthy more money doesn't help workers or expand the middle class. It doesn't even help the wealthy. When you already have more money than you could spend in ten lifetimes, the reciepts from another 5% tax cut aren't even noticeable. One can purchase political power; buy yourself a congressman or Senator or two, maybe even a Supreme Court justice, but, as we have seen of late, the return on investment peaks and then declines rapidly.
Jake Sullivan; sounds like the name of a prizefighter or tough union organizer. Before you even meet him, you know "No nonsense here! Take your BS down the road!"
I've been a "hired gun" with my cameras since 1973 when I freelanced on my first corporate gig at Pangborn in Hagerstown. We all worked at the local Board of Education TV studios and put together the first independent video production company in our region. Our first corporate gig was making training videos for the Soviets...with a Russian soundtrack. We were told the parts were being used in Russian farm tractors. We found out years later the parts were used in Soviet Tanks. At that time Hagerstown and the area was full of manufacturing plants. Mack Trucks, Fairchild planes, Grove Cranes, Jamison, Moller, Brandt and more. I had a lot of clients. Over the years as I produced more corporate videos and we kept moving more plants to China and outsourcing more jobs, I said "don't they understand what they are doing?". Guess what? They did not care. It became about quarterly profits. Most of these companies had been owned and operated by the families that started them. They took care of their workers. Eventually they sold off, or had new boards who didn't care about the local workers. Bit by bit many of these plants closed or downsized. Hagerstown is now full of warehouses and trucking and only a few manufactures like Mack...which is now Volvo still exist. In my business when I started at the Board of Ed in 1972, virtually all of the equipment was American made. RCA, GE, AMPEX, Century lights, Bell & Howell, Kodak film. And then we got our first Sony port-a-pak video camera & recorder. My first camera was a Minolta 35mm SLR from Japan. Pretty quickly most of the gear was Sony, JVC or Panasonic. By the time I started my first video business in in 1980, all of the camera & recording gear I bought was JVC from Japan. There was nothing made by the US that could compete. At that time Kodak was developing digital photography. Their R&D had made the first all digital camera. Their management said we are a film company...and they let the Japanese take their invention and run with it. Every camera all of us has now is digital...and made overseas...yet Kodak invented it. We've been idiots. Our greedy boards of directors sent our manufacturing plants and jobs out of country to make them a bigger profit...our "leaders" did not understand their own ingenuity...when VW and then Japan first brought in low priced, gas economical cars, we countered with the unsafe at any speed Corvair. When GM developed a good electric vehicle in the 90's the EV1 which people loved, they killed it...to sell more gasoline. Our corporate "leadership" has screwed up in so many ways. I now work mostly for non-profits, on history related projects...or am trying trying to fund and create documentaries on social & climate issues...because the manufacturing is not here any more...it's starting to come back. But we the people need to have a say in this...we cannot trust the business people to do whats best for us. The last good corporate gig I had was with Rukert Terminals in Baltimore. They just celebrated their 100th Anniversary as a terminal that handles imports and exports at the docks. They transfer goods from ships to the warehouses. Most of it is imports. Products or raw materials from Brazil, Germany, Asia, Africa, Saudi...Russian aluminum for your Ford 150 pickup trucks, until Ukraine broke out. They are a family owned and operated business that started with one truck and a rented stable for a warehouse. Now they are the largest Independent Terminal (non government) on the East Coast. Even they had to buy their biggest crane from Europe, because no one here makes one that will do the job they need.
If we stop electing Repubs...keep Joe & Company...maybe my son & daughter can take over my company...maybe there will be manufacturers who need our services again. It's just starting to happen here in the offshore wind sector....for now I'll try and make documentaries that matter....and keep folks like Trump and DeSantis out of office. Now if we could just beat Andy Harris for Congress on the Eastern Shore....Peace
Mike, Thanks so much for spelling out the story of how we got ourselves into this mess - or rather how the boards of directors and owners of industry succumbed to such short-term vision. I remember having a Minolta 35 mm camera in the 1960's (and taking classes on how to get the most out of it). Later, I discovered that film for that camera was no longer available from Kodak and I had to buy film made in China.
I watched a documentary called, "How They Killed the Electric Car" - which turned out to be a lease-only vehicle - and the corporation called in all the vehicles at the expiration of the lease period (so no one could get their paws on the technology) - and the electric-car dream was killed.
How many other important and forward-thinking concepts and products have been 'killed/sacrificed' so that the corporate board/owners/shareholders could reap a nice quarterly dividend?
Thank you so much for your work to promote domestic companies who may be willing to share their bounty with 'the people' as well as with 'the corporation.' Carry on ...
Thank you Julia. Minolta's started coming into the US with Viet Nam vets returning. They were a less expensive option to the Nikon's which were mostly used by professionals then. People loved the GM EV-1. A few of the owners hid their's for awhile. I did a video on a guy who built his own electric car during the gas crisis when Carter was President. He worked in DC and drove in from his home in the MD suburbs. They ran an extension cord out to charge it up. I got to drive it. It had incredible torque and off the line jump. It was at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Recently I worked an Offshore Wind conference in Baltimore. That technology has a lot of honest green promise, investment potential...and jobs.
The Rukert Family was wonderful to work with, documenting their 100 year history. It's a great case study on evolving, educated risk taking and hard work. If you go their website
I like this vision! I've been thinking we need younger blood at the top in 2024, but maybe with such competent people in place supporting Biden we don't just yet.
Politicians and the people are finally waking up in the Western world to the negative reality of the globalization of the world's economy. While the growth achieve might be said to have produced a "win-win" situation in macro-economic terms for many of the countries, when measured by GDP etc, this is not necessarily true when you get down to the micro-economic level. You and I, as individual consumers suffer more frequently rather through a "win-lose game" as the "winners" in any country are not the same as the "losers" and the former tend to take all of the gain in wealth while leaving little in the form of wages or small business earnings to be shared with those whom TFG qualified as "losers" . Size gives might perhaps but it doesn't make it right. It's time to make the individual vote count for more than the money sloshing around the democratic process.
Is it, "How the World Really Works" by Smil? I see the library may have this in an audio book. I'm getting behind in my reading and need to get audio books to listen to while walking for exercise. I'm going to share this sub stack. This is better than expensive advertisements or expensive newspapers for spreading Biden's plan for a future that makes sense.
Many thanks, Hugh. I didn't know him. I have ordered the book alongside Roderick Braithwaite's look at Russian Myths and Realities......another of my interests.
Will Rogers knew and said clearly, on Nov 26, 1932, that republicans were full of crap. “The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least passed through the poor fellows hands.” Mr. Hoover may have believed in the “trickle down” bull Schitt, but the clowns these days know better. So did most of America after the debacle that Hoover ushered in. But “silver-tongued” liar Reagan convinced most that the wealthy would look out for everybody. The scam began and is repeated with every republican breath.
Wow! Vision of what we can be. Strategies flexible enough to work for many and not just the few. A real plan and partners willing to join from all over the world. The will to see it through. A roller coaster ride for sure. Full of scary highs and lows. And hope.
That's the major difference between Democrats & Republicans. We represent, for the most part, hope & positivity, THEY offer doom, gloom, pessimism, ignorance, negativity, TRIBALISM ( especially ! ), etc. then blame it on us / lay it at our doorstep like a sack of flaming dog - poop.
"They" believe in the strong individual...not the group, not the masses. We are here to serve them, to enrich them. "We" believe in the group, in the huddled masses...and "fairness"...not greed.
What Sullivan described is the best national/ international plan an administration has put forth since Kennedy’s idealism. The most difficult task will be to get 51% of Americans to care about people they don’t personally know.
"The most difficult task will be to get 51% of Americans to care about people they don’t personally know."
Right. Actually, in the white community it is more like, the most difficult task is to get anyone to care about anyone but themselves and their kids.
For Rs it is to get them to have something other than greed, power, white supremacy, "Christian" theocracy, and owning the libs as their goals. Another frustration of mine are those who bellyache about the Electoral College and want representation by population only. The EC isn't going away soon and the House is population based and the Senate a compromise that every state has two Senators, also not going to change anytime soon. A lot of you report on the work you put in on helping with voting, and any other number of other good works .....things we can actually do, trying to make the ideals of our democracy real for all people. It's slow and messy and hard work, so this am I offer gratitude and kudos to all of you who are doing what you can.
Mostly, the House based on gerrymandering, unfortunately. That’s the result of 15 years of abandoning the idea of building state-level democratic parties. The Dems are just now concentrating on building state-level parties that can elect state and local democrats.
I agree with you that it is hard work and a sustained, deliberate process.
And to care about people they do know but who might not be like them and also people who might need help. I know a lot of people who believe if you can't afford a nice house and car and can't take your family on vacation twice a year, it must be because you are lazy.
Or, if you are Black, Jewish, Muslim, LBGTQ, certainly trans, have an accent, are a smart, ambitious woman, or have an advanced degree — then you are not a “Real American,” and your don’t deserve the same rights and privileges that white, male, Christians deserve.
They don’t care about persons they do know
I used to be amazed by that. But when I saw’s how some parents treated their kids it lowered my expectations for our society.
I’m not at sll sure the GOP believes in the strong individual. They believe in certain privileged individuals, certainly. Beyond those relative few, however, I don’t think there’s a lot of human concern.
I hope we believe in individuals, and have the same level of concern for humanity at large.
when I say "strong individuals" they seem to not care about welfare, social security, medicare...it's a "do self" attitude. I'd bet that most "survivalists" are Republican or Libertarian. It's the cowboy culture. NRA culture. That's what I'm talking about...the folks who vote for the privileged folks like Trump...the ones who stormed the Capitol, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers...those guys.
Those you called strong are the weakest. They aren't rational thinkers; their actions are determined by anger and fear. The GOP like them because they are more easily propagandized and thus controlled.
They are fear driven...they think they are "strong" individuals who take care of themselves...but they ignore all that government provides for them...roads, schools, police, defense, etc.
Love thy Neighbor as Thyself? The problem is getting ourselves to accept that most of our neighbors do not live next door and do not necessarily share our beliefs, though they are just as human as we are. Future generations not excluded.
we're yang, they're yin.....
True Yin & Yang is healthy. This is not. This is twisted...they lie, they cheat, they steal...Yin & Yang is being too kind.
Dystopian / Utopian. we may never have Utopia, but with Republicans in charge we'd have a dystopia that Orwell could only dream of, indeed.
Dystopia a nightmare, rather than a dream, methinks.
And by extension, I am strong, I will be successful if left alone, I will get mine, I will be a beacon of light for those other strong entrepreneurs with a good product and an open market ... until, I pull my share and walk away, but, I got mine. To which I add this truth: These individual pursue maximum return on their investment (and exploitation of resources, human and otherwise), always advocating "Don't fix it unless (usually until) its broke" and let government carry the cost to fix and regulate and hedge funds to suck the last drop of value from the product or service left behind by the individual economic engine. The backside of that success heap is environmental, human, and social waste. Success aspired to in this nation is getting out with your share, the rest be damned to their own failures while carrying along as well the cost to reclaim the environment, feed the poor, heal the maimed, and restore the soul of the nation.
Fred, that really does sum it up. It's the "robber baron" approach to life. I'll be the "big man" and build the railroad, with your labor, with your tickets purchased, with whatever help I can get from elected officials...bonds, lands, right of way...screw the Indians, screw whoever settled there, take advantage of immigrant labor...did it open up the country faster...yes it did...did science advance a lot...yes it did. Did a few people get crazy wealthy? yes they did...but at what expense to the average person ? Could they have paid higher wages? YES. Could they have been more caring and giving? YES.
My friend Gene Bruskin wrote and produced an historical musical, in the model of "Hamilton", titled "The Moment was Now" when America almost did the right thing. Frederick Douglass is the glue that holds the show together, set here in Baltimore.
I documented the premier performances here for the purpose of creating promo material to tour the show. Covid came along and our videos became the show, which was shared mostly via zoom performances. It has not been performed live again since Covid.
You can learn about it here: www.zinnedproject.org/materials/the-moment-was-now
Sadly Julia Nixon who played and powerfully sang the role of Frances Harper...an amazing woman I knew nothing about until we did this show...died from Covid, just as we were considering doing more shows.
Gene has written a new musical show centered on John Brown that is in the early stages of pre-production, with a fall premier set. We intend to be a part of that. Watch for more on my page.
...said the hypocritical Vampire Liberal:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-27-2023/comment/15337647
John, if you really listened to earth, you would hear that the economic policies of autocrats have cheated the masses, left them starving, and fighting for survival. A knowledge of history would also let you understand that the dark ages ended when ordinary people learned to read and began to design an enlightened era where they and not just a few could enjoy the benefits of their labor.
Also, John seems to be a taunting bot. AKA a troll.
I have reported the troll.
. . . who seems to think he's showing how technically savvy he is by knowing how to copy & paste ad nauseum. Just scroll on by. . .
...another hypocritical Vampire Liberal?
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
George, Mr. Schmeeckle is one of our resident trolls. Best to just not respond.
The Dark Ages ended well before the "invention" (or importation from China) of the printing press.
So true, Daniel. I really find it frustrating and sad that people will gravitate to the doom, gloom, etc. etc. Plus, I think the horrible message that the repuklicans keep spieling sells more papers and ad time for the media.
On the nail head Colette. Again our collective influence is not to echo the negative, support or buy from. Bargaining power lies in the consumer , numbers matter. We can boycott effectively , notice given, right.!?
I want to support the companies who standby good practices, good news media that truths will be accountable , sensationalism is soap opera mentality carefully and methodically ingrained in too many factors for over 40+ years. Stop watching . Stop buying. Stop support. Learn the alternatives, the better quality ...it’s like cooking from scratch vs instant potatoes ..get it? We CAN, we HAVE TO demand responsible marketing,news, advertising, canvassing, laws, politicians, judicial, federal and state fiscal accountability. We need to come up to speed for the good of ALL.
Loved the positive message, Heather ...this is the truth of wonderfully interesting reading ..accurate factual happenings.
Doesn’t have to be a make believe world , by known liars, and repetitious doomsayers , whose promises are as fake as their future forecasts year after year after year!
Let that ‘trickle down’ into reality with greater success! Please.
But it's good for comedy writers. you rarely see a comedy writer in an unemployment office. Just sayin'.
Colette, do you not believe that the media is currently making an effort to modernize and become more technologically sophisticated in light of the Internet?
I have no idea.
You omitted a few of the 'RepublieQons' best offerings: 1) Greed; 2) Lies; 3) Hate; and 4) 'imaginative' conspiracies.
Have we left out any others??
Fear. You left out fear. So much of the Republican strength depends upon selling fear, e.g., the “Great Replacement Theory.”
Fear of being a Loser, fear of “them.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-27-2023/comment/15337647
Sorry! Not I terested in what you're selling.
Cheryl Cardran - "Sorry! Not I terested in what you're selling."
Whatever it might be.
😊😊😊😊😊
Vampire Liberals are also I.M.F. Holocaust deniers.
Join in reporting him as well (ellipsis under his comments)!
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Agreed! Join me in reporting him as well (ellipsis under his comments)!
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Vampire Liberals are also I.M.F. Holocaust deniers.
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Vampire Liberals are also I.M.F. Holocaust deniers.
From my reading of conservative publications - at least the respectable ones - they don’t offer doom, gloom and pessimism to everyone. Only to those who are already struggling and can’t use the system to their own benefit, as they do. It’s an ideology of selfishness, not despair.
In response to Daniel's original comment pointing out 'the major difference between Democrats & Republicans,' if you pause and think about it, the 'We' and the 'THEY' he mentions can represent either Republicans or Democrats and are interchangable labels, depending on one's political perspective. Economic theory is contaminated when mixed with political labels.
Unfortunately, there are some issues on which Democrats and Republicans are equally abysmal, such as U.S. complicity in the most far-reaching genocide in history.
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Which has nothing to do with what HCR wrote yesterday.
Yes, the rising tide lifting all boats. Imagine, thinking of ourselves as a single species instead of battling tribes. Imagine actually acting "Christian" in the original sense of the word.
The last paragraph - Sullivans summation - was really important. If one can't applaud this, then one is probably more interested in personal profits than the health of others.
"....then we’re going to build the resilience we need…so that no natural disaster or geopolitical shock can stop us from getting things we need when we need them….”
I guess the Republicans have forgotten what it was like when the Pandemic hit and the supply chains froze. We ran out of simple things like PPE and the chemicals needed for testing. Masks intended for one time, one patient use were worn all day by nurses. Life saving essentials stuck in China. And still, too many of our essential medicines come exclusively from - guess where.
Repubs, like their "dear leader," only remember the very last thing that was said to them. And since they only watch FOX or other right wing liars, they can't "remember" anything good ever done by any Dem.
Spoken like a proud, shameless bigot.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Gleeful cackling
:-(
It is obvious not one republican in Congress has any idea what Heather is talking about. Their "base" of vitriol spewing cultists is equally clueless.
I'll add, that the way republicans try to run things is like a "Jerry Springer" show. At least the late Springer admitted his was a stupid show and he knew it, but it was "entertaining" and of course it made him wealthy. That it brought a really nasty element to society doesn't seem to matter to these people. I'll take issue with "entertaining" but it sure was stupid (I never watched the show as I had to go to an office to work in those days but have seen clips over the years). Unfortunately, republicans actually believe that is how government is supposed to work. Pretty sick.
OMG! The Biden team has a plan to make life better for all of us this time. Imagine that instead of the wild chimpanzees screaming and howling and throwing things and fighting with each other, which is the Republicans' MO.
Old business saying, "he who has a plan wins", I would say "he or she who has a plan wins". Or better yet "The Team that has a plan wins."
I'm hoping that Biden and his group will have enough time before 2024 to reveal what they are working on.
Wild chimpanzees throw their own excrement as well. Just like the Rethugs.
Everyone should read this powerful letter! Heather's clarity in describing Biden's brilliant vision and its shared benefits for all is compelling. Dem's working on all upcoming elections should amplify it.
Exactly!
My mantra for decades
“We are all in this together. There IS enough to go around.”
Believe it. President Biden does.
Salud, Stacy.
🗽
Yes Stacey, HOPE
Vote for Biden Harris!
What I appreciate from reading this LFAA today is a reporting on the fundamental workings of a government working on behalf of it's people. The folks doing that work and talking to Americans, rather than a talking head interpreting or the leader (president) simplifying and taking credit for what HE/HIS administration is achieving. I want to know what and how my government is working and how the delegated agencies are implementing and being accountable for the policies and practices. I need to be assured both that there is a sound (feasible) plan, not general ideas, and that what is being done (and accomplished and is effective) to make our economy buzz, benefits accrue to most of us, and see how the goals economic, societal, and technologically can be achieved whether nationally or internationally. I hear leadership in this reporting. I hear a rational plan that enables international collaboration and advantages for job creation and stable supply chains within our country and backstop resources from other nations when things get uncertain. I do hear a restoration of the American greatness, not from threats and thundering nationalism, but a real understanding of what American is and how it became great, within itself and its accomplishments, but also, and so important, being a part of the silent generation that I am, being a leader nation that fosters alliances, collaboration, invention, advancement, and competition where competition yields it's real rewards: Creations in progressive values, support for opportunity and safety, and for advancing the human spirit and potential of our present people and people who, in the future, will wish to become contributors in and American culture, an American democracy. I feel pride, reading this today, in what my government and my country are doing. I feel the possibility that we can regain our purpose, our soul, our standing because we have good and well prepared people at all levels of our national agencies.
That’s just how I felt after reading Heather’s article. I also , like Stacey felt hope and I wanted to run out and shout to the world!! “Please Read”.
Sullivan was wonderful. We have the brains and the will to become what we say.... do we have the guts and determination?🌏👏🏻🎶
And are we able to return to a truly moral and ethical mind set?? 🥰🤗
I believe the time is right for such a transformation. We are a very resilient страна, and we can pass every test.
Sounds like a plan to me!👍
Fake white Biden liberals, praising Biden for spending zillions of borrowed dollars for Worthwhile Projects, heedless of how their spending spree exports inflation (thanks to the Almighty Dollar as a global reserve currency), compounding the economic woes of hapless darker-skinned countries who have been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund. And then there is Biden's profligate waste of money and weapons supporting the thuggish, corrupt, undemocratic one-party right-wing regime in Ukraine, pumping up a global weapons black market with who knows what ghastly terrorist consequence in the works, while the zombified Ukrainians make payments on their unpayable I.M.F./NATO loan with pounds and pounds of bloody flesh, the latest permutation of the most far-reaching genocide in history.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-23-2023/comment/15163701
Globally, the "growing toxicity of the dollar" is pushing countries to start conducting trade in other currencies. Articles like this are becoming commonplace:
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230427/toxicity-of-us-dollar-fuels-growing-sway-of-chinas-yuan-in-mercosur-trade-1109880129.html
The eventual result will be a surge of now-unwanted "international" dollars sloshing back to the U.S.A. and fueling domestic inflation.
What a selfish, uneducated, warped view of the world. May your pathetic nightmare never come true.
Don't feed the troll.
Agreed! Don't feed the troll!
Right! Report him, Karen.
I hope you aren't another one of Biden's Vampire Liberals.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
NOpe: REPORT the troll.
Agree! Report him!
I hope you aren't another one of Biden's Vampire Liberals.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Same source:
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Except to laugh.
:-D
Andrea, this individual is just a troll. Just scroll on by.
Report him with us as well (ellipsis under his comments)!
I've reported him a couple of times so far, and asked the admins that he be blocked, if possible. As he shows up in response to a comment going forward, I'll keep reporting and requesting that he be blocked.
Thanks for the suggestion. I reported him. I didn’t know we could do that. What a vile man.
Join in reporting him (ellipsis under his comments).
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
My grandmother's family is from the Lehigh Valley -- Burkhalter, Deshler of Allentown, Mickley, etc.
A fine place, still voting for Democrats, with strong unions, and with an openmindedness based on its verdant academic environment including Muhlenberg College and nearby Lehigh and Lafayette as well. Where did you go wrong? From where does your bitterness come?
Cracks me up you paid $50 to try to troll this forum.
Better trolls than you have tried only to find out it's one and done.
Have a good day.
Click the 3 little black dots on the side of the comment and report the comment that has been repeated several times now!
Hypocritical I.M.F. Holocaust deniers.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
p.s. I've been around here for a year or so.
What BS...you're the self proclaimed "leading expert" on nothing buddy. Go find some other field to plow.
Report him. And don't engage with him.
I'm not...done
If hypocritical I.M.F. Holocaust deniers plant their head where the Sun don't shine, then the only thing they smell is "BS."
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Same source:
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Smells like somebody left the bathroom door open without turning on the exhaust fan. What a stinker.
Please report him to the forum administrator
Exactly, dear Miselle! I’ve done so at least 20 times.
Thank you for that. Sometimes people on this forum get a bit heated in what they say, and I've seen them chastise each other. Like the old definition of porn, I "know it when I see it" and this guy is a troll.
...said Skidmark the hypocritical I.M.F. Holocaust denier.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Same source:
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Wow! You lost me at “fake white Biden liberals”. Usually, people comment on the general historical thrust of heather’s discourses and don’t attack her ideas or readers. I use her missives to inform myself and really appreciate her hard work and perspective.
Do not engage with him. Please just report him to the forum administrator. Eventually, they remove their ability to comment. It take multiple reports from multiple people.
I did report the post and I won’t respond to him, no worries.
As a trained historian, I can point out where, on occasion, HCR doesn't quite get it right.
And sometimes omissions speak louder than words.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Same source:
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Omg! You must be a joy to be around! Thankfully, you're nobody.
I really hope you can stop being a hypocritical I.M.F. Holocaust denier.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
I am not a Holocaust denier.
BC. [;ease don't engage the troll. I am highly suspicious that this troll is the same one that got eliminated by the forum administrator previously. It takes multiple reports from multiple people. I no longer attempt to engage as he ALWAYS has to have the final word, no matter how inane his retort if.
Just report him.
I said "I.M.F. Holocaust denier."
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Same source:
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
Poor, poor, pitiful you John.
Don’t respond. Don’t engage. Trumpkins need attention to survive
Jim Duffy. “He’s waitin’ on the Double E”
Jim and Dave, as I have posted above, don't bother to engage. Just report him to the forum administrator. It takes time, but with a prior troll, once multiple people started reporting multiple times, it got removed. Report each and every post.
Definitely a Vampire Liberal.
"Will the heirs of those we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Godot got nothin on you
https://youtu.be/1uYWYWPc9HU
I hope you're not one of Biden's Vampire Liberals.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Same source:
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
SputnikGlobe.com?!! Wow, Mr. Smeegle, impressive.
SL dont engage. Watch and see, he ALWAYS HAS to have the last word.
What a fool!
Just do what I and a number of others on this forum do": report him. Eventually he gets blocked.
Thanks, Miselle. I guess I shouldn’t be indulging my impulse to amuse myself, hey!? Maybe amuse others as well. Esp since troll breakthrough is so unusual on Heather’s site.
But yeah, I’m happy to take your suggestion under advisement.
I hope you're not parading your anti-Russian bigotry.
Not at all: my Lord of the Rings bias (though their name is often misspelled; it is technically Smeagol).
OHHHH. You mean "Sputnik"?
You appear to be confused about the pronunciation of my name, which is easily mocked. The correct pronunciation is here (because a lot of my Facebook friends are not native English speakers), near the top : https://m.facebook.com/john.schmeeckle
What total BS!! Proof there is an alternate universe.
...said the blatant I.M.F. Holocaust
denier. Shame on you.
"Will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?"
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
🤣
Zella, his drivel is everywhere today. Don't engage with him, report him.
Each and every insulting inane comment he posts, please report it. Eventually, after enough reports from enough people, these types DO get blocked.
https://youtu.be/qOwFVowEugQ
You might like this one, too:
http://earthwarning.org/index.php/here-be-demons/
All I do is take dictation.
Here's another one you won't want to miss:
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/535187/communicating-with-ancestors
And another one:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php/?story_fbid=10157896036407830&id=710547829
Your writing makes it very clear what a sloppy mess the Republicant party is. McCarthy got his picture all over the news for proposing the same old nasty crap— the rich get richer while the workers stay in their place.
It's had to believe that the rich getting way richer was not always the ulterior motive under the patent fairy-tale scenarios presented by "Reaganomics". The "austerity" part is bait and switch; pubic treasuries and Main St. bank accounts were billed as certain to proper as never before. Forty + years later, it's mainly mega-yachts and personal spacecraft that are riding high.
Sullivan's phase " the surest path to restoring the middle class" assumes that the reader knows that the US "middle class" has been in decline over they years "Reaganomic" policies; which was always a predictable outcome. The real modern Republican objective, besides their quest for Absolute Power, has been a return to the bad old days of "The Gilded Age", if not warmed-over feudalism.
Really hacks me that NASA is contracting with private space man Musk for, well, anything. They will regret the eggs they put in his basket.
JL I read that down near Mar a Lago as well as in New York some of the present day Gilded Agers pay $100,000-to-200,000 annually to belong to exclusive restaurants where they can easily book reservations. Personally, my wife and I find Starbucks a bit pricy.
Keith, You have showed interest in the country's banking policy. Here are the major findings of Fed Reserve's report out today, more to come.
'Fed says it must strengthen banking rules after SVB’s collapse (excerpts)
In a scathing report, the Federal Reserve on Friday outlined a series of disastrous decisions that led to the downfall of Silicon Valley Bank — including failures by the central bank’s own supervisors to ward off last month’s crisis.'
'The much-anticipated 114-page report set the stage for a new, aggressive push by the Fed to restrengthen bank regulation, in an attempt to tighten up many of the rules that were eased by Congress on a bipartisan vote in 2018 and loosened further by the Fed in 2019.'
'Barr, nominated by President Biden as the Fed’s chief banking cop in 2022, wrote the report on SVB and will lead the push for new rules. He has long been a critic of past moves to weaken oversight of the banking system, which he had helped strengthen after the 2008 financial crisis.'
‘Barr’s investigation pointed to four main culprits, with blame spanning from the bank’s reckless executives to Congress’s push to weaken oversight of the banking system. The report also characterized SVB’s meltdown as a perfect storm of compounding hazards: the bank’s explosive growth, a weak supervisory culture at the Fed, even the pandemic’s interference with routine examinations.’ (WAPO) Article printed in today’s paper. Sorry, gifted option not available.
FERN The SVB disbalance between rushed outflow of hot deposits and long-term low-interest assets is a harbinger for further bank panics.
You may have heard of the collapse of over 7,000 banks as FDR took office in March, 1933. Banks then (and now) do not have sufficient cash to pay customers who rush to withdraw their deposits.
The S&L debacle in the 1980s reflected this. S&Ls were limited as to the interest on their deposits. When money market funds evolved, during high inflation of the late 70s-early 80s depositors rushed to move their deposits into money funds. The S&L, with long-term, low-interest assets went bust. I recall that the government ended up with a $150+/- bill.
Currently the first tier banks are under rather strict SEC regulations. This has been weakened under Trump for the $50-250 billion banks, and is even worst for the smaller banks. These smaller banks are most vulnerable on local commercial loans, including real estate.
Especially if there is a national debt default, I foresee another bank crisis. Most recently the Fed/Treasury stepped in to guarantee deposits over the $250,000 FDIC limit. Were this to become a repeat government finger in the bad bank dike again, longer term this will cause a further disbalance in our banking system/
Any thoughts about a short-term ‘solution?’
Ah, 'short-term', there is the rub. How do you answer your question, Keith? I respond by recommending stronger regulation and examining the details provided by the Fed's Report.
'Warren, Senators, Call on Fed to Strengthen Rules for Banks with Assets Over $100B
“In order to restore sufficient safety practices to the banking system and restore consumers’ confidence in the soundness of their banks, the Fed must immediately exercise its authority to apply enhanced prudential standards and supervision to banks with $100-$250 billion in assets,” the senators wrote.'
'Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Angus King (I-Maine), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve (Fed) Michael Barr, calling on him to exercise the Fed’s authority to apply stronger regulation and supervision to banks with assets totaling $100 to $250 billion. ' See link below.
https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/warren-senators-call-on-fed-to-strengthen-rules-for-banks-with-assets-over-100b
'Warren, Porter, Dozens of Democratic Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Repeal 2018 Rollback of Critical Dodd-Frank Protections' See link below
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-porter-dozens-of-democratic-lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-repeal-2018-rollback-of-critical-dodd-frank-protections
‘The review spanned hundreds of pages and painted a picture of a bank that grew rapidly in size and risk with limited intervention from supervisors who missed obvious problems and moved slowly to address the ones they did recognize. And it outlined a range of changes to bank oversight and regulation — from stronger deterrents against risk-taking to possible curbs on incentive compensation for executives at poorly managed banks — that the Fed will consider in response to the disaster.’ (NYTimes) Sorry, gifting option not available.
And I bet the coffee at your house is better than Starbucks!
Nancy Yes! Years ago we invested in a Jura cappresso machine.I remember years of commuting to NYC on the 6:36 a. M. Express where we got a cup of hot coffee for 10 cents. Tasted pretty good.
Well it sure is better than Starbucks at my house and I am enjoying some right now.
Yes, their ulterior motive is a permanent, white-supremacist, male-dominated, theocratic oligarchy in which as much money as possible is funneled upward as fast as possible. To support that, government spending on anything but the military and strategic infrastructure is to be eliminated, as are taxes on the "makers" and all regulations. But that approach favors only a small minority of the population, at the expense of the great majority, thus the population must be controlled: Only the "right" people can be allowed to vote; women and people of color must not have autonomy of any sort or meaningful opportunity lest they gain a bit of political and economic power; non-traditional religious views and gender roles/definitions are to be shunned and forcefully sent to the margins, if not oppressed altogether; only the "right" information is to be disseminated publicly and taught to the younger generation.
I'd have said that the ideal was a return to the plantation economy and social structure of the antebellum South, but warmed-over feudalism is a good way of putting it as well.
The Hartmann Report had an eye opening letter about how religious competition has always led to theocratic suppression and even killing of women. This always happens when men start fearing that there is not enough of the economic pie for themselves. They don't like the idea of sharing with women or minorities and can't conceive of growing the pie bigger (in contradiction of what they claim tax cuts will do.) This goes all the way back to the Salem with trials.
Jaci Statton wanted her baby, but the fetus wasn’t developing properly and was dying inside her. If it wasn’t removed from her uterus it might kill her, too. She was experiencing vaginal bleeding, high blood pressure, debilitating cramps, and “intense nausea.”
As reporter Ben Felder wrote for The Oklahoman:
“The longer the fetus remained inside her, the higher risk she would be for internal bleeding, kidney and liver failure, and even a stroke.”
She and her husband first went to a nearby hospital, but — like one-in-six hospital beds in America — it was run to earn money for the Catholic Church and so refused to provide her with any help beyond fluids.
Next up was the hospital at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center but that, too, was a dead end. As Felder reported:
“They said, ‘We can't touch you because of the Oklahoma law,’ Statton recalled the doctors telling her husband, even as they acknowledged the pregnancy posed serious health risks and removing the fetus was the best medical decision.”
To save her life, Jaci’s husband drove her to an abortion clinic in Kansas where she was forced to walk through a gamut of jeering anti-abortion protestors carrying signs proclaiming their followers should “STONE ALL THE WHORES!”
If it seems to you like women in Red states are the subjects of witch hunts, you’re right. And it has nothing to do with “life”: it’s all about economic and political power.
Prior to the 1980 election, the official position of the GOP was the same as the Democratic Party. Pre-viability abortions were a decision to be made by a woman alone, with consultation — if she wished — with her physician, spouse, and/or religious counselor.
California Governor Ronald Reagan had, in fact, signed into law the nation’s most permissive abortion regulation in 1967, a full six years before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision. And Reagan’s 1980 running mate, former Texas Congressman George HW Bush, had supported Planned Parenthood — including abortion rights — all the way back to the 1960s as well.
But leading up to the election of 1980, the Reagan campaign determined that the growing backlash to Roe v Wade was a great issue to help ride to victory in the polls. It combined a general Republican distrust of the Supreme Court — dating back to the 1954 Brown v Board decision desegregating public schools — with an embrace of both Catholic and Evangelical Protestant positions that were ardently opposed to abortion.
In this, the Reagan campaign was following a long tradition of men seizing political power on the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) backs of women. The first widespread witch hunts in the 1500s, in fact, were the Catholic Church’s response to the growing Protestant Reformation competing successfully for church membership.
As researchers Peter T. Leeson and Jacob W. Russ noted in The Journal of the Royal Economic Society:
“Europe’s witch trials reflected non-price competition between the Catholic and Protestant churches for religious market share in confessionally contested parts of Christendom. By leveraging popular belief in witchcraft, witch-prosecutors advertised their confessional brands’ commitment and power to protect citizens from worldly manifestations of Satan’s evil.
“Similar to how contemporary Republican and Democrat candidates focus campaign activity in political battlegrounds during elections to attract the loyalty of undecided voters, historical Catholic and Protestant officials focused witch-trial activity in confessional battlegrounds during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to attract the loyalty of undecided Christians.”
But there was also an economic dimension to the witch hunts, one that is also resurgent today.
In the late 1500s and early 1600s, women who performed abortions or provided birth control were most of the early victims of witch hunts because children were a source of cheap labor for the feudal lords, who essentially owned their serfs and their children.
Multiple studies of that era now show that times of economic insecurity most closely correlated with upsurges in witch hunts and the often gruesome murders of women who practiced reproductive medicine. Times of economic prosperity, on the other hand, tended to go hand-in-hand with more permissive attitudes toward birth control and abortion, and a pause in the witch hunts.
Which may account for the modern era’s swing back toward witch hunts against women seeking or providing abortion.
In 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, the American middle class was prosperous.
Wages and wealth of working-class people were growing at a rate faster than that of the morbidly rich, who were restrained by a top 74 percent income tax bracket. A single breadwinner could buy a house and car, raise a family, take an annual vacation, and even set aside money for a comfortable retirement.
In the midst of this prosperity, progressive attitudes toward abortion prospered.
Outside of Catholic circles, in fact, the Roe decision wasn’t even particularly controversial in 1973. It would be another few years before the label “right to life” would be appropriated from the anti-death-penalty movement and used to rebrand the anti-abortion movement.
Reagan’s imposition of neoliberal “trickle down” economics ended the expansion of the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class, which had reached almost 65 percent of American families by 1980.
With a series of massive tax cuts on corporations and the morbidly rich, along with 18 tax increases on average working people, the Reagan administration began the collapse of the middle class to the roughly 45 percent of Americans in it today.
As working class Americans became more impoverished by Reaganism, racist and misogynist sentiments blossomed, becoming mainstream within the GOP by the time Rush Limbaugh gave them voice with his condemnation of “Feminazis!”
The unspoken rallying cry in response to the simultaneous impoverishment and browning of America was, “More white babies!”
Working class white men increasingly saw brown-skinned immigrants, African Americans, and women as economic competitors. The growing national prosperity pie that had once seemed unlimited quickly became perceived as a zero-sum game in the post-Reagan era.
Reaganomics produced a $50 trillion transfer of wealth from the homes and savings accounts of America’s working class into the money bins of the morbidly rich, where that money remains to this day. It set off a scramble for what little was left.
If white men could knock out more than half the population — the 51 percent women and the roughly 15 percent Blacks — there was more money to split up among themselves.
While most white men merely intuited that forbidding women abortions would reduce their representation in the workplace both through parenthood and pregnancy-related deaths, social scientists were proving it.
Five states had legalized abortion prior to the Roe decision: in addition to Reagan’s California, the procedure was also available in Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington state. As researchers found comparing statistics from those states with similar states where abortion was still criminalized prior to 1974:
“Abortion legalization reduced the number of women who became teen mothers by 34% and the number who became teen brides by 20%... [L]egalization reduced maternal mortality among Black women by 30-40%...”
Today, however, abortion is becoming less and less available in the United States, and it’s literally killing women. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American women between 20 and 24 years old, and the third-leading cause of death among women 25-34.
A new study published three months ago in the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA Psychiatry found that in the years between Roe and 2016 — as so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws went into place in state after state making it harder to get an abortion, closing clinics, and mandating invasive rape-like ultrasounds — those laws led to a measurable increase in female suicide:
“Enforcement of TRAP laws was associated with higher suicide rates among reproductive-aged women (β = 0.17; 95% CI, 0.03 to 0.32; P = .02) but not women of postreproductive age (β = 0.06; 95% CI, –0.11 to 0.24; P = .47) nor to deaths due to motor vehicle crashes (β = 0.03, 95% CI, –0.04 to 0.11; P = .36). Among reproductive-aged women, the weighted average annual-state level suicide death rate when no TRAP laws were enforced was 5.5 per 100,000. Enforcement of a TRAP law was associated with a 5.81% higher annual rate of suicide than in pre-enforcement years.”
Religious freaks and workplace-insecure men are no longer burning women at the stake for the heresy of having or providing abortions.
Instead, they’re using the power of the state to set them up to die often agonizing deaths, all while bragging about their brutality to win elections.
For more information on the state of abortion in America today, I highly recommend Jessica Valenti’s newsletter, Abortion Every Day.
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=302288&post_id=117275768&utm_source=post-email-title&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1MTgwMTcxLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxMTcyNzU3NjgsImlhdCI6MTY4MjUxNzE2NiwiZXhwIjoxNjg1MTA5MTY2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzAyMjg4Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.fjcY_GAE7t3yXcabpDHHKPfaIfM2Vn8BTJ_Jjcq4I4g
Barbara S WOW! What a detailed history of the projection onto women of the need to resolve essentially competitive religious problems most recently morphed into political difficulties. An amazing tangle with a LONG history.
How ironic that TFG cries "witch hunt" every time he's held to account; yet another example of projection of his own deficits and moral vacuousness!
Yes! I love your addition of TFG's trite reliance on the phrase witch hunt. You are so right. THe Hartmann Report has been doing some fabulous writing on gun control lately, including a whole book on the history of guns in America. I'm ranking him right up there with Heather as daily required reading, though he is more openly left wing partisan in his languaging. (Which I'm OK with since he backs it up with facts and reasoning.)
Here is today's Hartmann Report, which links economically and politically to Naomi Klein's Shock Capitalism, which details how thr Rich have been able to leverage economic and political shocks that devastate the poor and Middle classes into great wealth and even more power for the rich.
This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded…
Why the GOP May Actually Want a Second Great Depression by Thom Hartmann Apr 23 2023
This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.
In yesterday’s Daily Take, I laid out a scenario where Kevin McCarthy and congressional Republicans could crash our economy by forcing a default on US debt, producing what could easily be a depression as deep and deadly as the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s.
When I discussed this with people on the radio yesterday, several responded with incredulity.
“Why would the Republicans,” they asked, “who generally represent the interests of corporations and the rich above all else, risk crashing the stock market and economy where those very same wealthy people have their money invested?”
The question itself reveals a misunderstanding of how things work for the morbidly rich.
They are, uniquely, in a position to profit from the same economic downturns that wipe out average working people or those who’ve put their money into 401Ks locked into the market or certain stocks.
This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded.
Joe Kennedy, who’d made a pile of money manipulating the stock market, bailed out as the market began its slide and even shorted the market, increasing his wealth. But once it had crashed, when everybody was broke, he bought stock with a vengeance. “Cash is king” was the phrase of the day, and Kennedy was well stocked in cash (he even bought a movie studio). By the end of the Depression, he was one of the richest men in the nation.
J. Paul Getty’s favorite phrase was, “Buy when everyone else is selling, and hold on until everyone else is buying.” It’s something you can only do at scale if you’re fabulously rich to begin with.
The afternoon of the Great Crash — Black Tuesday — under Republican President Hoover in 1929, Getty skipped his parents’ golden wedding anniversary to head to Wall Street where he began buying stocks, particularly in small oil companies that were in trouble.
“It is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing,” Getty later wrote. Out of that, he became one of the richest men in the world.
Flash forward to the modern era.
When Wall Street banks — exploiting Republican-demanded deregulation of banking and investment rules — crashed the American economy in 2007, home prices (and, thus, homeowner equity) collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to banking predators like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, and tens of millions of others were underwater.
The stock market plummeted by over 50%. On October 9, 2007 the Dow was at its all-time peak of 14,164.53 but by March 5, 2009 it had collapsed to 6,594.44.
While over 8 million Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out as the Bush Crash started today’s homelessness crises, the top 1 percent saw it as a buying opportunity.
People were desperately unloading stocks in their 401Ks at a loss just to pay the bills, as wages plummeted in the face of a loose labor market.
But the morbidly rich were doing great.
Between 2009 — the bottom of the Bush Crash — and 2012 when the recovery really began, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31 percent. Fully 95 percent of all the income increases in the country were seized by the top 1 percent of Americans during that period.
As the economy recovered, rich people who’d used their increased income to buy stocks at the market bottom rode the S&P 500 up by 462 percent to 2020. A billion dollars invested in 2009 became 462 billion in just 11 years, a period during which the combined wealth of American billionaires went up by over 80 percent.
The Trump/Covid Crash of 2020 presented America’s morbidly rich with another brand new and huge opportunity to get richer on top of a crisis brutalizing the rest of America.
Once again the market collapsed and working people, now out of work, were selling their stocks at a loss just to pay the mortgage and buy food. But for the wealthy, it was a gift from God.
March 16, 2020 — just after Trump declared a pandemic and lockdown — the Dow sustained the largest single-day crash in its entire history. For the investor class, Trump and his billionaire buddies, this was an even better opportunity than the Bush crash of 2007!
Fewer than three months later, on June 4th, we learned that the seven richest people in America had seen their fortunes increase by fully 50 percent. And with Trump’s massive tax cut for his fellow billionaires, they could keep most all of it: by that time the average American billionaire was paying less than 3 percent in income taxes (a situation that persists to this day).
Just during that one single terrible pandemic year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, the world's 2,365 billionaires saw their wealth increase by a full 54%, as U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone.
Billionaire’s taxes have fallen by a full 79 percent since Reagan’s election in 1980, and a 2012 analysis found that as much as $32 trillion was safely squirreled away in tax-fraud offshore shelters.
This is why Kevin McCarthy’s proposed legislation to raise the debt ceiling would strip $80 billion from the IRS: the morbidly rich tax cheats who own him (with the Supreme Court’s blessing in Citizens United) don’t want to get caught.
They want to hang onto the trillions they made during the last two crashes.
And, apparently, they’re happily anticipating the next crash that their boy McCarthy and their bought-off Republicans in Congress are working hard to bring to pass with their debt ceiling manipulations.
— Economic downturns not only cut wages and present buying opportunities for the wealthy and corporate America, they also give massive companies far more leverage when negotiating with vendors, who are typically desperate smaller businesses.
— They retain access to credit so they can leverage their buying opportunities in ways smaller companies and working class individuals can’t.
— And their power to fight unionization increases exponentially as workers scramble and compete for jobs that have become vanishingly rare.
But the average American can be forgiven for thinking that Republicans would be reluctant to crash the economy. Their lived experience is very different from that of Elon Musk (532% increase in wealth during the single year of 2020), Mark Zuckerberg (86% increase), or Jeff Bezos (65% increase).
During the Bush Crash, average income for the poorest 10% of Americans fell by a full 23%, making business (and billionaires) much more profitable while working people were skipping meals and cutting pills in half.
Thirteen years later, the Trump Crash threw 8,500,000 Americans out of work: according to the World Economic Forum, the adjusted unemployment rate hit 22.7 percent in 2020, higher than even during the Bush Crash, and it’s taken a full three years for working people to get back to where they started before Trump so badly mismanaged the pandemic.
Small business revenue collapsed by more than a fifth under Trump, new business formation cratered, and by July 2020 one-in-five American families were behind on their rent. The rate of hunger in America doubled at the same time the GOP sought to cut food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid benefits.
The Bush and Trump crashes, in other words, did the work the morbidly rich have been demanding for years. Wages fell, unions struggled, corporate profits hit highs literally never before seen in America, and hedge funds bought up millions of distressed single-family homes to flip into high-priced rentals.
The stock market became absurdly cheap with both crashes, providing both the multimillionaire members of Congress and their billionaire backers with what used to be once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunities.
So don’t be so sure Republicans in the House and Senate won’t drag America into default and a second Republican Great Depression if they have a chance.
They and their billionaire backers have almost nothing to lose and a fortune to gain.
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You’ve wrapped up the evolution of American conservatism over the last 40+ years quite succinctly, pts. I so wish I’d seen it coming. Not a bit of suspicion. I honestly did not realize conservatism in the US could ever be that diabolical. I’ve been gobsmacked these past 3, 4 years. Wow.
Warmed-over feudalism?
No, it's more like occupation by a vicious foreign invader, plus quislings.
Good comment, JL, but I'd like some additional info about the "pubic" treasuries. They don't sound very "proper" to me.
Typo, i think. Try prosper in that sentence instead.
Yes, it's surely a typo. A funny one, however.
Feudalism?
Feudalism with no responsibility, no reciprocity, no protection for the serfs, no duty to any higher power?
Pure unadulterated exploitation.
No, those words are too weak.
Vampirism.
How's that for a policy?
As for the sTrumpets and sTrumpettes turning tricks in Congress...
a big part of the problem is how media giants frame it. headline suggest that Biden should negotiate with GOP, that it is on him not them to fix what they broke. Look at how they frame their headlines and focus their stories.
100 percent. And the media needs to change this false framing.
The will not, though. They frame the news in such a fashion because it sells more clicks and creates more advertising revenue.😭😠
In any case, I believe Biden's team is capable of handling the negotiations.
Totally agree!
That's the way they like it, uh, huh, uh, huh - to borrow from the Bee Gees.
Daniel, KC and the Sunshine Band.....
Elizabeth Iler! As Mary Wells would say, "You beat me to the punch, that time"!
I’m smiling at your “punch”, Joanne!
Yeah, sometimes I get a little punchy!!! 😊
More appropriate Bee Gees - “Stayin’ Alive”
You're my kind of guy, Daniel...sing it!
I was once asked to sing in a church choir. My response, " You guys are really THAT desperate ? WOW ! ".
Daniel Appleton, what about KC and the Sunshine Band?
I like Hugh Jackman better, after hearing him in The Greatest Showman. It's everything you ever want, everything you'll ever need.....
Daniel: here is the link on YT: https://youtu.be/q3svW8PM_jc
Gracias !
Dr Richardson, words cannot express my joy at reading this letter. This is the world as it should be. Thanks to President Biden for the foresight to see this clearly and get us back on the track. This train wreck has been a constant and painful problem since 1981. Now if we can just reclaim both the House and Senate by electing sensible, civic minded, persons to fill those 535 seats we may finally pull ourselves out of the abyss into which we have fallen. These new civic and honorable people don't need to be all Democrats. Sane, intelligent, and freedom loving Independents and Republicans can round out the Legislative branch too. We just need to cut out the cancerous rot of the trumpster maggots, bring back the REAL Constitution, do away FOREVER with gerrymandering, voter suppression, and rampant greed.
Thanks, Fay. This is how I see it but you expressed it so nicely.
Thank you, Lynell
...and yet another reason, Fay, to apply the Biden global strategy of cooperative competition to the Republican Party. Democracy NEEDS a viable 2nd party (at least) in which all those newly enlightened others may have a voice in helping steer our democracy rather than destroy it by turning it into chaos.
Thank you Heather.
What Jake Sullivan had to say gives me, and should give US all hope. What a lovely and exciting path forward for US and for our world - if we can make it happen.
What Mr. Sullivan said gives me hope also. I sure hope we can make it happen.
Yes, Vision and Hope. We may never reach our goal, but we shouldn’t stop trying.
Yes! Troglodytes, get out of the way!
Yes, Biden has vision. I think that comes of years in government. I will vote for him again.
He sounds progressive. The corporate Democrats usually run like scared rabbits from such thinking, which is why they shoved Bernie off of the stage & the Orange Ogre won.
It also seems to be that he is a genuinely good man, albeit flawed like the rest of us.
I have that sense too.
I have always been a big fan of Jake Sullivan but this piece about his economic vision is just I have been advocating for years. The Laffer economic message of "Tax Cuts" and "Trickle Down Economics" that still resonates with Republicans is dead or should be dead. The Sullivan message of investing in supply chain building and infrastucture development is the way government can help
"the Sullivan message," - love it!!!
Professor, you capture the essence of how a healthy world economy is as necessary as a productive domestic economy. And America must pay attention.
“But today at the Brookings Institution, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan outlined a very different vision of the global economy and American economic leadership.” Calling for a bipartisan approach to restore middle class, a clean energy transition....this is not new, but it definitely counters the repubs’ approach to cut services and programs that strengthen all citizens. “We’re all in this together” quoting President Kennedy. At home and abroad. Can we make this happen in today’s political climate? Hoping step by step we get beyond partisan politics and move forward. A healthy economy helps everyone.
To most Republicans, they'd rather toss themselves into a wood - chipper than be bipartisan. They see it as a weakness. Much like their Evangelical brothers & sisters don't like acknowledging the validity of other faiths / belief systems. Which is WHY I want as little as possible to do with either one.
Bipartisanship is an impediment to one-party rule.
As in " we'll take all our marbles & go home ". The GOP are children of a severely DYSFUNCTIONAL family - as in Manson's family.
Well see, J L. I think the jury's still out on that one.
Yes!
Thank the Newt Toad Gingrich for that
The one that speaks to me personally is about the tide lifting all boats.
I was unaware the phrase originated with JFK. I heard it repeatedly as the Reagan Administration's metaphor for how enriching and further empowering the richest of the rich would someone enrich and empower us all. Yet, while the JFK phase makes sense as far as it goes, the GOP formula, which warps our economy, our politics, and our future to this day, has seemed utterly incongruous with it.
Not "has seemed". Is.
I like the phase too & wonder how people who have never experienced the tidal exchange feel about the saying & if there is something comparable for non tidal people?
Fake white Biden liberals, praising Biden for spending zillions of borrowed dollars for Worthwhile Projects, heedless of how their spending spree exports inflation (thanks to the Almighty Dollar as a global reserve currency), compounding the economic woes of hapless darker-skinned countries who have been enslaved by the International Monetary Fund. And then there is Biden's profligate waste of money and weapons supporting the thuggish, corrupt, undemocratic one-party right-wing regime in Ukraine, pumping up a global weapons black market with who knows what ghastly terrorist consequence in the works, while the zombified Ukrainians make payments on their unpayable I.M.F./NATO loan with pounds and pounds of bloody flesh, the latest permutation of the most far-reaching genocide in history.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-23-2023/comment/15163701
Globally, the "growing toxicity of the dollar" is pushing countries to start conducting trade in other currencies. Articles like this are becoming commonplace:
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230427/toxicity-of-us-dollar-fuels-growing-sway-of-chinas-yuan-in-mercosur-trade-1109880129.html
The eventual result will be a surge of now-unwanted "international" dollars sloshing back to the U.S.A. and fueling domestic inflation.
Ya know, trolling is an art and usually successful ones use different material the second time.
I rate this 2 stars for lack of originality. 😉
The Great Wall O' Text. Where are all the CAPS, mizspelld wrds & exclamation !!!!!! Points !!!!!!! between !!!! Every mzpeld !!!! word !!!!!! ?
Well, it does have the requisite random Capitalization.
😂
Beth, Daniel and Michael,
Don't feed the troll, just report him. Report every comment without answering him. Trolls do eventually get removed. The more who report him, the quicker it will happen. ANYTIME you engage him, he absolutely cannot control himself and will have to have the "last word"
Watch and see.
Hypocritical I.M.F Holocaust deniers.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Hypocritical I.M.F Holocaust deniers.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Close the bathroom door and turn on the exhaust fan. Looks like you need to visit your gastroenterologist, STAT!
The methane build - up will be leading to a potential explosion that could be seen from low Earth orbit. BOOM goes the methane !
Hypocritical dope-fiend I.M.F Holocaust denier.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
Hypocritical I.M.F Holocaust deniers.
"The blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers."
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
For me to make sense of Heather's Letter, I drew this analogy. It comes from an article written by Tom Silva's This Old House:
"Building a good foundation requires a lot more than digging a hole and pouring some concrete into forms. It must be tailored to its site like a custom suit, taking into account soil conditions, water tables, even the quality of the backfill.
"And as with a custom suit, every detail must be perfect: the base properly compacted, the formwork set up right, the concrete free of voids. Neglect even one of these, and the most carefully poured foundation can fail."
I would argue that our Declaration of Independence and Constitution with its accompanying amendments provide us with that good foundation. I would also argue that the Biden Administration is tending to perfecting the details that are necessary to protect our foundation for ourselves and the generations to come.
Great analogy
I agree to a point.
Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution have the serious flaws that allowed/allow for genocide of Native Peoples and slavery. "4/5 of a person": this must be remedied going forward.
Agree, Martyrita. I did include the subsequent amendments to fill in the gaps in the original document . I also included, I thought, future tweaking to get us to a "more perfect union." If we scuttle these two documents we, to my mind, cease to exist as a United States of America. Just my opinion.
High praise coming from you, Jeri. But truth be told, I like your analogies better!
Lynell, FWIW you get my vote for the best quote and comment of the day! Thank you!
(It is very tiring to see not just trolls' comments when they happen but the increasing incidents of name calling.)
If you click on the three dots at the end of a troll message, you can report it to Substack quickly and easily.
Ruth Brinton -- Thanks, I am aware of that very welcome activity, and have done it many times with the trolls who invade this space! Sometimes many times with the same troll.
I have reported one of the more obnoxious ones; I report that account almost every day.
Much appreciated, Judith!
Nicely put, Lynell. I'm hoping for the best for Team Biden.
Yay, Sabrina...me, too!
Love Tom Silva and “This Old House”!
Man years ago, and being guided by the "This Old House" team, we renovated a whole house. Fun times, Gail!
Wow! What an INCREDIBLE experience that must’ve been! So cool!
Great synopsis, Dr. Richardson. Thank you.
Jake Sullivan is a very impressive young man. Look for him to go far.
All the GOP has is St. Marjorie of Whack - Job & Lauren Boebert Fett.
Ewww, don't taint Star Wars by association with that ignoranus...
I stopped watching much of that muddled mess after the original trilogy.
Ah yes, those muddled messes yearning to be . . . um . . . profitable!
THAT'S A DEFINITE YES ! Oui, Ja. Si.
The movie is overrated, and I agree.
Marjorie Traitor Goon. That's what i think could be a good name for her..
An example of How To Be A Deranged Psycho In US Politics.
Marjorie seems to be wearing out her welcome within her own caucus because of incendiary statements she's been making in committee hearings. She may be a has-been before long.
Don, MTG is a walking breathing 3 - dimensional serious case of " INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE " !
She needs benzodiazepines by the gallon, for starters.
Synopsis; Every person, every nation on Earth is connected. Like it or not. We rise or fall together. All or none.
Conclusion; Giving the wealthy more money doesn't help workers or expand the middle class. It doesn't even help the wealthy. When you already have more money than you could spend in ten lifetimes, the reciepts from another 5% tax cut aren't even noticeable. One can purchase political power; buy yourself a congressman or Senator or two, maybe even a Supreme Court justice, but, as we have seen of late, the return on investment peaks and then declines rapidly.
Jake Sullivan; sounds like the name of a prizefighter or tough union organizer. Before you even meet him, you know "No nonsense here! Take your BS down the road!"
Thanks for your recap. Beautifully said, Ralph.
❤️❤️❤️
I've been a "hired gun" with my cameras since 1973 when I freelanced on my first corporate gig at Pangborn in Hagerstown. We all worked at the local Board of Education TV studios and put together the first independent video production company in our region. Our first corporate gig was making training videos for the Soviets...with a Russian soundtrack. We were told the parts were being used in Russian farm tractors. We found out years later the parts were used in Soviet Tanks. At that time Hagerstown and the area was full of manufacturing plants. Mack Trucks, Fairchild planes, Grove Cranes, Jamison, Moller, Brandt and more. I had a lot of clients. Over the years as I produced more corporate videos and we kept moving more plants to China and outsourcing more jobs, I said "don't they understand what they are doing?". Guess what? They did not care. It became about quarterly profits. Most of these companies had been owned and operated by the families that started them. They took care of their workers. Eventually they sold off, or had new boards who didn't care about the local workers. Bit by bit many of these plants closed or downsized. Hagerstown is now full of warehouses and trucking and only a few manufactures like Mack...which is now Volvo still exist. In my business when I started at the Board of Ed in 1972, virtually all of the equipment was American made. RCA, GE, AMPEX, Century lights, Bell & Howell, Kodak film. And then we got our first Sony port-a-pak video camera & recorder. My first camera was a Minolta 35mm SLR from Japan. Pretty quickly most of the gear was Sony, JVC or Panasonic. By the time I started my first video business in in 1980, all of the camera & recording gear I bought was JVC from Japan. There was nothing made by the US that could compete. At that time Kodak was developing digital photography. Their R&D had made the first all digital camera. Their management said we are a film company...and they let the Japanese take their invention and run with it. Every camera all of us has now is digital...and made overseas...yet Kodak invented it. We've been idiots. Our greedy boards of directors sent our manufacturing plants and jobs out of country to make them a bigger profit...our "leaders" did not understand their own ingenuity...when VW and then Japan first brought in low priced, gas economical cars, we countered with the unsafe at any speed Corvair. When GM developed a good electric vehicle in the 90's the EV1 which people loved, they killed it...to sell more gasoline. Our corporate "leadership" has screwed up in so many ways. I now work mostly for non-profits, on history related projects...or am trying trying to fund and create documentaries on social & climate issues...because the manufacturing is not here any more...it's starting to come back. But we the people need to have a say in this...we cannot trust the business people to do whats best for us. The last good corporate gig I had was with Rukert Terminals in Baltimore. They just celebrated their 100th Anniversary as a terminal that handles imports and exports at the docks. They transfer goods from ships to the warehouses. Most of it is imports. Products or raw materials from Brazil, Germany, Asia, Africa, Saudi...Russian aluminum for your Ford 150 pickup trucks, until Ukraine broke out. They are a family owned and operated business that started with one truck and a rented stable for a warehouse. Now they are the largest Independent Terminal (non government) on the East Coast. Even they had to buy their biggest crane from Europe, because no one here makes one that will do the job they need.
If we stop electing Repubs...keep Joe & Company...maybe my son & daughter can take over my company...maybe there will be manufacturers who need our services again. It's just starting to happen here in the offshore wind sector....for now I'll try and make documentaries that matter....and keep folks like Trump and DeSantis out of office. Now if we could just beat Andy Harris for Congress on the Eastern Shore....Peace
Mike, Thanks so much for spelling out the story of how we got ourselves into this mess - or rather how the boards of directors and owners of industry succumbed to such short-term vision. I remember having a Minolta 35 mm camera in the 1960's (and taking classes on how to get the most out of it). Later, I discovered that film for that camera was no longer available from Kodak and I had to buy film made in China.
I watched a documentary called, "How They Killed the Electric Car" - which turned out to be a lease-only vehicle - and the corporation called in all the vehicles at the expiration of the lease period (so no one could get their paws on the technology) - and the electric-car dream was killed.
How many other important and forward-thinking concepts and products have been 'killed/sacrificed' so that the corporate board/owners/shareholders could reap a nice quarterly dividend?
Thank you so much for your work to promote domestic companies who may be willing to share their bounty with 'the people' as well as with 'the corporation.' Carry on ...
Thank you Julia. Minolta's started coming into the US with Viet Nam vets returning. They were a less expensive option to the Nikon's which were mostly used by professionals then. People loved the GM EV-1. A few of the owners hid their's for awhile. I did a video on a guy who built his own electric car during the gas crisis when Carter was President. He worked in DC and drove in from his home in the MD suburbs. They ran an extension cord out to charge it up. I got to drive it. It had incredible torque and off the line jump. It was at the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Recently I worked an Offshore Wind conference in Baltimore. That technology has a lot of honest green promise, investment potential...and jobs.
The Rukert Family was wonderful to work with, documenting their 100 year history. It's a great case study on evolving, educated risk taking and hard work. If you go their website
www.rukert.com
and then go their Facebook page and scroll down you'll see our history videos
Thanks for this background - and for all you do (and are hoping to do).
Peace to you, Mike, and thanks for such an excellent and heartfelt lifelong perspective
I like this vision! I've been thinking we need younger blood at the top in 2024, but maybe with such competent people in place supporting Biden we don't just yet.
Old dogs can still learn new tricks !
Politicians and the people are finally waking up in the Western world to the negative reality of the globalization of the world's economy. While the growth achieve might be said to have produced a "win-win" situation in macro-economic terms for many of the countries, when measured by GDP etc, this is not necessarily true when you get down to the micro-economic level. You and I, as individual consumers suffer more frequently rather through a "win-lose game" as the "winners" in any country are not the same as the "losers" and the former tend to take all of the gain in wealth while leaving little in the form of wages or small business earnings to be shared with those whom TFG qualified as "losers" . Size gives might perhaps but it doesn't make it right. It's time to make the individual vote count for more than the money sloshing around the democratic process.
Read Vaclav Smil "How the World Works" - he has a very enlightening discussion of Globalisation.
Is it, "How the World Really Works" by Smil? I see the library may have this in an audio book. I'm getting behind in my reading and need to get audio books to listen to while walking for exercise. I'm going to share this sub stack. This is better than expensive advertisements or expensive newspapers for spreading Biden's plan for a future that makes sense.
Many thanks, Hugh. I didn't know him. I have ordered the book alongside Roderick Braithwaite's look at Russian Myths and Realities......another of my interests.
Stuart, I hope everything works out as planned! We have the power to change things.
Great letter, sorely needed dose of encouragement.
Oh, the things we could accomplish. The possibilities for a better world. If only...we had a better congress.
Repubs need to go extinct, Dems and real Independents will do
Will Rogers knew and said clearly, on Nov 26, 1932, that republicans were full of crap. “The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least passed through the poor fellows hands.” Mr. Hoover may have believed in the “trickle down” bull Schitt, but the clowns these days know better. So did most of America after the debacle that Hoover ushered in. But “silver-tongued” liar Reagan convinced most that the wealthy would look out for everybody. The scam began and is repeated with every republican breath.