With the recent Supreme Court decisions gutting federal enforcement of civil rights and business regulation and the public hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S.
Brilliant. I so wish everyone in America was reading this. And that all Democrats , the media, and the country would be praising and supporting Biden for his focus and work. It's working. The Republicans focus on the 1 percent did not and is not. Thanks for putting this all together
Hartmann's writing at the link plus Dr. Richardson's writing today should be mandatory reading for all Americans who can read.
Unfortunately, the number of Americans that can read, ever do read, or want to read?
Getting smaller by the day and not very large to begin with. It is so much easier to grab a beer and listen to Buck and Butt on AM radio or listen to Sean Hannity on AM radio or watch Fox News show some fake blonde leg.
But, reading is the path to understanding complex issues. Hartmann's letter and today's letter by HCR clarify Republican intent and reasons that EVERYONE should READ.
Another letter from Hartmann is just as eye opening.
"Hartmann's writing at the link plus Dr. Richardson's writing today should be mandatory reading for all Americans who can read."
And for those who have difficulty with Twitter, here is a "transcript":
Thom Hartmann Twitter – 02 July 2022
1/ Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work (a thread):
11:15 PM · Jul 2, 2022
Thom Hartmann
Jul 2
2/ The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS.
3/ Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.
4/ Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%.
5/ Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America and avoided participating in politics.
6/ Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses;
7/ unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.
8/ When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class.
9/ The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.”
10/ It became a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then America.
11/ They then moved on to infiltrate our universities, seize our media, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to add millions of votes, and turn upside down our tax, labor, and gun laws.
12/ That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.
13/ By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented GOP was putting forward.
14/ They included radical tax cuts, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered people (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them dependent).
15/ Their sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution.
16/ It’s time to simply say out loud that it hasn’t worked:
17/ Republicans told us if we just cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was at in 1980 down to 27% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else as, they said, the “job creators” would be unleashed on our economy.
18/ Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over 40 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day.
19/ The middle class has gone from over 60% of us to fewer than half of us. It now takes 2 full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980.
20/ Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted wherever they wanted it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.
21/ “An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill politicians.
22/ Five Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about history to make guns more widely available.
23/ Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world.
24/ Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.
25/ Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.
26/ Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus instead on science and math.
27/ Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans that can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.”
28/ Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have what they told us was “skin in the game,”
29/ we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.
30/ Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses,
30/ Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses,
31/ or beginning families. While students are underwater, banksters who donate to Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable loans.
32/ Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and better.
33/ Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s impossible to start or find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs.
34/ It’s all giant chains, many now owed by hedge funds or private equity. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants.
35/ Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.
36/ Instead, nearly every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, millions and often billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives — while workers, the company, and society suffer the loss.
37/ Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world.
38/ At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.
39/ Now a small group of often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as you can imagine, are generally absent.
40/ Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve and which they’d reject.
41/ They said this will “lower costs and increase choice.”
42/ In all of the entire developed world — all the OECD countries on 4 continents — there are only 500,000 medical bankruptcies a year. Every single one of them is here in America.
43/ Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.
44/ As everybody can see, they lied. And are working as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment.
45/ Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.
Now, I feel personal gratitude to the super rich who have made something that benefits me. Like the Wal Mart gang. They are welcome to the money. Just like the guy who goes to the stadium to watch professional football and pay handsomely for doing it. Those athletes are, to him, worth their huge salaries because they provide him enjoyment.
Yes, McConnell is the cynical power grabber in so many ways. I loathe that man almost as much as I do death star donny. Nearly every day i see some post that blames Biden for gas prices and all things economic. I see less of it now from the far left here in Salem because they are now concentrating on the reversal of Roe and other such issues. When I posted Heather's letter to Facebook, I ended with the reminder to vote D. I also post as many items that I see about the good things Biden is doing.
Unfortunately we also need to be aware of the media's dislike of all things Biden. Here is the lead story in the New York Times today. It is a devastating look at Biden.
Barbara, Unfortunately, I can understand why Americans have turned on Biden.
1. AM radio, which, nobody takes seriously, reaches a very wide audience from coast to coast and has a variety of all day long nuts ranting against Biden. These stations really matter.
2. Fox News. Same bunch of nuts ranting on TV.
3. Gas prices. Although Biden can do nothing but watch the price of gas move wherever, the price of gas is wholly out of his control and even influence, Americans like I was at age 18 are ignorant enough to believe all the ranting on AM radio about how Biden is at fault.
4. Lastly, and even a concern of mine, Biden is 79 years old. I have yet to meet a 79 year old in my lifetime that I felt would be an optimal, highly effective President. In fact, I heard Pete Buttigiege on some platform my wife showed me yesterday and he was masterful talking with Fox news about protesters outside Kavanaugh's home. I believe that 79 is too old.
I also believe that Pete Buttigeige does not have a snowballs chance in hell of winning a nationwide election for President.
So, I don't know what to do. Kamala Harris cannot win either.
I've never liked polls, whose results depend on the way questions are formulated in order to obtain answers the pollsters want to get. It's similar to questioners on "60 Minutes" asking, "You didn't like that very much, did you?" and the person responding, "I didn't like that very much."
Instead of following "The White House has tried to trumpet strong job growth, including on Friday when Mr. Biden declared that he had overseen 'the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history' with a statement that the Times/Siena poll showed a vast disconnect between those boasts, and the strength of some economic indicators, and the financial reality that most Americans feel they are confronting," The New York Times should simply have written "The White House trumpets strong job growth and the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history," and left that paragraph at that, instead of immediately countering with "...a vast disconnect..." Our mainstream media should look for and trumpet all the good the president has done, and emphasize that many of the things he has proposed, as with Obama, have been blocked by McConnell and the Radical Regressives' filibuster.
There are good polls and bad polls, including dishonest polls. The results certainly depend on how the questions are posed, but it is certainly not true that all poll questions are designed to get a desired result. Even a well-designed, carefully administered poll only gives the result from a statistical sample that is chosen "at random" (which has a technical definition) and which attempts to give an accurate picture of the population at large. Results are reported with "margins of error" to gauge the uncertainty in the results. Usually polls are designed to give results at the 95% confidence level, another technical term, which means, roughly, that 95% of all possible random samples will give a result within the stated margin of error. That means that 5% of samples will give a "bad" result, i.e., not within the margin of error. One does not know whether the particular sample that shows up in the poll is one of the 95% "good" samples or one of the 5% "bad" samples. That's just a fact of life. Statistical arguments are not strict mathematical proofs; they are empirical observations, which can be wrong. A bit like news reports.
When the Maddow blog was still in operation, there was a lovely poster under the name Carolina Lady With Fan. (I do miss those folks) She had worked in polling for years and explained how it worked. After that I have paid no attention to them. The mainstream media loves bad news and clink bait.
Yes, this really irritates me which is why I only do the puzzles and science and food sections. I do read Bill Palmer (yes, I know the headlines are hyperbole) who takes on the media all the time.
Sorry I sent it to you. And yes ordinarily I watch what I read in MSM. I like the real estate section watching what people choose to live in, Metropolitan Diary, and Margaret Renkyl.
It's safe to speculate that decades hence, historians looking back at the shocking decline of America will center on McConnell as a linchpin. That is, if historians are still able to research and publish.
Keep in mind that capitalism is amoral and global. Capitalists do not care about the common good and they do not care about the well-being of the nations in which they operate. Capitalists are parasites by design, feeding off the host planet and its people.
My husband is a fan of Picketty (sp?) and is now reading his newest book on the history of equality. We do try to shop as much as we can locally and frequent our Saturday Market every weekend and then do our grocery shopping at our local natural food store. They do mark those items which are local. I do try to avoid brands that I know have been sold to big companies also. I buy a lot of my herbs and spices from a company that works with small farmers. No, they are not local, but I like their product and the fact that they support these farmers all over the world. I also have a garden and buy my plants from a local nursery and most of my seeds from one here in Oregon. I never order books from Amazon, but from Powell's, the wonderful book store in Portland. Since we seldom drive out of the city, our Prius is getting something like 560+ miles to the gallon. We have solar panels and just added more with storage batteries (not Tesla) in the garage. I know everyone cannot afford to do this, but I encourage people to do what they can and to support efforts for urban gardens in cities and other projects to help ordinary people.
I mean 560+. We rarely drive on anything but electric which is in town driving. It would less if we did lots of highway driving. Also the mileage is better in summer than in winter. We bought the car in January and it had a full tank of gas. We haven't been to the gas station yet and the tank is still pretty full.
I just shared this essay from Dr. Richardson with a number of my friends and family who have grown weary of the tumult and chaos. It is important that we work to inform instead of politicizing. I also frequently quote Dr. Richardson when countering misinformation. For many reasons this writing from Dr. Richardson was amazing. I studied Economics just enough to realize that is is a complex topic understood by few. So you are correct in stating that our task is to inform.
Thanks for that link--I just subscribed to the Hartmann Report.
Extremely interesting and informative backstory. After seeing what Burke's theories did to the lower and lower middle classes in Great Britain, how could ANYONE--even a conservative--think that it was good policy? Too sad that Thomas Paine's writings weren't more popular and more widely followed.
Wasn't the French Revolution enough of an object lesson in what happens when deliberately punitive financial policies on specific classes plus despair and grievance collide?
Tom Payne and Nicolas de Condorcet are still more alive and relevant than most commentators writing today... and all those dead-weight politicians -- not to mention the criminals on mission from Hell...
Matt Stoller, author of Goliath, is another voice in the case against concentrated power. He spoke at our library last night. A one-time White House insider and committed Democrat, he faults Obama for increasing that power concentration in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Populist Senator Wright Patman, is the hero of Stoller's history lesson, dedicated to dismantling monopolies, favoring small businesses.
Mike: Lace up and snug up your marathon 'shoes' ; there are far more 'band-aids' that need to be ripped off. The problem is words, narrative truths in evidence - in digestible forms, and numbers of folks singing by heart from exactly the same 'hymnal' - if you will, in numbers that cannot be ignored by our broadcast media problems - yet another huge, complex problem we share today; complex for a multiplicity of factors that again requires teasing apart. It can become dizzying; yet I've never seen problems that don't yield to factoring apart. I have a notion though that there are band-aids that even our good Dr. HRC cares to 'not' have ripped off quite yet. Patience and acceptance are difficult things. ~Cheers to all of good will !
In addition, empirical evidence for the failure of Republican economics can be found at "The Rise & Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism" by David Kotz. Evidence & arguments for Democratic political philosophy & economics can be found at "American Amnesia" by Jacob Hacker.
Other Democratic government seem not to have fallen prey to such a deep history of greed. At least others have put money into National Healthcare. How is it that our country puts such greed over the welfare of its people.
It should be lauded and applauded on every social media platform — and even posted on all bulletin boards at town halls as in “olden days.” Every single paragraph is worth soaking in and then relaying to our communities.
We keep saying that. We keep looking for the right slogans and sales pitches. But I think the messengers are the problem. I have enormous respect for what Biden, Schumer and Pelosi have accomplished and what they want to accomplish. But they are not inspiring speakers!
We need some new leaders with fire in their bellies - who are YOUNGER.
Newsom, Booker, Abrams, Pritzker, Schiff, Raskin, Swalwell.... we have a huge stable of talent. Time to let them take the reins.
We are not recognizing how humans need inspiring leadership. The GQP has that figured out with emotional rhetoric that riles up their rabble. We stare at our navels and/or flagellate ourselves because somehow we haven't delivered our message properly. If we could only find the right words..."they would understand". But I suggest it's not the message that's wrong. It's the lack of convincing charisma at the top.
Sorry Joe, Nancy and Chuck. I love you. But you are old like me. Time to pass the damned baton.
So spend a little time on social media amplifying all the Democrats you support. No one is going to do this for us. Don’t worry about how many followers you don’t have - the algorithms are always watching, and they promote material with more approvals and repeats.
For good messaging on Twitter, I follow @theDemocrats, @BidensWins. For a fiery speaker, check out @RepMcClinton, leader of PA House Dems.
yes, I saw this Sara and Pete hit three home runs and drove 10 runs in all in 5 minutes on the field. Awesome.
Sadly, a gay man just cannot win, I don't think, a Presidential election in the states especially with the new laws on the books on Red states enabling the legislatatures to swap out the electors to whatever they want.
Impressive performance. What's he actually doing to help deal with the airline mess?? He's smart and a quick study, yes. Doing his actual current job as Transportation Secretary? Not much. Extremely disappointed in him...
Come election time, Republicans will draw a straight line connecting Joe and these, and more, issues. A candidate not directly tied to today’s problem areas will stand a better chance of beating the Republican nominee. Someone bold. A dynamic speaker. Someone who can dish it out as good as they can take it.
Republicans never have a problem making up their version of things and spewing from Rupert’s propaganda machine. So true that lies can go around the world before truth can get it’s shoes on. This needs to change and the MSM has failed us, Dems, get on your high horse and stop letting the Trojan horses lead…
There’s always an attraction to the new (and untried). Particularly in the United States. The Great Man, or Great Woman who will rescue us. 25 years ago, I tried an age discrimination case in which I suggested to the jurors that the American taste for the new could be summed up this way:
Get a new car,
Get a new house.
Get a new boat.
Maybe get a new spouse.
In the same case , one of our clients told us, “They said they wanted fresh, new ideas. They were the same ideas we tried twenty years ago. They didn’t work then, and they weren’t going to work now.”
An interesting list. Some of these like "open borders" and "indecisive" are outright lies. Others ("gas prices") have nothing to do with who is on the Oval Office. Some ("bipartisan," for example) are actually virtues—or were before reason, intelligence, and education became vices.
And listing "Senator Joe" as an "issue" simply makes no sense whatsoever. Is that code of some sort?
What they have in common is that NONE of them are real issues. Anyone who thinks *any* other Democrat, regardless of age, will not have "a straight line" drawn between them and whatever fake outrage the right comes up with has simply not been paying attention. If you insist on playing by their rules, you will lose every time.
"Who" precisely is broadcasting (and repeatedly) said words / narratives (besides Faux); make lists, check it thrice, and broadcast repeatedly, decisively in all forms available to we peons, and without any shaming finger wagging in 'any' form is something I think can and must be done. Hopes, prayers, responsibility pass-off's, and speaking 'down' have not worked at all. Effective, verifiable information sharing has to be the goal / mantra. The last points can't be emphasized enough. My lifelong, ongoing education continues to humble me.
Couldn't agree more. The great tragedy is that those who believe the Big Lie and stormed the Capitol will remain utterly clueless of the truth that the professor, Hartmann, and others reveal.
MAGAs seek to destroy those in government whose policies would help them the most while revering those whose policies would harm them the most.
"Newsom, Booker, Abrams, Pritzker, Schiff, Raskin, Swalwell.... we have a huge stable of talent. Time to let them take the reins." Perfect and thank you Bill Alstrom.
Although I like both, I would not add them to the list. They both are too polarizing. We don't need more polarization, that's what lost us the 2016 election, too many voters going for a third candidate. We've seen that before in past elections. I don't believe either has a chance at beating a Republican for the presidency, much less a chance with many swing states having handed over designation of electors to Republican legislatures if said legislators don't like the voters' choice.
As for Newsom, I supported him for governor but question if he will appeal to a broad spectrum of American voters.
I agree. The older people you mentioned have been excellent at steering the Ship of State. It is in my memory that Pelosi was thinking of stepping down until trump came on the scene. And Biden came out of retirement because of Charlottesville.
The younger people you mention are stellar. Charles Booker is from my State of Kentucky. He burst on the scene in 2020 and is making waves.
Yes and no. Nancy Pelosi, in particular, has done a stellar job. And have you noticed that all the press about "too old" is always about Democrats, when it could as easily be applied to the other party? Let's keep our effective older leaders, and at the same time advance the younger ones.
Yes! For instance 'Snake-in-the-Grassley' at 88 yrs old, has been a Senator for over 40 years! He's been feeding at the public trough since 1959.
Right out of college, he was elected as a state level Representative from 1959 to 1974. From 1975 to 1981 he was a U.S. Representative for Iowa's 3rd District and since 1981 he has been in the Senate.
Iowa, isn't it time to elect someone a little less fossilized into office? Put Chuckie G. out to grass!
Yes. The disadvantage we have is healthy internal disagreement.
But I am sure there could be a way to package a series of messages that tell the truth. Look how the Jan 6 Hearings are constructed. The DNC should hire that guy!
I've read that every day the GOP leadership in Congress sends out to its members specific, easy-to-understand talking points. They're also sent to right-wing media outlets. That's why you hear them repeated throughout any given day.
It's difficult to be good at messaging when so many people only get "news" from Fox, or worse sites. And the mainstream media also largely ignore anything that seems the least bit complicated and instead focus on polls of Biden being up or down or better or worse than previous presidents. They are still over-covering Trump and what he says and does, too.
Peter Burnett - "There's a confused, ignorant, ill-informed public out there, millions of them,"
I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?
I cut out TV news altogether, because that’s just common sense, and I waited until late afternoon to read other news. By then, I figured, I could gut it out until dinner (and wine).
But the news crept into every crevice of life. I couldn’t avoid exposure — in my email inbox, on social media, in text messages from friends. I tried to toughen up. I gave myself stern lectures: “𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨! 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘎𝘰𝘥’𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦. 𝘗𝘭𝘶𝘴: 𝘙𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘮! 𝘈𝘭𝘴𝘰: 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦! 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯! 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥!”
And the latest MSM report is re a poll "showing" that 69 percent of Democrats want someone other than President Biden as their presidential candidate in 2024.
They are getting better. We can help by amplifying whatever is good. If on Twitter, follow @BidenWins and retweet all the good stuff. Did you see any of Pete Buttigieg on Fox Sunday?
Not only are the Dems rather disorganized and terrible at messaging...but the msm--driven by profit only--isn't one bit of help AT ALL.
I have a good deal of blame to heap on the media (particularly tv and print 'journalists' for their part in helping the orange mousse-olini (all air; little substance) win his 'election'.
While I agree with you that the press have been horrendous, the Democrats are getting better about messaging - just see Pete B on Fox this last Sunday, or PA House Dem Leader Joanna E. McClinton, WI Lt Gov and Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, Mallory McMorrow in the Michigan State Senate, or my favorite, " Politics Girl" Leigh McGowan, who has a great podcast and can also be found on YouTube and Twitter.
Clumsy messaging is not the problem. The problem is that Republicans need only repeat the dog whistle “woke” at every opportunity to remind the 90% of their voters who are white that they vote R because Republicans promise to do everything they can to preserve and expand systemic white advantages and Democrats don’t. No message based on policy nor even results can compete with “woke” for garnering white votes. If it could, Youngkin would not be a governor.
Agree. Bad news and crazy news sells papers and subscriptions. No one wants to read about Joe Biden;, with his quietly radical vision for America, sitting in his office or traveling across the globe doing his job! Yes, he makes mistakes, often bad ones; yes he's tongue-tied (he was a stutterer, for heaven's sake), yes, he speaks before he thinks. His refusal to abandon the bi-partisan fantasy is annoying. Take it all together it doesn't outweigh the list of his unprecedented accomplishments. I just don't have a firm grasp on how the Dems, with our lackadaisical approach to nearly everything, can counter that. The country has been pummeled for 6+ years by constant, daily loud noise and meaningless, often frightening spectacle. Like leaving a 4 hour rock concert, we can't hear.
And not to be ignored, the broadcast media, also - again, for a multiplicity of reasons / factors... [ 1) Intelligible communication of facts in evidence 2) Broadcast outreach of facts in evidence - repetitive if needed... are supposed to be the constitutionally protected necessity for a 'free' press, is it not ? To inform a community (writ large) of necessary, actionable facts in evidence, is it not ? ] *Has it become their purpose or part of it, to entertain, or to compete for eyeballs ?
Yes, I agree. The mainstream media do not give good coverage to President Biden and his many accomplishments. They tend to focus on his age and sometimes portray him as a doddering old man. They also need to cover the real radicalness of the Republican party. They call them" conservative" when they should be labeled "radical extremists". The media are still giving air time to Trump who, I am sure, is relishing this. Thank-you, Dr. Richardson, for another spot-on article. I too wish everyone could read what you have written today.
Timothy Snyder" On Tyranny" is instructive. Then read his "Black Earth" and see what happens when fascism takes over and established governments which singularly lie, rape, torture, murder and keep violence and misinformation as their tools which resulted in millions dying in WWII. In the USA we have Republican governments in at least 19 states (a) repressing the vote (b) passing laws so that they determine the validity of their own elections , essentially setting about to defraud the voters, (c) passing anti-privacy laws, (d) punishing innocent rape victims or careless teens, (e) not believing in separation of church and state .....need I say more. We have 18-30 year olds (30 million) not voting, we have disabled people unable to gain fair access to the ballot box and a US Senate using a non constitutional filibuster to stop legislators from doing their jobs.
WAKE UP AMERICA: WE ARE ON A very slippery slope. PLEASE CALL YOUR US SENATORS AND DEMAND THEY END THE FILIBUSTER FOR THE JOHN R LEWIS VOTING RIGHTS ACT.
Also read "How Fascism Works" (Stanley) and "How Democracies Die" (Levitsky) and "The Road to Unfreedom" (Snyder). What Mitch McConnell did to Obama was unprecedented....... Not allowing Garland a place on the Supreme Court. What Newt Gingrich did was allow attacks on tolerance and political norms that had guarded democracy here in the US for over a century. Both of them set the stage for Trump but it is the lack of political courage by the Republican Party and the failure to constrain an authoritarian demagogue that has caused us to fracture.
Alice, I write specifically in response to your last mostly capitalized paragraph. First, I would note, contrary to the Freedom to Vote Act whose provisions not only provide the necessary safeguards against both voter suppression and election subversion but also would supersede state law in conflict with any of its stipulations, that the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act is not preemptive and therefore cannot overturn state laws that already have passed. Consequently, I advise we be wary were the Senate to set aside the filibuster solely to pass the John Lewis Act.
Second, I believe it’s important we recall last January, that through a procedural maneuver, Schumer was able to bring the newly combined Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act to the floor for debate and a vote. As expected, when the 50-50 vote failed to reach the 60-vote threshold, Schumer called for a second vote for filibuster reform. Despite Senate Dems settling on an extremely modest filibuster rule change that would have allowed each side 100 speaking hours before getting to an up or down majority vote, Manchin and Sinema voted with the 50 Republicans to oppose the rule change.
Please note I have reviewed this recent history so we tactically can decide upon next steps. Though this should have occurred back in January, in my view, Biden, along with Democratic leadership, must call out Manchin’s & Sinema’s mere support for voter protection safeguards as hollow and performative, absent their willingness to do their part to figure out how the filibuster could be modified to pass the combined voter protection bill under regular order even if it meant taking a long time to get to an up or down majority vote.
My pleasure, Becky. From the outset, I have regarded this community as an opportunity to share our understanding and, thus, enhance our effectiveness to work for change.
The Constitution empowers the Senate to make its own rules. Roughly 200 years ago, senators updating their rules accidentally failed to include a rule about ending debate when it dragged on too long. Slave-holding Senators proceeded to use that omission to talk anti-slavery bills to death. Since it was so useful, pro-slavery senators and their successors held tight to the maneuver and did an effective job of enshrining (aka idolizing) it. At some point, senators changed their rules so that now not even talking is required - just an email saying ‘I block this.’ The filibuster is nothing but a senate procedure - at first, really a lack of a procedure - that has been used mainly to block civil rights bills. By the same token, a simple majority of senators can modify, bypass, or get rid of it at any time.
Anne-Louise, I don’t know what part of my comment prompted this question. Suffice it to say that neither legality nor constitutionality are relevant. The filibuster merely is a Senate procedural rule that dates back to the early 19th Century as a process to end debate. (The House never adopted the rule because representatives only are permitted to speak for 30 minutes.)
Regrettably, the filibuster, largely, had become a tactic for thwarting the majority party. In its current form, I regard it as a minority veto over the will of the majority and, thus, the source for most everything that is disfunctional in our politics.
The fact that the framers made many concessions to the South and slavery to get approval for the Constitution still lives with us today. Add to that 2 Senators per state and electoral college, you have the perfect structure for minority rule. Slave holding South maintains its mastery over machinery over gov't despite enactment of 13. 14 & 15 Amendments which Alito & other Repubs on SCOTUS want to ignore. Death of over 700,000 in Civil War did not wash the stain of slavery from our collective souls as Lincoln hoped. He was killed, too. Irony is Republicans of 1860's tried to save the Union and today's Republicans want to break it up. Poor Abe!
Sterling, I will reply to the valid points you raise when I return home later tonight. That reply also will include justification for asserting that most everything that is disfunctional in our politics, in my view, can be attributed, at this point, to the filibuster.
Sterling, I apologize for the delayed response, but frankly 4AM Friday morning has been my first real break all week. To start, I agree that this experiment in democracy called America has always been inextricably interwoven with white supremacy and its legacy, a hypocrisy too many regrettably deny or avoid. As for the anti-democratic electoral college and Senate, despite the odds, I still think it worthwhile, in the case of one, to try and add enough states to the interstate compact to reach the equivalent of 270 electoral votes and, in the case of the other, to grant statehood to DC and possibly to Puerto Rico. I believe we could accomplish the latter in 23 were we to hold the House, pick up at least 2 Senate seats, and abolish the filibuster, which, in my view, is meant even further to entrench minority rule and, thus, make it harder and harder for Democrats to win elections, let alone govern even if they do win substantial electoral majorities.
This last point is based on my perception that, contrary to contemporary Republicans who care only about tax cuts, judges, and staying in power through any means, Democrats want to tackle education, climate, healthcare, the economy, criminal justice, and immigration reform, legislation that largely remains stalled in the Senate, blocked by the requisite 60-vote threshold.
Thank you Barbara. For me, the core of your fine summary rests in your last sentence here--that the filibuster is, in whatever form, a tool that allows the minority to rule over the majority. That is, of course, the given of authoritarian government that in fact negates, in any corner, rule by the will of the people. It is possible, from that launching pad to manipulate the vote and discard it if you don't like the results. There are nearly 20 states poised to slam this into place. Along with the ruling on Roe, we are very close to the point at which we have painted ourselves into a corner.
This is when I get frightened. When I am comforted the many-headed beast and there seem to be too many blocked passages to know where to begin..
Dean, I don’t know if this reply is helpful, but I derive enormous gratification being in community with fellow travelers, who have committed to standing against the deep and pervasive corruption that has settled upon the republic.
Thank you, Barbara. I, too, have been not just gratified but encouraged and filled with hope and determination by the simple, profound impact of community. For most of my long journey I have believed absolutely in the great balance and rotation of the universe that (with a little help from its friends) would bring us right again. Most days I can still get there (with a little help from folks like you), but I have to confess that what stretches around us in all directions today is an alien landscape. From news reports and history books we are not unfamiliar with this phenomenon but only recently do I recognize the face of authoritarianism here and now and in this ;real world. I, for one, now see that I must also join the community of those who somehow missed it as it approached, looked away, blinked. And, although it has seemed sudden, where we are now has been constructed one small piece at a time over a great long while.
All that said, I am greatly encouraged by your words, by Dr. Richardson's brilliant skills at both summarizing and placing firmly into their historical context the horrors of the day and, as you suggest, the community of fellow travelers speaking freely. Intelligent conversation calms the spirit.
It has been adopted as a senate rule, originally as a method to limit endless debate, I believe. The House used to have something similar but got rid of it. A filibuster used to require the filibuster-er to talk without a break, even through the night. In recent years the senate adopted a rule that a senator could just SAY s/he was going to filibuster, without actually taking the floor and talking—the lazy man’s filibuster as it were. It’s nothing to do with law or constitutionality.
I will seek expertise but the Article 1.4 of the US Constitution makes it clear that Congress may amend or alter the actions of state legislatures What is your authority?
Alice, As stated in my original comment, contrary to the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is not preemptive. Hence it would have jurisdiction only over state legislation enacted after its passage.
I noted Herb requested permission to publish your letter. Though the choice is yours, you’re welcome to use any of my text if you decide to revise your concluding paragraph.
Postscript: Alice, Because this past January the two voter protection bills were combined to become the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act,” you simply could replace what you wrote with the recently combined filibustered bill.
Alice, I didn’t present a premise. I merely related the contents contained in the two bills and added that this past January the two had been combined.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Your comment that previously enacted state legislation remains in effect is not correct. Article 1.4 makes it clear that Congress can supersede State laws. So, too, the 14th and 15th Amendments.
ACTION FOR ALL:
Contact YOUR US Senators directly by phone and tell them to do their duty and bring H.R.5746 to the floor of the Senate for debate and a vote with no filibuster. Contact Collins, Murkowski, Sinema and Manchin's offices. Demand they protect our democracy.
Call today. Email your grandkids, kids, students friends and business associates and ask them to do the same.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. Call at night and leave a message.
HERE IS THE EASY MESSAGE. HERE ARE THE LINKS.
“Protect our voting rights and support H.R. 5746. NO FILIBUSTER for voting rights!”
I would like permission to submit your letter to the Exeter Newsletter (published under the Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, NH; part of the "USA Today" network). I would submit it under your name; better yet, you could submit it by sending it to newsletter@seacoastonline.com. You can reach me at herb.moyer@comcast.net. I know the Publishing Editor, and may be able to convince him that it is OK to publish a letter from outside our geographic readership area.... something I was not able to accomplish when I sent a letter critical of the Trump administration to the editors of the major newspapers in southern state newspapers 2-3 years ago.
It is not just that inflation and SCOTUS stripping away our rights dominate the news, it is IMHO, that the news really fails to give full reports of things that matter. Media fails to interview Biden supporters, instead reporting on and showing individuals who seem inflamed or outraged by inflation or gas prices only. This amplifies the message that Biden is failing to act. I know many who defend and support the President, but I so rarely see such individuals present in any media interviews. Such focus on the negative reaffirms distrust of government and undermines truth when it is presented. Truth, facts, reality matter little to citizens whose outrage is inflamed by half-truths and lack of balance in reporting the news. Media companies, like any business, exist to make money. Truth is no longer their primary concern.
I was recently out of college when Reagan was elected. At the time I thought the Laffer Curve really should have been called the Laugher Curve because it was a joke to think that the beneficiaries of those massive tax cut would actually share any of their new wealth with the masses. I’m still waiting for the benefits of Reagan’s economic programs to trickle down to me. About the closest I’ve come to receiving that economic trickle is the feeling that those in the top 1% of wealth have (metaphorically) been pissing on my shoes for the past 4 decades.
Bush 41 was right about one thing. Reaganomics was “voodoo economics.” The Republicans did not stop spending; they just spent on different things. However, the Reagan tax cuts, combined with Republican spending was equivalent to quitting one’s job and going on a spending spree. The Republicans made it seem like the tax savings were going to put back into businesses, innovating, growing, adding employees and creating jobs. That is not what happened. Small businesses might need to operate as above, but large corporations do not. Even David Stockton came to understand that Reaganomics were bs. As Stuart Stevens says, “It was all a lie.”
As the 70 year old son of well-paid government bureaucrats and as a strong believer in the social state and progressive taxation, I have plenty of things to complain about, but no excuses to offer. Despite being born and later "stepson-ed" into a life of ... advantage ... I have managed to pretty much escape all that (in Italy), and so I, too, am anxiously watching the price of things go up as the planet heats and Fascism rears its ugly head yet again, and public discourse degrades into useless noise.
I cannot believe anyone - even Mitch McConnell - really believes anymore in Laffer curves or trickle-down or any of the other crap the GOP since Reagan has been pushing and successfully selling to a substantial block of Americans, to the point where a cult of well-armed jerks has replaced their severe and repressive version of God with the vile and corrupt Trump, and they hope to imprison or kill the rest of us. The piss puddle has become a lake.
As was known in 1932, quote from Will Rogers “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 the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands.” Love that the “trickle down” is just pissing on your shoes for 4 decades. Great political message. Mad dog billboards, where are you…
I sooooo dislike McTurtleneck I can hardly tolerate hearing his turtle voice or seeing his turtle neck flapping with hateful words....once again the leader of the "NO Party."
A CA doctor is preparing to create a medical ship that will float in federal waters off the coast of TX and LA. It will provide abortion for women, and because it will be in federal waters, the states can't go after women or providers. She has the staff ready to go, just needs the ship. Anyone here know of someone who could make that kind of donation?
SCOTUS certainly shook things up, even if IS in the wrong direction on two hot-button issues. I think Biden has gotten far more done than he gets credit for, but who can expect fair winds when the first half of his term was marked by the first and biggest pandemic in 100 years and the biggest war in 50 years upsetting world trade? And all the pundits can talk about is gas and food prices? Wages are nearly keeping pace with inflation, but no one finds that comforting. What's going to drive me nuts if the mid-terms work out like they historically do is 2 more years where the Party of NO produces stagnation in the way our government normally addresses problems. Our government has done a good job addressing those two cataclysmic events, making vaccines broadly available in record time and rallying the liberal democracies of the world to respond to Russian aggression in a united fashion. All the while, the domestic economy has come roaring back from pandemic pandemonium.
What's not to like? We really have a case of the "magic wand" syndrome; we want our chief executive to pull one out, wave it a few times and watch every disruptive world event magically evaporate before our eyes.
We U.S. citizens are too used to instant gratification and it has ruined us for the ordinary less-than-lightspeed workings of government--particularly when the government is stoppered up by power-loving old reactionaries like Turtleface McConnell who needs to flushed out by a big ol' Kentucky dose of whichever plumber's helper would work best.
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who once said that taxes are the “price we pay for a civilized society”. He was right and the Republicans, who see tax cuts as the solution to everything, are wrong.
I always wonder if the people who advocate tax cuts know where their services come from. Taxation is necessary if we want the services we expect. It is so obvious that it is laughable.
Do as many (myself included) has posted: forward it to friends, post on your social media, print out and mail to those who don't have/use internet (As a younger senior, I have two elder siblings who don't use the internet)
Thank you, Heather, for focusing on President Biden's economic plan and its successes. The far right is scaring their base by saying there will be run-away hyper-inflation next year. We need to talk more about these successes and make sure people know it is to President Biden's leadership. The media time given to Bannon and his ilk would better used to talk about the strength in the economy!!
Unfortunately, the openly fascist "ReAwaken America Tour" is performing mind control on sold-out audiences across the country, pushing the story opposite to this report of success.
Mike Flynn and Eric Trump are the headliners and the group includes far-right celebrities Charlie Kirk, Stella Immanuel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Lindell, Roger Stone, Sidney Powell, Greg Locke, Jackson Lahmeyer, Alex Jones and Ken Paxton. Fourteen of the featured speakers are identified as Christian pastors, although some Baptists are trying to distance themselves:
I detest McConnell. I detest him with increasing agitation. What a rich and completely horrid person.
What’s sad, is that he thinks so little of 45, in whose image he is so perfectly formed - that he can’t see he’s exactly like him. In fact, hear tell he can’t stand that “xxx.” (McConnell won’t even say 45’s name.)
Me? I’m so touchy around republicans that I avoid at any length - but if I can’t avoid then I shut down. They’re truly turning into terrorists.
I would like to hear Mitch McConnell explain to his constituents how "placing a 3.8% tax on income “pass throughs” taken by individuals making more than $400,000 a year and would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, significantly lowering costs to consumers" is not something Kentuckians should support. Perhaps I've missed something and the vast majority of Kentucky households are making over $400k per year. I think I'll talk to my wife about moving.
Mitch long ago abandoned even the slightest effort to explain anything. And there seem to be no consequences for that. He will be there, brazenly obstructing bills for no particular reason, until his last breath. He won't be voted out because he brings money into the state.
One of the major losses in American education in not so recent years was the cutting of what was called Social Sciences... looking at what made governments and other social entities work. That and the growth of the Republican Party, thanks Ronnie. Now for the coming election the Dem's have to get their act on track... this article and ones like it might help, but the voters must be taught the damage of letting the world turn while watching tv or any of the social media. Pushing and educating the public is the best thing the Dem Party can do... proving over and over the positive work being done by Biden. Keep up the good work, Heather.
Dr. Richardson. Thank you for a great summary around both the history of the destruction of the middle class by Republican Policy (often supported by Democratic votes in Congress to pass those tax cut bills and bills to gut regulations).
Unfortunately, I tuned away from my normal NPR listening last week to listen to my local AM radio station while driving. Wow. So much hate, lies and and fakery I have never heard.
All over America, radio and TV is, 24/7, spinning lies, hate, anger, and more lies all day every day. One local radio announcer even pointed to a specific part of our city here, the African American part, and noted all crime came from that part of the city. This same guy referred to our black mayor as an Orangutan one time.
The vast majority of the media apparatus in our country is doing everything possible to keep Republican policy going and push America into dictatorship by lazy, fat, white men.
I am not optimistic after one week of listening to AM radio. Not at all. The stuff they are putting out is not quite "There are UFO's coming" but it is close.
Lastly, the AM radio is positively hysterical about "concealed carry" laws that Kathy Hochul has put in place that limit their ability to conceal carry on private property.
What? Gun owners want to conceal their weapons on private property AND keep it a secret from property owners? What is wrong with these people? Do they view the entire world as a threat to them?
Cowards and fraidy cats, one and all, are these Republicans with guns.
This is one powerful letter. This little tidbit should make us all want to scream "Stop! Thieves!"
"...more than $50 trillion has been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%"
Think about how even a fraction of that could have addressed homelessness, mental health issues, education and job retraining, drug addiction, hunger, affordable housing, gun buy backs, developing a new electric grid, funding fusion, providing clean potable water....make your own list.
The theft of a nation's treasure should outrage ALL of us. Why doesn't it? When are we going to reach the "Let them eat cake" moment?
Agreed. But the low hanging fruit for a claw back of wealth stolen from us is those with more than $1 billion. Or maybe $500 million. I don't know what the right number is. But the ultra wealthy could sacrifice 90% of their ill gotten gains and still not notice a difference in their lifestyles.
I do know that if Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos sleep well at night while millions of kids are hungry and/or poorly educated and/or struggling with addiction (thank you Nancy Reagan), etc....then they are F....ing EVIL.
The uber rich have discarded their fellow citizens as if they were sub-human.
MLM--I have discussed this with my husband. I truly believe that a great deal of Americans struggle with numbers. I am not just talking about fractions and decimal points, but the ability to comprehend the difference between a million and a billion. Years ago, I recall a school which was attempting to collect a million pop-tops from cans so the children could visualize the difference. I wish that the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry would do this NOW!!
I think that people making 100k+/yr think that getting to a portfolio of $1M is not out of reach (especially with a hyped up stock market) and think that they will have it swept away from them by taxes. Or that they will win a big lottery, and again, the feds will take it all away.
A year or so ago, I saw somewhere a mathematic equation using time as a measure of wealth. It showed something along the lines of if took the average American ONE SECOND to earn $50K, how long it would take until they had earned $1 Billion. I don't recall the exact amount of time but it was astounding! Most people can understand time much better than numbers. We need Katie Porter and the white board to explain it to people, perhaps then they wouldn't be so lenient with taxes on Billionaires.
That’s a good question, especially considering that not even one cent can pass through with them when they pass, as we all will eventually do. Set the threshold high, $50 million, $100 million, that’s wealth for unseen generations, and then tax the rest as if there’s no tomorrow.
Americans are angry, but they are angry at the wrong people
Democrat messaging should say, “we know you are angry about inflation, jobs, shortages, supply chain, but here’s why AND Here’s what we’re trying to do about it. Be angry at those refuse to help fix it”
They all believe “ The Left Caused Everything ! Before my Republican friends stopped talking to me I tried to show them the numbers.They won’t listen. Most have debt and very little savings and they think that 401K is going to get them through.Our generation was taught to live within you’re means.Tell me why Ice Cream is Tax’ed ? SMH
Brilliant. I so wish everyone in America was reading this. And that all Democrats , the media, and the country would be praising and supporting Biden for his focus and work. It's working. The Republicans focus on the 1 percent did not and is not. Thanks for putting this all together
Hartmann's summary is here: Coupled with Dr. Richardson's letter today they make a brilliant picture of what Republicans have done and are doing.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-the-reagan-revolution-scheme
Hartmann's writing at the link plus Dr. Richardson's writing today should be mandatory reading for all Americans who can read.
Unfortunately, the number of Americans that can read, ever do read, or want to read?
Getting smaller by the day and not very large to begin with. It is so much easier to grab a beer and listen to Buck and Butt on AM radio or listen to Sean Hannity on AM radio or watch Fox News show some fake blonde leg.
But, reading is the path to understanding complex issues. Hartmann's letter and today's letter by HCR clarify Republican intent and reasons that EVERYONE should READ.
Another letter from Hartmann is just as eye opening.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-the-reagan-revolution-scheme
All in all, for an America that sleeps, we should definitely be actively involved every day.
All of us.
"Hartmann's writing at the link plus Dr. Richardson's writing today should be mandatory reading for all Americans who can read."
And for those who have difficulty with Twitter, here is a "transcript":
Thom Hartmann Twitter – 02 July 2022
1/ Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work (a thread):
11:15 PM · Jul 2, 2022
Thom Hartmann
Jul 2
2/ The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS.
3/ Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.
4/ Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%.
5/ Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America and avoided participating in politics.
6/ Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses;
7/ unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.
8/ When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class.
9/ The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.”
10/ It became a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then America.
11/ They then moved on to infiltrate our universities, seize our media, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to add millions of votes, and turn upside down our tax, labor, and gun laws.
12/ That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.
13/ By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented GOP was putting forward.
14/ They included radical tax cuts, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered people (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them dependent).
15/ Their sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution.
16/ It’s time to simply say out loud that it hasn’t worked:
17/ Republicans told us if we just cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was at in 1980 down to 27% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else as, they said, the “job creators” would be unleashed on our economy.
18/ Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over 40 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day.
19/ The middle class has gone from over 60% of us to fewer than half of us. It now takes 2 full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980.
20/ Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted wherever they wanted it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.
21/ “An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill politicians.
22/ Five Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about history to make guns more widely available.
23/ Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world.
24/ Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.
25/ Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.
26/ Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus instead on science and math.
27/ Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans that can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.”
28/ Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have what they told us was “skin in the game,”
29/ we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.
30/ Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses,
30/ Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses,
31/ or beginning families. While students are underwater, banksters who donate to Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable loans.
32/ Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and better.
33/ Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s impossible to start or find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs.
34/ It’s all giant chains, many now owed by hedge funds or private equity. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants.
35/ Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.
36/ Instead, nearly every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, millions and often billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives — while workers, the company, and society suffer the loss.
37/ Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world.
38/ At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.
39/ Now a small group of often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as you can imagine, are generally absent.
40/ Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve and which they’d reject.
41/ They said this will “lower costs and increase choice.”
42/ In all of the entire developed world — all the OECD countries on 4 continents — there are only 500,000 medical bankruptcies a year. Every single one of them is here in America.
43/ Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.
44/ As everybody can see, they lied. And are working as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment.
45/ Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.
Hartmann's Substack letter is terrific. He is currently publishing, one chapter at a time on Sundays, his book "Unequal Protection".
Or without Twitter:
https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way
The Hartmann Report
DAILY TAKE
Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work
Now, I feel personal gratitude to the super rich who have made something that benefits me. Like the Wal Mart gang. They are welcome to the money. Just like the guy who goes to the stadium to watch professional football and pay handsomely for doing it. Those athletes are, to him, worth their huge salaries because they provide him enjoyment.
Thanks Ron.
dam' straight
A nation of blind kittens?
At all events, much licking of eyeballs needed.
And then, too many like McConnell for whom a good licking would be less than what the bandits deserve.
Yes, McConnell is the cynical power grabber in so many ways. I loathe that man almost as much as I do death star donny. Nearly every day i see some post that blames Biden for gas prices and all things economic. I see less of it now from the far left here in Salem because they are now concentrating on the reversal of Roe and other such issues. When I posted Heather's letter to Facebook, I ended with the reminder to vote D. I also post as many items that I see about the good things Biden is doing.
Unfortunately we also need to be aware of the media's dislike of all things Biden. Here is the lead story in the New York Times today. It is a devastating look at Biden.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/us/politics/biden-approval-polling-2024.html#:~:text=Most%20Democrats%20Don%E2%80%99t%20Want%20Biden%20in%202024%2C%20New%20Poll%20Shows
Barbara, Unfortunately, I can understand why Americans have turned on Biden.
1. AM radio, which, nobody takes seriously, reaches a very wide audience from coast to coast and has a variety of all day long nuts ranting against Biden. These stations really matter.
2. Fox News. Same bunch of nuts ranting on TV.
3. Gas prices. Although Biden can do nothing but watch the price of gas move wherever, the price of gas is wholly out of his control and even influence, Americans like I was at age 18 are ignorant enough to believe all the ranting on AM radio about how Biden is at fault.
4. Lastly, and even a concern of mine, Biden is 79 years old. I have yet to meet a 79 year old in my lifetime that I felt would be an optimal, highly effective President. In fact, I heard Pete Buttigiege on some platform my wife showed me yesterday and he was masterful talking with Fox news about protesters outside Kavanaugh's home. I believe that 79 is too old.
I also believe that Pete Buttigeige does not have a snowballs chance in hell of winning a nationwide election for President.
So, I don't know what to do. Kamala Harris cannot win either.
All in all, it looks bad Barbara.
Yes it does. I am hoping for some miracle silent majority of Democratic voters.
I've never liked polls, whose results depend on the way questions are formulated in order to obtain answers the pollsters want to get. It's similar to questioners on "60 Minutes" asking, "You didn't like that very much, did you?" and the person responding, "I didn't like that very much."
Instead of following "The White House has tried to trumpet strong job growth, including on Friday when Mr. Biden declared that he had overseen 'the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history' with a statement that the Times/Siena poll showed a vast disconnect between those boasts, and the strength of some economic indicators, and the financial reality that most Americans feel they are confronting," The New York Times should simply have written "The White House trumpets strong job growth and the fastest and strongest jobs recovery in American history," and left that paragraph at that, instead of immediately countering with "...a vast disconnect..." Our mainstream media should look for and trumpet all the good the president has done, and emphasize that many of the things he has proposed, as with Obama, have been blocked by McConnell and the Radical Regressives' filibuster.
Agree. The problem is that this was the lead headline in NYT today. The media dislikes Biden and that is a huge negative.
There are good polls and bad polls, including dishonest polls. The results certainly depend on how the questions are posed, but it is certainly not true that all poll questions are designed to get a desired result. Even a well-designed, carefully administered poll only gives the result from a statistical sample that is chosen "at random" (which has a technical definition) and which attempts to give an accurate picture of the population at large. Results are reported with "margins of error" to gauge the uncertainty in the results. Usually polls are designed to give results at the 95% confidence level, another technical term, which means, roughly, that 95% of all possible random samples will give a result within the stated margin of error. That means that 5% of samples will give a "bad" result, i.e., not within the margin of error. One does not know whether the particular sample that shows up in the poll is one of the 95% "good" samples or one of the 5% "bad" samples. That's just a fact of life. Statistical arguments are not strict mathematical proofs; they are empirical observations, which can be wrong. A bit like news reports.
When the Maddow blog was still in operation, there was a lovely poster under the name Carolina Lady With Fan. (I do miss those folks) She had worked in polling for years and explained how it worked. After that I have paid no attention to them. The mainstream media loves bad news and clink bait.
Yes, this really irritates me which is why I only do the puzzles and science and food sections. I do read Bill Palmer (yes, I know the headlines are hyperbole) who takes on the media all the time.
Sorry I sent it to you. And yes ordinarily I watch what I read in MSM. I like the real estate section watching what people choose to live in, Metropolitan Diary, and Margaret Renkyl.
As a cat mama, I agree
🐾❤️🐾
It's safe to speculate that decades hence, historians looking back at the shocking decline of America will center on McConnell as a linchpin. That is, if historians are still able to research and publish.
Yes, and it might be a big if....not only fascism, but also degradation of the planet.
Unless it’s at the woodshed. With a big can of whoop-ass opened.
Salud, Peter. 🗽
lol ~
Whenever I see China mentioned in any way regarding legislation, I KNOW the turtle will scuttle it. Need I say more?
Keep in mind that capitalism is amoral and global. Capitalists do not care about the common good and they do not care about the well-being of the nations in which they operate. Capitalists are parasites by design, feeding off the host planet and its people.
My husband is a fan of Picketty (sp?) and is now reading his newest book on the history of equality. We do try to shop as much as we can locally and frequent our Saturday Market every weekend and then do our grocery shopping at our local natural food store. They do mark those items which are local. I do try to avoid brands that I know have been sold to big companies also. I buy a lot of my herbs and spices from a company that works with small farmers. No, they are not local, but I like their product and the fact that they support these farmers all over the world. I also have a garden and buy my plants from a local nursery and most of my seeds from one here in Oregon. I never order books from Amazon, but from Powell's, the wonderful book store in Portland. Since we seldom drive out of the city, our Prius is getting something like 560+ miles to the gallon. We have solar panels and just added more with storage batteries (not Tesla) in the garage. I know everyone cannot afford to do this, but I encourage people to do what they can and to support efforts for urban gardens in cities and other projects to help ordinary people.
Did you mean 560+ or 56+ mpg? The latter is what my best friend in coastal Connecticut has reported to me for her Prius.
I mean 560+. We rarely drive on anything but electric which is in town driving. It would less if we did lots of highway driving. Also the mileage is better in summer than in winter. We bought the car in January and it had a full tank of gas. We haven't been to the gas station yet and the tank is still pretty full.
Greg,
Agree but, in America Capitalism, Church, Grandma, Baseball and Apple Pie are all holy are they not? Propaganda really works well.
I just shared this essay from Dr. Richardson with a number of my friends and family who have grown weary of the tumult and chaos. It is important that we work to inform instead of politicizing. I also frequently quote Dr. Richardson when countering misinformation. For many reasons this writing from Dr. Richardson was amazing. I studied Economics just enough to realize that is is a complex topic understood by few. So you are correct in stating that our task is to inform.
I gave up with my family in Texas. They believe what they are told in church, and, that's it.
My family are liberal Democrats. They have checked out of politics though.
Thanks for that link--I just subscribed to the Hartmann Report.
Extremely interesting and informative backstory. After seeing what Burke's theories did to the lower and lower middle classes in Great Britain, how could ANYONE--even a conservative--think that it was good policy? Too sad that Thomas Paine's writings weren't more popular and more widely followed.
Wasn't the French Revolution enough of an object lesson in what happens when deliberately punitive financial policies on specific classes plus despair and grievance collide?
Tom Payne and Nicolas de Condorcet are still more alive and relevant than most commentators writing today... and all those dead-weight politicians -- not to mention the criminals on mission from Hell...
Yes, one does think of the guillotine at times. I would settle for some of these insurrectionists going to jail.
No, we definitely do not want to see a replay of the "Reign of Terror" here!
If nothing else, we want no martyrs created for the red anarchist wing of the radical RepubliQans to venerate or worship as heroes of their cause.
No, we don't. And absolutely no martyrs.
My first read by Hartmann as well. I signed up too.
This is tremendously informative and important. Thank you, Mike, I am sending on to others.
Well, Dr. Richardson pointed me to Hartmann so really, I thank her for you.
:-)
Mike
Matt Stoller, author of Goliath, is another voice in the case against concentrated power. He spoke at our library last night. A one-time White House insider and committed Democrat, he faults Obama for increasing that power concentration in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Populist Senator Wright Patman, is the hero of Stoller's history lesson, dedicated to dismantling monopolies, favoring small businesses.
Mike: Lace up and snug up your marathon 'shoes' ; there are far more 'band-aids' that need to be ripped off. The problem is words, narrative truths in evidence - in digestible forms, and numbers of folks singing by heart from exactly the same 'hymnal' - if you will, in numbers that cannot be ignored by our broadcast media problems - yet another huge, complex problem we share today; complex for a multiplicity of factors that again requires teasing apart. It can become dizzying; yet I've never seen problems that don't yield to factoring apart. I have a notion though that there are band-aids that even our good Dr. HRC cares to 'not' have ripped off quite yet. Patience and acceptance are difficult things. ~Cheers to all of good will !
In addition, empirical evidence for the failure of Republican economics can be found at "The Rise & Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism" by David Kotz. Evidence & arguments for Democratic political philosophy & economics can be found at "American Amnesia" by Jacob Hacker.
Other Democratic government seem not to have fallen prey to such a deep history of greed. At least others have put money into National Healthcare. How is it that our country puts such greed over the welfare of its people.
Agreed but so far money is talking so loud that democracy can’t be heard.
Great comment Robin. Thanks. I might use it sometime!
I'm putting it on LinkedIn and Twitter
I put on Facebook
Go Gailee!!
Did you win the brawl??
:-)
lol what brawl?
It should be lauded and applauded on every social media platform — and even posted on all bulletin boards at town halls as in “olden days.” Every single paragraph is worth soaking in and then relaying to our communities.
Yes, a huge THANK YOU, Heather, as always.
Absolutely!!!
I see more and more people posting it on Facebook and I also saw it mentioned on one of the progressive sites here in Salem.
That’s the problem, the Democrats and this administration are horrible at messaging.
We keep saying that. We keep looking for the right slogans and sales pitches. But I think the messengers are the problem. I have enormous respect for what Biden, Schumer and Pelosi have accomplished and what they want to accomplish. But they are not inspiring speakers!
We need some new leaders with fire in their bellies - who are YOUNGER.
Newsom, Booker, Abrams, Pritzker, Schiff, Raskin, Swalwell.... we have a huge stable of talent. Time to let them take the reins.
We are not recognizing how humans need inspiring leadership. The GQP has that figured out with emotional rhetoric that riles up their rabble. We stare at our navels and/or flagellate ourselves because somehow we haven't delivered our message properly. If we could only find the right words..."they would understand". But I suggest it's not the message that's wrong. It's the lack of convincing charisma at the top.
Sorry Joe, Nancy and Chuck. I love you. But you are old like me. Time to pass the damned baton.
So spend a little time on social media amplifying all the Democrats you support. No one is going to do this for us. Don’t worry about how many followers you don’t have - the algorithms are always watching, and they promote material with more approvals and repeats.
For good messaging on Twitter, I follow @theDemocrats, @BidensWins. For a fiery speaker, check out @RepMcClinton, leader of PA House Dems.
Bill, “Mayor Pete” needs to be in the forefront. Did you see this on Fox News?
https://youtu.be/SPbA0kTnL1s
Pete 10.
Fox. 0.
I just corrected the link. Sorry! The above link has Pete’s entire response.
Absolutely. Pete is brilliant at bridging the divide and a very quick study.
Diane, and his logic is impeccable!
yes, I saw this Sara and Pete hit three home runs and drove 10 runs in all in 5 minutes on the field. Awesome.
Sadly, a gay man just cannot win, I don't think, a Presidential election in the states especially with the new laws on the books on Red states enabling the legislatatures to swap out the electors to whatever they want.
Impressive performance. What's he actually doing to help deal with the airline mess?? He's smart and a quick study, yes. Doing his actual current job as Transportation Secretary? Not much. Extremely disappointed in him...
Senator Joe
Bipartisan Joe
Conservative Joe
Cautious and Careful Joe
Indecisive Joe
Open borders Joe
Inflation Joe
Gas price Joe
Come election time, Republicans will draw a straight line connecting Joe and these, and more, issues. A candidate not directly tied to today’s problem areas will stand a better chance of beating the Republican nominee. Someone bold. A dynamic speaker. Someone who can dish it out as good as they can take it.
Tumultuous times require dynamic leadership.
Republicans never have a problem making up their version of things and spewing from Rupert’s propaganda machine. So true that lies can go around the world before truth can get it’s shoes on. This needs to change and the MSM has failed us, Dems, get on your high horse and stop letting the Trojan horses lead…
#check mark \/
Lies vs. facts & truth is too much like the "rockets and feathers" analogy of crude oil prices versus gasoline prices.
There’s always an attraction to the new (and untried). Particularly in the United States. The Great Man, or Great Woman who will rescue us. 25 years ago, I tried an age discrimination case in which I suggested to the jurors that the American taste for the new could be summed up this way:
Get a new car,
Get a new house.
Get a new boat.
Maybe get a new spouse.
In the same case , one of our clients told us, “They said they wanted fresh, new ideas. They were the same ideas we tried twenty years ago. They didn’t work then, and they weren’t going to work now.”
An interesting list. Some of these like "open borders" and "indecisive" are outright lies. Others ("gas prices") have nothing to do with who is on the Oval Office. Some ("bipartisan," for example) are actually virtues—or were before reason, intelligence, and education became vices.
And listing "Senator Joe" as an "issue" simply makes no sense whatsoever. Is that code of some sort?
What they have in common is that NONE of them are real issues. Anyone who thinks *any* other Democrat, regardless of age, will not have "a straight line" drawn between them and whatever fake outrage the right comes up with has simply not been paying attention. If you insist on playing by their rules, you will lose every time.
"Who" precisely is broadcasting (and repeatedly) said words / narratives (besides Faux); make lists, check it thrice, and broadcast repeatedly, decisively in all forms available to we peons, and without any shaming finger wagging in 'any' form is something I think can and must be done. Hopes, prayers, responsibility pass-off's, and speaking 'down' have not worked at all. Effective, verifiable information sharing has to be the goal / mantra. The last points can't be emphasized enough. My lifelong, ongoing education continues to humble me.
Couldn't agree more. The great tragedy is that those who believe the Big Lie and stormed the Capitol will remain utterly clueless of the truth that the professor, Hartmann, and others reveal.
MAGAs seek to destroy those in government whose policies would help them the most while revering those whose policies would harm them the most.
"Newsom, Booker, Abrams, Pritzker, Schiff, Raskin, Swalwell.... we have a huge stable of talent. Time to let them take the reins." Perfect and thank you Bill Alstrom.
❤️👏👏 Absolutely. Add Feinstein. I appreciate her service but it’s time for the door.
I would add Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Both trying to reshape America into their personal image.
Although I like both, I would not add them to the list. They both are too polarizing. We don't need more polarization, that's what lost us the 2016 election, too many voters going for a third candidate. We've seen that before in past elections. I don't believe either has a chance at beating a Republican for the presidency, much less a chance with many swing states having handed over designation of electors to Republican legislatures if said legislators don't like the voters' choice.
As for Newsom, I supported him for governor but question if he will appeal to a broad spectrum of American voters.
I agree. The older people you mentioned have been excellent at steering the Ship of State. It is in my memory that Pelosi was thinking of stepping down until trump came on the scene. And Biden came out of retirement because of Charlottesville.
The younger people you mention are stellar. Charles Booker is from my State of Kentucky. He burst on the scene in 2020 and is making waves.
We older people can best serve by stepping aside.
Yes and no. Nancy Pelosi, in particular, has done a stellar job. And have you noticed that all the press about "too old" is always about Democrats, when it could as easily be applied to the other party? Let's keep our effective older leaders, and at the same time advance the younger ones.
Yes! For instance 'Snake-in-the-Grassley' at 88 yrs old, has been a Senator for over 40 years! He's been feeding at the public trough since 1959.
Right out of college, he was elected as a state level Representative from 1959 to 1974. From 1975 to 1981 he was a U.S. Representative for Iowa's 3rd District and since 1981 he has been in the Senate.
Iowa, isn't it time to elect someone a little less fossilized into office? Put Chuckie G. out to grass!
"We older people can best serve by stepping aside" and helping those younger people we carefully identify move into our places.
Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against many of these young candidates. We need campaign finance reform, and possibly term limits.
Bill,
What the Democrats need is what the Republicans have. A broad propaganda apparatus.
Trump was HORRIBLE at messaging but no matter what he put out, his vast right wing propaganda network would message it to sound great to the masses.
Yes. The disadvantage we have is healthy internal disagreement.
But I am sure there could be a way to package a series of messages that tell the truth. Look how the Jan 6 Hearings are constructed. The DNC should hire that guy!
I've read that every day the GOP leadership in Congress sends out to its members specific, easy-to-understand talking points. They're also sent to right-wing media outlets. That's why you hear them repeated throughout any given day.
It's difficult to be good at messaging when so many people only get "news" from Fox, or worse sites. And the mainstream media also largely ignore anything that seems the least bit complicated and instead focus on polls of Biden being up or down or better or worse than previous presidents. They are still over-covering Trump and what he says and does, too.
I began the day badly: with CNN's Meanwhile in America.
If I were their boss the so-called journalists in question would be out of a job. They should be sent back to school.
There's a confused, ignorant, ill-informed public out there, millions of them, and all CNN can do is add to the cowardice and confusion.
I may be mistaken, but I see more cause for concern in America than in Ukraine, Russia or anywhere else.
It is in America that the big showdown is taking place.
NOW.
Peter Burnett - "There's a confused, ignorant, ill-informed public out there, millions of them,"
I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?
I cut out TV news altogether, because that’s just common sense, and I waited until late afternoon to read other news. By then, I figured, I could gut it out until dinner (and wine).
But the news crept into every crevice of life. I couldn’t avoid exposure — in my email inbox, on social media, in text messages from friends. I tried to toughen up. I gave myself stern lectures: “𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨! 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘎𝘰𝘥’𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦. 𝘗𝘭𝘶𝘴: 𝘙𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘮! 𝘈𝘭𝘴𝘰: 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦! 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯! 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥!”
[Gift Link]
https://wapo.st/3uD10zc
Thanks for this. The essay's useful. At the same time, I don't think it succeeds in tackling sufficiently the "crying 'Wolf!' factor...
Now I'm concerned with how Americans are to find a practical 21st century version of Paul Revere's ride... and not sleep through... the Apocalypse?
News is addictive and I picked up a professional dependence early on. I'm more concerned with alarm systems now...
As for info accumulation, I'm old and...
"The grave's a fine and secret place
But none, I think, do there embrace."
Nor do they read, click or watch TV...
The situation for half of my long life, Bill Moyers tried to tell us…
And the latest MSM report is re a poll "showing" that 69 percent of Democrats want someone other than President Biden as their presidential candidate in 2024.
They are getting better. We can help by amplifying whatever is good. If on Twitter, follow @BidenWins and retweet all the good stuff. Did you see any of Pete Buttigieg on Fox Sunday?
We need more Pete Buttigieg on the airwaves! He can be a great spokesman for the administration.
Not only are the Dems rather disorganized and terrible at messaging...but the msm--driven by profit only--isn't one bit of help AT ALL.
I have a good deal of blame to heap on the media (particularly tv and print 'journalists' for their part in helping the orange mousse-olini (all air; little substance) win his 'election'.
While I agree with you that the press have been horrendous, the Democrats are getting better about messaging - just see Pete B on Fox this last Sunday, or PA House Dem Leader Joanna E. McClinton, WI Lt Gov and Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, Mallory McMorrow in the Michigan State Senate, or my favorite, " Politics Girl" Leigh McGowan, who has a great podcast and can also be found on YouTube and Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbrXHzlFmu0
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/house_bio.cfm?id=1734 https://mandelabarnes.com/
Three cheers here for Politics Girl.
Clumsy messaging is not the problem. The problem is that Republicans need only repeat the dog whistle “woke” at every opportunity to remind the 90% of their voters who are white that they vote R because Republicans promise to do everything they can to preserve and expand systemic white advantages and Democrats don’t. No message based on policy nor even results can compete with “woke” for garnering white votes. If it could, Youngkin would not be a governor.
Agree. Bad news and crazy news sells papers and subscriptions. No one wants to read about Joe Biden;, with his quietly radical vision for America, sitting in his office or traveling across the globe doing his job! Yes, he makes mistakes, often bad ones; yes he's tongue-tied (he was a stutterer, for heaven's sake), yes, he speaks before he thinks. His refusal to abandon the bi-partisan fantasy is annoying. Take it all together it doesn't outweigh the list of his unprecedented accomplishments. I just don't have a firm grasp on how the Dems, with our lackadaisical approach to nearly everything, can counter that. The country has been pummeled for 6+ years by constant, daily loud noise and meaningless, often frightening spectacle. Like leaving a 4 hour rock concert, we can't hear.
Yes. But, they don't have a Fox News to make themselves sound better like Trump. Trump sounded, on his own, MUCH worse than the current white house.
But, his spin doctors on AM radio on Fox News always told people what he meant to say.
And not to be ignored, the broadcast media, also - again, for a multiplicity of reasons / factors... [ 1) Intelligible communication of facts in evidence 2) Broadcast outreach of facts in evidence - repetitive if needed... are supposed to be the constitutionally protected necessity for a 'free' press, is it not ? To inform a community (writ large) of necessary, actionable facts in evidence, is it not ? ] *Has it become their purpose or part of it, to entertain, or to compete for eyeballs ?
At their peril, and America’s at this point.
Yes, I agree. The mainstream media do not give good coverage to President Biden and his many accomplishments. They tend to focus on his age and sometimes portray him as a doddering old man. They also need to cover the real radicalness of the Republican party. They call them" conservative" when they should be labeled "radical extremists". The media are still giving air time to Trump who, I am sure, is relishing this. Thank-you, Dr. Richardson, for another spot-on article. I too wish everyone could read what you have written today.
I encourage everyone to share the letter with all the people they can. Forward the letter electronically or print and mail to friends.
How truly arrogant and exasperating that McConnell with his Congress healthcare perk would stiff the rest of America!!!
Absolutely, our thoughts exactly!
Timothy Snyder" On Tyranny" is instructive. Then read his "Black Earth" and see what happens when fascism takes over and established governments which singularly lie, rape, torture, murder and keep violence and misinformation as their tools which resulted in millions dying in WWII. In the USA we have Republican governments in at least 19 states (a) repressing the vote (b) passing laws so that they determine the validity of their own elections , essentially setting about to defraud the voters, (c) passing anti-privacy laws, (d) punishing innocent rape victims or careless teens, (e) not believing in separation of church and state .....need I say more. We have 18-30 year olds (30 million) not voting, we have disabled people unable to gain fair access to the ballot box and a US Senate using a non constitutional filibuster to stop legislators from doing their jobs.
WAKE UP AMERICA: WE ARE ON A very slippery slope. PLEASE CALL YOUR US SENATORS AND DEMAND THEY END THE FILIBUSTER FOR THE JOHN R LEWIS VOTING RIGHTS ACT.
Also read "How Fascism Works" (Stanley) and "How Democracies Die" (Levitsky) and "The Road to Unfreedom" (Snyder). What Mitch McConnell did to Obama was unprecedented....... Not allowing Garland a place on the Supreme Court. What Newt Gingrich did was allow attacks on tolerance and political norms that had guarded democracy here in the US for over a century. Both of them set the stage for Trump but it is the lack of political courage by the Republican Party and the failure to constrain an authoritarian demagogue that has caused us to fracture.
I've read Levitsky, too. but not Stanley or the other Snyder. Thanks.
Alice, I write specifically in response to your last mostly capitalized paragraph. First, I would note, contrary to the Freedom to Vote Act whose provisions not only provide the necessary safeguards against both voter suppression and election subversion but also would supersede state law in conflict with any of its stipulations, that the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act is not preemptive and therefore cannot overturn state laws that already have passed. Consequently, I advise we be wary were the Senate to set aside the filibuster solely to pass the John Lewis Act.
Second, I believe it’s important we recall last January, that through a procedural maneuver, Schumer was able to bring the newly combined Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act to the floor for debate and a vote. As expected, when the 50-50 vote failed to reach the 60-vote threshold, Schumer called for a second vote for filibuster reform. Despite Senate Dems settling on an extremely modest filibuster rule change that would have allowed each side 100 speaking hours before getting to an up or down majority vote, Manchin and Sinema voted with the 50 Republicans to oppose the rule change.
Please note I have reviewed this recent history so we tactically can decide upon next steps. Though this should have occurred back in January, in my view, Biden, along with Democratic leadership, must call out Manchin’s & Sinema’s mere support for voter protection safeguards as hollow and performative, absent their willingness to do their part to figure out how the filibuster could be modified to pass the combined voter protection bill under regular order even if it meant taking a long time to get to an up or down majority vote.
Thank you very much for this kind, clear, and informative explanation.
My pleasure, Becky. From the outset, I have regarded this community as an opportunity to share our understanding and, thus, enhance our effectiveness to work for change.
Foreigner speaking: how is a filibuster legal, if not constitutional?
The Constitution empowers the Senate to make its own rules. Roughly 200 years ago, senators updating their rules accidentally failed to include a rule about ending debate when it dragged on too long. Slave-holding Senators proceeded to use that omission to talk anti-slavery bills to death. Since it was so useful, pro-slavery senators and their successors held tight to the maneuver and did an effective job of enshrining (aka idolizing) it. At some point, senators changed their rules so that now not even talking is required - just an email saying ‘I block this.’ The filibuster is nothing but a senate procedure - at first, really a lack of a procedure - that has been used mainly to block civil rights bills. By the same token, a simple majority of senators can modify, bypass, or get rid of it at any time.
But, alas, it's not that simple, is it?
Simple, yes. Easy, no.
Anne-Louise, I don’t know what part of my comment prompted this question. Suffice it to say that neither legality nor constitutionality are relevant. The filibuster merely is a Senate procedural rule that dates back to the early 19th Century as a process to end debate. (The House never adopted the rule because representatives only are permitted to speak for 30 minutes.)
Regrettably, the filibuster, largely, had become a tactic for thwarting the majority party. In its current form, I regard it as a minority veto over the will of the majority and, thus, the source for most everything that is disfunctional in our politics.
The fact that the framers made many concessions to the South and slavery to get approval for the Constitution still lives with us today. Add to that 2 Senators per state and electoral college, you have the perfect structure for minority rule. Slave holding South maintains its mastery over machinery over gov't despite enactment of 13. 14 & 15 Amendments which Alito & other Repubs on SCOTUS want to ignore. Death of over 700,000 in Civil War did not wash the stain of slavery from our collective souls as Lincoln hoped. He was killed, too. Irony is Republicans of 1860's tried to save the Union and today's Republicans want to break it up. Poor Abe!
Sterling, I will reply to the valid points you raise when I return home later tonight. That reply also will include justification for asserting that most everything that is disfunctional in our politics, in my view, can be attributed, at this point, to the filibuster.
Sterling, I apologize for the delayed response, but frankly 4AM Friday morning has been my first real break all week. To start, I agree that this experiment in democracy called America has always been inextricably interwoven with white supremacy and its legacy, a hypocrisy too many regrettably deny or avoid. As for the anti-democratic electoral college and Senate, despite the odds, I still think it worthwhile, in the case of one, to try and add enough states to the interstate compact to reach the equivalent of 270 electoral votes and, in the case of the other, to grant statehood to DC and possibly to Puerto Rico. I believe we could accomplish the latter in 23 were we to hold the House, pick up at least 2 Senate seats, and abolish the filibuster, which, in my view, is meant even further to entrench minority rule and, thus, make it harder and harder for Democrats to win elections, let alone govern even if they do win substantial electoral majorities.
This last point is based on my perception that, contrary to contemporary Republicans who care only about tax cuts, judges, and staying in power through any means, Democrats want to tackle education, climate, healthcare, the economy, criminal justice, and immigration reform, legislation that largely remains stalled in the Senate, blocked by the requisite 60-vote threshold.
Thank you Barbara. For me, the core of your fine summary rests in your last sentence here--that the filibuster is, in whatever form, a tool that allows the minority to rule over the majority. That is, of course, the given of authoritarian government that in fact negates, in any corner, rule by the will of the people. It is possible, from that launching pad to manipulate the vote and discard it if you don't like the results. There are nearly 20 states poised to slam this into place. Along with the ruling on Roe, we are very close to the point at which we have painted ourselves into a corner.
This is when I get frightened. When I am comforted the many-headed beast and there seem to be too many blocked passages to know where to begin..
Dean, I don’t know if this reply is helpful, but I derive enormous gratification being in community with fellow travelers, who have committed to standing against the deep and pervasive corruption that has settled upon the republic.
Thank you, Barbara. I, too, have been not just gratified but encouraged and filled with hope and determination by the simple, profound impact of community. For most of my long journey I have believed absolutely in the great balance and rotation of the universe that (with a little help from its friends) would bring us right again. Most days I can still get there (with a little help from folks like you), but I have to confess that what stretches around us in all directions today is an alien landscape. From news reports and history books we are not unfamiliar with this phenomenon but only recently do I recognize the face of authoritarianism here and now and in this ;real world. I, for one, now see that I must also join the community of those who somehow missed it as it approached, looked away, blinked. And, although it has seemed sudden, where we are now has been constructed one small piece at a time over a great long while.
All that said, I am greatly encouraged by your words, by Dr. Richardson's brilliant skills at both summarizing and placing firmly into their historical context the horrors of the day and, as you suggest, the community of fellow travelers speaking freely. Intelligent conversation calms the spirit.
Again, thanks
Well done Barbara! Thank you.
It has been adopted as a senate rule, originally as a method to limit endless debate, I believe. The House used to have something similar but got rid of it. A filibuster used to require the filibuster-er to talk without a break, even through the night. In recent years the senate adopted a rule that a senator could just SAY s/he was going to filibuster, without actually taking the floor and talking—the lazy man’s filibuster as it were. It’s nothing to do with law or constitutionality.
A bit like a Scrabble rule. And it's used to block the passage of a law. That is extraordinary.
Same question from old citizen
I will seek expertise but the Article 1.4 of the US Constitution makes it clear that Congress may amend or alter the actions of state legislatures What is your authority?
Alice, As stated in my original comment, contrary to the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is not preemptive. Hence it would have jurisdiction only over state legislation enacted after its passage.
I noted Herb requested permission to publish your letter. Though the choice is yours, you’re welcome to use any of my text if you decide to revise your concluding paragraph.
Postscript: Alice, Because this past January the two voter protection bills were combined to become the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act,” you simply could replace what you wrote with the recently combined filibustered bill.
H.R.5746 is the combined bill
I totally disagree with your entire premise.
How do you think they got rid of voting rights legislation in the south
Alice, I didn’t present a premise. I merely related the contents contained in the two bills and added that this past January the two had been combined.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Your comment that previously enacted state legislation remains in effect is not correct. Article 1.4 makes it clear that Congress can supersede State laws. So, too, the 14th and 15th Amendments.
ACTION FOR ALL:
Contact YOUR US Senators directly by phone and tell them to do their duty and bring H.R.5746 to the floor of the Senate for debate and a vote with no filibuster. Contact Collins, Murkowski, Sinema and Manchin's offices. Demand they protect our democracy.
Call today. Email your grandkids, kids, students friends and business associates and ask them to do the same.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. Call at night and leave a message.
HERE IS THE EASY MESSAGE. HERE ARE THE LINKS.
“Protect our voting rights and support H.R. 5746. NO FILIBUSTER for voting rights!”
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
1-202-224-3121
Alice,
I would like permission to submit your letter to the Exeter Newsletter (published under the Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, NH; part of the "USA Today" network). I would submit it under your name; better yet, you could submit it by sending it to newsletter@seacoastonline.com. You can reach me at herb.moyer@comcast.net. I know the Publishing Editor, and may be able to convince him that it is OK to publish a letter from outside our geographic readership area.... something I was not able to accomplish when I sent a letter critical of the Trump administration to the editors of the major newspapers in southern state newspapers 2-3 years ago.
Indeed you have my permission. And anyone else
HEAR, HEAR!!!
It is not just that inflation and SCOTUS stripping away our rights dominate the news, it is IMHO, that the news really fails to give full reports of things that matter. Media fails to interview Biden supporters, instead reporting on and showing individuals who seem inflamed or outraged by inflation or gas prices only. This amplifies the message that Biden is failing to act. I know many who defend and support the President, but I so rarely see such individuals present in any media interviews. Such focus on the negative reaffirms distrust of government and undermines truth when it is presented. Truth, facts, reality matter little to citizens whose outrage is inflamed by half-truths and lack of balance in reporting the news. Media companies, like any business, exist to make money. Truth is no longer their primary concern.
Neither a primary, a secondary nor a tertiary concern. Grub Street hacks and whores.
As for Manchin and Sinema... most punishments are too good for them.
And it's not even an American speaking. Just a foreigner with memories of vast green fields filled with row upon row of headstones.
GIs' graves.
Did they die for THIS?
Perfect. From your keyboard to God's Eyes, please. Thank you.
I was recently out of college when Reagan was elected. At the time I thought the Laffer Curve really should have been called the Laugher Curve because it was a joke to think that the beneficiaries of those massive tax cut would actually share any of their new wealth with the masses. I’m still waiting for the benefits of Reagan’s economic programs to trickle down to me. About the closest I’ve come to receiving that economic trickle is the feeling that those in the top 1% of wealth have (metaphorically) been pissing on my shoes for the past 4 decades.
Bush 41 was right about one thing. Reaganomics was “voodoo economics.” The Republicans did not stop spending; they just spent on different things. However, the Reagan tax cuts, combined with Republican spending was equivalent to quitting one’s job and going on a spending spree. The Republicans made it seem like the tax savings were going to put back into businesses, innovating, growing, adding employees and creating jobs. That is not what happened. Small businesses might need to operate as above, but large corporations do not. Even David Stockton came to understand that Reaganomics were bs. As Stuart Stevens says, “It was all a lie.”
Yep, Stockman recanted but nobody else did, too busy slurping from the trough
Oops, Stockman
Nice comment, Fran.
As the 70 year old son of well-paid government bureaucrats and as a strong believer in the social state and progressive taxation, I have plenty of things to complain about, but no excuses to offer. Despite being born and later "stepson-ed" into a life of ... advantage ... I have managed to pretty much escape all that (in Italy), and so I, too, am anxiously watching the price of things go up as the planet heats and Fascism rears its ugly head yet again, and public discourse degrades into useless noise.
I cannot believe anyone - even Mitch McConnell - really believes anymore in Laffer curves or trickle-down or any of the other crap the GOP since Reagan has been pushing and successfully selling to a substantial block of Americans, to the point where a cult of well-armed jerks has replaced their severe and repressive version of God with the vile and corrupt Trump, and they hope to imprison or kill the rest of us. The piss puddle has become a lake.
As was known in 1932, quote from Will Rogers “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 the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands.” Love that the “trickle down” is just pissing on your shoes for 4 decades. Great political message. Mad dog billboards, where are you…
Mitch McConnell should no longer be in a position to kill anything. And yet, here he (still) is.
I'm replying to his Twitter attacks on the President and the Democrats with information daily. Many others are as well.
I sooooo dislike McTurtleneck I can hardly tolerate hearing his turtle voice or seeing his turtle neck flapping with hateful words....once again the leader of the "NO Party."
An underground railroad is being devised for women, in 2022.
Ponder that.
A CA doctor is preparing to create a medical ship that will float in federal waters off the coast of TX and LA. It will provide abortion for women, and because it will be in federal waters, the states can't go after women or providers. She has the staff ready to go, just needs the ship. Anyone here know of someone who could make that kind of donation?
Sign me up
Diabolically sickening it has come to this, yet I’ll be ready to help.
SCOTUS certainly shook things up, even if IS in the wrong direction on two hot-button issues. I think Biden has gotten far more done than he gets credit for, but who can expect fair winds when the first half of his term was marked by the first and biggest pandemic in 100 years and the biggest war in 50 years upsetting world trade? And all the pundits can talk about is gas and food prices? Wages are nearly keeping pace with inflation, but no one finds that comforting. What's going to drive me nuts if the mid-terms work out like they historically do is 2 more years where the Party of NO produces stagnation in the way our government normally addresses problems. Our government has done a good job addressing those two cataclysmic events, making vaccines broadly available in record time and rallying the liberal democracies of the world to respond to Russian aggression in a united fashion. All the while, the domestic economy has come roaring back from pandemic pandemonium.
What's not to like? We really have a case of the "magic wand" syndrome; we want our chief executive to pull one out, wave it a few times and watch every disruptive world event magically evaporate before our eyes.
We U.S. citizens are too used to instant gratification and it has ruined us for the ordinary less-than-lightspeed workings of government--particularly when the government is stoppered up by power-loving old reactionaries like Turtleface McConnell who needs to flushed out by a big ol' Kentucky dose of whichever plumber's helper would work best.
It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who once said that taxes are the “price we pay for a civilized society”. He was right and the Republicans, who see tax cuts as the solution to everything, are wrong.
I always wonder if the people who advocate tax cuts know where their services come from. Taxation is necessary if we want the services we expect. It is so obvious that it is laughable.
What a gold mine of extraordinary data and political analysis! Thank you for another outstanding letter, Professor. Every voter should read this.
How I wish every voter WOULD read this!
Do as many (myself included) has posted: forward it to friends, post on your social media, print out and mail to those who don't have/use internet (As a younger senior, I have two elder siblings who don't use the internet)
Thank you, Heather, for focusing on President Biden's economic plan and its successes. The far right is scaring their base by saying there will be run-away hyper-inflation next year. We need to talk more about these successes and make sure people know it is to President Biden's leadership. The media time given to Bannon and his ilk would better used to talk about the strength in the economy!!
Rupert won’t tell, bashing Dems is derigueur
Unfortunately, the openly fascist "ReAwaken America Tour" is performing mind control on sold-out audiences across the country, pushing the story opposite to this report of success.
https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/reawaken-america-tour/
Mike Flynn and Eric Trump are the headliners and the group includes far-right celebrities Charlie Kirk, Stella Immanuel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Lindell, Roger Stone, Sidney Powell, Greg Locke, Jackson Lahmeyer, Alex Jones and Ken Paxton. Fourteen of the featured speakers are identified as Christian pastors, although some Baptists are trying to distance themselves:
https://baptistnews.com/article/pastors-send-out-a-mobile-billboard-to-warn-virginia-beach-residents-of-this-weekends-reawaken-america-tour/#.Ysxn5-wpCHF
I detest McConnell. I detest him with increasing agitation. What a rich and completely horrid person.
What’s sad, is that he thinks so little of 45, in whose image he is so perfectly formed - that he can’t see he’s exactly like him. In fact, hear tell he can’t stand that “xxx.” (McConnell won’t even say 45’s name.)
Me? I’m so touchy around republicans that I avoid at any length - but if I can’t avoid then I shut down. They’re truly turning into terrorists.
I would like to hear Mitch McConnell explain to his constituents how "placing a 3.8% tax on income “pass throughs” taken by individuals making more than $400,000 a year and would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, significantly lowering costs to consumers" is not something Kentuckians should support. Perhaps I've missed something and the vast majority of Kentucky households are making over $400k per year. I think I'll talk to my wife about moving.
They watch Fox or a clone, no mystery
Mitch long ago abandoned even the slightest effort to explain anything. And there seem to be no consequences for that. He will be there, brazenly obstructing bills for no particular reason, until his last breath. He won't be voted out because he brings money into the state.
One of the major losses in American education in not so recent years was the cutting of what was called Social Sciences... looking at what made governments and other social entities work. That and the growth of the Republican Party, thanks Ronnie. Now for the coming election the Dem's have to get their act on track... this article and ones like it might help, but the voters must be taught the damage of letting the world turn while watching tv or any of the social media. Pushing and educating the public is the best thing the Dem Party can do... proving over and over the positive work being done by Biden. Keep up the good work, Heather.
Dr. Richardson. Thank you for a great summary around both the history of the destruction of the middle class by Republican Policy (often supported by Democratic votes in Congress to pass those tax cut bills and bills to gut regulations).
Unfortunately, I tuned away from my normal NPR listening last week to listen to my local AM radio station while driving. Wow. So much hate, lies and and fakery I have never heard.
All over America, radio and TV is, 24/7, spinning lies, hate, anger, and more lies all day every day. One local radio announcer even pointed to a specific part of our city here, the African American part, and noted all crime came from that part of the city. This same guy referred to our black mayor as an Orangutan one time.
The vast majority of the media apparatus in our country is doing everything possible to keep Republican policy going and push America into dictatorship by lazy, fat, white men.
I am not optimistic after one week of listening to AM radio. Not at all. The stuff they are putting out is not quite "There are UFO's coming" but it is close.
Lastly, the AM radio is positively hysterical about "concealed carry" laws that Kathy Hochul has put in place that limit their ability to conceal carry on private property.
What? Gun owners want to conceal their weapons on private property AND keep it a secret from property owners? What is wrong with these people? Do they view the entire world as a threat to them?
Cowards and fraidy cats, one and all, are these Republicans with guns.
Heather,
This is one powerful letter. This little tidbit should make us all want to scream "Stop! Thieves!"
"...more than $50 trillion has been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%"
Think about how even a fraction of that could have addressed homelessness, mental health issues, education and job retraining, drug addiction, hunger, affordable housing, gun buy backs, developing a new electric grid, funding fusion, providing clean potable water....make your own list.
The theft of a nation's treasure should outrage ALL of us. Why doesn't it? When are we going to reach the "Let them eat cake" moment?
This sounds like a dumb statement, but how much money does a person need? What is the difference between, say, $10 million and $20 million? Really.
Agreed. But the low hanging fruit for a claw back of wealth stolen from us is those with more than $1 billion. Or maybe $500 million. I don't know what the right number is. But the ultra wealthy could sacrifice 90% of their ill gotten gains and still not notice a difference in their lifestyles.
I do know that if Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos sleep well at night while millions of kids are hungry and/or poorly educated and/or struggling with addiction (thank you Nancy Reagan), etc....then they are F....ing EVIL.
The uber rich have discarded their fellow citizens as if they were sub-human.
MLM--I have discussed this with my husband. I truly believe that a great deal of Americans struggle with numbers. I am not just talking about fractions and decimal points, but the ability to comprehend the difference between a million and a billion. Years ago, I recall a school which was attempting to collect a million pop-tops from cans so the children could visualize the difference. I wish that the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry would do this NOW!!
I think that people making 100k+/yr think that getting to a portfolio of $1M is not out of reach (especially with a hyped up stock market) and think that they will have it swept away from them by taxes. Or that they will win a big lottery, and again, the feds will take it all away.
A year or so ago, I saw somewhere a mathematic equation using time as a measure of wealth. It showed something along the lines of if took the average American ONE SECOND to earn $50K, how long it would take until they had earned $1 Billion. I don't recall the exact amount of time but it was astounding! Most people can understand time much better than numbers. We need Katie Porter and the white board to explain it to people, perhaps then they wouldn't be so lenient with taxes on Billionaires.
That’s a good question, especially considering that not even one cent can pass through with them when they pass, as we all will eventually do. Set the threshold high, $50 million, $100 million, that’s wealth for unseen generations, and then tax the rest as if there’s no tomorrow.
I shared this Letter and the Thom Hartmann pieces together to my FB liberal activist groups.
Americans are angry, but they are angry at the wrong people
Democrat messaging should say, “we know you are angry about inflation, jobs, shortages, supply chain, but here’s why AND Here’s what we’re trying to do about it. Be angry at those refuse to help fix it”
They all believe “ The Left Caused Everything ! Before my Republican friends stopped talking to me I tried to show them the numbers.They won’t listen. Most have debt and very little savings and they think that 401K is going to get them through.Our generation was taught to live within you’re means.Tell me why Ice Cream is Tax’ed ? SMH