One of the day’s biggest stories came from Ohio, where the House speaker, Republican Larry Householder, and four other political operatives, were arrested by federal officials for racketeering. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio David DeVillers said the case was “likely the largest bribery money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”
It is somewhat a matter of semantics, but it is indeed true that Trump stands for LAW & ORDER, when you realize that LAW & ORDER is what is used by authoritarians to maintain order by applying rules and laws, when they choose to, primarily to suppress the voices and actions of those who do not support them. It also means giving pardons and providing clemency to criminals who have acted in support of Trump or who Trump believes will provide him a quid pro quo in return. The law gives him the authority to do it, and by doing it he maintains order that supports his agenda.
"Rule of law,” on the other hand, is the principle of applying justice equally regardless of whether one is black, white or brown; rich or poor; Christian or Muslim or Jewish or atheist; a friend of those in power or someone who protests those who are in power. Trump makes no claim to being in favor of "rule of law." While it once took pride in striving to administer justice and the impartial “rule of law,” the US Justice Department, at least at the federal office level, has now become an agent for Trump's corrupt enforcement of law and order against all who might oppose him, and for the furthering of Trump’s personal interests.
I thank you for looking into the abyss and making sense out of this mess. Can you please waive a wand and make it around January 30, Biden has been sworn in and Trump is wearing orange to match the rest of him? I need a breather!
Seriously, one of the dumbest things I have ever heard:
"Republican senators are mortified at the spending involved in a bill that focuses not on shoring up businesses, but rather on supporting ordinary Americans. 'What in the hell are we doing?' Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked his colleagues. He warned that a large relief package would anger Republican voters in the November elections. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) disagreed about the means, but not the end. He told his colleagues that if the Republicans don’t do enough to save the economy, Democrats will win in November and put in place policies that will cost even more money. A rescue bill now could save money in the long run by keeping Republicans in power."
The most fascinating part of this to me is that the reason spending has gone mad is that the GOP gave their cronies huge tax breaks in '17 and most of the money intended for small business in the first bill. I might add, our money.
Only Democrats have balanced the budget in the last four decades so it really only comes down to who gets the money when they shovel it out of the treasury. The GOP wants to make sure that ain't 'we the people.'
Also, have you felt that the last 3 years have felt eerily like the 20s? Teapot Dome, Tax Acts, Tariffs, Spanish Flu (beginning), Harlem Renaissance, Women’s freedom, farmers destroying their crops, meat packing plants, might be about to have Trumpvilles, if people don’t get jobs or help, it seems like a lot of similar stuff, right?
I've been rereading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to escape this constant parade of uber-crafty greed mixed with blatant stupidity. Alas, Douglas Adams was already ahead of me: "One of the major difficulties Trilian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid."
The new symbol for the GOP should be "Bees around a honey pot".
Trump and his underlings are stealing from the people using official violence, political obstruction and the epidemic to line there and there cronies' pockets while driving the American people into poverty, out of their homes and into the grave; the same system as the criminal oligarchs of the Kremlin and the "Mafia" controlled Italian South. Wear yellow and get into the streets to protect the community! Make American Human Again!
As a person who lives in Householder’s home county, fought his every move in environmental degradation, I have repeatedly written letters to the editor of both the local weekly and the Columbus Dispatch trying to draw attention to his disgust for the common citizen and the hopes of people who live in an Appalachian County which has never reaped the benefit of his speakership in new jobs or new businesses. (We don’t even have a Walmart in this county, no movie theatre, no hospital, few doctors, no big box lumber store, no chain grocery except one bad Kroger. You cannot buy a paid of new shoes in my county nor blue jeans. Not that some of these things are necessary to life but wth? Do SOMETHING for the citizens of your county!) instead, he chose to rip us and the rest of the state off. The irony? In a pandemic we are having a county FAIR because Householder himself sent a letter to the health department and the city stating if any Covid-19 measures were put on the fair he personally would sue them. Why? Well the Householder dynasty was planning on expanding as his son is running for county commissioner. Lock them up. All of them.
My first thought on reading about the Ohio arrests was, “a corruption story that isn’t about Trump?” But of course, it is, as your newsletter illustrates. These guys are comparable to the oligarchs in Putin’s Russia, and Trump is probably already looking into how he can get DOJ to interfere with the case on their behalf, for a quid pro quo, naturally.
The GOP stands for LAW & ORDER the way the GOP stands for family values. That is, they want other people to toe the line but they wish to leave themselves free to do whatever they want.
Anyone else ever notice that the stories about Republican corruption compared to Democratic corruption runs about 5:1 nowadays? Yes, back in the days of the Democratic city machines they took a back seat to no one about corruption, but those days are long gone, almost even in Chicago.
Interesting to me that Trump is now saying it's "OK" to wear a mask. This is probably as close as he has come to admitting there is a real threat out there. Having said that, I believe it is just a ruse to bring back some of the numbers he has lost over this. He doesn't care about any of us; he only cares about his numbers, and they are shrinking. Let's hope that particular trend continues.
Clearly, "LAW AND ORDER" refers to beating and gassing protesters who throw a few rocks and break a few windows. Elected officials and businessmen who steal tax dollars from the poor and middle class taxpayers, whom they've already shafted with their tax policies, are just poor, misguided souls, understandably unable to resist temptation, who only deserve probation, suspended sentences, pardons and commutations. I deeply wish that misappropriation of public funds and "white collar" crime, deeds which impoverish people struggling to provide for their old age, would incur the same penalties as rape, murder, and the possession of a few hits of meth.
The law that it now appears Ohio House Speaker Householder was bribed to push through was far, far more than "a public bailout for an ailing company." It involved a major electric utility, FirstEnergy Corp. and the bailout was to refurbish two aging nuclear power plants on the shore of Lake Erie owned by the utility. The bailout was enacted at the expense of Ohio's electric utility rate-payers. The law also subsidized two coal-fired electricity generating plants and stripped rate-payer subsidies for development of safer renewable energy. (Cutting subsidies for non-polluting renewable energy while renewing or increasing subsidies for polluting energies has been a Republican strategy for some time.)
During the debate over the bill, many Ohioans thought it smelled fishy. We were not all that surprised to learn of the reasons for yesterday's arrest of the Speaker and his for lobbyist and associates.
An attempt to put a referendum on the Ohio ballot last year failed, largely because of dirty tricks and false advertising.
I live in Ohio and am incensed over this latest money laundering scandal. Glad to hear that Governor DeWine has called for him to step down as has Senator Portman, even though I have no respect at all for him. It seems that every bit of corruption I read about involves Republicans. Every Congressman or Senator exposed for some deviant sexual behavior is a Republican. They have sure hoodwinked a lot of Americans into believing they are the party of family values and fiscal responsibility.
North Carolina is one of the states the GOP took over in 2010, and one of their first actions was to cut unemployment to the bone. NC had to borrow from the Feds at the beginning of the Great Recession, to cover a shortfall in our unemployment fund. The shortfall that was caused by the GOP insisting on cutting the taxes businesses paid into the fund in the first place over years. In order to rebuild the fund, and add a fat cushion, something had to go, and what went was benefits to those thrown out of work. Thanks to the GOP legislators' 'the beatings will continue until morale improves' way of governing, we now have people, like my own daughter, who have not only lost their jobs, but could only get the barest minimum in unemployment and were extremely grateful for the extra $600 from the Feds. That now goes away, too, regardless of what Congress does about extending it. If you're not able to get state unemployment, you won't be getting anything. So much for 'go to college - get a degree'. She did all that and it hasn't paid off. Meanwhile, the mortgage payment is due every month. She has to pay her COBRA, which is not cheap, or lose her health insurance.
Whoa, I missed that T is pushing for funding for a new FBI building in this bill. Thanks for pointing that out! This, of course, has nothing to do with coronavirus or with the FBI's own interests, they'd wanted a single campus near DC. This has everything to do with keeping the FBI downtown and preserving his hotel's exclusivity. Perhaps a sign he sees this as one of his last chances to manipulate a funding bill towards his own business interests? For background: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/us/politics/fbi-headquarters-building-trump.html
It is somewhat a matter of semantics, but it is indeed true that Trump stands for LAW & ORDER, when you realize that LAW & ORDER is what is used by authoritarians to maintain order by applying rules and laws, when they choose to, primarily to suppress the voices and actions of those who do not support them. It also means giving pardons and providing clemency to criminals who have acted in support of Trump or who Trump believes will provide him a quid pro quo in return. The law gives him the authority to do it, and by doing it he maintains order that supports his agenda.
"Rule of law,” on the other hand, is the principle of applying justice equally regardless of whether one is black, white or brown; rich or poor; Christian or Muslim or Jewish or atheist; a friend of those in power or someone who protests those who are in power. Trump makes no claim to being in favor of "rule of law." While it once took pride in striving to administer justice and the impartial “rule of law,” the US Justice Department, at least at the federal office level, has now become an agent for Trump's corrupt enforcement of law and order against all who might oppose him, and for the furthering of Trump’s personal interests.
I thank you for looking into the abyss and making sense out of this mess. Can you please waive a wand and make it around January 30, Biden has been sworn in and Trump is wearing orange to match the rest of him? I need a breather!
Seriously, one of the dumbest things I have ever heard:
"Republican senators are mortified at the spending involved in a bill that focuses not on shoring up businesses, but rather on supporting ordinary Americans. 'What in the hell are we doing?' Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked his colleagues. He warned that a large relief package would anger Republican voters in the November elections. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) disagreed about the means, but not the end. He told his colleagues that if the Republicans don’t do enough to save the economy, Democrats will win in November and put in place policies that will cost even more money. A rescue bill now could save money in the long run by keeping Republicans in power."
The most fascinating part of this to me is that the reason spending has gone mad is that the GOP gave their cronies huge tax breaks in '17 and most of the money intended for small business in the first bill. I might add, our money.
Only Democrats have balanced the budget in the last four decades so it really only comes down to who gets the money when they shovel it out of the treasury. The GOP wants to make sure that ain't 'we the people.'
Also, have you felt that the last 3 years have felt eerily like the 20s? Teapot Dome, Tax Acts, Tariffs, Spanish Flu (beginning), Harlem Renaissance, Women’s freedom, farmers destroying their crops, meat packing plants, might be about to have Trumpvilles, if people don’t get jobs or help, it seems like a lot of similar stuff, right?
I've been rereading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to escape this constant parade of uber-crafty greed mixed with blatant stupidity. Alas, Douglas Adams was already ahead of me: "One of the major difficulties Trilian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid."
The new symbol for the GOP should be "Bees around a honey pot".
Trump and his underlings are stealing from the people using official violence, political obstruction and the epidemic to line there and there cronies' pockets while driving the American people into poverty, out of their homes and into the grave; the same system as the criminal oligarchs of the Kremlin and the "Mafia" controlled Italian South. Wear yellow and get into the streets to protect the community! Make American Human Again!
As a person who lives in Householder’s home county, fought his every move in environmental degradation, I have repeatedly written letters to the editor of both the local weekly and the Columbus Dispatch trying to draw attention to his disgust for the common citizen and the hopes of people who live in an Appalachian County which has never reaped the benefit of his speakership in new jobs or new businesses. (We don’t even have a Walmart in this county, no movie theatre, no hospital, few doctors, no big box lumber store, no chain grocery except one bad Kroger. You cannot buy a paid of new shoes in my county nor blue jeans. Not that some of these things are necessary to life but wth? Do SOMETHING for the citizens of your county!) instead, he chose to rip us and the rest of the state off. The irony? In a pandemic we are having a county FAIR because Householder himself sent a letter to the health department and the city stating if any Covid-19 measures were put on the fair he personally would sue them. Why? Well the Householder dynasty was planning on expanding as his son is running for county commissioner. Lock them up. All of them.
My first thought on reading about the Ohio arrests was, “a corruption story that isn’t about Trump?” But of course, it is, as your newsletter illustrates. These guys are comparable to the oligarchs in Putin’s Russia, and Trump is probably already looking into how he can get DOJ to interfere with the case on their behalf, for a quid pro quo, naturally.
The GOP stands for LAW & ORDER the way the GOP stands for family values. That is, they want other people to toe the line but they wish to leave themselves free to do whatever they want.
Anyone else ever notice that the stories about Republican corruption compared to Democratic corruption runs about 5:1 nowadays? Yes, back in the days of the Democratic city machines they took a back seat to no one about corruption, but those days are long gone, almost even in Chicago.
Interesting to me that Trump is now saying it's "OK" to wear a mask. This is probably as close as he has come to admitting there is a real threat out there. Having said that, I believe it is just a ruse to bring back some of the numbers he has lost over this. He doesn't care about any of us; he only cares about his numbers, and they are shrinking. Let's hope that particular trend continues.
Clearly, "LAW AND ORDER" refers to beating and gassing protesters who throw a few rocks and break a few windows. Elected officials and businessmen who steal tax dollars from the poor and middle class taxpayers, whom they've already shafted with their tax policies, are just poor, misguided souls, understandably unable to resist temptation, who only deserve probation, suspended sentences, pardons and commutations. I deeply wish that misappropriation of public funds and "white collar" crime, deeds which impoverish people struggling to provide for their old age, would incur the same penalties as rape, murder, and the possession of a few hits of meth.
The law that it now appears Ohio House Speaker Householder was bribed to push through was far, far more than "a public bailout for an ailing company." It involved a major electric utility, FirstEnergy Corp. and the bailout was to refurbish two aging nuclear power plants on the shore of Lake Erie owned by the utility. The bailout was enacted at the expense of Ohio's electric utility rate-payers. The law also subsidized two coal-fired electricity generating plants and stripped rate-payer subsidies for development of safer renewable energy. (Cutting subsidies for non-polluting renewable energy while renewing or increasing subsidies for polluting energies has been a Republican strategy for some time.)
During the debate over the bill, many Ohioans thought it smelled fishy. We were not all that surprised to learn of the reasons for yesterday's arrest of the Speaker and his for lobbyist and associates.
An attempt to put a referendum on the Ohio ballot last year failed, largely because of dirty tricks and false advertising.
https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200721/house-bill-6-was-nasty-expensive-fight-even-as-feds-investigated
I live in Ohio and am incensed over this latest money laundering scandal. Glad to hear that Governor DeWine has called for him to step down as has Senator Portman, even though I have no respect at all for him. It seems that every bit of corruption I read about involves Republicans. Every Congressman or Senator exposed for some deviant sexual behavior is a Republican. They have sure hoodwinked a lot of Americans into believing they are the party of family values and fiscal responsibility.
North Carolina is one of the states the GOP took over in 2010, and one of their first actions was to cut unemployment to the bone. NC had to borrow from the Feds at the beginning of the Great Recession, to cover a shortfall in our unemployment fund. The shortfall that was caused by the GOP insisting on cutting the taxes businesses paid into the fund in the first place over years. In order to rebuild the fund, and add a fat cushion, something had to go, and what went was benefits to those thrown out of work. Thanks to the GOP legislators' 'the beatings will continue until morale improves' way of governing, we now have people, like my own daughter, who have not only lost their jobs, but could only get the barest minimum in unemployment and were extremely grateful for the extra $600 from the Feds. That now goes away, too, regardless of what Congress does about extending it. If you're not able to get state unemployment, you won't be getting anything. So much for 'go to college - get a degree'. She did all that and it hasn't paid off. Meanwhile, the mortgage payment is due every month. She has to pay her COBRA, which is not cheap, or lose her health insurance.
Whoa, I missed that T is pushing for funding for a new FBI building in this bill. Thanks for pointing that out! This, of course, has nothing to do with coronavirus or with the FBI's own interests, they'd wanted a single campus near DC. This has everything to do with keeping the FBI downtown and preserving his hotel's exclusivity. Perhaps a sign he sees this as one of his last chances to manipulate a funding bill towards his own business interests? For background: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/us/politics/fbi-headquarters-building-trump.html