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.
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.'
About the only thing I can say for CARES so far is that Wall Street appears to be safe. Banks are profiting and stock market indices are still riding high on a $6T liquidity influx. Main Street is not faring so well. A second impending business shutdown will not help.
I saw an interesting comment on HCR's FB page that added a lot of perspective. Giving every person in the US (~330M) a $2,000 monthly stipend is a mere $660B/month. The initial $3.5T CARES price tag would have covered that for 5+ months (April - August). That money would have been spent--injected into the economy. What have we to show for CARES now?
Small businesses may still fail for a lack of customers. Large corporate interests are surviving, but there was never really any doubt of that. They have access to vast amounts of low cost capital. But what good is it if there are no consumers? We've burned so many bridges with the rest of the world, it's hard to see them coming to our aid with a "buy American" campaign; Donnie Tariff has made certain of that.
I see the GOP complaining that people make more on unemployment than working which disincentivizes going back to work. I agree, but the solution is to pay more for labor. Anyone that thinks $2000/month ($14k/yr) is a living wage is living in a fantasy world. Meanwhile, each of those Senators is bringing in at least 7 times that amount per month. They should be careful when they make comments about paying people to do nothing.
They really should watch that but they just keep talking. After masses tax cuts to the rich and giving most of that PPP money to cronies worth $$$$, a bunch of guys who don't work half the year and get 6 figures to behave this way need to watch what they say about people 'laying up' on $600 a week. And it is, after all, our money cause, god knows, they are not paying their taxes.
Amen, brother! My only problem with direct checks is that when they come with conDon's name, people call them "Trump money" and are more inclined to vote for him.
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?
Yes, just throw in the chaos of Jackson, the self-serving criminality of Nixon, the greed of Reagan, and amp them up exponentially and we almost get to OOO-45.
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.
There is a peculiar weirdness going on here that actually has the Right, in general if not in the higher ranks, as befuddled as the Left. Remember Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt? There were other examples, but you get the idea. The Trump golden shield that protects him from consequences does not extend beyond the Oval Office. Maureen, your comparison to Russian oligarchs is apt in theory, and I've made it myself, but somehow it doesn't hold up in fact so far. While it is obvious that the power money backing the GOP would very much like to establish a true oligarchy, and it has been apparent that some of Trumps cabinet picks thought that was the trend and wanted to capitalize on the new age of corruption, only Trump gets a pass. And he gets a pass on everything. And while Barr seems to have permission to extend presidential power through corrupting the DOJ, crimes of greed elsewhere in the swamp appear to be denounced by the party once they are revealed. As if the party is requiring people to save dessert for later, when the power part of the equation is secured. If this is the case, expect Householder to be on his own. Especially given the size of the graft and the shaky odds at this point for Trump's reelection. If I am wrong, it won't be the first time.
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.
You are giving them way too much credit. If the GOP actually cared about families, they would not be opposed on 'principle' to spending money to help the people in those families. They would not tolerate the federal government doing next to nothing to keep the people in those families alive. If they cared about law, Rand Paul would not be the only one of them objecting to unidentified federal agents snatching peaceful protesters off the streets of Portland Oregon and Columbus Ohio.
I'm not sure you got the gist of my comment... I was implying they don't care, except that they want other people to have the moral compass they do not want to impose on themselves.
I do understand what you meant. You were calling them out for hypocrisy, like Henry Hyde objecting to Bill Clinton's affairs while concealing his own mistress of 40 years, or Newt Gingrich doing the same while leaving his wife for another woman while his wife was in the hospital with cancer. I'm saying it's worse than that, because even their version of the values they want others to uphold is so twisted.
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.
I would like to know more about the changing of the guard, when did the old Democratic Party morph into the current Republican Party and how did this happen?
In regard to being the party of white supremacy, that started in 1965 when LBJ pushed through the Voting Rights Act. In 1968, Nixon combined a "Southern strategy" of appealing to white supremacists with a "Law & Order" strategy of being the man who would crack down on black protesters in the cities. Does that sound familiar?
My first prez election that I could vote in was 1968 and I voted for Nixon!!! :O (Young and naive, name recognition only) I was in New Orleans at that time and don’t recall any protests, but N.O. was a strange place with its 3 races, white, black, creole.
The "old" Democratic Party was divided between a northern urban party, which became progressively "progressive" after the Civil War as it became the party representing immigrants in the cities. It became more "progressive" in the 20th Century. However, the party was unwilling to challenge the "Solid South" because that was their only way of achieving a national majority. Thus, when the Great Depression gave them their opportunity, all the New Deal legislation was colored by having to kowtow to the senior committee heads in Congress - all Southern because a single-party state gave them seniority. An example is that Social Security originally covered no occupations where African Americans were in the majority. The Tennessee Valley Authority and Rural Electrification Act gave 1st connection to rural whites. Et Cetera.
Following World War II, Hubert Humphrey pushed for a civil rights plank in the 1948 platform that led to the "Revolt of the Dixiecrats." This was accompanied by Truman's desegregation of the armed forces that year. (The Korean War made desegregation real in the demands to fill the ranks and replace the dead - leading to a draft system of working class whites and poor blacks that prefigured Vietnam).
The Dem party continued gaining power in the north from support from progressives and POC. The Civil Rights campaign that began in 1955 found increasing support in the north and west. The response of the South outraged people.
When Lyndon Johnson passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act he told his assistant Bill Moyers that "we've lost the South for a generation." He was off by a few generations.
In 1968, Nixon used "the Southern Strategy" and his "Law and Order Campaign" to attract anti-civil rights South. This was a process completed under Reagan (who announced his campaign and support for "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney were murdered by the KKK, a "dog whistle" every white Southerner heard).
Essentially, from the beginning, there have been two national parties, both evenly matched: a national conservative party and a national progressive party - each has been known by different names over the years. There is a third, regional, party I'll call the "southernists." This party has thrown its support back and forth between the national parties, depending on which one would "respect its peculiar institutions." After the "treason" of the Dems in the 60s, the southernists determined they would guarantee no treason from the Republicans. We all know what happens when the parasite attempts to take total control of the host organism. That is what we have seen in the Republican Party beginning with Nixon and culminating in Reagan and all that has come after.
And that is how it happened. It has ALWAYS been about race.
A very good account Thomas. The brilliant documentary "13th amendment" goes into some depth on the southern strategy and which has been cynically exploited by successive presidencies over the past 50 years.
That makes a lot of sense! Thank you Thomas! Such a sad thing, race should have been out long ago, I cannot for the life of me figure out what any white man has to gain by putting down someone from another race. They certainly haven’t gained anything thus far - manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas, and America is far behind other nations in so many areas including education and industry. Instead of working against each other we should be working together. This is so silly and those who follow this ideology are so narrow minded!
Heather dealt with this in one of her talks, one of the ones I listened to but don't remember when--certainly within the past month and a half. It answers your question quite directly.
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.
Of course he only cares about himself. Someone seems to have convinced him that promoting mask wearing will do his voter numbers more good than using masks to promote division. Or maybe, as Andy Borowitz suggested, he realized that letting his voters die of covid-19 prevents them from voting for him. (Borowitz said it as satire; now it may be real. Satire has gotten so close to reality that over a year ago the New Yorker plastered the word satire all over his columns.)
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 wish I knew. The governor and the head of Ohio's Republican party have called for Speaker Householder's resignation. The investigation is continuing. We were told yesterday that there may be further arrests. A subpoena of FirstEnergy documentation has been issued. I would not be surprised if other legislators and lobbyists were in on the scheme.
As far as the law itself is concerned, it sure seems that a valid case to render it null and void could be made. I suppose that case would have to be made in court. The legislature could do the right thing and repeal it, but I'm not holding my breath over that possibility.
I am also an Ohioan. I understand some members of the legislature are drafting a bill to repeal it. It is fishy indeed. Other than Householder and his cronies, the only people to make out were the TV stations who ran scads of ads for both sides during the push for a repeal, which, sadly, did not happen. One of their false claims that our utilities would be taken over by China. They even blatantly told people not to answer the door to repeal petition-gathers. There will be lots more fallout here, including who will now lead the Ohio House of Representatives.
Yes they are. But these sponsors all voted against it initially. Good to see this, of course, but we'll have to wait and see if it gains traction among those who originally supported it.
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.'
About the only thing I can say for CARES so far is that Wall Street appears to be safe. Banks are profiting and stock market indices are still riding high on a $6T liquidity influx. Main Street is not faring so well. A second impending business shutdown will not help.
I saw an interesting comment on HCR's FB page that added a lot of perspective. Giving every person in the US (~330M) a $2,000 monthly stipend is a mere $660B/month. The initial $3.5T CARES price tag would have covered that for 5+ months (April - August). That money would have been spent--injected into the economy. What have we to show for CARES now?
Small businesses may still fail for a lack of customers. Large corporate interests are surviving, but there was never really any doubt of that. They have access to vast amounts of low cost capital. But what good is it if there are no consumers? We've burned so many bridges with the rest of the world, it's hard to see them coming to our aid with a "buy American" campaign; Donnie Tariff has made certain of that.
I see the GOP complaining that people make more on unemployment than working which disincentivizes going back to work. I agree, but the solution is to pay more for labor. Anyone that thinks $2000/month ($14k/yr) is a living wage is living in a fantasy world. Meanwhile, each of those Senators is bringing in at least 7 times that amount per month. They should be careful when they make comments about paying people to do nothing.
They really should watch that but they just keep talking. After masses tax cuts to the rich and giving most of that PPP money to cronies worth $$$$, a bunch of guys who don't work half the year and get 6 figures to behave this way need to watch what they say about people 'laying up' on $600 a week. And it is, after all, our money cause, god knows, they are not paying their taxes.
Amen, brother! My only problem with direct checks is that when they come with conDon's name, people call them "Trump money" and are more inclined to vote for him.
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?
And don't forget the re-emergence of KKK in its latest incarnation.
Oh yes!
Yes, just throw in the chaos of Jackson, the self-serving criminality of Nixon, the greed of Reagan, and amp them up exponentially and we almost get to OOO-45.
Dare we hope for flapper dresses, headbands and jazz? What is the new speakeasy?
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."
Sometimes (and all too often lately), I wish I could just say, "So long, and thanks for all the fish!" and fly, fly away.
You should revisit the Cohen brothers' 2006 film "Idocracy" and draw the parallels with what we are experiencing throught the western world!
Sorting this out: "Idiocracy" is a film by Etan Cohen who is a different person from Ethan Coen, a Coen Brother.
Many thanks! My mistake. I didn't see that he was missing an "h" . Pertinent film though, don't you think?
Life imitating art, rather than the reverse.
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!
hogs at the trough might be more real...
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.
There is a peculiar weirdness going on here that actually has the Right, in general if not in the higher ranks, as befuddled as the Left. Remember Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt? There were other examples, but you get the idea. The Trump golden shield that protects him from consequences does not extend beyond the Oval Office. Maureen, your comparison to Russian oligarchs is apt in theory, and I've made it myself, but somehow it doesn't hold up in fact so far. While it is obvious that the power money backing the GOP would very much like to establish a true oligarchy, and it has been apparent that some of Trumps cabinet picks thought that was the trend and wanted to capitalize on the new age of corruption, only Trump gets a pass. And he gets a pass on everything. And while Barr seems to have permission to extend presidential power through corrupting the DOJ, crimes of greed elsewhere in the swamp appear to be denounced by the party once they are revealed. As if the party is requiring people to save dessert for later, when the power part of the equation is secured. If this is the case, expect Householder to be on his own. Especially given the size of the graft and the shaky odds at this point for Trump's reelection. If I am wrong, it won't be the first time.
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.
The GOP stands for Greed Over People. (Sorry, I’m in a meme state of mind today)
That works! I've been saying it stands for Grand Old Plague. But yours is even more appropriate.
You are giving them way too much credit. If the GOP actually cared about families, they would not be opposed on 'principle' to spending money to help the people in those families. They would not tolerate the federal government doing next to nothing to keep the people in those families alive. If they cared about law, Rand Paul would not be the only one of them objecting to unidentified federal agents snatching peaceful protesters off the streets of Portland Oregon and Columbus Ohio.
I'm not sure you got the gist of my comment... I was implying they don't care, except that they want other people to have the moral compass they do not want to impose on themselves.
I do understand what you meant. You were calling them out for hypocrisy, like Henry Hyde objecting to Bill Clinton's affairs while concealing his own mistress of 40 years, or Newt Gingrich doing the same while leaving his wife for another woman while his wife was in the hospital with cancer. I'm saying it's worse than that, because even their version of the values they want others to uphold is so twisted.
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.
I would like to know more about the changing of the guard, when did the old Democratic Party morph into the current Republican Party and how did this happen?
In regard to being the party of white supremacy, that started in 1965 when LBJ pushed through the Voting Rights Act. In 1968, Nixon combined a "Southern strategy" of appealing to white supremacists with a "Law & Order" strategy of being the man who would crack down on black protesters in the cities. Does that sound familiar?
My first prez election that I could vote in was 1968 and I voted for Nixon!!! :O (Young and naive, name recognition only) I was in New Orleans at that time and don’t recall any protests, but N.O. was a strange place with its 3 races, white, black, creole.
The "old" Democratic Party was divided between a northern urban party, which became progressively "progressive" after the Civil War as it became the party representing immigrants in the cities. It became more "progressive" in the 20th Century. However, the party was unwilling to challenge the "Solid South" because that was their only way of achieving a national majority. Thus, when the Great Depression gave them their opportunity, all the New Deal legislation was colored by having to kowtow to the senior committee heads in Congress - all Southern because a single-party state gave them seniority. An example is that Social Security originally covered no occupations where African Americans were in the majority. The Tennessee Valley Authority and Rural Electrification Act gave 1st connection to rural whites. Et Cetera.
Following World War II, Hubert Humphrey pushed for a civil rights plank in the 1948 platform that led to the "Revolt of the Dixiecrats." This was accompanied by Truman's desegregation of the armed forces that year. (The Korean War made desegregation real in the demands to fill the ranks and replace the dead - leading to a draft system of working class whites and poor blacks that prefigured Vietnam).
The Dem party continued gaining power in the north from support from progressives and POC. The Civil Rights campaign that began in 1955 found increasing support in the north and west. The response of the South outraged people.
When Lyndon Johnson passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act he told his assistant Bill Moyers that "we've lost the South for a generation." He was off by a few generations.
In 1968, Nixon used "the Southern Strategy" and his "Law and Order Campaign" to attract anti-civil rights South. This was a process completed under Reagan (who announced his campaign and support for "states' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney were murdered by the KKK, a "dog whistle" every white Southerner heard).
Essentially, from the beginning, there have been two national parties, both evenly matched: a national conservative party and a national progressive party - each has been known by different names over the years. There is a third, regional, party I'll call the "southernists." This party has thrown its support back and forth between the national parties, depending on which one would "respect its peculiar institutions." After the "treason" of the Dems in the 60s, the southernists determined they would guarantee no treason from the Republicans. We all know what happens when the parasite attempts to take total control of the host organism. That is what we have seen in the Republican Party beginning with Nixon and culminating in Reagan and all that has come after.
And that is how it happened. It has ALWAYS been about race.
A very good account Thomas. The brilliant documentary "13th amendment" goes into some depth on the southern strategy and which has been cynically exploited by successive presidencies over the past 50 years.
That makes a lot of sense! Thank you Thomas! Such a sad thing, race should have been out long ago, I cannot for the life of me figure out what any white man has to gain by putting down someone from another race. They certainly haven’t gained anything thus far - manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas, and America is far behind other nations in so many areas including education and industry. Instead of working against each other we should be working together. This is so silly and those who follow this ideology are so narrow minded!
Heather dealt with this in one of her talks, one of the ones I listened to but don't remember when--certainly within the past month and a half. It answers your question quite directly.
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.
Of course he only cares about himself. Someone seems to have convinced him that promoting mask wearing will do his voter numbers more good than using masks to promote division. Or maybe, as Andy Borowitz suggested, he realized that letting his voters die of covid-19 prevents them from voting for him. (Borowitz said it as satire; now it may be real. Satire has gotten so close to reality that over a year ago the New Yorker plastered the word satire all over his columns.)
Absolutely
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 should also point out that the cost of this subsidy to utility rate payers amounts to $1 billion.
What happens to the law now, given the bribery revelation?
I wish I knew. The governor and the head of Ohio's Republican party have called for Speaker Householder's resignation. The investigation is continuing. We were told yesterday that there may be further arrests. A subpoena of FirstEnergy documentation has been issued. I would not be surprised if other legislators and lobbyists were in on the scheme.
As far as the law itself is concerned, it sure seems that a valid case to render it null and void could be made. I suppose that case would have to be made in court. The legislature could do the right thing and repeal it, but I'm not holding my breath over that possibility.
I am also an Ohioan. I understand some members of the legislature are drafting a bill to repeal it. It is fishy indeed. Other than Householder and his cronies, the only people to make out were the TV stations who ran scads of ads for both sides during the push for a repeal, which, sadly, did not happen. One of their false claims that our utilities would be taken over by China. They even blatantly told people not to answer the door to repeal petition-gathers. There will be lots more fallout here, including who will now lead the Ohio House of Representatives.
Yes they are. But these sponsors all voted against it initially. Good to see this, of course, but we'll have to wait and see if it gains traction among those who originally supported it.
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/07/house-bill-6-repeal-bills-are-being-drafted-by-ohio-lawmakers-from-both-parties.html?fbclid=IwAR3KoR-0UxpzJm4nekWFnOqDazE97enQUK71ncTWsv7NT6lxtkL2oKvM6zc
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.
That stinks.
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