Yesterday, the Republican Study Committee, a 175-member group of far-right House members, released their 2024 “Blueprint to Save America” budget plan. It calls for slashing the federal budget by raising the age at which retirees can start claiming Social Security benefits from 67 to 69, privatizing Medicare, and enacting dramatic tax cuts that will starve the federal government.
J.H.F**king Christ. Let’s see them try to convince the rest of the country that all of this is a good idea. Fascism on the hoof. With über racism along with it.
And Carole, this is the part that perplexes me. How do we get “the rest of the country,”as Linda states, to recognize the nonsense/propaganda that the right wing media is pedaling? Along with DJT we have Rupert Murdoch and his crew led by Sean Hannity. And those media types appear to have a lock on a portion of the voting population.
So, it seems like the biggest challenge we face is getting the message Heather Cox-Richardson writes out to people who will vote for the FDR way of democracy. I hope there is a lot more Heathers out their getting this message to voters.
The long term plan of conservative to take over local and state elected offices has been, obviously, very successful while the liberals were sound asleep. We are paying dearly for that slumber. VOTE like you life depends on it because it DOES!!!
THIS is now, our only hope. The thugs have rigged the "system" for so long, and brainwashed their crazed base, the rest of the silent majority HAS to stand up and take notice. One vote/voice/conversation at a time.
This is key. The party of death as it is currently constituted full of wing nuts and greeds, should not be governing anything including school boards and other local entities. Meanwhile they stir up the culture wars, so that an older man shouts at a little girl at a track meet in Montana because she has short hair or a honored teacher quits in Texas after being hounded by certain locals. I will also note that our nephew and his lady recently observed that they don't expect social security to be there for them. I also note that these pols are first in line when things go south and they need the Federal government, which as climate happenings intensify will surely happen. Already insurance companies are declining insurance to certain areas of the country.
"Culture war" is a misnomer. There is no war, but there is a campaign of racism and misogyny in the name of white power. A "war" implies that both sides of are equal in legitimacy, which of course they are not.
This is true and this is the problem. Many school boards have terrific well educated and diverse school boards - volunteers who work really hard. But many other local school boards have demented yahoos fighting culture wars.
I suggest (and expect much push back) that education should be controlled and FUNDED at the state level. And they should be required to follow certain standards established by the Federal Dept of Ed.
One of the reasons we have madness and ignorance in our nation is because we let local yahoos influence dedicated professionals. It's in the headlines every day.
The other reason we have this problem is because we fund schools by real estate taxes. Zip code funding of education is a guarantee of inequity and the maintenance of a "class society". The rich stay rich. The poor get poorer.
In many red states, the autocracy and ignorance peddling is rooted at the state level. Republican controlled state governments are attacking their own school systems. They are also going after local governments, especially those of any Democratic cities.
For years we funded education in Oregon primarily through the property tax. So every year there were local elections and we all waited and hoped it would pass. One year it didn't pass in time for the regular start of school, so we had kids running around crying and wondering what would happen to them while we started two weeks late. Now the the primary funding comes from the state. And I read where the Supreme Court may allow religious charter schools. I do not want my tax money to go to any religious school, period.
Are you aware that school board members in several states are actually paid? In Florida people serve on school boards for the money. The average annual pay in Florida is $58,511.00
The average Teacher Elementary School salary in the United States is $63,220 as of May 25, 2023, but the range typically falls between $51,872 and $76,347.
Susan Lorraine Knox: Exactly. Sadly the previous lack of interest in school board elections is now compounded by crazed parents coming to meetings to attack board members who have different perspectives.
They had to take it up several more notches by going after School Boards:
“According to previous reporting by CMD, ALEC held a workshop in December 2020 promoting the Right’s false narrative about critical race theory being taught in public schools that featured speakers from other groups tied to anti-public school zealot Koch, including the Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and American Enterprise Institute, which have spent decades attacking public education.
Just weeks after this ALEC workshop, the dark money attack dog, Moms for Liberty, was launched to target public schools. Shortly thereafter another dark money group, Parents Defending Education, was created. As of February 2022, right-wing state officials in 36 states had introduced bills or other restrictions limiting the truthful telling in public schools of history and teachings about race, racism, or the contribution of specific racial or ethnic groups.“
President Bidens wife is a teacher, they say. Could her advice have any effect on how school curriculum, funding, and choosing of school boards are arranged? Would Bidens conversion to Catholicism undermine our separation of Church and State?
I think we need to teach basic economic concepts starting in 4th grade as a concept on a developmentally appropriate level. I always did when I taught. We also need to teach critical thinking. Of course, we need to address the millions of fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers who are not teaching their children anything that might get them independence. This would also be true of the Yeshiva's in NYC. There should be national school standards like other countries have, which both homeschoolers and private schools are required to meet. How is that for government interference. I think that regulating education, and talking about children's rights to an education might get around children as property Parent's rights movements, which exist basically to get around government and our societal norms.
The politicized education system in America is why I never learned about the massacres and erasures of Tulsa, Okla.; Wilmington, NC; Ocoee, Fla. (Not to mention Native American atrocities.) Only during the last few years of Orange Angst and Pandemic-induced Awakening have I come to understand the UNITED States has not finished fighting the Civil War.
I was well into my twenties when I learned about the Japanese internment camps during WWII and the disenfranchisement of the Japanese-American Citizens. Shame on us!
I also suggest it is important to ad in Civics education much earlier, in elementary school, when age-appropriate principles of the rights and responsibilities of a good citizen can be introduced as essential to being American. Then, in middle and high school - to prepare young people to be good American adults - add teaching the mechanics of government and the importance of learning how to be informed and active participants in our system. I believe space created in school curricula to include teaching civics would not interfere with but would actually enhance learning in other subjects. A child who feels part of something bigger than himself/herself- part of a society that, despite its faults (yes, of course include the terrible historical truths as part of the teaching of American history), intends to advance opportunity, growth, and goodness in all of its people - will more likely succeed in whatever studies he/she are inspired to pursue.
You’re so right, Laura, about teaching children to be good, informed, successful citizens. I suspect that was the point: It’s much harder to manipulate good, informed, FAIRLY TREATED citizens. Sigh. Big sigh.
Children should be taught early on the privilege and responsibility to vote in every election. I don't remember civics classes but I am sure I had some in the 40' and '50's when I attended schools in Montclair, a top notch town. One thing that stuck in my head is: America is a melting pot. Montclair began as estates for wealthy New Yorkers and has many blacks who probably got there to begin with as household servants. And, lucky for Montclair, they stayed in Montclair. I am continuously shocked that people in many parts of the country just don't get it. They're Americans!!! "White Supremacy" is SO American.
During the 70s, I was the director of Junior Achievement of Southeast Michigan's "Project Business," which brought upper-level executives into 7th-8th grade classrooms once a week for a semester. The program successfully engaged students in the concepts and processes of economics. Unfortunately, it took up an hour of regular teaching time every week, and it became impossible for teachers to cover their own material in less time.
It is unfortunate that whatever else was on the docket was prioritized over real life lessons. I am a Deweyan teacher and believe in learning through relevant experiences whenever possible. https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/john.html
An hour a week does not seem like much if it is planned into the curriculum and other activities support it. It might not be an all year thing, but still, at that age economics education is very important.
If "upper-level executives" are to present their version of "the concepts and processes of economics" to the innocent, FFS bring in a labor leader (or scholar) and a socialist organizer to counteract the exec's brainwashing re those "concepts and processes."
To add to your educational economics comments, children should learn critical thinking skills and how manipulation and gaslighting happen all around them--including amongst family members and friends, sometimes. They need to explore the 10 basic components of authoritarian leaning regimes that intentionally undermine critical thinking skills. They can use those skills to discern any person or group or media who might be trying to pull the wool over them.
I would call these classes LifeSkills. Our children would avoid a lot of charlatans if they could think for themselves, and would provide a higher inoculation rate from being susceptible to cults. I can tell you that my reading of Anne Frank, at nine, changed my life and how I look at anyone who gaslights me. It also impacted me when my recently born again Godmother suddenly tried to get me to become a Christian. She told me the guy bleeding and nailed on the cross she placed above my bed died for my sins. I asked what Sin is. I was appalled. I was only 9 years old, never did anything anyone should die for and he did not even know me since he died 2,000+ years ago. When my Godmother found out that I wanted my mom to take down the crucifix so I could sleep, I never saw her again. That was my first experience in truly stand-ing up for my own mind, using logic and refusing to be manipulated by a loved one. Well, I thought she was a loved one but her kind of Christianity seemed to teach her that if those you love do not convert, dump them. I studied what Jesus might have said and I could discern that there are universal truths about love, kindness, forgiveness and not casting stones. The rest sounded like someone warped the teachings and completely lost the points that resonate for so many of us. My mother, standing by me and supporting my developing critical thinking skills, against my Godmother, was THE BEST, most life-changing gift she ever gave to me. I have written about that many times in this forum over the years. This skill was critical to my calling trump a fascist in 2016 because I learned how fascists think and operate and mind-control. And here we are.
Critical thinking skills are essential in a representative democracy. As is the knowledge of how that democracy functions. Trump said it to their faces during the campaign in 2016—, "I love the poorly educated..." And they cheered! Bingo. He might be ignorant about many things, but clearly, he is a master manipulator/gaslighter of an alternative reality. Just like Hitler. Superiority, divisiveness and fear are the foundations of their power. This must be taught to children around 9 years old, at least in my experience--along with reading all the books the trump reich are banning. These skills also nip sexual predators in the bud because children will not easily fall for lies and manipulation when their personal and physical spaces are invaded. They need to tell someone if someone EVER threatens them. And keep telling until someone believes and helps them. Many cults and churches have predators whose actions should always be questioned. No one should be on a pedestal. We are all equal and should be treated with respect.
I was also pre-teen & teen in the '60's and keenly observed all the messaging, war protests, love-ins, and rioting in ghettos. The two signs that impacted my young mind most were "Question Authority" and "War is not healthy for children and other living things." Interesting, at the same time, didn't I learn that also from Anne Frank's Diary and WWII?
Might have to go over to fox and teach it. Cut and paste significant pieces of Heather's critical message here. (the easiest to understand-- why we are in significant debt due to trump & co., and how those who worked hard for their medicare savings plan will be dumped till 69 yrs old and have no protection from the government when it is privatized...this is corporatocracy at its' very worst.
It also makes me wonder how they would mismanage the SS accts of those Americans already receiving SS , of course I’ve always thought, perhaps naively, that recipients should or should have been allowed to take their money in lump sum when eligible.
Diana King: 1. Whose version of "economic history" should be taught? 2. How would you prevent curricula from being influenced by politicians? 3. Is "economic history" the same as or different from Economics? 4. For what reasons is "economic history" not being taught in high schools?
These are big questions. (Religious dogma should be kept out of it too. Comparative religion perhaps ok. ) Unanswerable in this medium. Perhaps a complete review or investigation of the education system with educators from all disciplines represented.
Economic history is not being taught because it would cause trouble for the teachers and the school board. Not only because parents would be misunderstanding and all up in arms about communism, but because the teachers are not qualified to teach what they have never been taught.
Economics, as a subject in school has not, in my experience, been taught in any comprehensible way. I don't think it's political influence, I think it's how Economics has evolved as a pseudo-science; there's not enough understanding of math and too much wishful thinking sociology.
Whether Civics is taught in high schools is up to the states. The classroom instruction time previously allotted to Civics, Government, and Social Studies has diminished greatly because of the bureaucratic requirements of "No Child Left Behind," the focus on math and science, and meaningless, anti-education, standardized tests.
Here in MT the congressional rep on their fb page almost every post uses weaponized words to describe & blame the D & Pres Biden. 500 people showed up to hear how the 2020 election was corrupt in our county. The state party met vowing to take down our only D representative in 2024. I feel like I am living in the Lord OF the Rings & a great battle for the good.
175 GOP reps are MAGA extremists.?That’s 80% of the GOP members of Congress. And they have a sufficient following in the population to actually re-elect Trump ? How can we prevent this nightmare scenario?
I do think we need to work on a very local level and actually have important conversations in our neighborhoods and local communities that include these people. Why are we not asking them what are their basic needs ? How are these needs being mer? What do they really need going forward for themselves and their families. I don’t think we will get anywhere by continuing to vilify and label.
And we need to go out now and register voters. I mean door-to-door and talk to people, get them registered for the next general election and help them get out and vote or send in a valuable bulletin. This takes a huge grass roots organization. We need to start today.
Respectfully you are the third person today that wrote about this grassroots idea. You say 'we'. We did start initiatives in my community and worked our hearts out leading up to 2016. I am not sure I want to do this again. Do you? It is not my intention to single you out. From my perspective I have been actively engaged for years and am only seeing the same people trying to move the same needle.
Never give up. I think authentic tough conversations where we actually listen to each other and not just wait to speak are a way to connect and then go forward. Have you read Amanda Ripley’s book HIGH Conflict: how it happens and how we can get out of it. I highly recommend it.
Alas, John, our nation has such deeply embedded "otherism" that is being manipulated to the max right now. That same population will never admit their superstitious and hate filled fears of blacks, gays, uppity women, immigrants, and intellectuals. Instead they reframe it as their right to be in control.
But yes, I agree that HCR's letters and other substacks are a little breath of sanity right now, but accessed by a minority. Facebook, Fox, Twitter reach many millions more and keep the toxins going. To say nothing about the fascists who seek self-aggrandizement at the peril of us all.
Fight we must, and bless the likes of HCR, but it's a huge climb.
That is what we need to do, John. We are too far down the "rabbit Hole" to talk about change at the school board level. Long range, yes, but time is a fleeting.
You mean like a microphone that Rupert has but telling the truth. We’re about 40 years behind. Rachel Maddow said it. MSNBC does not deliberately lie on the air. Fox has not a qualm. And the MAGAts and their ilk have not a clue. And MSM took their strategy from chump -good people on both sides. Who will call them what they are. Anything but a legitimate political party.
The young voting block may save us but the problem is they are getting their news from social media like Instagram. Very few young folks ages 20-30 have cable TV and most do not subscribe to an online newspaper of record.
With fewer and fewer news”papers” of record every day, it’s difficult to know which among the remaining are worth the read. Loss of the news industry and the resulting less-well-informed electorate is what keeps me awake at night.
The Meidas Touch is an excellent source of information by attorneys who are grounded and relentless in informing Americans. Really worth watching them. They are not corporate owned.
YOU ARE the chorus of THE many leaders. Our President . His many Staff. The writers we so love and need Heather, Ruth, Joyce, Charlie, blessed the ad infinitum ...
I truly believe John , as growing evidence shows, there are many many more who do hear, understand, and have joined US. Always there’s a reason for doubt for sure the least of which I think we forget...that we are a grieving nation, even world, for what the pandemic did to far many more than we count, and in far many more ways we yet truly comprehend.
Inflation as well as inFilltration of the disillusioned grasping , in fact many gasping for a breath of fresh air. We ARE in The Revolution . In the very thick of it.
And here comes the YOU to ask questions, pen mighty encouragement and and and educate those seeking clarification. Don’t PLEASE feel for a moment we don’t hear you, feel your anguish, and best of all applaud what some of you feel inconsequential effort ..to help.
Thank you. We (My wife and I) just completed postcards for an Ohio election. I believe you are right on point. It is encouraging to see and hear from so many voices during these incredible times.
Thanks again John ( and wife) post cards YES! 🙌 waaay back here in the deep woods of OMG blood red WV this old hippie has fought this battle, this system, this war for oh so very long….and will continue. Best to you two ❤️❤️ May your weekend be thoroughly enjoyed knowing the WE includes US and hoping many of THEM like our music 🎶💙❤️🎶. and join the band 😉
John, the only way to solve the issue you raise is to get money out of politics. The media is a problem, but it's being funded by billionaires, whose only interest is to promote low taxes and accumulate more profits for their shareholders. Big banking, Big pharma, big tech, are using Citizens United to fund their interests. Elections are now won by dark money in politics. These billionaires come in from other states and open the floodgates before an election, promoting their favorite issue In order to defeat the losers, the socialists, the immigrants.... We need to overturn Citizens United and make an all out effort to pass the' For the People act". It was defeated by billionaires stuffing the coffers of Sinema and Manchin, in order to defeat the act. Read Thom Hartmann's report and solution. Congress has the power to accomplish this but they need the help of the electorate.https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-no-labels-agenda-is-more-disturbing-d5a
I agree that big money, dark money is a major problem. Are you aware that Citizens United was stopped at the Appeals Court level and that Mitch McConnell played a big role as a co-plaintive to appeal it to the Supreme Court. Thus, I have always wanted to get Mitch out of office BUT a result of Citizens United has been that Mitch has a pot of money to strategically help key politicians. Susan Collins is a case in point. Mitch and his money made the difference after her vote for SCOTUS nominee Kavanaugh, who she later claimed to be disappointed in because he misled or lied to her re: how he would rule on abortion.
Yet, even with the billionaire money we have done pretty welll. Regretfully, Dems did not pay enough attention to state and local elections. Now, for example, we have seen a big push to get parents fired up about school board elections and it is working.
And you are right to point out Sinema and Manchin. They are a problem, for sure. Right now, with Sinema being independent there is a three way race that will make it challenging to unseat her. It seems better to have her and find other candidates in other states to expand the Dems majority.
Ah! So much to consider. I am not a political strategist but these things and big money are a plague.
I've been listening to Thom Hartmann for over 20 years and he is on the radio five days a week and had Bernie Sanders on every Friday for over 10 years "Brunch With Bernie" and there are a few others but our so called group of millionaire/billionaires don't buy up media outlets to get the word out all over especially in rural areas where it is all faux news.
Please listen carefully to the desperate call from trump to his base that the criminal charges are illegal, the prosecutors are “communists,” “thugs,” and only he “can save the country.” Extremism writ large! There is no doubt that he, Rudy, Lindsey, and others will be indicted in Georgia. Moreover, Trump, Jeffrey Clarke, Bannon and a large group of fake electors in multiple states will also be indicted by Smith in the Jan6 case. The walls are closing in and the only way he thinks he will survive is to publicly call for another insurrection to install him as President “to save the country!” He has already predicted publicly that this “is the last battle.”
We live in the most perilous time in our beloved nation since the Civil War! We will win but our military will have to be activated and a small but significant portion of our population will support him openly while a larger portion will support him covertly. We must remain resolute as our Democracy writ large is worth it!
I am heartened by 2 important differences between January 6, 2021 and now:
1. The DOJ has indicted over 1000 participants in the insurrection, and convicted many, including leaders like the head of the oathkeepers who is spending 18 years in prison. No obvious oathkeeper presence at trump's indictment hearing in Miami.
2. I joked in one of these Letters that maybe the reason so few showed up to support tRump on Tuesday was because the rest now have jobs, thanks to President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg - now I think it's true!
The times they are a'changin, for the better. And there's a #3: We LFAA readers are going to spread the word and get out the vote.
I don't think these indictments will inspire a 2nd jan 6. There are too many to attend or choose between. But, if he has to go to jail or even house arrest: watch out!
Hard to tell but in a couple of months from now a number of different indictments will be overwhelming and that may inspire the beginning of an insurrection in a variety of locations at different times.
Objectively he is getting far worse mentally in his incessant complaints of our alleged wrongful treatment of him. He has crossed the border between snide politics and the loss of all emotional control. Those who are up close recognize his uncontrollable behavior so that some of his lawyers are fleeing. And because the word is out, he is having great difficulty in finding competent replacements even if he is offering multi-million dollar paychecks in cash and in advance. That is a sign of a recognizably deranged individual.
We are 60 days away from Fani Willis’ bombshell which will be a massive recital of his overt threats and multiple schemes to overturn the official Georgia result by a cast of nefarious characters including Lindsey and several other MOC. Preceding that sorry tale, Jack Smith will complete the federal narrative with new indictments of what went on behind the scene before and during Jan6. Plays, movies, history books and novels will be composed about these sordid events for decades!
But by late August, the whole story will have been unfolded for all but the hardcore MAGA loyalists. The 35% of moderate Rs will have had enough so he will resort to open insurrection. That chapter will keep the FBI far busier than Jan6 for a very long time. It also will be time for McConnell and the old leadership of the GOP to sue for divorce from the crazies and ultimately suffer a massive defeat in both Houses of Congress and the presidency in November 2024.
But the “stink” of Trumpism will linger and that is another story!
As I responded to an earlier post, I do hope your description of what lies ahead proves to be the best nonfiction of our times. To be any less than you describe will mean a horror show the likes of which the US has not seen since the Civil War.
Time will tell as we share and support one another.
Nope. You all have missed the punt. Don’t be naive that we are being exploited by social media and we are getting our butts best. We’ve gone too far and in other instances, not far enough. It’s pathetic that we weren’t able to compromise on immigration. We can’t have it all our way or the highway. Prime example numero uno: The former governor of Virginia lost in my opinion when he responded about regulating books that parents had no right to make decisions. So he stood his ground and lost.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach kids,” McAuliffe, a parent of five children, said during the debate, defending his 2016 veto of a bill that would have required schools to warn parents of books with sexually explicit content.“ Politico
This was exactly what social media ran with. McAuliffe was right. DeSantis is wrong. As a parent, I was aware of my child’s curriculum. The ones screaming about McAuliffe are the same ones who couldn’t be bothered to attend parent/teacher conferences or workshops. Social media and right wing media ran with it, as has “Moms for Liberty”.
At the beginning of each semester, most teacher are required to send home a course syllabus that comports with national and state standards, for parental signatures. Way too much teacher-time is sidetracked into dealing with parents who want individual curricula that comport with their own religious and political beliefs designed for their children. EX: Parents that insisted their 10th grader be sent to the library with an alternative unit, for the duration of our 3-week unit on "Animal Farm," because talking animals were satanic.
My son, a few years ago, took AP government and politics and had an assignment to write a book report. He was offered a list of books from which to pick. Low and behold, a book by Glenn Beck appeared. We hit the roof and he showed us the list that offered choices from both right and left authors. I was ashamed that the teacher perhaps indirectly provides the students with tacit support of the lies of Glenn Beck. Made him return that book, I bet Glenn did not refund us, and marched him to library to pick from real sources of information. Schools are caught in the middle; parents are the ones who need to inform their children. If the parents cannot see that they are being deceived, then the children will be deceived too.
In Maryland we have thr Destiny Program which allows parents to choose which books their children can check out at school. Seems like a good compromise,
Best of luck with your compromising efforts with Libertarian/GOP/QOP Obstructionsist /elected radicals from a gerrymandered districts, whose strategy is to NEVER compromise, mantain obstruction of popular policies, and to continue obfuscication to keep the people uncertain, stressed, and threaten, and continue to incite polical violence. The New Deal is a good deal. It might be the best deal that the shrinking middle class has left in country. MAGA's real goal is to make America Russia. These tactics are stink of Putin and the GOP should be ashamed.
The “recently released” Blueprint For America has actually been covertly available for months. BFA was what Biden referred to ( “ I’ll give you a copy of the proposal” )at the State of The Union as GOP heads exploded. 🤯🤯🤯
"Blueprint for America".., like New Gingrich's 'contract ON america' as I recall it. These f'errs have their origins from well within the communist party whose assets are quite dedicated to our demise. And, not unlike the bible-passage-quoters who would have us believe "the word" (of 'their' choosings). Sure makes it hard to maintain some focus that actually benefits humanity.
Perhaps something else should be pointed out to everyone - that most of our politicians are members of the 1% - not only do they receive substantial "salaries", but their benefits outweigh anything we have, PLUS the little subsidies here & there that they receive as members of Congress! Some were millionaires or wealthy when they were elected - some have never ever held any actual job! Public service is nothing like it was intended to be. Sadly, far too many have absolutely NO comprehension of what it is like for normal ordinary people - anymore than djt has.
I'm so sick & tired of watching this bunch of "elites" (thats what they are) stand in front of every microphone they can find & blathering on.
I think we have to tackle the huge Evangelical Christian Cults of non thinking, non questioning followers, which is enslaving women and children to follow a set of behaviors and beliefs with no tools for questioning and through homeschooling no exposure to the outside world. These White Evangelical churches are telling their people to vote in a block for Trump and people like him. He could sell our secrets to North Korea, and all enemy nations and they would not care because Trump lets these male run societies, where women and children have no say and provide slave labor to enrich these so called churches, run by males, do whatever they want, and is a role model to them for oppression of women. He caters to this crowd, and the type of people taking over the Republican party. If you have seen Shiny Happy People about the IBLP religious sect, and the Duggar family who gained television fame for practicing the principles of this group. Women are beguiling temptresses if they do not cover their bodies, and are responsible for any sexual assault upon them, which is a part of the creed of the group to assault women and girls because they have to obey the men. These women and children are not in a position to 1) read Prof Richardson or anyone else who is writing enlightening things, 2) or to choose whom to vote for or what to do on their own. They are kept in a permanent childlike, subservient state in their communities, and this represents millions of people in our country. No exposure is the rule of thumb for these groups because, while they claim they don't want their women and children poisoned by sinful ideas, what they really don't want is loss of control. Somehow our religious freedom laws have allowed groups like this to grow and get extremely wealthy, and still get tax exempt status. Mega churches whose leaders fly around in private planes should not get tax exempt status. Given that the White Evangelical movement is replicating the world found in The Handmaid's Tale, which is the White Supremacist nation state dream to spread over the entire country, and people like Matt Gaetz, MTG and Lauren Bobert are their representatives, we need to look at how to address that constituency in this country. They do not want our government because they believe that what they are doing is religious work. The religion of capitalism.
Last night PBS news reported that the largest single Christian denomination in the US, the Southern Baptist Convention, had back-tracked from its 30-year tolerance of women pastors declaring that henceforth only men can be priests or pastors or ministers in their denomination thereby joining the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Church in the dominance by and subservience to a male priesthood.
Yes. I have been reading about it, and it is very upsetting to the women pastors who are being voted out. Out of leadership. There is criticism of their style. I imagine there is less sexual assault of parishioners in these women led communities. It is outrageous. They want men making the money, and controlling the people. We need a title IX in religions too, so that there will be no tax exemption for churches that practice gender discrimination. This should go for racism too.
No church should be tax exempt. Why? Personal beliefs are private and none of the government’s business. Since the churches have become a voting block they no longer deserve to have the benefit of tax exemption on top of it.
I am in total agreement. We have separation of church and state. Unfortunately the Supreme Court is allowed to ignore the law and enforce it through a fundamentalist lens. I also think that any "non-profit" educational establishment that discriminates against women, whether it be in the school directly or the leadership of the organization, is violating Title IX. Certainly religious schools that violate this should not be getting Federal education dollars. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/sexoverview.html#:~:text=Title%20IX%20of%20the%20Education,that%20receive%20federal%20financial%20assistance.
I’ll add this: Tax exemption for churches is the way our government pays the churches for keeping people in line. It uses persuasion and propaganda to work its sorry magic to help win elections. It uses threats of damnation to help the congregation remember to obey.
Everyone knows that God is a jealous and vengeful old white(ish) guy, created in the image of those males who, over the centuries, have written the "sacred" texts upon which subsequent human cultures have structured themselves, and upon which lie our only hope (besides technology) of escaping the clutches of mortality and spending all eternity in paradise (at least some of us). Within that context the Southern Baptist decision certainly makes perfect sense.
Besides...nobody ever said "to boldly go where no woman has gone before!" Nobody.
Doesn't that seal the deal? Why do you want to spend all eternity wailing and gnashing your teeth in the fiery bowels of Hell? Get on board the immortality project, my friend.
From Michelle Goldberg's op-ed today on the renewed alliance between conservative Xtians and Muslim fundamentalists:
This nascent alliance between conservative Christians and Muslims marks the resurrection of a right-wing project that was derailed, for a time, by the Sept. 11 attacks. Back in the 1990s, American conservatives founded a group called the World Congress of Families in an effort to unite pious traditionalists from across the globe against the forces of secular modernity. Before the attacks on the World Trade Center, they’d been planning simultaneous conferences in Mexico City and Dubai. After the attacks, those plans fell apart and cooperation between right-leaning Christians and Muslims became more fraught, though it continued in international bodies like the United Nations.
I think in all cases religious schools exacerbate the problems. I think that all private schools should be required to teach basics in history, math, science, reading, writing at each grade and sans that they should be shut down. In addition there should be no government monies going to schools that are segregationist. Of course, we know this supreme court is not going to support that, but it should still be the law of the land. It is what I am going to be asking of lawmakers if we get a majority of Dems in the 2 remaining branches. We know the Republicans rule the Supreme Courts. Children should not be their parents property to do with as they wish. They should have human rights, and it is high time that this country got into a debate on that. The parental rights groups may claim to be saving their children's souls, but they should not get exemptions from a general idea based on understanding of children by professionals of what is good for children. We know this with feeding, clothing and shelter. They are supposed to be entitled to their own bodies too. As for their minds, we need to have a national debate, and not just let child care slide under the rug. Children should be provided for in body and mind, and if the parents cannot do it alone the government should help them. They also should insist on homeschooling meeting national, standard accountability. I was very for homeschooling, and wanted to home school my child, who I immediately saw was too social for that. It has turned out for the best. I know other teachers who have given up teaching to do that. I have seen children playing video games all day in the local coffeehouse while their moms chatted with friends and that was their homeschooling. A few well placed questions led me to believe that these children who were in the middle grade years were not reading yet. Parents can file plans, but there is no oversight. While I am not big on standardized testing, it seems like it could fill a role here. If the Duggar children had to pass basic reading, writing and math tests in order to continue on in their homeschooling they might all be better off.
Given the expected dress code for women, I think they could be wearing hijab, or burka and that would have made the men happier. There is a lot of control around females and what they wear and do in all of these conservative sects of the monotheistic religions. The ideas of religious freedom should be investigated too. Just as FGM is illegal, one cannot tie illegal practices of a religion to the religion itself and we should not be accepting ones that violate human rights. Enslaving women and children within a religious group is not the same as expecting children to do chores to help out. It is concerning that these conservative groups act very cult-like. Even if the original intent was to allow just this sort of freedom, although the puritans certainly did not practice that, and the fundamentalists do not practice religious tolerance, I don't think our nation should accept just anything either.
Linda, I think you are much like myself in our concerns for the state of our schools. I would like to add some thoughts—not original—in the Democratic future I wish for. There would be a few million more teachers, paid a good salary. In communities with a somewhat larger population, there would be types of schools to choose from, including a variant of online-alt days for students who do well in those environments. I also see another variant of "pods", smaller neighborhood schools with specialized foci, such as IT, Vocational trades, sports, the arts, etc.
Of course, I am and always will be a dreamer, but my point is, one size does not fit all. The most important thing is to begin with a concerted effort to increase the number of well educated teachers by a really big margin and to make it a well paid profession once again. And smaller class rooms, please!!
Thank you. I found this very interesting and helps to deepen my understanding what is going on in the Right Wing Evangelical Christian world. Also, I find the cover of the Spanish language edition of her book very interesting. https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Kristin-Kobes-Du-Mez-ebook/dp/B0BRQP5XCQ
The author is a Calvinist. I had friends from Germany and the Netherlands who were Calvinists, but in the USA, they joined a more Right Wing Evangelical church in the Suburbs of our city.
Yes, and wow, hadn't seen that cover. Calvin College is here in Michigan. I was once briefly in a Catholic evangelical group, but it got crazy quickly.
Above its the link to the membership of the Republican study Committee, the authors of the budget plan.
If your representative is on it, start networking with your local Democratic activist groups to show up at every public in-district event they appear at and call them out on a specific budget issue that will negatively impact everyone on your district. A different issue each event and prime the media to get coverage, as much as possible. Town halls especially..
If your representative is a Republican NOT on the list and they are leaning centrist try constructive engagement regarding your concerns. Push to get them on the record on their stand in any way that moves away from the Republican Study Group Budget.
If you have a Democratic representative give money and time and participate in GOTV initiatives.
Different strokes for different folks. There was a center that held on the debt ceiling so there is hope. Have to get to that point again. It definitely will not be easy.
My Freedom Caucus Rep/ Repub Study Comm member follows the FL GOP playbook with rare public appearances. Here is his latest response to one of my frequent contacts about military/ spending.⬇️
“Some analysts have estimated that over $100 billion in our national defense budget is already spent on things not directly related to national defense. Rather than further cutting our national defense budget, I believe it is prudent to make budgetary changes in our defense budget to make that every dollar set aside for national defense is not wasted but is actually spent to protect the American people.”
Linda Mitchell: They don't need to convince the rest of the country. They just have to outvote us, out-gerrymander us, and continue to impose voting restrictions.
Convincing the rest of the country “A Blueprint to save America” starts and thrives on generating a false drumbeat of FEAR through the myriad of media slowly bought up over the last several decades.
As HCR implores each week— we as individual forces must take up the oxygen, speak up — see fear for the pernicious dark force that it is on every level of integrity whether interpersonal or international.
Government should ideally be the benevolent teacher on playground duty ensuring everyone plays fair, takes care of the little ones, and picks up after themselves. This is not “socialism”, but common decency.
Yes,I totally agree.Wonder how they are going to try to sell this monstrosity to the people?What a cruel and heartless vision they have for this country!Younger people are going to be the main recipients of this garbage and I hope they come out to vote in numbers not heard of to crush this horrible narrative.
We need to broadcast it far and wide. Just the increase in the age to receive Social Security might be enough. Oh, wait, most don't think they will receive Social Security, do they?
I keep thinking about the bridge over I-95 in Philadelphia that was damaged over the weekend. How do things like that get fixed without taxes?
Yes. You are right about what taxes are used for. Congresspeople drive or are driven over our bridges. They use our roads. They breathe the air. How do these people propose that we pay for stuff like this anyway?
My first spontaneous laugh of the day Linda, thanks.(Your profanity quelled my raised disgust or was that anger 🤣)
Another masterpiece Heather, triple thanks.❤️❤️❤️
I note ( applaud) the word choice of ‘LEAK’ -vs trickle down , as those talking heads pound their lie ( effectively to some/poor and too many ). I hear it like a scratched vinyl stuck repeating the same ol message , a dying message ...as many jump ship , people are finally seeing. Blessings .
Is their a decent Republican left...HELLO?
Facts are facts. Get with the reality , roll up those fancy pants and stuffed shirts. We The People down here on ground floor WILL welcome the needed hands. There’s a helluva task ahead and a world needing our cinched belts and willingness to toil away. We believe it can be done , believe America IS great and can lead/gather/soothe the weary , sick, and least amongst us .
Ahhh back to those ‘facts’ ....as the many countries swelled back to stand with us -by our brothers and sisters in Ukraine (and to also resolve the many nations yet exploited, led by despots harking that same vinyl record). Slow and steady wins this race/racism as the freedoms we saw grow ( now increasingly taken away or threatened mind you!) and are committed to see this equality through. We admit our errors, our failings , and work with resolve to correct - while those pointed fingers project your future by their very deliberate actions they accuse us of. It’s classic revelation PERIOD ......and...
THAT was the earliest veil apparent -those pointed fingers and truth wrapped in sheep’s clothing.
Another post too stupid and anti intellectual to believe.
Yet your basic assertions are SO cliché its embarrassing. To borrow a phrase from my old friend, and sadly missed Christopher Hitchens, "that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
In spite of Chris's dictum , here is the evidence.
1) Its a lie that the Republican tax and spending proposals only benefit the rich and hurt the government. Here is a list of government tax receipts over the last decade.
FY 2021 $4.05 trillion
FY 2020 $3.42 trillion
FY 2019 $3.46 trillion
FY 2018 $3.33 trillion
FY 2017 $3.32 trillion
FY 2016 $3.27 trillion
FY 2015 $3.25 trillion
FY 2014 $3.02 trillion
FY 2013 $2.78 trillion
FY 2012 $2.45 trillion
FY 2011 $2.30 trillion
The government is taking in more money every year. THE PROBLEM isn't government receipts ITS SPENDING.
took the unprecedented step of publishing a report WARNING the country is on the path to fiscal suicide.
There overview is "Every fiscal year since 2002, the federal government has run a deficit—meaning spending exceeds its revenues—and added to its debt. Going forward, spending, including for Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and net interest on the debt, is projected to continue to outpace revenue by increasing amounts.
Demographic and other trends—like rising health care costs—are putting pressure on declining Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Higher interest rates could also combine with rising debt to increase deficits going forward."
There solution: "Congress should develop a long-term fiscal plan to provide a cohesive picture of the government’s fiscal goals and a road map for achieving them. A fiscal plan could include an assessment of the drivers of deficits—both revenue and spending—and alternative approaches to the debt limit. For example, the debt limit could be set as part of the budget resolution or Treasury could be given the authority to propose a change in the debt limit that would take effect without needing congressional approval"
Your tired Marxist view of the effects of taxation is also untrue
Here is a list of wage growth in America over the last decade:
Dec 31, 2020 -1.08%
Dec 31, 2019 8.96%
Dec 31, 2018 4.41%
Dec 31, 2017 3.70%
Dec 31, 2016 4.89%
Dec 31, 2015 4.65%
Dec 31, 2014 4.26%
Dec 31, 2013 1.92%
Dec 31, 2012 2.29%
Dec 31, 2011 3.39%
Dec 31, 2010 -0.86%
Wage growth isn't the problem, its inflation. When wage growth is for example is
5% and inflation is 9% Americans are losing purchasing power.
If you rolled down your window and took off your partisan glasses you would see that
government has some tough decisions to make. We are going to have to paid for a rising tide
of aging Americans who are going to need Social Security and Medicare.
The number of social security beneficiaries has gone from 45,000,000 in 2000 to 65,000,000 in 2020.
On the SSA (Social Security Administrations' own website that lay out the coming peril
"As a result of changes to Social Security enacted in 1983, benefits are now expected to be payable in full on a timely basis until 2037, when the trust fund reserves are projected to become exhausted.1 At the point where the reserves are used up, continuing taxes are expected to be enough to pay 76 percent of scheduled benefits. Thus, the Congress will need to make changes to the scheduled benefits and revenue sources for the program in the future. The Social Security Board of Trustees project that changes equivalent to an immediate reduction in benefits of about 13 percent, or an immediate increase in the combined payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 14.4 percent, or some combination of these changes, would be sufficient to allow full payment of the scheduled benefits for the next 75 years."
This year the government will take in approx. 5T in revenue and spending 6.5T.
We are on the road to becoming Greece.
We ADULTS to solve these problems NOT HACK partisan virtue signaling just meant to take cheap shots at political opponents.
Since you're so fond of cherry-picking data to suit your agenda, you might want to read what they have to say about tax policy:https://www.gao.gov/tax-reform
I notice you also continue to ignore the distinction between income tax and FICA tax as a way to attack social security. The very existence of SS and Medicare is, of course, an ideological heresy to the far right. The very concept of government insurance programs that actually work being an ideological impossibility, it is not surprising that so much effort has been put into making them not work or, failing that, just repeating that they don't work in hopes that doing so will eventually make it real.
That said, I don't expect anyone who starts out by throwing around right wing dog whistles like "Marxist" and "virtue signaling" to have much interest in acting like adults.
According to this discussion of Paul Krugman's explanation of why government debt is not like household debt, governments are not in the business of paying off their debt.
However, how the money that is taken in is allocated does matter, and also, we have a lot of Americans who are not paying taxes, because they have ways of getting around it. That is both unfair and unhealthy for our budget. We are not offering a lot of services that other wealthy countries do, which means that their average citizen has a lot better quality of life. Read about the low income housing utopia in Vienna for example. They also are on their way to managing their climate impact, and the climate change in their city far faster than we are in any city here in the USA. In fact, many of us are still reeling from the horrid pollution of the forest fires in Canada, which was scary for many. We are not on the road to becoming Greece because Greece is not filled with climate deniers like the USA is, and Greece is not prioritizing their fossil fuel businesses over getting a grip on carbon output.
Government debt has a purpose, however it becomes toxic at a certain point.
Krugman has a Keynesian view of government spending. That tends to be supported by
leftist academics, not market based economists.
This really simple we have approx 34T in debt and climbing. This year we will taken in
5T in revenue and 6.5T in spending.
As I pointed out in my post REVENUE is growing every year
FISCAL YEAR REVENUE
FY 2021 $4.05 trillion
FY 2020 $3.42 trillion
FY 2019 $3.46 trillion
FY 2018 $3.33 trillion
FY 2017 $3.32 trillion
FY 2016 $3.27 trillion
FY 2015 $3.25 trillion
FY 2014 $3.02 trillion
FY 2013 $2.78 trillion
FY 2012 $2.45 trillion
FY 2011 $2.30 trillion
FY 2010 $2.16 trillion
FY 2009 $2.11 trillion
FY 2008 $2.52 trillion
FY 2007 $2.57 trillion
FY 2006 $2.41 trillion
FY 2005 $2.15 trillion
FY 2004 $1.88 trillion
FY 2003 $1.78 trillion
FY 2002 $1.85 trillion
FY 2001 $1.99 trillion
FY 2000 $2.03 trillion
We don't have a REVENUE problem, we have a spending problem
As the GAO pointed out, unless we get spending under control we are going to GET crushed by Medicare/Social Security payments & debt. Printing money every year (M1) is causing inflation which excelerates our borrowing cost and ultimately is going to lead to deflation of the dollar.
Amen, esp the fascism and uber racism pieces. The press and the Democrats need to do a better job at educating those MAGAites who are in the working and lower class citizens that if the GOP is successful, they will be hurt.
John, I watched the video of the poobahs throwing women priests/ministers out. It was really something. One woman minister pointed out how many “called women” they would be losing. Her church was exiled from the “boys only” club some time ago. There are millions of followers who generously give money to the backward thinking evangelist ‘leaders’. Just shakin’ my head.....
There are no priests in the Baptist church, only called ministers or, as they say, pastors. The recently elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention was said to be a mainstream conservative, whatever that is these days.
Elizabeth Iler: Yes--and the "good" male and female members of these churches justify prohibiting female pastors by proclaiming that the Bible prohibits female pastors.
Michael Bales: Yup. One slogan of the Third Reich was, "Kinder, Küche, Kirche," and millions of German women complied with it until all the men were gone, and the Nazis needed women to go to work.
It must be understood that this misogyny is part and parcel of the theology of these people. They believe (and hear reinforced every Sunday) that woman was made from Adam's rib for the sole purpose of being his helpmate (read servant), and to produce children and tend to them (while also tending to the man's wants, needs and desires, of course). A woman is not to have thoughts of her own, let alone opinons!
I heard one of these women interviewed on NPR yesterday, explaining her beliefs to the interviewer, and clearly stating that this is GOD'S WORD!!
In Tim Egan's new book on the history of the KKK circa 1920s, he makes the tie-in between Christian Nationalism, racism, terrorism, misogyny, all of it, very clear. In Indiana, the Klan went into churches, during Sunday services, and literally paid the preacher, with the clear understanding there was more 'support' where that came from. Of course, this was couched in the most charitable of terms, but the congregation got the message, as did the preacher - "Play ball with us and we'll protect you. Ignore us, and we'll come after YOU, too."
This crap has been preached from pulpits across America for over a century. Since so many, at least here in the South, see their 'church family' as blood family (as it often is), going against what's taught weekly is unthinkable. You would be casting yourself not only out of the church body, but out of your birth family!!
As the number of regular church goes continues to decline, these congregations get more and more desperate, and hence turn up the heat on those left.
According to Mr. Egan's book, they worked with all denominations except Roman Catholics and Jews, both of which groups were targeted for derision and harrassment.
Nope, only the men and complicit women. That’s not everybody.
I belong to a small Episcopal church in Georgia, planted in the suburbs 22 years ago. Our founding priest is a woman. Many of the parishioners I’ve met “grew up Baptist”. We welcome everyone to the church and the table. If there are any [finally] disillusioned Southern Baptists reading this, there’s a church home for you, probably close to where you live. Don’t give up, and don’t feel like you have to go back.
John D. Cooper--Exactly. I was just about to post about these churches when I saw your post. All those women vote. And mal-nourish their children with their self-defeating True Believer madness.
Right-wing media tells the uneducated what to believe as truth. Some pastors and priests use selected parts of the Bible to endorse hatred. The Right has a massive system that is well-financed. They attack education and science. Their ultimate goal to having the power (even illegally) to enable the rich to become richer. Big money is their god; democracy is small change.
"Christianity" has been weaponized at least since the fall of Rome. Gotta get rid of those pagans, doncha know. And then there are the Crusades. And colonialism. And when it wasn't "weaponized" per se, the popular antisemite, Father Coughlin, encouraged weaponization of fascism.
Umm, there have been and continue to be Women's marches for this that and the other. Most recently, a nation -wide Mothers Demand Action (against assault weapons.) I bet there was not a mention on the news. The problem is the white male predominance among oligarchs, Republicans, the conservative Catholic Supreme Court, Evangelicals plus the MEDIA which ignores, represses and abuses women. (Remember Rush Limbaugh's "Feminazis?") The mean males (DeSantis, Abbot) also make up new rules as they go about undoing progress such as the draconian anti-abortion movement, anti-trans and gays. The number of women assaulted, murdered and disappeared annually—usually by their partners is quite awful (sorry the number is not in my memory at the moment.) So, we get pushed back a lot. And that's just American women.
LBNL, some women like the status quo because 1) Their religion says to be subordinate to men, 2) Being married to a successful man has lots of bennies (the traitoresses!) 3) It still is the cultural norm and 4) Whether intentional or not, it is painful, difficult and sometimes harmful to break the glass ceiling. Guys have a way of punishing women who are in their way. (Consider tfg's behavior and overt sexism.)
Having said that, Run, there are lots of good guys and I suspect you are one. Sometimes women need a little help from their friends.
For me, the question of how to present facts, whether historical or present-day, to people who chose to believe lies and fantasies is one to which I have been unable to find an answer. Most if not all of us here understand the difference, but sharing that understanding, at least on the national scale, seems impossible. However, n the local scale, I am hopeful. My universal healthcare group has put together a questionnaire for our towns, showing what the savings will be under a Medicare for All plan that has been languishing in the MA Legislature for years. Today, in addition to our Cape Cod towns, our regional school district is about to compute their savings. This seems to me to be a better way to show people how their healthcare will improve at the same time that their taxes will go down. If you'd like to learn more, I'd be happy to share our survey.
Betsy, I don't have an answer to the question of how to present facts, either. I tried for the entire abysmal four plus years under tfg to honestly engage with R supporters. I don't believe we can do it. It's a cult, fed by Faux (happily now bleeding viewers, though....) and a relentless church campaign - emails, sermons, newsletters. It's a colossal waste of time to try to convert Republicans. Only other Rs have a chance at peeling some of them off.
I completely agree with you on this as well - we DO all have to fight the local fight. And make sure we're bringing as many lazy or overwhelmed Dem or "independent" voters as we can along to the polls with us. Thanks for your good work.
That's been my experience, too. Can't get through to T**** supporters. All I can figure is that they've lost touch with reality, denying incontrovertible facts, even from the mouth of the one who holds sway over them. It's a puzzle.
I hope you didn’t waste much effort beating that dead horse. Effort that could have been productively invested in a well-organized get-out-the-vote project. There are many good ones to choose from, and they all address the only important factor in elections: getting our voters to the polls. When we succeed in that effort, Democrats win.
The only way you sway voters is to separate them from their local herd, which if you live in a small town is highly unlikely. There are morning meetups at the diners, etc, which function as reinforcement sessions. Same discussions every day. Those ( usually) men do not entertain the notion of breaking away, that would be backstabbing and extreme disloyalty. They count on each other more than you think.
A local librarian who worked in the political arena for decades showed me her copy of the Indictment. I asked if she printed it off at the library, and she said yes, and put the library stamp on it to offer the doc to anyone who admitted to not reading it.
I know of no Republicans in the area where I live, comprising of 75% of the rural population, who has read any of the indictment. And if they did, under a pillow with a flashlight, they would never admit it.
I. for instance, do not display my American flag, I do not want to signal to the locals that I am a MAGA member too. You would be surprised how many rebel flags fly here mere miles from the Canadian border.
I agree, Ed. The suggestion that those in my small town should broaden their horizons is spitting in the wind. They live in an echo chamber with high walls.
Ed, I hear you about flying the National Colors. Currently, my flag display is of the National Colors (properly illuminated at night; my inspection last night tells me that replacing my flag on July 4 will be appropriate this year) along side the "inclusive" Pride flag (one which includes lots of the "plus" of LGBTQ+ along with black and brown). Last month I paired "Old Glory" with the COPS flag (black field with a single blue stripe, which I fly in April and May; April because it is the anniversary month of losing a friend to a line of duty death, and May, because it is Law Enforcement Memorial Month). A new Ukrainian flag will go up in August (my old one is too faded).
All that to say is that I will not let those MAGAts take my pride in my country. My wife and housemate do not like me flying the flag for the very reasons you state. So far I am more stubborn.
I could do that too, I am just quieter in my resistance to their beliefs. My mailman and others I interact with often are polar opposites from me, and I just roll quietly, easier to get along. They won't change their views, they only began voting in 2016, and guess who explained the ballot process to them? I work the polls 2-3 times a year.
Rex Page: Yes--exactly. There is no benefit to engaging with Acultamuricans. We absolutely have to not only get out the vote, but we must make sure our candidates have integrity, competence, intellect, and dedication.
James, I think all we can do is do the work on our side and let MAGA crumble. Incalculable damage is being done while we wait. But it is crumbling. Rs are peeling off — quietly, but more visibly every day.
Maybe, but in miniscule numbers. And that’s not good enough. How to explain to the complacent!, ignorant non-voters how their lives will change living under an authoritarian leadership? Our wealthiest class numbers
steadily increasing, middle class shrinking, nothing will be done for our environment, clean air and water, safer energy, roads and bridges, all stagnating now. Not to mention personal rights being taken away…we can already see what’s happening to women, the LGBTQ community in the works and so on. Yes, there need to be ways to get through to those who don’t get it…and they aren’t all imbeciles. O, if our good Professor would consider a cloning! She is being stretched way too far and we need to keep her in good spirits and health…
I describe that as "their sky is a different color". I cannot reach those I have tried with. Many of my former work cohort (a bunch of retired cops) are so sunk into the MAGAt propaganda that there seems to be no way out.
I have also tried to get through to these ignorant and gullible TUMP fanatics, to no avail. I gave up and haven't even tried to convince them any longer.
Betsy, the issue of Medicare for All is one I've raised with my own MA Senator and representative. I think they're as frustrated as many of their constituents in not being able to get the MA legislature to act - particularly this year, when very few laws have been passed. Your survey interests me... I'd like to show it to them.
If I contact your state rep, whom I've met in the past, and ask her to put us in touch with each other, will she know you and be able to do that? I see that she's a co-sponsor, but since we're a small, Cape based group, she may not know about it, and I need to find out how people feel on this end about extending at this point to other parts of the state. Is there a better way that doesn't involve putting our contact info here?
Ah, you know the formidable Kate Donaghue, eh? Yes, she'd know me - we talked after our local caucus a couple days ago, though not about Medicare for All. I'm sure she has my contact info. Thanks.
When trying to convince someone to get, say, a COVID-19 vaccination, it is important to get a sense of what and how strong their objections are. For someone who is a bit ambivalent, appealing to the social good (protect family, community, etc.) is the best approach. With someone who is more strongly anti-vaccination, appealing to their self-interest (you won't get sick and die) generally works best.
Both of these approaches start with the acknowledgement of and appealing to an emotional state, not a spreadsheet. Yes, our arguments should always be based on fact - that is both a pragmatic and a moral imperative, but appealing to facts without recognizing that we are really appealing to someone's emotional state is simply stirring dust. Obama understood this. How factual, really, are campaign slogans that simply say "Hope" and "Change"? Trump is the master of appealing to negative emotions. Enough said about that.
How to spread the word of the Democrat's extraordinary governance and plans? I say start with statements like "this will keep you and your family safe", or "this will save you money". Then back them up with facts. An emotional investment in what they're listening to helps people pay attention. A set of facts, no matter how compelling, simply do not.
Presenting "facts" to non-factual people is a waste of time and energy. To paraphrase someone (!), "You can't reason a person out of something she/he wasn't reasoned into."
Betsy, thank you for your persistence, the survey appears to be a positive approach. Many but thankfully not all, family members, friends and even well-meaning strangers I've spoken with are fully receiving the propaganda as truth.
Prejudice and fear have taken such a strong hold. The need/security in belonging to a group also holds persons back from debate. These are facts that trouble me deeply.
Most of my friends are Christian and deeply faithful . When they speak negatively of another faith or another choice of lifestyle....referring to our mutual faith......I remind them that Jesus loved everyone because He looked within the person....not only what we see with our eyes. Sometimes as Christians we develop a "better than thou" attitude. We forget that we were brought to faith through unconditional love....through the brutal sacrifice of Jesus, our Saviour, who sees us completely to the depth of our souls....He gave Himself for each of us......His death was brutal.....He was the sacrificial Lamb of God. After receiving such love....why do we choose to treat people with disrespect if they worship differently, if their skin color is brown, as Jesus' was.
As Christians , we must constantly examine ourselves and how we are living out our faith.
The God we say we worship came to save us from brokenness. We should live a life of love and kindness and gratitude and live out our faith by caring for everyone....which also means confronting evil and corruption, when necessary.
Our faith should affect our life choices. I am just a simple person but I believe Joe Biden and many on his team, fit in the category of "following in the footsteps of Christ" more than Trump and his minions.
A political party that appreciates diversity and lifting people up seems like something I want to be a part of ie grateful for Social Security and Medicare.
A political party that respects the rights of women...and allows them to protect themselves and honors their humanity by allowing them to lead (as Debra lead an army to victory in the Old Testament of the Bible) It is a way I can demonstrate God's love towards my fellow human beings. A political party that is trying to take care of our earth and air quality and children seems a good place in which to live out my faith and I might add, to live out my faith with other fellow Americans of a different faith or the choice of no faith.
Betsy, for those who might listen, I recommend the book Across the Divide by Justin Lee. He’s done a lot, as a gay man raised in an Evangelical Church household, to have discourse that changes some minds about homosexuality. Talk about a tough sell! His suggestions sound useful to me.
Republican politicians take advantage of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (well, lots of people leverage this, but we’re talking politics, here). This is a cognitive bias, where at the beginning of the knowledge cycle, our perceived confidence on a subject soars way above what we really know and understand. If we work to understand a subject, then our confidence drops significantly. It’s easy to understand this through a chart https://graphpaperdiaries.com/2017/08/20/the-real-dunning-kruger-graph/.
The same guy who came up with the memorable "of the people, by the people, for the people" description of democratic governance further elucidated with "The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities." Way out of step, I should say, with the aims of modern "Republicans".
Yup, DAVE, Lincoln was nothing if not a man who recognized what was valuable in what others said or wrote! He recognized himself as a man who had no formal education so he became a voracious reader and spent his life seeking out the wise and practical in others; probably what allowed him to be such an astonishingly effective leader!
I would be grateful if you have some good links to this. On the one hand all education is self-education because if we are incurious little of formal education is likely to be integrated into our thinking, and also we "stand on the shoulders of giants", a phrase associated with Newton, although I understand it predates him. I would also add that we stand on so many, many shoulders unrecorded by history.
Because of the Great Depression, my curious parents were never officially educated beyond high school, although my mother attended college and was close to earning a BA in her late 50's, a goal foiled by cancer. Both mixed easily with those with degrees because they were well read. My boss for many years quit college in his first semester, got a reading list from a university librarian and read the books he would have needed to get a degree. He read them to learn, not just pass the test. I think "discussion method" classrooms can also be immensely valuable, but today I gather many modern college lectures are presented as Powerpoints that might as well be viewed on a computer.
What I see in Lincoln is curiosity about the functional essences of concepts such as liberty and justice, that resists the false labeling by despots. Thoreau claimed "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root", and it seems to me that Lincoln often got to the roots of things, literally "radical". There have been medical cures and prescriptions for health for eons, some even quiteeffective, but medical science took off like a rocket with the discovery of "germs", functional anatomy, DNA, etc. that revealed underlying principles. I think Lincoln's thoughts, original and incorporated, are rich with them.
My folks raised me in the UU church, and I am aware of some the contemporaneous influences of Parker and Channing. Also influence of Emerson in his day, a side of American history too rarely discussed.
Massachusetts has had some good Republican governors, even recently--Charlie Baker, and in the '80s maybe, Francis Sargent. Governor Romney gave Massachusetts what became Obamacare.
My parents had a story about another GOP Mass governor, William Weld. My mother was fairly crippled with MS. She had an electric scooter. They were going to the theater one time, and my father was helping her out of the car, when someone asked if he needed any help. He just waved the guy off. And then he looked. It was Governor Weld.
I'd give them another decade, TCinLA. Thad Stevens was still hard at work post-Civil War. We did get the 14th-15th Amendments. Otherwise, couldn't agree more!!
I'll point out that the three Republican presidents generally considered the best - Lincoln, TR and Eisenhower, were all cordially hated by the party establishment for not "toeing the line", and when considered against all the other R presidents, they were flukes. You can add guys like Sherman and anyone else who did something "progressive" that actually made progress a "fluke" too.
Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment and its bureaucracy have a preference for complacency and tranquillizers over fresh thinking and inconvenient realities...
A weak defense against the virulent menace we now face.
My U.S. government class i took in my junior year in high school said the extreme Republicans on the political scale were defined as, ''Reactionaries''
Yes, it does seem to be dropped in the recent years, especially since that dictator Donald TUMP was Dictator of the United States for 4 years. I guess you could classify him as '' A deranged Nazi/ fascist extreme Reactionary. This half century since i was in high school really went by in a hurry, i miss those days when i was in high school very much.
‘At the Heart of the Documents Case: Trump’s Attachment to His Boxes’
When I saw that headline today, I immediately thought of ‘‘Alice in Wonderland” the precursor of ‘Donald J. Trump in Wonderland’. Others might prefer “The Shining” or NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.
We are in the bizarre world of HIM!
…and the ‘USA’, the country that let him play to his heart’s content; what do we call this partnership?
‘During President Donald J. Trump’s years in the White House, his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the “beautiful mind” material.'
‘It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.’
‘The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security.’
‘One former White House official, who was granted anonymity to describe the situation, said that while the materials were disorganized, Mr. Trump would notice if somebody had riffled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way. It was, the person said, how “his mind worked.”’ (NYTimes) See link below. Sorry, gifted link is not available.
Why would that lunacy surprise any of us? You couldn’t make this up, it’s so crazy no one would believe you if you tried. “Beautiful Mind” my ass, if this was happening to someone close to you, you would be alarmed for them, this lunatic has been trying to drive the bus we are all on, right off a cliff, it’s so detached from reality, it’s hard to believe. But that’s who he is, we need to lock him up to protect ourselves from the corruption that oozes from every pore of his being. I’m so over seeing his face every time I turn on the TV. We have a right to protect ourselves.....
I'm so over seeing a wall of unusually bright false teeth in a scowling, leathery face which is intended to be seen as smiling. Has he had them coated with something luminous?
I’m going with the bleach that he gargled with during Covid. Public service announcement: this is a joke. Do not under any circumstances gargle with bleach. Your teeth will still look like hell and the skin inside your mouth will melt off. Carry on.
Anne-Louise, he may have gotten new dentures, to replace the ones that slipped out of place when he intoned, “God blesh the United Shtash”after a speech. Anyone with a dental prosthesis knows exactly what happened there. And, yes, when they’re new, they’re usually too white.
Thanks for the laugh! Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Terrible job (wonder if he paid the dentist?) - a full set of big identical incisors with no canines. But then, we know he doesn't like dogs.
There is some sort of "light" which cleans teeth and leaves a blue hint on ultra white. One came to a local shopping center right before Covid, but closed. No doubt the vain Donald has one of his own.
For the first time, I am getting the picture of a man who is truly mentally ill, after a fashion. I have encountered a few hoarders in my life, persons who collect things incessantly, feeling that the more possessions they have around them, the more secure they feel. Often, they have the "highest and best use" syndrome or the sincere intention that at some point, they will somehow organize it into a chronicle of their life (as if anyone were interested in all the details). TFG is hopelessly mistaken if he believes anyone will want to dig through all of that exhaustively once he's gone to attempt to write a biography of him. His heirs are completely wrapped up in their own stories by now to have enough interest to do any historical treatment of his White House days. He has already put enough crap into the public discourse to fill volumes, including endless armchair analyses of his mental health. Perhaps that would be the most effective defense he could present in court; that of the insanity plea?
I have not had the idea of him being a hoarder until I read this article. Sadly, my last mother in law WAS a hoarder (Oh! The stories I could tell!!). After reading this article, I seriously think he could be a hoarder.
Builds space ships? Seriously, we should tell "them" that there is a diminishing ratio of happiness with wealth. Of course the very poor are not too happy either. Thom Hartmann says that $75,000 per year is the right balance. And Bernie says $999 million is enough. Every bit above a $Billion is taxed 100%.
Thank you, Ally! I never had the thought until reading this article, and I am shocked; my late mother in law WAS a hoarder. Him being a hoarder would explain why he absolutely refused to give all this up.
That's the point, Michael. Lots of us knew how bizarre, crooked and what a liar he was, yet, so many Americans fell for him. We have to accept some responsibility for not paying attention; the transfer of wealth; lack of affordable housing; inequality; poor pay for labor …and the myths...who lied first, second and third...? The ground had been laid down.
I just want to cry....sorry but this is all getting to me. If the Republicans get their way our democracy will not survive, and our world will descend faster into fascism, ecological disaster and chaos. I pray that tomorrow I will feel more hopeful.
I'm sure you are, Cynthia, but please keep your head up. You have a type of courage that lives in rare air. As a straight guy I can't say I fully understand your journey, but as a human being I can certainly say I deeply respect your integrity and courage, and those of all the LGBTQ community.
Cynthia, you've heard it before -- spend time with your friends and allies and make new ones. See if you can contribute more to the effort of defeating this cruelty, inhumanity, fascism. You have my utmost respect and support.
I do and I am/have . . . still that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. What it doesn’t do is paralyze me, it angers me and stiffens my resolve. Fear is not a bad thing, it prepares one to fight. Panic on the other hand is bad because it causes one to act rashly.
Cynthia, you have it; you have what you need -- the spirit, the resolve, and fear is not a bad thing. That is the other quality you have; you are realistic. You bolstered my resolve as a human being in the midst danger because we're all in danger. Thank you, Cynthia.
Fear is a product of uncertainty. The fact that people are fearful is a healthy sign that they’re paying attention. If we were going to call this the Age of Greed, we might also consider entitling it The Age of Uncertainty. Maybe I need my ChatGPT to steer me on this one.
We all go through feelings of fear and even despair. Action is a good antidote, and every single one of us can Do Something to Save Democracy. David Pepper has great ideas in his new book, Saving Democracy. Jessica Craven writes every day with easy to do actions for us to do in her "Chop Wood, Carry Water" Substack. It's empowering, and our individual small actions add up to a mighty force!
Saving Democracy: A User's Manual for Every American: Pepper, David: 9781662938214: Amazon.com: Books
If I may add to your list of actions that can save democracy, I would include:
Having dinner parties with your neighbors.
Donating to local charities, not just your church.
Singing Christmas carols, celebrating Kwanzaa, wearing a pentacle for Wicca, and throwing a Diwali feast.
Attending the services of other religions besides your own.
Reading academic journals.
Practice holding Republicans, especially the ones you hate, firmly in your mind, drenched in love that you generate in your own heart.
Join groups in your environment that specialize in a particular ethnic/religious/racial group, but only go to meetings occasionally because you don't want to interfere with their mission. (For instance, I was a very white member of the Black Law Student's Association, an instructive experience for all of us at the time.)
Going to farmers' markets and getting to know the farmers.
Learn to enjoy the pleasure of having one of your own ideas, especially a cherished one, proven wrong.
(Please, readers, add to this list ideas that you've never seen on this website.)
I note that all of the "obviously wrong" ideas being parrotted by Norquist-devotees are, as HCR explicitly stated, old, endlessly recycled ideas that go back centuries. The quotes from FDR make it clear that he was responding to the exact same arguments then as we are now, despite almost a hundred years of education, and those arguments weren't even remotely new then.
Education doesn't seem to have an effect on the prevalence of these seemingly-ludicrous conservative/Christian ideas that we rail about in these comments. I hope love and kind engagement (perhaps including beer) can have a greater impact.
Lori, tomorrow you need to set aside “hope” and embrace action, engagement and community like your life and our democracy depends on it-because it does!
It's getting to me, too. I'm tired, frustrated, discouraged, ANGRY. I want to scream, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?" at least seven times a day. Okay. Got that out. Back to writing post cards.
Exactly! But do we have a megaphone that can reach a larger audience as the Murdoch enterprise. This Australian, come Englishman, come US citizen does not give a damn about anything but his power, just like DJT. They feed off of lies, misinformation and propaganda.
As always, it’s those who have it made that want to get still richer at the expense of those who need a social safety net. Unfortunately, those who are strictly concerned with preserving their wealth are able to lobby members of Congress by giving to their campaigns to ensure that these “bought” legislators pass laws to increase their wealth. The idea of having all campaigns at the national level equally funded by the federal government and outlawing superPACs that support candidates has been proposed many times, but has not been passed into law.
Every Democratic campaign ad should trumpet the GOP’s call to raise the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 69. It also should be mentioned in every campaign speech, from Biden down to every race for Congress. And I want them to read Heather’s last paragraph loud and clear.
Republicans often belittle Denmark and other Nordic countries as socialist because they took ideas from the New Deal even further. But, of course, these countries aren’t socialist. They’ve sacrificed countless lives in various wars to combat socialism and communism. What they do embody is robust economies — capitalism that thrives with regulation.
So good to have this history before US today. Saw the Republican senator attacking Janet Yellen on YouTube. Cringed at his lack of basic manners then laughed that Janet Yellen told him nothing he could twist and propagandize.
We can start working on primaries on 22 June. Time to get in all the blue possible.
That’s exactly what a friend said when I told her the story. I had every confidence in Janet Yellen, but as I am numerically challenged (in a family with two mathematical stars), I could only judge her political savvy on the basis that she is part of the president’s team.
Republicans hate it when they get boxed into a logical corner. But then, for some reason, they just turn around and start banging their head against the wall hoping a good next idea might fall out.
'The wealth gap was partly due to significant rises in stock market prices, according to the new study from Imperial College Business School, published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.'
'Researchers from Imperial and the Paris School of Economics are calling for action to be taken by governments and policy makers in the US, to boost wages at the lower end of the market, control unemployment, and stabilise house prices.'
'The researchers drew on new economic data from which they could build a database of the distribution of wealth for most European countries for the first time. This brought the data in line with the available US financial figures and allowed them to compare the change in both total household wealth and wealth inequality in Europe and the United States since the 1970s to the present day, as well as working out the reasons for those changes.'
"High levels of economic inequality can lead to economic and political instability. This is why action needs to be taken before societies become polarised."
Dr Clara Martinez-Toledano, Assistant Professor in Finance, Business School
'The researchers found that although both regions had a similar steady growth in total household wealth, the way the wealth had been distributed has been markedly different since the 1980s.'
'Dr Clara Martínez-Toledano, Assistant Professor in Finance at Imperial College Business School and one of the lead authors of the study said: “From the 1980s we see a wealth gap start to emerge, where there’s a more dramatic change in the United States. The wealth that the top one percent richest people own in the States has undergone a significantly larger increase than the top one percent richest in Europe – in other words, the gap between rich and poor in the US became much more pronounced as wealthy Americans became even richer.”
'Reasons for the wealth gap'
'To discover why this gap emerged, the researchers broke wealth down into three key drivers: differences in saving rates; wages; and capital gains rates.'
'During the decades surveyed, the research showed that house prices had gone up dramatically in both regions, as had financial asset prices. However, stock market prices had increased much faster in the US than in Europe.'
'Dr Martínez-Toledano continued: “Differences in the composition of these assets across wealth groups is key. The richest people tend to own financial assets such as stocks and bonds, while the middle wealth groups tend to have a house as their major asset. But even with a big growth in house prices in both regions, stock market prices were the standout distinguishing factor, with a huge jump in value of US stocks during those decades.“
'Another important factor that can explain the wealth gap between rich and poor in the US is inequality of labour income, with the US economy showing a much bigger contrast in pay between the lowest and highest paid workers than the European economies over the same time period.'
'To document these findings, the researchers ran simulations that substituted the labour income inequality and asset price trajectories from France into the US figures. They found the hypothetical US wealth concentration levels were lower as a result of the smaller rise in labour income inequality and the larger rise in house prices relative to financial assets in Europe. The results were similar when they substituted the same figures from other European countries into the US data.'
'Dr Martínez-Toledano explained: “Less equal societies have less stable economies. High levels of economic inequality can lead to economic and political instability. This is why action needs to be taken before societies become polarised.”
'The new Distribution Wealth Accounts for Europe database is already available on wid.world for other researchers to build on this work, with the researchers planning regular updates to stay informed about the state of wealth inequality in Europe and the US.'
'The project forms part of a bigger international drive by the World Inequality Lab to provide more comprehensive public information about wealth and income inequality across the world.'
'Wealth inequality dynamics in Europe and the United States: Understanding the determinants is published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.' (ImperialCollegeLondon) For more info, google title below.
Gap between rich and poor has increased more quickly in the US than in Europe
And now that we’ve blown it and allowed ourselves to become completely polarized, we need to push equally as hard for Democratic Socialism. Tax the rich. Rebuild the infrastructure. Create jobs. Rebuild the state hospitals. Create an army of carpenters and plumbers and electricians to build affordable housing. Medicare for all.
Heather as usual hasn’t missed a ‘beat’ in her fiscal rendition….
Fair and appropriate taxation is the structural basis for a sound economy…
What regularly mystifies me is how the average voter gets gulled into the Republican heresy of little or no taxation or regulation and it generally takes a major catastrophe or war to shift gears back to ‘sanity’….
You’d think by now we’d all know Heather’s story and conclusions!
Coretta Scott King said every generation has to ‘learn its lessons’….the ones Heather just covered!
"What regularly mystifies me is how the average voter gets gulled into the Republican heresy of little or no taxation or regulation "
Well, for billionaires and corporations. Taxes are for the "little people", and they get regulated plenty, de facto by monopolistic corporations, and directly by fanatics in positions of governmental power. That's a hell of a price to pay for having your prejudices indulged.
Thanks. No one else says it, so I’ll say it again.
We have $140 Trillion of net household wealth.
That grew about $72 Trillion in the last 10 years.
The federal debt grew about $15 Trillion.
Redistribution of wealth happens in the boardroom.
We have the money.
We could spread prosperity like wildfire, if we only put people to work on our country.
If you pay a working family a dollar, a rich guy gets it almost immediately. So smart rich guys should be spending all day, every day to put people to work.
Schools, hospitals, power lines, roads, bridges, medical research, sewers, clean water, it goes on.
We all can see it, every day.
So where is the opposition? One cult.
The problem has metastasized into one fat organization, the R party. The votes are clear, the lies are loud and incessant, and now traitorous.
Some have said, over and over again, that the two parties are the same. They apparently can’t count, or understand simple language. Both are huge failings in a democratic republic.
best luck to US -- b.rad
ps new household numbers are due soon; balance sheet update came out last week <uswealthclock.com>
Having carefully avoided the study of economics in college (it was a very pro-business environment and very anti-woman even in the sixties) I go for a more approachable discussion, such as Robert Reich's dissection of the distribution of wealth and income on his substack. He is offering the last series of his lectures before retirement, and they're very understandable. Also, I just finished Matthew Desmond's Poverty by America, which is a clear explanation of our inequality at 189 pages (plus notes and gracious acknowledgments). I'm planning to read Evicted by the same author, a Princeton professor who grew up poor in Arizona.
The Republican’s approach to economic management is so obviously “How to Create Chaos, Destroy Everything, Embarrass the Nation while Grifting from the Taxpayer and Making the Land vulnerable to Weather catastrophes”, that they should not garner one vote from your average citizen. A country which gives these types power must be seen ( sorry but geez) as irredeemably ignorant.
Thank you for once again explaining with historical evidence that the GQP plans are destined to fail AGAIN. Please keep spreading the word, hopefully more people will learn the truth and see through the lies and B.S. of the right-wing scumwads.
J.H.F**king Christ. Let’s see them try to convince the rest of the country that all of this is a good idea. Fascism on the hoof. With über racism along with it.
THE long awaited out of the closet destruction of the NEWDEAL . Their constituents are primed with propaganda & ready for the sell out.
And Carole, this is the part that perplexes me. How do we get “the rest of the country,”as Linda states, to recognize the nonsense/propaganda that the right wing media is pedaling? Along with DJT we have Rupert Murdoch and his crew led by Sean Hannity. And those media types appear to have a lock on a portion of the voting population.
So, it seems like the biggest challenge we face is getting the message Heather Cox-Richardson writes out to people who will vote for the FDR way of democracy. I hope there is a lot more Heathers out their getting this message to voters.
Thank you for sharing.
Perhaps by teaching economic history in high schools and not letting curricula be influenced by politicians.
True, but that is the long view. Get Out the Vote in 2023 & 2024 for every elected office, in every state. Vote them out up and down the ballot.
The long term plan of conservative to take over local and state elected offices has been, obviously, very successful while the liberals were sound asleep. We are paying dearly for that slumber. VOTE like you life depends on it because it DOES!!!
THIS is now, our only hope. The thugs have rigged the "system" for so long, and brainwashed their crazed base, the rest of the silent majority HAS to stand up and take notice. One vote/voice/conversation at a time.
Good luck in Tx and Fl
This is key. The party of death as it is currently constituted full of wing nuts and greeds, should not be governing anything including school boards and other local entities. Meanwhile they stir up the culture wars, so that an older man shouts at a little girl at a track meet in Montana because she has short hair or a honored teacher quits in Texas after being hounded by certain locals. I will also note that our nephew and his lady recently observed that they don't expect social security to be there for them. I also note that these pols are first in line when things go south and they need the Federal government, which as climate happenings intensify will surely happen. Already insurance companies are declining insurance to certain areas of the country.
"Culture war" is a misnomer. There is no war, but there is a campaign of racism and misogyny in the name of white power. A "war" implies that both sides of are equal in legitimacy, which of course they are not.
Currently many are eating from food pantries!
But many states are controlled by repugs and they
oops and they control who gets to vote or with techniques that make it almost impossible for many to vote.
Cutriculam is decided by school boards, not teachers. Elect intelligent people to school boards.
This is true and this is the problem. Many school boards have terrific well educated and diverse school boards - volunteers who work really hard. But many other local school boards have demented yahoos fighting culture wars.
I suggest (and expect much push back) that education should be controlled and FUNDED at the state level. And they should be required to follow certain standards established by the Federal Dept of Ed.
One of the reasons we have madness and ignorance in our nation is because we let local yahoos influence dedicated professionals. It's in the headlines every day.
The other reason we have this problem is because we fund schools by real estate taxes. Zip code funding of education is a guarantee of inequity and the maintenance of a "class society". The rich stay rich. The poor get poorer.
In many red states, the autocracy and ignorance peddling is rooted at the state level. Republican controlled state governments are attacking their own school systems. They are also going after local governments, especially those of any Democratic cities.
For years we funded education in Oregon primarily through the property tax. So every year there were local elections and we all waited and hoped it would pass. One year it didn't pass in time for the regular start of school, so we had kids running around crying and wondering what would happen to them while we started two weeks late. Now the the primary funding comes from the state. And I read where the Supreme Court may allow religious charter schools. I do not want my tax money to go to any religious school, period.
And the yahoos actually scare reasonable people off the boards, I have heard.
Are you aware that school board members in several states are actually paid? In Florida people serve on school boards for the money. The average annual pay in Florida is $58,511.00
The average Teacher Elementary School salary in the United States is $63,220 as of May 25, 2023, but the range typically falls between $51,872 and $76,347.
Susan Lorraine Knox: Exactly. Sadly the previous lack of interest in school board elections is now compounded by crazed parents coming to meetings to attack board members who have different perspectives.
Koch’s started a war against democracy by attacking our educational institutions.
Simply writing curriculum wasn’t working fast enough:
https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-koch-brothers-sneak-into-school/
They had to take it up several more notches by going after School Boards:
“According to previous reporting by CMD, ALEC held a workshop in December 2020 promoting the Right’s false narrative about critical race theory being taught in public schools that featured speakers from other groups tied to anti-public school zealot Koch, including the Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and American Enterprise Institute, which have spent decades attacking public education.
Just weeks after this ALEC workshop, the dark money attack dog, Moms for Liberty, was launched to target public schools. Shortly thereafter another dark money group, Parents Defending Education, was created. As of February 2022, right-wing state officials in 36 states had introduced bills or other restrictions limiting the truthful telling in public schools of history and teachings about race, racism, or the contribution of specific racial or ethnic groups.“
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/11/04/new-documents-show-alec-targeting-school-board-and-other-local-races/
And democracy activists are standing up for democracy. Will we win??
https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/apr/21/school-board-elections-illinois-wisconsin-republicans-lose
It depends. School boards in many states set administrative policies but do not decide curriculum, which is set by state education departments.
It starts at the state level.
I think it starts at the local level.
A lu lu was elected last year in Clay County, IN.
President Bidens wife is a teacher, they say. Could her advice have any effect on how school curriculum, funding, and choosing of school boards are arranged? Would Bidens conversion to Catholicism undermine our separation of Church and State?
Thank you everyone for your informative comments on my post.
I think we need to teach basic economic concepts starting in 4th grade as a concept on a developmentally appropriate level. I always did when I taught. We also need to teach critical thinking. Of course, we need to address the millions of fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers who are not teaching their children anything that might get them independence. This would also be true of the Yeshiva's in NYC. There should be national school standards like other countries have, which both homeschoolers and private schools are required to meet. How is that for government interference. I think that regulating education, and talking about children's rights to an education might get around children as property Parent's rights movements, which exist basically to get around government and our societal norms.
The politicized education system in America is why I never learned about the massacres and erasures of Tulsa, Okla.; Wilmington, NC; Ocoee, Fla. (Not to mention Native American atrocities.) Only during the last few years of Orange Angst and Pandemic-induced Awakening have I come to understand the UNITED States has not finished fighting the Civil War.
WTF?
I was well into my twenties when I learned about the Japanese internment camps during WWII and the disenfranchisement of the Japanese-American Citizens. Shame on us!
SLWeston: "politicized" or racist?
I agree 100%, Linda!
I also suggest it is important to ad in Civics education much earlier, in elementary school, when age-appropriate principles of the rights and responsibilities of a good citizen can be introduced as essential to being American. Then, in middle and high school - to prepare young people to be good American adults - add teaching the mechanics of government and the importance of learning how to be informed and active participants in our system. I believe space created in school curricula to include teaching civics would not interfere with but would actually enhance learning in other subjects. A child who feels part of something bigger than himself/herself- part of a society that, despite its faults (yes, of course include the terrible historical truths as part of the teaching of American history), intends to advance opportunity, growth, and goodness in all of its people - will more likely succeed in whatever studies he/she are inspired to pursue.
You’re so right, Laura, about teaching children to be good, informed, successful citizens. I suspect that was the point: It’s much harder to manipulate good, informed, FAIRLY TREATED citizens. Sigh. Big sigh.
Children should be taught early on the privilege and responsibility to vote in every election. I don't remember civics classes but I am sure I had some in the 40' and '50's when I attended schools in Montclair, a top notch town. One thing that stuck in my head is: America is a melting pot. Montclair began as estates for wealthy New Yorkers and has many blacks who probably got there to begin with as household servants. And, lucky for Montclair, they stayed in Montclair. I am continuously shocked that people in many parts of the country just don't get it. They're Americans!!! "White Supremacy" is SO American.
During the 70s, I was the director of Junior Achievement of Southeast Michigan's "Project Business," which brought upper-level executives into 7th-8th grade classrooms once a week for a semester. The program successfully engaged students in the concepts and processes of economics. Unfortunately, it took up an hour of regular teaching time every week, and it became impossible for teachers to cover their own material in less time.
It is unfortunate that whatever else was on the docket was prioritized over real life lessons. I am a Deweyan teacher and believe in learning through relevant experiences whenever possible. https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/john.html
An hour a week does not seem like much if it is planned into the curriculum and other activities support it. It might not be an all year thing, but still, at that age economics education is very important.
If "upper-level executives" are to present their version of "the concepts and processes of economics" to the innocent, FFS bring in a labor leader (or scholar) and a socialist organizer to counteract the exec's brainwashing re those "concepts and processes."
To add to your educational economics comments, children should learn critical thinking skills and how manipulation and gaslighting happen all around them--including amongst family members and friends, sometimes. They need to explore the 10 basic components of authoritarian leaning regimes that intentionally undermine critical thinking skills. They can use those skills to discern any person or group or media who might be trying to pull the wool over them.
I would call these classes LifeSkills. Our children would avoid a lot of charlatans if they could think for themselves, and would provide a higher inoculation rate from being susceptible to cults. I can tell you that my reading of Anne Frank, at nine, changed my life and how I look at anyone who gaslights me. It also impacted me when my recently born again Godmother suddenly tried to get me to become a Christian. She told me the guy bleeding and nailed on the cross she placed above my bed died for my sins. I asked what Sin is. I was appalled. I was only 9 years old, never did anything anyone should die for and he did not even know me since he died 2,000+ years ago. When my Godmother found out that I wanted my mom to take down the crucifix so I could sleep, I never saw her again. That was my first experience in truly stand-ing up for my own mind, using logic and refusing to be manipulated by a loved one. Well, I thought she was a loved one but her kind of Christianity seemed to teach her that if those you love do not convert, dump them. I studied what Jesus might have said and I could discern that there are universal truths about love, kindness, forgiveness and not casting stones. The rest sounded like someone warped the teachings and completely lost the points that resonate for so many of us. My mother, standing by me and supporting my developing critical thinking skills, against my Godmother, was THE BEST, most life-changing gift she ever gave to me. I have written about that many times in this forum over the years. This skill was critical to my calling trump a fascist in 2016 because I learned how fascists think and operate and mind-control. And here we are.
Critical thinking skills are essential in a representative democracy. As is the knowledge of how that democracy functions. Trump said it to their faces during the campaign in 2016—, "I love the poorly educated..." And they cheered! Bingo. He might be ignorant about many things, but clearly, he is a master manipulator/gaslighter of an alternative reality. Just like Hitler. Superiority, divisiveness and fear are the foundations of their power. This must be taught to children around 9 years old, at least in my experience--along with reading all the books the trump reich are banning. These skills also nip sexual predators in the bud because children will not easily fall for lies and manipulation when their personal and physical spaces are invaded. They need to tell someone if someone EVER threatens them. And keep telling until someone believes and helps them. Many cults and churches have predators whose actions should always be questioned. No one should be on a pedestal. We are all equal and should be treated with respect.
I was also pre-teen & teen in the '60's and keenly observed all the messaging, war protests, love-ins, and rioting in ghettos. The two signs that impacted my young mind most were "Question Authority" and "War is not healthy for children and other living things." Interesting, at the same time, didn't I learn that also from Anne Frank's Diary and WWII?
Might have to go over to fox and teach it. Cut and paste significant pieces of Heather's critical message here. (the easiest to understand-- why we are in significant debt due to trump & co., and how those who worked hard for their medicare savings plan will be dumped till 69 yrs old and have no protection from the government when it is privatized...this is corporatocracy at its' very worst.
It also makes me wonder how they would mismanage the SS accts of those Americans already receiving SS , of course I’ve always thought, perhaps naively, that recipients should or should have been allowed to take their money in lump sum when eligible.
Diana King: 1. Whose version of "economic history" should be taught? 2. How would you prevent curricula from being influenced by politicians? 3. Is "economic history" the same as or different from Economics? 4. For what reasons is "economic history" not being taught in high schools?
Or just have Letters From An American be required daily reading from 7th grade on up.
These are big questions. (Religious dogma should be kept out of it too. Comparative religion perhaps ok. ) Unanswerable in this medium. Perhaps a complete review or investigation of the education system with educators from all disciplines represented.
Excellent questions !
Economic history is not being taught because it would cause trouble for the teachers and the school board. Not only because parents would be misunderstanding and all up in arms about communism, but because the teachers are not qualified to teach what they have never been taught.
Mary Ellen Harris: So true.
Economics, as a subject in school has not, in my experience, been taught in any comprehensible way. I don't think it's political influence, I think it's how Economics has evolved as a pseudo-science; there's not enough understanding of math and too much wishful thinking sociology.
Whether Civics is taught in high schools is up to the states. The classroom instruction time previously allotted to Civics, Government, and Social Studies has diminished greatly because of the bureaucratic requirements of "No Child Left Behind," the focus on math and science, and meaningless, anti-education, standardized tests.
No Child Left Untested.
Here in MT the congressional rep on their fb page almost every post uses weaponized words to describe & blame the D & Pres Biden. 500 people showed up to hear how the 2020 election was corrupt in our county. The state party met vowing to take down our only D representative in 2024. I feel like I am living in the Lord OF the Rings & a great battle for the good.
...or maybe in "The Lord of the Flies"????
I’m in MT too. It does feel like Lord of the Rings. MT is where the old system is on hospice. Be strong and know that there are more of us out here.
Can't help but paraphrase, "The Ring of the Lords!"
You do live in Lord of the Rings.
Carole Berkoff: "Lord of the Rings" meets "Lord of the Flies."
175 GOP reps are MAGA extremists.?That’s 80% of the GOP members of Congress. And they have a sufficient following in the population to actually re-elect Trump ? How can we prevent this nightmare scenario?
I do think we need to work on a very local level and actually have important conversations in our neighborhoods and local communities that include these people. Why are we not asking them what are their basic needs ? How are these needs being mer? What do they really need going forward for themselves and their families. I don’t think we will get anywhere by continuing to vilify and label.
And we need to go out now and register voters. I mean door-to-door and talk to people, get them registered for the next general election and help them get out and vote or send in a valuable bulletin. This takes a huge grass roots organization. We need to start today.
Respectfully you are the third person today that wrote about this grassroots idea. You say 'we'. We did start initiatives in my community and worked our hearts out leading up to 2016. I am not sure I want to do this again. Do you? It is not my intention to single you out. From my perspective I have been actively engaged for years and am only seeing the same people trying to move the same needle.
Never give up. I think authentic tough conversations where we actually listen to each other and not just wait to speak are a way to connect and then go forward. Have you read Amanda Ripley’s book HIGH Conflict: how it happens and how we can get out of it. I highly recommend it.
Alas, John, our nation has such deeply embedded "otherism" that is being manipulated to the max right now. That same population will never admit their superstitious and hate filled fears of blacks, gays, uppity women, immigrants, and intellectuals. Instead they reframe it as their right to be in control.
But yes, I agree that HCR's letters and other substacks are a little breath of sanity right now, but accessed by a minority. Facebook, Fox, Twitter reach many millions more and keep the toxins going. To say nothing about the fascists who seek self-aggrandizement at the peril of us all.
Fight we must, and bless the likes of HCR, but it's a huge climb.
Perfectly stated, Hope Lindsay--and HCR is our oasis and reservoir.
John D. Cooper: Exactly. We need to outvote them--
That is what we need to do, John. We are too far down the "rabbit Hole" to talk about change at the school board level. Long range, yes, but time is a fleeting.
Those school board members have a way of movin' on up very quickly--the bad ones need to be stopped asap, and the good ones need to be supported.
You mean like a microphone that Rupert has but telling the truth. We’re about 40 years behind. Rachel Maddow said it. MSNBC does not deliberately lie on the air. Fox has not a qualm. And the MAGAts and their ilk have not a clue. And MSM took their strategy from chump -good people on both sides. Who will call them what they are. Anything but a legitimate political party.
Hi Jeri. I suspect "Rachel Maddog" is a typo? Or not? It made me grin.
Thanks, she is tough, but not mad. Well, maybe. I sure am
Jeri Chilcutt: Nothing wrong with being mad!
Hope Lindsay--Me, too! I like "Maddog"! 😊
Yes, Jeri, exactly.
The young voting block may save us but the problem is they are getting their news from social media like Instagram. Very few young folks ages 20-30 have cable TV and most do not subscribe to an online newspaper of record.
With fewer and fewer news”papers” of record every day, it’s difficult to know which among the remaining are worth the read. Loss of the news industry and the resulting less-well-informed electorate is what keeps me awake at night.
Thank God for Substack.
The Meidas Touch is an excellent source of information by attorneys who are grounded and relentless in informing Americans. Really worth watching them. They are not corporate owned.
Thanks to so many of you❤️
YOU ARE the chorus of THE many leaders. Our President . His many Staff. The writers we so love and need Heather, Ruth, Joyce, Charlie, blessed the ad infinitum ...
I truly believe John , as growing evidence shows, there are many many more who do hear, understand, and have joined US. Always there’s a reason for doubt for sure the least of which I think we forget...that we are a grieving nation, even world, for what the pandemic did to far many more than we count, and in far many more ways we yet truly comprehend.
Inflation as well as inFilltration of the disillusioned grasping , in fact many gasping for a breath of fresh air. We ARE in The Revolution . In the very thick of it.
And here comes the YOU to ask questions, pen mighty encouragement and and and educate those seeking clarification. Don’t PLEASE feel for a moment we don’t hear you, feel your anguish, and best of all applaud what some of you feel inconsequential effort ..to help.
You are.
Carry on, thanks so very much.
❤️👏🤞🙏❤️
Thank you. We (My wife and I) just completed postcards for an Ohio election. I believe you are right on point. It is encouraging to see and hear from so many voices during these incredible times.
Thanks again John ( and wife) post cards YES! 🙌 waaay back here in the deep woods of OMG blood red WV this old hippie has fought this battle, this system, this war for oh so very long….and will continue. Best to you two ❤️❤️ May your weekend be thoroughly enjoyed knowing the WE includes US and hoping many of THEM like our music 🎶💙❤️🎶. and join the band 😉
John, the only way to solve the issue you raise is to get money out of politics. The media is a problem, but it's being funded by billionaires, whose only interest is to promote low taxes and accumulate more profits for their shareholders. Big banking, Big pharma, big tech, are using Citizens United to fund their interests. Elections are now won by dark money in politics. These billionaires come in from other states and open the floodgates before an election, promoting their favorite issue In order to defeat the losers, the socialists, the immigrants.... We need to overturn Citizens United and make an all out effort to pass the' For the People act". It was defeated by billionaires stuffing the coffers of Sinema and Manchin, in order to defeat the act. Read Thom Hartmann's report and solution. Congress has the power to accomplish this but they need the help of the electorate.https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-no-labels-agenda-is-more-disturbing-d5a
I agree that big money, dark money is a major problem. Are you aware that Citizens United was stopped at the Appeals Court level and that Mitch McConnell played a big role as a co-plaintive to appeal it to the Supreme Court. Thus, I have always wanted to get Mitch out of office BUT a result of Citizens United has been that Mitch has a pot of money to strategically help key politicians. Susan Collins is a case in point. Mitch and his money made the difference after her vote for SCOTUS nominee Kavanaugh, who she later claimed to be disappointed in because he misled or lied to her re: how he would rule on abortion.
Yet, even with the billionaire money we have done pretty welll. Regretfully, Dems did not pay enough attention to state and local elections. Now, for example, we have seen a big push to get parents fired up about school board elections and it is working.
And you are right to point out Sinema and Manchin. They are a problem, for sure. Right now, with Sinema being independent there is a three way race that will make it challenging to unseat her. It seems better to have her and find other candidates in other states to expand the Dems majority.
Ah! So much to consider. I am not a political strategist but these things and big money are a plague.
We need to dump Citizens United during the Biden term. Immediately!!
I've been listening to Thom Hartmann for over 20 years and he is on the radio five days a week and had Bernie Sanders on every Friday for over 10 years "Brunch With Bernie" and there are a few others but our so called group of millionaire/billionaires don't buy up media outlets to get the word out all over especially in rural areas where it is all faux news.
Please listen carefully to the desperate call from trump to his base that the criminal charges are illegal, the prosecutors are “communists,” “thugs,” and only he “can save the country.” Extremism writ large! There is no doubt that he, Rudy, Lindsey, and others will be indicted in Georgia. Moreover, Trump, Jeffrey Clarke, Bannon and a large group of fake electors in multiple states will also be indicted by Smith in the Jan6 case. The walls are closing in and the only way he thinks he will survive is to publicly call for another insurrection to install him as President “to save the country!” He has already predicted publicly that this “is the last battle.”
We live in the most perilous time in our beloved nation since the Civil War! We will win but our military will have to be activated and a small but significant portion of our population will support him openly while a larger portion will support him covertly. We must remain resolute as our Democracy writ large is worth it!
I am heartened by 2 important differences between January 6, 2021 and now:
1. The DOJ has indicted over 1000 participants in the insurrection, and convicted many, including leaders like the head of the oathkeepers who is spending 18 years in prison. No obvious oathkeeper presence at trump's indictment hearing in Miami.
2. I joked in one of these Letters that maybe the reason so few showed up to support tRump on Tuesday was because the rest now have jobs, thanks to President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg - now I think it's true!
The times they are a'changin, for the better. And there's a #3: We LFAA readers are going to spread the word and get out the vote.
https://www.lawfirmantiracismalliance.org/lfaacharter/Home
Absolutely! But he may get worse as the indictments roll in?
Ira Lechner: He will get worse.
Yes, much worse when he is indicted in GA and the again by Jack Smith for the Jan6 Insurrection!
I don't think these indictments will inspire a 2nd jan 6. There are too many to attend or choose between. But, if he has to go to jail or even house arrest: watch out!
Hard to tell but in a couple of months from now a number of different indictments will be overwhelming and that may inspire the beginning of an insurrection in a variety of locations at different times.
No last battle as demonstrated by the quiet indictment day in Florida.
Well Ira, you have just written my dream come true. Let’s hope what you wrote is not fiction but rather the greatest nonfiction of our lifetime.
Objectively he is getting far worse mentally in his incessant complaints of our alleged wrongful treatment of him. He has crossed the border between snide politics and the loss of all emotional control. Those who are up close recognize his uncontrollable behavior so that some of his lawyers are fleeing. And because the word is out, he is having great difficulty in finding competent replacements even if he is offering multi-million dollar paychecks in cash and in advance. That is a sign of a recognizably deranged individual.
We are 60 days away from Fani Willis’ bombshell which will be a massive recital of his overt threats and multiple schemes to overturn the official Georgia result by a cast of nefarious characters including Lindsey and several other MOC. Preceding that sorry tale, Jack Smith will complete the federal narrative with new indictments of what went on behind the scene before and during Jan6. Plays, movies, history books and novels will be composed about these sordid events for decades!
But by late August, the whole story will have been unfolded for all but the hardcore MAGA loyalists. The 35% of moderate Rs will have had enough so he will resort to open insurrection. That chapter will keep the FBI far busier than Jan6 for a very long time. It also will be time for McConnell and the old leadership of the GOP to sue for divorce from the crazies and ultimately suffer a massive defeat in both Houses of Congress and the presidency in November 2024.
But the “stink” of Trumpism will linger and that is another story!
As I responded to an earlier post, I do hope your description of what lies ahead proves to be the best nonfiction of our times. To be any less than you describe will mean a horror show the likes of which the US has not seen since the Civil War.
Time will tell as we share and support one another.
Not just destruction of the new deal. Once that’s done it’s a quick step to Fascism.
Nope. You all have missed the punt. Don’t be naive that we are being exploited by social media and we are getting our butts best. We’ve gone too far and in other instances, not far enough. It’s pathetic that we weren’t able to compromise on immigration. We can’t have it all our way or the highway. Prime example numero uno: The former governor of Virginia lost in my opinion when he responded about regulating books that parents had no right to make decisions. So he stood his ground and lost.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach kids,” McAuliffe, a parent of five children, said during the debate, defending his 2016 veto of a bill that would have required schools to warn parents of books with sexually explicit content.“ Politico
This was exactly what social media ran with. McAuliffe was right. DeSantis is wrong. As a parent, I was aware of my child’s curriculum. The ones screaming about McAuliffe are the same ones who couldn’t be bothered to attend parent/teacher conferences or workshops. Social media and right wing media ran with it, as has “Moms for Liberty”.
At the beginning of each semester, most teacher are required to send home a course syllabus that comports with national and state standards, for parental signatures. Way too much teacher-time is sidetracked into dealing with parents who want individual curricula that comport with their own religious and political beliefs designed for their children. EX: Parents that insisted their 10th grader be sent to the library with an alternative unit, for the duration of our 3-week unit on "Animal Farm," because talking animals were satanic.
My son, a few years ago, took AP government and politics and had an assignment to write a book report. He was offered a list of books from which to pick. Low and behold, a book by Glenn Beck appeared. We hit the roof and he showed us the list that offered choices from both right and left authors. I was ashamed that the teacher perhaps indirectly provides the students with tacit support of the lies of Glenn Beck. Made him return that book, I bet Glenn did not refund us, and marched him to library to pick from real sources of information. Schools are caught in the middle; parents are the ones who need to inform their children. If the parents cannot see that they are being deceived, then the children will be deceived too.
In Maryland we have thr Destiny Program which allows parents to choose which books their children can check out at school. Seems like a good compromise,
Students would just have their friends check out the books prohibited by parents.
Best of luck with your compromising efforts with Libertarian/GOP/QOP Obstructionsist /elected radicals from a gerrymandered districts, whose strategy is to NEVER compromise, mantain obstruction of popular policies, and to continue obfuscication to keep the people uncertain, stressed, and threaten, and continue to incite polical violence. The New Deal is a good deal. It might be the best deal that the shrinking middle class has left in country. MAGA's real goal is to make America Russia. These tactics are stink of Putin and the GOP should be ashamed.
Ted! Yes! To whom are your comments directed?
Not to U! Somebody up above about compromising with Fascist ( new QOP troll)
The “recently released” Blueprint For America has actually been covertly available for months. BFA was what Biden referred to ( “ I’ll give you a copy of the proposal” )at the State of The Union as GOP heads exploded. 🤯🤯🤯
Go Dark Brandon !!💙
"Blueprint for America".., like New Gingrich's 'contract ON america' as I recall it. These f'errs have their origins from well within the communist party whose assets are quite dedicated to our demise. And, not unlike the bible-passage-quoters who would have us believe "the word" (of 'their' choosings). Sure makes it hard to maintain some focus that actually benefits humanity.
Perhaps something else should be pointed out to everyone - that most of our politicians are members of the 1% - not only do they receive substantial "salaries", but their benefits outweigh anything we have, PLUS the little subsidies here & there that they receive as members of Congress! Some were millionaires or wealthy when they were elected - some have never ever held any actual job! Public service is nothing like it was intended to be. Sadly, far too many have absolutely NO comprehension of what it is like for normal ordinary people - anymore than djt has.
I'm so sick & tired of watching this bunch of "elites" (thats what they are) stand in front of every microphone they can find & blathering on.
And in the vanguard …the extreme court, with their 6 ultra-right wing,
christo-fascist GQP politicians in robes.
I think we have to tackle the huge Evangelical Christian Cults of non thinking, non questioning followers, which is enslaving women and children to follow a set of behaviors and beliefs with no tools for questioning and through homeschooling no exposure to the outside world. These White Evangelical churches are telling their people to vote in a block for Trump and people like him. He could sell our secrets to North Korea, and all enemy nations and they would not care because Trump lets these male run societies, where women and children have no say and provide slave labor to enrich these so called churches, run by males, do whatever they want, and is a role model to them for oppression of women. He caters to this crowd, and the type of people taking over the Republican party. If you have seen Shiny Happy People about the IBLP religious sect, and the Duggar family who gained television fame for practicing the principles of this group. Women are beguiling temptresses if they do not cover their bodies, and are responsible for any sexual assault upon them, which is a part of the creed of the group to assault women and girls because they have to obey the men. These women and children are not in a position to 1) read Prof Richardson or anyone else who is writing enlightening things, 2) or to choose whom to vote for or what to do on their own. They are kept in a permanent childlike, subservient state in their communities, and this represents millions of people in our country. No exposure is the rule of thumb for these groups because, while they claim they don't want their women and children poisoned by sinful ideas, what they really don't want is loss of control. Somehow our religious freedom laws have allowed groups like this to grow and get extremely wealthy, and still get tax exempt status. Mega churches whose leaders fly around in private planes should not get tax exempt status. Given that the White Evangelical movement is replicating the world found in The Handmaid's Tale, which is the White Supremacist nation state dream to spread over the entire country, and people like Matt Gaetz, MTG and Lauren Bobert are their representatives, we need to look at how to address that constituency in this country. They do not want our government because they believe that what they are doing is religious work. The religion of capitalism.
Last night PBS news reported that the largest single Christian denomination in the US, the Southern Baptist Convention, had back-tracked from its 30-year tolerance of women pastors declaring that henceforth only men can be priests or pastors or ministers in their denomination thereby joining the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Church in the dominance by and subservience to a male priesthood.
Yes. I have been reading about it, and it is very upsetting to the women pastors who are being voted out. Out of leadership. There is criticism of their style. I imagine there is less sexual assault of parishioners in these women led communities. It is outrageous. They want men making the money, and controlling the people. We need a title IX in religions too, so that there will be no tax exemption for churches that practice gender discrimination. This should go for racism too.
No church should be tax exempt. Why? Personal beliefs are private and none of the government’s business. Since the churches have become a voting block they no longer deserve to have the benefit of tax exemption on top of it.
I am in total agreement. We have separation of church and state. Unfortunately the Supreme Court is allowed to ignore the law and enforce it through a fundamentalist lens. I also think that any "non-profit" educational establishment that discriminates against women, whether it be in the school directly or the leadership of the organization, is violating Title IX. Certainly religious schools that violate this should not be getting Federal education dollars. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/sexoverview.html#:~:text=Title%20IX%20of%20the%20Education,that%20receive%20federal%20financial%20assistance.
I’ll add this: Tax exemption for churches is the way our government pays the churches for keeping people in line. It uses persuasion and propaganda to work its sorry magic to help win elections. It uses threats of damnation to help the congregation remember to obey.
Susan Burgess: Yes. Exactly. Houses of religion provide and exalt the compliant mind and spirit necessary for fascism to take hold and flourish.
They want to see their congregations shrink even more. Keep it up fools…
Everyone knows that God is a jealous and vengeful old white(ish) guy, created in the image of those males who, over the centuries, have written the "sacred" texts upon which subsequent human cultures have structured themselves, and upon which lie our only hope (besides technology) of escaping the clutches of mortality and spending all eternity in paradise (at least some of us). Within that context the Southern Baptist decision certainly makes perfect sense.
Besides...nobody ever said "to boldly go where no woman has gone before!" Nobody.
Doesn't that seal the deal? Why do you want to spend all eternity wailing and gnashing your teeth in the fiery bowels of Hell? Get on board the immortality project, my friend.
Love this!
Change their tax status. If we can do that for Golf, why not for Religion...
From Michelle Goldberg's op-ed today on the renewed alliance between conservative Xtians and Muslim fundamentalists:
This nascent alliance between conservative Christians and Muslims marks the resurrection of a right-wing project that was derailed, for a time, by the Sept. 11 attacks. Back in the 1990s, American conservatives founded a group called the World Congress of Families in an effort to unite pious traditionalists from across the globe against the forces of secular modernity. Before the attacks on the World Trade Center, they’d been planning simultaneous conferences in Mexico City and Dubai. After the attacks, those plans fell apart and cooperation between right-leaning Christians and Muslims became more fraught, though it continued in international bodies like the United Nations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/opinion/conservatives-muslims-lgbtq.html
This is true of the Hasidic Jewish community as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas-schools-new-york.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas-schools-divorce.html
I think in all cases religious schools exacerbate the problems. I think that all private schools should be required to teach basics in history, math, science, reading, writing at each grade and sans that they should be shut down. In addition there should be no government monies going to schools that are segregationist. Of course, we know this supreme court is not going to support that, but it should still be the law of the land. It is what I am going to be asking of lawmakers if we get a majority of Dems in the 2 remaining branches. We know the Republicans rule the Supreme Courts. Children should not be their parents property to do with as they wish. They should have human rights, and it is high time that this country got into a debate on that. The parental rights groups may claim to be saving their children's souls, but they should not get exemptions from a general idea based on understanding of children by professionals of what is good for children. We know this with feeding, clothing and shelter. They are supposed to be entitled to their own bodies too. As for their minds, we need to have a national debate, and not just let child care slide under the rug. Children should be provided for in body and mind, and if the parents cannot do it alone the government should help them. They also should insist on homeschooling meeting national, standard accountability. I was very for homeschooling, and wanted to home school my child, who I immediately saw was too social for that. It has turned out for the best. I know other teachers who have given up teaching to do that. I have seen children playing video games all day in the local coffeehouse while their moms chatted with friends and that was their homeschooling. A few well placed questions led me to believe that these children who were in the middle grade years were not reading yet. Parents can file plans, but there is no oversight. While I am not big on standardized testing, it seems like it could fill a role here. If the Duggar children had to pass basic reading, writing and math tests in order to continue on in their homeschooling they might all be better off.
https://screenrant.com/duggar-family-secrets-iblp-used-education-control-members/
Given the expected dress code for women, I think they could be wearing hijab, or burka and that would have made the men happier. There is a lot of control around females and what they wear and do in all of these conservative sects of the monotheistic religions. The ideas of religious freedom should be investigated too. Just as FGM is illegal, one cannot tie illegal practices of a religion to the religion itself and we should not be accepting ones that violate human rights. Enslaving women and children within a religious group is not the same as expecting children to do chores to help out. It is concerning that these conservative groups act very cult-like. Even if the original intent was to allow just this sort of freedom, although the puritans certainly did not practice that, and the fundamentalists do not practice religious tolerance, I don't think our nation should accept just anything either.
Linda, I think you are much like myself in our concerns for the state of our schools. I would like to add some thoughts—not original—in the Democratic future I wish for. There would be a few million more teachers, paid a good salary. In communities with a somewhat larger population, there would be types of schools to choose from, including a variant of online-alt days for students who do well in those environments. I also see another variant of "pods", smaller neighborhood schools with specialized foci, such as IT, Vocational trades, sports, the arts, etc.
Of course, I am and always will be a dreamer, but my point is, one size does not fit all. The most important thing is to begin with a concerted effort to increase the number of well educated teachers by a really big margin and to make it a well paid profession once again. And smaller class rooms, please!!
Agreed!
Hope Lindsay: "You might say you're a dreamer . . . but you're not the one one . . . imagine all the people sharing all the world . . ."
That was/is such a wonderful song.
https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-John-Wayne-Evangelicals-Corrupted/dp/B08C1G1XG3/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1NM01AI73Q94&keywords=jesus+and+john+wayne+by+kristin+kobes+du+mez&qid=1686756267&sprefix=jesus+and+joh%2Caps%2C191&sr=8-1
MaryPat, Thanks for the recommendation.
Here's another (video with the author, a Christian expert on evangelicals from Calvin College)
https://youtu.be/yP9OIEL35Es
Thank you. I found this very interesting and helps to deepen my understanding what is going on in the Right Wing Evangelical Christian world. Also, I find the cover of the Spanish language edition of her book very interesting. https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Kristin-Kobes-Du-Mez-ebook/dp/B0BRQP5XCQ
The author is a Calvinist. I had friends from Germany and the Netherlands who were Calvinists, but in the USA, they joined a more Right Wing Evangelical church in the Suburbs of our city.
Yes, and wow, hadn't seen that cover. Calvin College is here in Michigan. I was once briefly in a Catholic evangelical group, but it got crazy quickly.
Thank you, Linda Weide. Absolutely and tragically true.
https://rsc-hern.house.gov/about/membership
Above its the link to the membership of the Republican study Committee, the authors of the budget plan.
If your representative is on it, start networking with your local Democratic activist groups to show up at every public in-district event they appear at and call them out on a specific budget issue that will negatively impact everyone on your district. A different issue each event and prime the media to get coverage, as much as possible. Town halls especially..
If your representative is a Republican NOT on the list and they are leaning centrist try constructive engagement regarding your concerns. Push to get them on the record on their stand in any way that moves away from the Republican Study Group Budget.
If you have a Democratic representative give money and time and participate in GOTV initiatives.
Different strokes for different folks. There was a center that held on the debt ceiling so there is hope. Have to get to that point again. It definitely will not be easy.
My representative and senators in town halls? Hahahahahaha. I watched Marsha Blackburn run from cameras.
Mike Kelly ran from a group of high school students.....
Oh, great. We have 6 of them from Michigan. Arggh.
Not at all surprising that most on the list are men.
Georgia Fisanick, Thank you for the link.
My Freedom Caucus Rep/ Repub Study Comm member follows the FL GOP playbook with rare public appearances. Here is his latest response to one of my frequent contacts about military/ spending.⬇️
“Some analysts have estimated that over $100 billion in our national defense budget is already spent on things not directly related to national defense. Rather than further cutting our national defense budget, I believe it is prudent to make budgetary changes in our defense budget to make that every dollar set aside for national defense is not wasted but is actually spent to protect the American people.”
Linda Mitchell: They don't need to convince the rest of the country. They just have to outvote us, out-gerrymander us, and continue to impose voting restrictions.
Well on the way…
Convincing the rest of the country “A Blueprint to save America” starts and thrives on generating a false drumbeat of FEAR through the myriad of media slowly bought up over the last several decades.
As HCR implores each week— we as individual forces must take up the oxygen, speak up — see fear for the pernicious dark force that it is on every level of integrity whether interpersonal or international.
Government should ideally be the benevolent teacher on playground duty ensuring everyone plays fair, takes care of the little ones, and picks up after themselves. This is not “socialism”, but common decency.
Yes,I totally agree.Wonder how they are going to try to sell this monstrosity to the people?What a cruel and heartless vision they have for this country!Younger people are going to be the main recipients of this garbage and I hope they come out to vote in numbers not heard of to crush this horrible narrative.
We need to broadcast it far and wide. Just the increase in the age to receive Social Security might be enough. Oh, wait, most don't think they will receive Social Security, do they?
I keep thinking about the bridge over I-95 in Philadelphia that was damaged over the weekend. How do things like that get fixed without taxes?
Yes. You are right about what taxes are used for. Congresspeople drive or are driven over our bridges. They use our roads. They breathe the air. How do these people propose that we pay for stuff like this anyway?
Somewhat off topic, but best meme ever is Chris Christie Beach Chair photo sitting atop the collapsed roadway. Still cleaning up spewed coffee.....
Did you see the meme with dressed-for-winter Bernie sitting under the chandelier in T's box-filled bathroom?
Yup! Also good.
My first spontaneous laugh of the day Linda, thanks.(Your profanity quelled my raised disgust or was that anger 🤣)
Another masterpiece Heather, triple thanks.❤️❤️❤️
I note ( applaud) the word choice of ‘LEAK’ -vs trickle down , as those talking heads pound their lie ( effectively to some/poor and too many ). I hear it like a scratched vinyl stuck repeating the same ol message , a dying message ...as many jump ship , people are finally seeing. Blessings .
Is their a decent Republican left...HELLO?
Facts are facts. Get with the reality , roll up those fancy pants and stuffed shirts. We The People down here on ground floor WILL welcome the needed hands. There’s a helluva task ahead and a world needing our cinched belts and willingness to toil away. We believe it can be done , believe America IS great and can lead/gather/soothe the weary , sick, and least amongst us .
Ahhh back to those ‘facts’ ....as the many countries swelled back to stand with us -by our brothers and sisters in Ukraine (and to also resolve the many nations yet exploited, led by despots harking that same vinyl record). Slow and steady wins this race/racism as the freedoms we saw grow ( now increasingly taken away or threatened mind you!) and are committed to see this equality through. We admit our errors, our failings , and work with resolve to correct - while those pointed fingers project your future by their very deliberate actions they accuse us of. It’s classic revelation PERIOD ......and...
THAT was the earliest veil apparent -those pointed fingers and truth wrapped in sheep’s clothing.
💙VOTE THE BLUE TSUNAMI💙
Surely there is a less offensive way of making your point.
Maybe there is a less offensive way of making YOUR point, whatever it was.
I'm sure that Eleanor was complaining about the use of profanity in the original post here, even though it was "starred" out.
Ally House! Wait! What did I miss?
The original poster (a regular here) began the post with “Jesus HF***ing Christ”. It offended another poster.
Thanks, Ally House! I'd seen that post but didn't realize it was the comment that had aroused someone's ire.
Eleanor Duffield, to whom and to what does, "Surely there is a less offensive way of making your point." refer?
See below, Joanne. I don't know how the order got up-side-down, but James L. unloaded his right wing financial screed.
Another post too stupid and anti intellectual to believe.
Yet your basic assertions are SO cliché its embarrassing. To borrow a phrase from my old friend, and sadly missed Christopher Hitchens, "that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
In spite of Chris's dictum , here is the evidence.
1) Its a lie that the Republican tax and spending proposals only benefit the rich and hurt the government. Here is a list of government tax receipts over the last decade.
FY 2021 $4.05 trillion
FY 2020 $3.42 trillion
FY 2019 $3.46 trillion
FY 2018 $3.33 trillion
FY 2017 $3.32 trillion
FY 2016 $3.27 trillion
FY 2015 $3.25 trillion
FY 2014 $3.02 trillion
FY 2013 $2.78 trillion
FY 2012 $2.45 trillion
FY 2011 $2.30 trillion
The government is taking in more money every year. THE PROBLEM isn't government receipts ITS SPENDING.
THE GAO (Government Accounting Office) https://www.gao.gov/americas-fiscal-future
took the unprecedented step of publishing a report WARNING the country is on the path to fiscal suicide.
There overview is "Every fiscal year since 2002, the federal government has run a deficit—meaning spending exceeds its revenues—and added to its debt. Going forward, spending, including for Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and net interest on the debt, is projected to continue to outpace revenue by increasing amounts.
Demographic and other trends—like rising health care costs—are putting pressure on declining Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Higher interest rates could also combine with rising debt to increase deficits going forward."
There solution: "Congress should develop a long-term fiscal plan to provide a cohesive picture of the government’s fiscal goals and a road map for achieving them. A fiscal plan could include an assessment of the drivers of deficits—both revenue and spending—and alternative approaches to the debt limit. For example, the debt limit could be set as part of the budget resolution or Treasury could be given the authority to propose a change in the debt limit that would take effect without needing congressional approval"
Your tired Marxist view of the effects of taxation is also untrue
Here is a list of wage growth in America over the last decade:
Dec 31, 2020 -1.08%
Dec 31, 2019 8.96%
Dec 31, 2018 4.41%
Dec 31, 2017 3.70%
Dec 31, 2016 4.89%
Dec 31, 2015 4.65%
Dec 31, 2014 4.26%
Dec 31, 2013 1.92%
Dec 31, 2012 2.29%
Dec 31, 2011 3.39%
Dec 31, 2010 -0.86%
Wage growth isn't the problem, its inflation. When wage growth is for example is
5% and inflation is 9% Americans are losing purchasing power.
If you rolled down your window and took off your partisan glasses you would see that
government has some tough decisions to make. We are going to have to paid for a rising tide
of aging Americans who are going to need Social Security and Medicare.
The number of social security beneficiaries has gone from 45,000,000 in 2000 to 65,000,000 in 2020.
On the SSA (Social Security Administrations' own website that lay out the coming peril
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html
"As a result of changes to Social Security enacted in 1983, benefits are now expected to be payable in full on a timely basis until 2037, when the trust fund reserves are projected to become exhausted.1 At the point where the reserves are used up, continuing taxes are expected to be enough to pay 76 percent of scheduled benefits. Thus, the Congress will need to make changes to the scheduled benefits and revenue sources for the program in the future. The Social Security Board of Trustees project that changes equivalent to an immediate reduction in benefits of about 13 percent, or an immediate increase in the combined payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 14.4 percent, or some combination of these changes, would be sufficient to allow full payment of the scheduled benefits for the next 75 years."
This year the government will take in approx. 5T in revenue and spending 6.5T.
We are on the road to becoming Greece.
We ADULTS to solve these problems NOT HACK partisan virtue signaling just meant to take cheap shots at political opponents.
Since you're so fond of cherry-picking data to suit your agenda, you might want to read what they have to say about tax policy:https://www.gao.gov/tax-reform
I notice you also continue to ignore the distinction between income tax and FICA tax as a way to attack social security. The very existence of SS and Medicare is, of course, an ideological heresy to the far right. The very concept of government insurance programs that actually work being an ideological impossibility, it is not surprising that so much effort has been put into making them not work or, failing that, just repeating that they don't work in hopes that doing so will eventually make it real.
That said, I don't expect anyone who starts out by throwing around right wing dog whistles like "Marxist" and "virtue signaling" to have much interest in acting like adults.
According to this discussion of Paul Krugman's explanation of why government debt is not like household debt, governments are not in the business of paying off their debt.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-us-doesnt-pay-035612736.html
However, how the money that is taken in is allocated does matter, and also, we have a lot of Americans who are not paying taxes, because they have ways of getting around it. That is both unfair and unhealthy for our budget. We are not offering a lot of services that other wealthy countries do, which means that their average citizen has a lot better quality of life. Read about the low income housing utopia in Vienna for example. They also are on their way to managing their climate impact, and the climate change in their city far faster than we are in any city here in the USA. In fact, many of us are still reeling from the horrid pollution of the forest fires in Canada, which was scary for many. We are not on the road to becoming Greece because Greece is not filled with climate deniers like the USA is, and Greece is not prioritizing their fossil fuel businesses over getting a grip on carbon output.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1128737392/greece-renewable-energy-electrical-grid#:~:text=Greece%20says%20its%20entire%20electrical,renewables%20for%20the%20first%20time&text=Bloomberg%2FGetty%20Images-,An%20array%20of%20photovoltaic%20panels%20are%20pictured%20at%20a%20solar,energy%20for%20a%20brief%20time.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/10/11/major-milestone-for-greek-energy-as-renewables-power-100-of-electricity-demand
Look a little deeper.
Government debt has a purpose, however it becomes toxic at a certain point.
Krugman has a Keynesian view of government spending. That tends to be supported by
leftist academics, not market based economists.
This really simple we have approx 34T in debt and climbing. This year we will taken in
5T in revenue and 6.5T in spending.
As I pointed out in my post REVENUE is growing every year
FISCAL YEAR REVENUE
FY 2021 $4.05 trillion
FY 2020 $3.42 trillion
FY 2019 $3.46 trillion
FY 2018 $3.33 trillion
FY 2017 $3.32 trillion
FY 2016 $3.27 trillion
FY 2015 $3.25 trillion
FY 2014 $3.02 trillion
FY 2013 $2.78 trillion
FY 2012 $2.45 trillion
FY 2011 $2.30 trillion
FY 2010 $2.16 trillion
FY 2009 $2.11 trillion
FY 2008 $2.52 trillion
FY 2007 $2.57 trillion
FY 2006 $2.41 trillion
FY 2005 $2.15 trillion
FY 2004 $1.88 trillion
FY 2003 $1.78 trillion
FY 2002 $1.85 trillion
FY 2001 $1.99 trillion
FY 2000 $2.03 trillion
We don't have a REVENUE problem, we have a spending problem
As the GAO pointed out, unless we get spending under control we are going to GET crushed by Medicare/Social Security payments & debt. Printing money every year (M1) is causing inflation which excelerates our borrowing cost and ultimately is going to lead to deflation of the dollar.
BOTH ARE BAD
Amen, esp the fascism and uber racism pieces. The press and the Democrats need to do a better job at educating those MAGAites who are in the working and lower class citizens that if the GOP is successful, they will be hurt.
I'm still flabbergasted 60 million women didn't rise up and vote out every GOP for the next two decades. WTAF is going on in this country?
And how about the women’s voices as the Southern Baptist convention votes to keep them out of the ministry with even more harsh rules offered after their first vote. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/southern-baptist-women-pastors-ouster.html?unlocked_article_code=1nVea3_Cp0m1qmkPPoqb53K5hBShvLTRCl7WPf8Uvd9D-KkazmOXswe5izT1b8bfQrD2LUNowPgDPq5dzQQ7FIQs0MXvYj3wObQoRnuKiEm_vOJARNOTMmSEMvgrDfDV_hn7WyKywQ5xRfRhrRlfrKYlng9yAD9MPigcZZPg9zUxBA8EqZfqAsxe9wBh0URJe6uMkTjSOeR2h79Fgj6RuSlZ_ntmulWEOHVLQlOFZTJFrAx9aGZMFq6wWFspjvoE5SGufQOaZzAk0uWtL_l7uaTIDubhKg1AtbVTnxXeYVRkwsqy5DHHtAvrI8ev866joobFme4padWuLCattL6PjUzq5RO7WbDPi10&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
John, I watched the video of the poobahs throwing women priests/ministers out. It was really something. One woman minister pointed out how many “called women” they would be losing. Her church was exiled from the “boys only” club some time ago. There are millions of followers who generously give money to the backward thinking evangelist ‘leaders’. Just shakin’ my head.....
There are no priests in the Baptist church, only called ministers or, as they say, pastors. The recently elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention was said to be a mainstream conservative, whatever that is these days.
A frickin'bigot!
Elizabeth Iler: Yes--and the "good" male and female members of these churches justify prohibiting female pastors by proclaiming that the Bible prohibits female pastors.
Witness the recent Turning Point women’s conference. Interviews with attendees were eye opening.
Just shocking.
They want women pregnant and in the kitchen and under the thumb of men. But they’re in for a rude awakening.
I hope you are right - I mean the rude awakening.
Michael Bales: Yup. One slogan of the Third Reich was, "Kinder, Küche, Kirche," and millions of German women complied with it until all the men were gone, and the Nazis needed women to go to work.
And wasn't this church recently exposed for the sexual abuse scandal?
Yes, according to Wikipedia. it's worth a read.
It must be understood that this misogyny is part and parcel of the theology of these people. They believe (and hear reinforced every Sunday) that woman was made from Adam's rib for the sole purpose of being his helpmate (read servant), and to produce children and tend to them (while also tending to the man's wants, needs and desires, of course). A woman is not to have thoughts of her own, let alone opinons!
I heard one of these women interviewed on NPR yesterday, explaining her beliefs to the interviewer, and clearly stating that this is GOD'S WORD!!
In Tim Egan's new book on the history of the KKK circa 1920s, he makes the tie-in between Christian Nationalism, racism, terrorism, misogyny, all of it, very clear. In Indiana, the Klan went into churches, during Sunday services, and literally paid the preacher, with the clear understanding there was more 'support' where that came from. Of course, this was couched in the most charitable of terms, but the congregation got the message, as did the preacher - "Play ball with us and we'll protect you. Ignore us, and we'll come after YOU, too."
This crap has been preached from pulpits across America for over a century. Since so many, at least here in the South, see their 'church family' as blood family (as it often is), going against what's taught weekly is unthinkable. You would be casting yourself not only out of the church body, but out of your birth family!!
As the number of regular church goes continues to decline, these congregations get more and more desperate, and hence turn up the heat on those left.
Sandra, why wouldn't the KKK support a church which was founded in a split from mainstream Protestantism in 1845 over their support for slavery?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
According to Mr. Egan's book, they worked with all denominations except Roman Catholics and Jews, both of which groups were targeted for derision and harrassment.
That is hubris, writ large. The call comes from God. Who are they, to say no?
The entire group of southern baptists ......
Nope, only the men and complicit women. That’s not everybody.
I belong to a small Episcopal church in Georgia, planted in the suburbs 22 years ago. Our founding priest is a woman. Many of the parishioners I’ve met “grew up Baptist”. We welcome everyone to the church and the table. If there are any [finally] disillusioned Southern Baptists reading this, there’s a church home for you, probably close to where you live. Don’t give up, and don’t feel like you have to go back.
John D. Cooper--Exactly. I was just about to post about these churches when I saw your post. All those women vote. And mal-nourish their children with their self-defeating True Believer madness.
Right-wing media tells the uneducated what to believe as truth. Some pastors and priests use selected parts of the Bible to endorse hatred. The Right has a massive system that is well-financed. They attack education and science. Their ultimate goal to having the power (even illegally) to enable the rich to become richer. Big money is their god; democracy is small change.
Those pastors and priests are weaponizing the Bible.
This is nothing new.
They are weaponizing Christianity
"Christianity" has been weaponized at least since the fall of Rome. Gotta get rid of those pagans, doncha know. And then there are the Crusades. And colonialism. And when it wasn't "weaponized" per se, the popular antisemite, Father Coughlin, encouraged weaponization of fascism.
Illegal gerrymandering
Runfastandwin: Women aren't monolithic. Those who are fervent right-wingers absolutely believe in and enthusiastically support their party's policies.
Sadly, indeed! Evangelists need BOTH sexes to succeed.
True, Frank Boomer--however, it would be better for democracy if Evangelicals of both sexes FAILED!
Umm, there have been and continue to be Women's marches for this that and the other. Most recently, a nation -wide Mothers Demand Action (against assault weapons.) I bet there was not a mention on the news. The problem is the white male predominance among oligarchs, Republicans, the conservative Catholic Supreme Court, Evangelicals plus the MEDIA which ignores, represses and abuses women. (Remember Rush Limbaugh's "Feminazis?") The mean males (DeSantis, Abbot) also make up new rules as they go about undoing progress such as the draconian anti-abortion movement, anti-trans and gays. The number of women assaulted, murdered and disappeared annually—usually by their partners is quite awful (sorry the number is not in my memory at the moment.) So, we get pushed back a lot. And that's just American women.
LBNL, some women like the status quo because 1) Their religion says to be subordinate to men, 2) Being married to a successful man has lots of bennies (the traitoresses!) 3) It still is the cultural norm and 4) Whether intentional or not, it is painful, difficult and sometimes harmful to break the glass ceiling. Guys have a way of punishing women who are in their way. (Consider tfg's behavior and overt sexism.)
Having said that, Run, there are lots of good guys and I suspect you are one. Sometimes women need a little help from their friends.
I wish I had run when I was younger! I'm a card carrying member of Women's March at least.
Hope Lindsay--Yes, exactly.
I remember reading in 2016, women saying that they'd gladly give up the right to vote if it meant they could get a President Trump in office.
There are millions of women. Women wake up one at a time.
For me, the question of how to present facts, whether historical or present-day, to people who chose to believe lies and fantasies is one to which I have been unable to find an answer. Most if not all of us here understand the difference, but sharing that understanding, at least on the national scale, seems impossible. However, n the local scale, I am hopeful. My universal healthcare group has put together a questionnaire for our towns, showing what the savings will be under a Medicare for All plan that has been languishing in the MA Legislature for years. Today, in addition to our Cape Cod towns, our regional school district is about to compute their savings. This seems to me to be a better way to show people how their healthcare will improve at the same time that their taxes will go down. If you'd like to learn more, I'd be happy to share our survey.
Betsy, I don't have an answer to the question of how to present facts, either. I tried for the entire abysmal four plus years under tfg to honestly engage with R supporters. I don't believe we can do it. It's a cult, fed by Faux (happily now bleeding viewers, though....) and a relentless church campaign - emails, sermons, newsletters. It's a colossal waste of time to try to convert Republicans. Only other Rs have a chance at peeling some of them off.
I completely agree with you on this as well - we DO all have to fight the local fight. And make sure we're bringing as many lazy or overwhelmed Dem or "independent" voters as we can along to the polls with us. Thanks for your good work.
That's been my experience, too. Can't get through to T**** supporters. All I can figure is that they've lost touch with reality, denying incontrovertible facts, even from the mouth of the one who holds sway over them. It's a puzzle.
I hope you didn’t waste much effort beating that dead horse. Effort that could have been productively invested in a well-organized get-out-the-vote project. There are many good ones to choose from, and they all address the only important factor in elections: getting our voters to the polls. When we succeed in that effort, Democrats win.
The only way you sway voters is to separate them from their local herd, which if you live in a small town is highly unlikely. There are morning meetups at the diners, etc, which function as reinforcement sessions. Same discussions every day. Those ( usually) men do not entertain the notion of breaking away, that would be backstabbing and extreme disloyalty. They count on each other more than you think.
A local librarian who worked in the political arena for decades showed me her copy of the Indictment. I asked if she printed it off at the library, and she said yes, and put the library stamp on it to offer the doc to anyone who admitted to not reading it.
I know of no Republicans in the area where I live, comprising of 75% of the rural population, who has read any of the indictment. And if they did, under a pillow with a flashlight, they would never admit it.
I. for instance, do not display my American flag, I do not want to signal to the locals that I am a MAGA member too. You would be surprised how many rebel flags fly here mere miles from the Canadian border.
I agree, Ed. The suggestion that those in my small town should broaden their horizons is spitting in the wind. They live in an echo chamber with high walls.
Agreed, and in the business world those chambers are called silos. Oh the irony!
Ed, I hear you about flying the National Colors. Currently, my flag display is of the National Colors (properly illuminated at night; my inspection last night tells me that replacing my flag on July 4 will be appropriate this year) along side the "inclusive" Pride flag (one which includes lots of the "plus" of LGBTQ+ along with black and brown). Last month I paired "Old Glory" with the COPS flag (black field with a single blue stripe, which I fly in April and May; April because it is the anniversary month of losing a friend to a line of duty death, and May, because it is Law Enforcement Memorial Month). A new Ukrainian flag will go up in August (my old one is too faded).
All that to say is that I will not let those MAGAts take my pride in my country. My wife and housemate do not like me flying the flag for the very reasons you state. So far I am more stubborn.
I could do that too, I am just quieter in my resistance to their beliefs. My mailman and others I interact with often are polar opposites from me, and I just roll quietly, easier to get along. They won't change their views, they only began voting in 2016, and guess who explained the ballot process to them? I work the polls 2-3 times a year.
Yay, Ally!
Rex Page: Yes--exactly. There is no benefit to engaging with Acultamuricans. We absolutely have to not only get out the vote, but we must make sure our candidates have integrity, competence, intellect, and dedication.
No, not too much time. And we (the Democratic Town Committee) have a GOTV effort here in town.
Bottom line, Rex. Thanks!
James, I think all we can do is do the work on our side and let MAGA crumble. Incalculable damage is being done while we wait. But it is crumbling. Rs are peeling off — quietly, but more visibly every day.
Sadly, the Rs are not peeling off in Las Vegas, and they managed to give us a right-wing governor.
I'm always sorry to hear that, Joanne.
Thanks, Alexandra--me, too . . .
Maybe, but in miniscule numbers. And that’s not good enough. How to explain to the complacent!, ignorant non-voters how their lives will change living under an authoritarian leadership? Our wealthiest class numbers
steadily increasing, middle class shrinking, nothing will be done for our environment, clean air and water, safer energy, roads and bridges, all stagnating now. Not to mention personal rights being taken away…we can already see what’s happening to women, the LGBTQ community in the works and so on. Yes, there need to be ways to get through to those who don’t get it…and they aren’t all imbeciles. O, if our good Professor would consider a cloning! She is being stretched way too far and we need to keep her in good spirits and health…
I'd say they deliberately avoid reality by getting all their info from right wing sources.
James Vander Poel: I don't think they've "lost touch with reality." They inhabit an entirely different reality.
I may have to concede that point to you.
I describe that as "their sky is a different color". I cannot reach those I have tried with. Many of my former work cohort (a bunch of retired cops) are so sunk into the MAGAt propaganda that there seems to be no way out.
James Vander Poel--I'd rather be wrong and have you show me the error of my ways.
I have also tried to get through to these ignorant and gullible TUMP fanatics, to no avail. I gave up and haven't even tried to convince them any longer.
Scaring cultists with messaging they'll catch through the corner of their eyes... Full frontal can't possibly work.
Betsy, we need lots of efforts like you describe.
Betsy, the issue of Medicare for All is one I've raised with my own MA Senator and representative. I think they're as frustrated as many of their constituents in not being able to get the MA legislature to act - particularly this year, when very few laws have been passed. Your survey interests me... I'd like to show it to them.
If I contact your state rep, whom I've met in the past, and ask her to put us in touch with each other, will she know you and be able to do that? I see that she's a co-sponsor, but since we're a small, Cape based group, she may not know about it, and I need to find out how people feel on this end about extending at this point to other parts of the state. Is there a better way that doesn't involve putting our contact info here?
Betsy and James, your state rep connection sounds wonderful. Another way is for each of you to email me and I can connect you with each other:
heathersherd@gmail.com
Medicare for All in MA? Count me in. Ellie, you can give them my contact info as well.
Ah, you know the formidable Kate Donaghue, eh? Yes, she'd know me - we talked after our local caucus a couple days ago, though not about Medicare for All. I'm sure she has my contact info. Thanks.
When trying to convince someone to get, say, a COVID-19 vaccination, it is important to get a sense of what and how strong their objections are. For someone who is a bit ambivalent, appealing to the social good (protect family, community, etc.) is the best approach. With someone who is more strongly anti-vaccination, appealing to their self-interest (you won't get sick and die) generally works best.
Both of these approaches start with the acknowledgement of and appealing to an emotional state, not a spreadsheet. Yes, our arguments should always be based on fact - that is both a pragmatic and a moral imperative, but appealing to facts without recognizing that we are really appealing to someone's emotional state is simply stirring dust. Obama understood this. How factual, really, are campaign slogans that simply say "Hope" and "Change"? Trump is the master of appealing to negative emotions. Enough said about that.
How to spread the word of the Democrat's extraordinary governance and plans? I say start with statements like "this will keep you and your family safe", or "this will save you money". Then back them up with facts. An emotional investment in what they're listening to helps people pay attention. A set of facts, no matter how compelling, simply do not.
Presenting "facts" to non-factual people is a waste of time and energy. To paraphrase someone (!), "You can't reason a person out of something she/he wasn't reasoned into."
Betsy, thank you for your persistence, the survey appears to be a positive approach. Many but thankfully not all, family members, friends and even well-meaning strangers I've spoken with are fully receiving the propaganda as truth.
Prejudice and fear have taken such a strong hold. The need/security in belonging to a group also holds persons back from debate. These are facts that trouble me deeply.
Most of my friends are Christian and deeply faithful . When they speak negatively of another faith or another choice of lifestyle....referring to our mutual faith......I remind them that Jesus loved everyone because He looked within the person....not only what we see with our eyes. Sometimes as Christians we develop a "better than thou" attitude. We forget that we were brought to faith through unconditional love....through the brutal sacrifice of Jesus, our Saviour, who sees us completely to the depth of our souls....He gave Himself for each of us......His death was brutal.....He was the sacrificial Lamb of God. After receiving such love....why do we choose to treat people with disrespect if they worship differently, if their skin color is brown, as Jesus' was.
As Christians , we must constantly examine ourselves and how we are living out our faith.
The God we say we worship came to save us from brokenness. We should live a life of love and kindness and gratitude and live out our faith by caring for everyone....which also means confronting evil and corruption, when necessary.
Our faith should affect our life choices. I am just a simple person but I believe Joe Biden and many on his team, fit in the category of "following in the footsteps of Christ" more than Trump and his minions.
A political party that appreciates diversity and lifting people up seems like something I want to be a part of ie grateful for Social Security and Medicare.
A political party that respects the rights of women...and allows them to protect themselves and honors their humanity by allowing them to lead (as Debra lead an army to victory in the Old Testament of the Bible) It is a way I can demonstrate God's love towards my fellow human beings. A political party that is trying to take care of our earth and air quality and children seems a good place in which to live out my faith and I might add, to live out my faith with other fellow Americans of a different faith or the choice of no faith.
Local action is on the list of David Pepper's endorsements for Saving Democracy. Find his new book at your favorite bookseller!
Saving Democracy: A User's Manual for Every American: Pepper, David: 9781662938214: Amazon.com: Books
Local action is state action as well. So much happens at the state level that we never recognize. You can help change that by supporting Tending to Democracy at https://www.grapevine.org/giving-circle/1XQhnyD/Tending-to-Democracy. Our focus currently is Virginia.
Betsy, for those who might listen, I recommend the book Across the Divide by Justin Lee. He’s done a lot, as a gay man raised in an Evangelical Church household, to have discourse that changes some minds about homosexuality. Talk about a tough sell! His suggestions sound useful to me.
Republican politicians take advantage of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (well, lots of people leverage this, but we’re talking politics, here). This is a cognitive bias, where at the beginning of the knowledge cycle, our perceived confidence on a subject soars way above what we really know and understand. If we work to understand a subject, then our confidence drops significantly. It’s easy to understand this through a chart https://graphpaperdiaries.com/2017/08/20/the-real-dunning-kruger-graph/.
And then there are the various forms of Confirmation Bias, including, 1. Selective Search; 2. Selective Interpretation; and
3. Selective Recall.
I’d like to see your survey, very much!
As a massachusetts resident I'd be very interested. You can email me at supernova1@aol.com
Have Republicans ever been right about anything since 1865?
The same guy who came up with the memorable "of the people, by the people, for the people" description of democratic governance further elucidated with "The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities." Way out of step, I should say, with the aims of modern "Republicans".
Totally right!
To be clear, Lincoln gof it from a sermon by Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who was also the source for "the arc of justice... "
Yup, DAVE, Lincoln was nothing if not a man who recognized what was valuable in what others said or wrote! He recognized himself as a man who had no formal education so he became a voracious reader and spent his life seeking out the wise and practical in others; probably what allowed him to be such an astonishingly effective leader!
Right on, John!
I would be grateful if you have some good links to this. On the one hand all education is self-education because if we are incurious little of formal education is likely to be integrated into our thinking, and also we "stand on the shoulders of giants", a phrase associated with Newton, although I understand it predates him. I would also add that we stand on so many, many shoulders unrecorded by history.
Because of the Great Depression, my curious parents were never officially educated beyond high school, although my mother attended college and was close to earning a BA in her late 50's, a goal foiled by cancer. Both mixed easily with those with degrees because they were well read. My boss for many years quit college in his first semester, got a reading list from a university librarian and read the books he would have needed to get a degree. He read them to learn, not just pass the test. I think "discussion method" classrooms can also be immensely valuable, but today I gather many modern college lectures are presented as Powerpoints that might as well be viewed on a computer.
What I see in Lincoln is curiosity about the functional essences of concepts such as liberty and justice, that resists the false labeling by despots. Thoreau claimed "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root", and it seems to me that Lincoln often got to the roots of things, literally "radical". There have been medical cures and prescriptions for health for eons, some even quiteeffective, but medical science took off like a rocket with the discovery of "germs", functional anatomy, DNA, etc. that revealed underlying principles. I think Lincoln's thoughts, original and incorporated, are rich with them.
My folks raised me in the UU church, and I am aware of some the contemporaneous influences of Parker and Channing. Also influence of Emerson in his day, a side of American history too rarely discussed.
My favorite Parker books are:
Commager, Henry Steele, ed. Theodore Parker: An Anthology (1960)
Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Theodore Parker: A Biography (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1880),
As a Unitarian Universalist, I know of Theodore Parker. Thanks, Dave, for the prompt to learn more.
Massachusetts has had some good Republican governors, even recently--Charlie Baker, and in the '80s maybe, Francis Sargent. Governor Romney gave Massachusetts what became Obamacare.
My parents had a story about another GOP Mass governor, William Weld. My mother was fairly crippled with MS. She had an electric scooter. They were going to the theater one time, and my father was helping her out of the car, when someone asked if he needed any help. He just waved the guy off. And then he looked. It was Governor Weld.
Flukes do happen - look at what has happened to those guys when they "went national" if they did.
I'd give them another decade, TCinLA. Thad Stevens was still hard at work post-Civil War. We did get the 14th-15th Amendments. Otherwise, couldn't agree more!!
Uh, no....
John Sherman and the Sherman Anti-trust act? TR's use of it?
I'll point out that the three Republican presidents generally considered the best - Lincoln, TR and Eisenhower, were all cordially hated by the party establishment for not "toeing the line", and when considered against all the other R presidents, they were flukes. You can add guys like Sherman and anyone else who did something "progressive" that actually made progress a "fluke" too.
Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment and its bureaucracy have a preference for complacency and tranquillizers over fresh thinking and inconvenient realities...
A weak defense against the virulent menace we now face.
Peter Burnett: So true . . . the agony of victory and the thrill of defeat . . .
And highly intelligent “flukes”!
conservatives.....call them what they really are.
They aren't conservatives. They're Know Nothings and they're dangerous.
My U.S. government class i took in my junior year in high school said the extreme Republicans on the political scale were defined as, ''Reactionaries''
I remember that phrase, too, John: radicals on the left, reactionaries on the right. It seems to have been dropped in recent years.
Yes, it does seem to be dropped in the recent years, especially since that dictator Donald TUMP was Dictator of the United States for 4 years. I guess you could classify him as '' A deranged Nazi/ fascist extreme Reactionary. This half century since i was in high school really went by in a hurry, i miss those days when i was in high school very much.
“Have Republicans ever been right about anything since 1865?”
>Trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt.
<Interstate Highway-building Dwight Eisenhower. Talk about infrastructure!
<Even (gasp!) EPA/Clean Water Act establishing Tricky Dick Nixon.
Then came Reagan…
'Interstate Highway-building Dwight Eisenhower. Talk about infrastructure!'... and destroying Black communities! Go ahead, talk about it!
If you ever want a demonstration of that, look at Portland, OR.
And Detroit.
NO! (TC: I know your question is rhetorical but I just can’t resist answering!)
Ted R. was right about a few things.
Not really, but they firmly believe they have. Which seems to be all that matters to them.
‘At the Heart of the Documents Case: Trump’s Attachment to His Boxes’
When I saw that headline today, I immediately thought of ‘‘Alice in Wonderland” the precursor of ‘Donald J. Trump in Wonderland’. Others might prefer “The Shining” or NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.
We are in the bizarre world of HIM!
…and the ‘USA’, the country that let him play to his heart’s content; what do we call this partnership?
‘During President Donald J. Trump’s years in the White House, his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the “beautiful mind” material.'
‘It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.’
‘The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security.’
‘One former White House official, who was granted anonymity to describe the situation, said that while the materials were disorganized, Mr. Trump would notice if somebody had riffled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way. It was, the person said, how “his mind worked.”’ (NYTimes) See link below. Sorry, gifted link is not available.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-documents-boxes.html
Why would that lunacy surprise any of us? You couldn’t make this up, it’s so crazy no one would believe you if you tried. “Beautiful Mind” my ass, if this was happening to someone close to you, you would be alarmed for them, this lunatic has been trying to drive the bus we are all on, right off a cliff, it’s so detached from reality, it’s hard to believe. But that’s who he is, we need to lock him up to protect ourselves from the corruption that oozes from every pore of his being. I’m so over seeing his face every time I turn on the TV. We have a right to protect ourselves.....
I'm so over seeing a wall of unusually bright false teeth in a scowling, leathery face which is intended to be seen as smiling. Has he had them coated with something luminous?
I’m going with the bleach that he gargled with during Covid. Public service announcement: this is a joke. Do not under any circumstances gargle with bleach. Your teeth will still look like hell and the skin inside your mouth will melt off. Carry on.
Veneers that contrast sharply with his heavy spray tan orange
They certainly do. This is new, and the Hannibal Lecter effect is not an improvement.
Anne-Louise, he may have gotten new dentures, to replace the ones that slipped out of place when he intoned, “God blesh the United Shtash”after a speech. Anyone with a dental prosthesis knows exactly what happened there. And, yes, when they’re new, they’re usually too white.
Thanks for the laugh! Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Terrible job (wonder if he paid the dentist?) - a full set of big identical incisors with no canines. But then, we know he doesn't like dogs.
Anne-Louise, cocaine powder???
At this point, nothing would surprise me. Could account for a lot.
There is some sort of "light" which cleans teeth and leaves a blue hint on ultra white. One came to a local shopping center right before Covid, but closed. No doubt the vain Donald has one of his own.
His daily ablutions must be quite a spectacle.
Hahah! I do NOT want to see that!
Yes. Him and, unfortunately, upwards of 74 million creeps who’d like nothing better than putting him back in the White House.
Well, the whacked out part without the math.
Here is the gift link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/15/us/politics/trump-documents-boxes.html?unlocked_article_code=2wzzdMm9dOl-d-J0Gz0s3A1byZMDFhDL8YXMQJYJenku1FuRgV1r8ZZpXjkBee3ewe7Q0-PhDGIQtR6fCk6vzp90CEpgexG_ETy7yXvoOJLxehdiG3NKqBUNzbR-S-0Jb8hqvqq5nFroaeANgGAkI1vjClZhIuS6acaLbolAXXIRUS4s7h-KuAMBzr-jnUbhyK-aeMWOZHGdog4B72Q8q2E1Z3VDJfLKURYfSGkbUTc_-zAlmWDAWS1cxpdAaibNUdLlifq9p97LfYgV0qzVQZFlt1j_qHaYvigeZ-x6QB9V5r7E9n4f2ANccEU7Q7rDgStNFoMzG0ly4X5OQsyqtedbIg&smid=url-share
For the first time, I am getting the picture of a man who is truly mentally ill, after a fashion. I have encountered a few hoarders in my life, persons who collect things incessantly, feeling that the more possessions they have around them, the more secure they feel. Often, they have the "highest and best use" syndrome or the sincere intention that at some point, they will somehow organize it into a chronicle of their life (as if anyone were interested in all the details). TFG is hopelessly mistaken if he believes anyone will want to dig through all of that exhaustively once he's gone to attempt to write a biography of him. His heirs are completely wrapped up in their own stories by now to have enough interest to do any historical treatment of his White House days. He has already put enough crap into the public discourse to fill volumes, including endless armchair analyses of his mental health. Perhaps that would be the most effective defense he could present in court; that of the insanity plea?
I have not had the idea of him being a hoarder until I read this article. Sadly, my last mother in law WAS a hoarder (Oh! The stories I could tell!!). After reading this article, I seriously think he could be a hoarder.
What is the endless pursuit of more money but financial hoarding? What the hell does someone do with $100 million-plus dollars in personal assets?
Dirk, obviously that person tries to get MORE! Hence his endless fundraising. For him, dollars are signs of love from his followers.
And how many millions owed?
I have said the same thing, Dick!
I'm sure we aren't alone, either. (And it's "Dirk," btw)
Builds space ships? Seriously, we should tell "them" that there is a diminishing ratio of happiness with wealth. Of course the very poor are not too happy either. Thom Hartmann says that $75,000 per year is the right balance. And Bernie says $999 million is enough. Every bit above a $Billion is taxed 100%.
I'd be happy if they only paid a fraction. These people think it's smart to pay nothing. We need to keep reminding folks that they're NOT ON OUR SIDE
Thank you, Ally.
Thank you, Ally! I never had the thought until reading this article, and I am shocked; my late mother in law WAS a hoarder. Him being a hoarder would explain why he absolutely refused to give all this up.
Thanks
Thank you 'Back Row".
Thanks for the link, Ally. The reader comments are also entertaining.
Thanks, Ally!
Any half-ass president of any party wouldn’t have the time for such absurd behavior — if actually working.
That's the point, Michael. Lots of us knew how bizarre, crooked and what a liar he was, yet, so many Americans fell for him. We have to accept some responsibility for not paying attention; the transfer of wealth; lack of affordable housing; inequality; poor pay for labor …and the myths...who lied first, second and third...? The ground had been laid down.
You’re right. We needed a catcher in the rye and we haven’t come up with one.
Yes, William Burke: “It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”
Thank you for the link. I heard about it on MSNBC this afternoon on Katy Tur’s show, I believe.
I've gone 'round the bend and I've come out silly. I read your first line as "Trump's attachment to his BOXERS! (Being a sexual predator and all.)
Eeeeewwww . . . do you mean his underwear or his dogs???? (Sorry, Heather!)
The man’s a hoarder.
…a sensible defense up to a point, but it doesn't cover classified documents.
Omigawd -- THE PRESIDENTIAL CARGO CULT !!!
Gilded turds next?
I just want to cry....sorry but this is all getting to me. If the Republicans get their way our democracy will not survive, and our world will descend faster into fascism, ecological disaster and chaos. I pray that tomorrow I will feel more hopeful.
As a transgender American I am terrified!!
I'm sure you are, Cynthia, but please keep your head up. You have a type of courage that lives in rare air. As a straight guy I can't say I fully understand your journey, but as a human being I can certainly say I deeply respect your integrity and courage, and those of all the LGBTQ community.
You be you.
PRIDE
Thank You Daniel! I appreciate your support.
You are most welcome
Cynthia, you've heard it before -- spend time with your friends and allies and make new ones. See if you can contribute more to the effort of defeating this cruelty, inhumanity, fascism. You have my utmost respect and support.
I do and I am/have . . . still that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. What it doesn’t do is paralyze me, it angers me and stiffens my resolve. Fear is not a bad thing, it prepares one to fight. Panic on the other hand is bad because it causes one to act rashly.
Cynthia, you have it; you have what you need -- the spirit, the resolve, and fear is not a bad thing. That is the other quality you have; you are realistic. You bolstered my resolve as a human being in the midst danger because we're all in danger. Thank you, Cynthia.
Fear is a product of uncertainty. The fact that people are fearful is a healthy sign that they’re paying attention. If we were going to call this the Age of Greed, we might also consider entitling it The Age of Uncertainty. Maybe I need my ChatGPT to steer me on this one.
You're doing just fine without it. Finding the humor in this tragedy is a rare gift. Thank you, William.
Mahalo Fern!
Please don't cry, Lorri. Hold tight. There are more of us than there are of them. We will prevail, but we must stay the course, as never before.
All Hands on Deck!
We all go through feelings of fear and even despair. Action is a good antidote, and every single one of us can Do Something to Save Democracy. David Pepper has great ideas in his new book, Saving Democracy. Jessica Craven writes every day with easy to do actions for us to do in her "Chop Wood, Carry Water" Substack. It's empowering, and our individual small actions add up to a mighty force!
Saving Democracy: A User's Manual for Every American: Pepper, David: 9781662938214: Amazon.com: Books
https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/
If I may add to your list of actions that can save democracy, I would include:
Having dinner parties with your neighbors.
Donating to local charities, not just your church.
Singing Christmas carols, celebrating Kwanzaa, wearing a pentacle for Wicca, and throwing a Diwali feast.
Attending the services of other religions besides your own.
Reading academic journals.
Practice holding Republicans, especially the ones you hate, firmly in your mind, drenched in love that you generate in your own heart.
Join groups in your environment that specialize in a particular ethnic/religious/racial group, but only go to meetings occasionally because you don't want to interfere with their mission. (For instance, I was a very white member of the Black Law Student's Association, an instructive experience for all of us at the time.)
Going to farmers' markets and getting to know the farmers.
Learn to enjoy the pleasure of having one of your own ideas, especially a cherished one, proven wrong.
(Please, readers, add to this list ideas that you've never seen on this website.)
I note that all of the "obviously wrong" ideas being parrotted by Norquist-devotees are, as HCR explicitly stated, old, endlessly recycled ideas that go back centuries. The quotes from FDR make it clear that he was responding to the exact same arguments then as we are now, despite almost a hundred years of education, and those arguments weren't even remotely new then.
Education doesn't seem to have an effect on the prevalence of these seemingly-ludicrous conservative/Christian ideas that we rail about in these comments. I hope love and kind engagement (perhaps including beer) can have a greater impact.
Lori, tomorrow you need to set aside “hope” and embrace action, engagement and community like your life and our democracy depends on it-because it does!
It's getting to me, too. I'm tired, frustrated, discouraged, ANGRY. I want to scream, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?" at least seven times a day. Okay. Got that out. Back to writing post cards.
Take action to feel hopeful. Write postcards or call voters (https://www.fieldteam6.org) or contribute to https://www.grapevine.org/giving-circle/1XQhnyD/Tending-to-Democracy. There’s much to do!
So very well said Heather. We all must educate everyone around us with this information. And vote, and help others to vote blue.
Exactly! But do we have a megaphone that can reach a larger audience as the Murdoch enterprise. This Australian, come Englishman, come US citizen does not give a damn about anything but his power, just like DJT. They feed off of lies, misinformation and propaganda.
Your writing is expectedly excellent, this letter is both excellent and eloquent. 🙏😻
As always, it’s those who have it made that want to get still richer at the expense of those who need a social safety net. Unfortunately, those who are strictly concerned with preserving their wealth are able to lobby members of Congress by giving to their campaigns to ensure that these “bought” legislators pass laws to increase their wealth. The idea of having all campaigns at the national level equally funded by the federal government and outlawing superPACs that support candidates has been proposed many times, but has not been passed into law.
AND limit political campaigns to two weeks prior to the election.
Every Democratic campaign ad should trumpet the GOP’s call to raise the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 69. It also should be mentioned in every campaign speech, from Biden down to every race for Congress. And I want them to read Heather’s last paragraph loud and clear.
Republicans often belittle Denmark and other Nordic countries as socialist because they took ideas from the New Deal even further. But, of course, these countries aren’t socialist. They’ve sacrificed countless lives in various wars to combat socialism and communism. What they do embody is robust economies — capitalism that thrives with regulation.
So good to have this history before US today. Saw the Republican senator attacking Janet Yellen on YouTube. Cringed at his lack of basic manners then laughed that Janet Yellen told him nothing he could twist and propagandize.
We can start working on primaries on 22 June. Time to get in all the blue possible.
Virginia Witmer, Janet Yellen is amazing! Another brilliant, capable leader within our government.
That’s exactly what a friend said when I told her the story. I had every confidence in Janet Yellen, but as I am numerically challenged (in a family with two mathematical stars), I could only judge her political savvy on the basis that she is part of the president’s team.
Republicans hate it when they get boxed into a logical corner. But then, for some reason, they just turn around and start banging their head against the wall hoping a good next idea might fall out.
Thank you for that well-considered opinion. In the future shall think of it as fact.
'The wealth gap was partly due to significant rises in stock market prices, according to the new study from Imperial College Business School, published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.'
'Researchers from Imperial and the Paris School of Economics are calling for action to be taken by governments and policy makers in the US, to boost wages at the lower end of the market, control unemployment, and stabilise house prices.'
'The researchers drew on new economic data from which they could build a database of the distribution of wealth for most European countries for the first time. This brought the data in line with the available US financial figures and allowed them to compare the change in both total household wealth and wealth inequality in Europe and the United States since the 1970s to the present day, as well as working out the reasons for those changes.'
"High levels of economic inequality can lead to economic and political instability. This is why action needs to be taken before societies become polarised."
Dr Clara Martinez-Toledano, Assistant Professor in Finance, Business School
'The researchers found that although both regions had a similar steady growth in total household wealth, the way the wealth had been distributed has been markedly different since the 1980s.'
'Dr Clara Martínez-Toledano, Assistant Professor in Finance at Imperial College Business School and one of the lead authors of the study said: “From the 1980s we see a wealth gap start to emerge, where there’s a more dramatic change in the United States. The wealth that the top one percent richest people own in the States has undergone a significantly larger increase than the top one percent richest in Europe – in other words, the gap between rich and poor in the US became much more pronounced as wealthy Americans became even richer.”
'Reasons for the wealth gap'
'To discover why this gap emerged, the researchers broke wealth down into three key drivers: differences in saving rates; wages; and capital gains rates.'
'During the decades surveyed, the research showed that house prices had gone up dramatically in both regions, as had financial asset prices. However, stock market prices had increased much faster in the US than in Europe.'
'Dr Martínez-Toledano continued: “Differences in the composition of these assets across wealth groups is key. The richest people tend to own financial assets such as stocks and bonds, while the middle wealth groups tend to have a house as their major asset. But even with a big growth in house prices in both regions, stock market prices were the standout distinguishing factor, with a huge jump in value of US stocks during those decades.“
'Another important factor that can explain the wealth gap between rich and poor in the US is inequality of labour income, with the US economy showing a much bigger contrast in pay between the lowest and highest paid workers than the European economies over the same time period.'
'To document these findings, the researchers ran simulations that substituted the labour income inequality and asset price trajectories from France into the US figures. They found the hypothetical US wealth concentration levels were lower as a result of the smaller rise in labour income inequality and the larger rise in house prices relative to financial assets in Europe. The results were similar when they substituted the same figures from other European countries into the US data.'
'Dr Martínez-Toledano explained: “Less equal societies have less stable economies. High levels of economic inequality can lead to economic and political instability. This is why action needs to be taken before societies become polarised.”
'The new Distribution Wealth Accounts for Europe database is already available on wid.world for other researchers to build on this work, with the researchers planning regular updates to stay informed about the state of wealth inequality in Europe and the US.'
'The project forms part of a bigger international drive by the World Inequality Lab to provide more comprehensive public information about wealth and income inequality across the world.'
'Wealth inequality dynamics in Europe and the United States: Understanding the determinants is published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.' (ImperialCollegeLondon) For more info, google title below.
Gap between rich and poor has increased more quickly in the US than in Europe
Article text (excluding photos or graphics) © Imperial College London.
And now that we’ve blown it and allowed ourselves to become completely polarized, we need to push equally as hard for Democratic Socialism. Tax the rich. Rebuild the infrastructure. Create jobs. Rebuild the state hospitals. Create an army of carpenters and plumbers and electricians to build affordable housing. Medicare for all.
Thank you, Fern.
Good to see you, progwoman.
Heather as usual hasn’t missed a ‘beat’ in her fiscal rendition….
Fair and appropriate taxation is the structural basis for a sound economy…
What regularly mystifies me is how the average voter gets gulled into the Republican heresy of little or no taxation or regulation and it generally takes a major catastrophe or war to shift gears back to ‘sanity’….
You’d think by now we’d all know Heather’s story and conclusions!
Coretta Scott King said every generation has to ‘learn its lessons’….the ones Heather just covered!
"What regularly mystifies me is how the average voter gets gulled into the Republican heresy of little or no taxation or regulation "
Well, for billionaires and corporations. Taxes are for the "little people", and they get regulated plenty, de facto by monopolistic corporations, and directly by fanatics in positions of governmental power. That's a hell of a price to pay for having your prejudices indulged.
Thanks. No one else says it, so I’ll say it again.
We have $140 Trillion of net household wealth.
That grew about $72 Trillion in the last 10 years.
The federal debt grew about $15 Trillion.
Redistribution of wealth happens in the boardroom.
We have the money.
We could spread prosperity like wildfire, if we only put people to work on our country.
If you pay a working family a dollar, a rich guy gets it almost immediately. So smart rich guys should be spending all day, every day to put people to work.
Schools, hospitals, power lines, roads, bridges, medical research, sewers, clean water, it goes on.
We all can see it, every day.
So where is the opposition? One cult.
The problem has metastasized into one fat organization, the R party. The votes are clear, the lies are loud and incessant, and now traitorous.
Some have said, over and over again, that the two parties are the same. They apparently can’t count, or understand simple language. Both are huge failings in a democratic republic.
best luck to US -- b.rad
ps new household numbers are due soon; balance sheet update came out last week <uswealthclock.com>
Having carefully avoided the study of economics in college (it was a very pro-business environment and very anti-woman even in the sixties) I go for a more approachable discussion, such as Robert Reich's dissection of the distribution of wealth and income on his substack. He is offering the last series of his lectures before retirement, and they're very understandable. Also, I just finished Matthew Desmond's Poverty by America, which is a clear explanation of our inequality at 189 pages (plus notes and gracious acknowledgments). I'm planning to read Evicted by the same author, a Princeton professor who grew up poor in Arizona.
The Republican’s approach to economic management is so obviously “How to Create Chaos, Destroy Everything, Embarrass the Nation while Grifting from the Taxpayer and Making the Land vulnerable to Weather catastrophes”, that they should not garner one vote from your average citizen. A country which gives these types power must be seen ( sorry but geez) as irredeemably ignorant.
Thank you for once again explaining with historical evidence that the GQP plans are destined to fail AGAIN. Please keep spreading the word, hopefully more people will learn the truth and see through the lies and B.S. of the right-wing scumwads.