ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted luxury vacations from Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire, for the past two decades and never acknowledged these gifts on his financial disclosure form. Justice Thomas said in a statement that he thought these lavish trips on a private jet and a super-yacht fell under the category of “personal hospitality,” like having dinner at a friend’s home. ProPublica estimated that a recent trip to Asia, involving both the jet and the yacht, was worth about $500,000.
ProPublica consulted seven ethics experts, and all agreed that his defense was unreasonable. For one who claims to take the letter of the law literally, his failure to report the multiple gifts of free luxury travel is nonsense.
The corporate world is short on workers, sooo, let’s see what states will pass legislation to loosen restrictions on child labor.
This drive reminds me of the blindside on K12 education that is Common Core– the justification (and assumption) being that the chief purpose K12 education is to “prepare students for 21st century jobs.”
Well, its the 21st century, and it seems that business is short on bodies, and any warm body will do.
So, on this Easter as I think of Jesus, who brought to the attention of his male-centric culture the importance of considering children as people valuable in their own right, I also think of the primarily-Republican push to feed children to the god of business and industry.
Forget childhood. We must appease the god of business and industry.
Knudsen writes, in part,
Legislators in multiple states are invoking a widespread labor shortage to push bills that would weaken long-standing child labor laws.
Why it matters: Some bills go beyond expanding eligibility or working hours for run-of-the-mill teen jobs. They’d make it easier for kids to fill physically demanding roles at potentially hazardous work sites. …
Driving the news: A new Arkansas law signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) last week makes it easier for teens as young as 14 to work without obtaining a permit.
Between the lines: The laws and proposals have largely been introduced by Republicans but received support from some Democrats in Ohio and New Jersey. …
Zoom in: Iowa lawmakers are considering Republican legislation that would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work in industrial laundry services and freezers at meatpacking plants. It’d also prevent many of them from receiving worker’s compensation if they are sickened, injured or killed on the job.
The Iowa law specifically excludes businesses who hire teens from any civil liability in the event they suffer harm or even death in the workplace.
Mercedes concludes:
This exploitation (make no mistake that this loosening of child labor laws in numerous states is exactly that) has at its center a lack of planning combined with the desire for a lower bottom line (and greater profits). Many of my teenaged students already drag themselves to school, only to fall asleep in class with the apology that “I had to close last night.” Therefore, making it easier for employers to squeeze even more out of school-aged employees even as society expects of them (and their schools) stellar academic results (dog whistle: test scores) is indeed speaking out of both ends of a hypocritical, corporate-adulating mouth.
Jesus loves the little children, sooo let’s exploit their labor potential, even for dangerous jobs, as we simultaneously absolve ourselves of any responsibility– even death.
Peter Greene has moved his wonderful blog Curmudgucation to Substack. Here is his first Substack submission. It describes the importance of Congressman Jamaal Bowman’s proposal to end the federal testing mandate, which was enacted 22 years ago. The tests have proved to be useless (the results come in after the students has moved to a different teacher); the ratings on the test are based on NAEP achievement levels, which is confusing and inaccurate. Most people think that most students should rank “proficient,” but NAEP Proficient is equivalent to an A. Most students are never at A performance unless standards are dumbed down.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not one of them. Instead of surrounding herself with knowledgeable locals, she has imported leftovers from the Trump administration, with no connection to Arkansas.
Her tweets and comments are nasty, just like Trump’s. She lashes out at enemies, some imaginary, and insults them. She learned at Trump’s feet.
He writes:
Though my expectations were low based on the hyper-partisan, angry, shallow campaign run last year by Sarah Sanders, I held off writing this column in the hope that our governor–who had never held elected office and never had a job in the private sector outside of political consulting–would mature once in office.
I’m a conservative. I spent 15 years working for Republican candidates and officeholders. I remember a time in the early 1980s when there were so few of us in Arkansas who identified as Republicans that we all knew each other on a first-name basis. In fact, the people who seem the saddest about the tragedy that is the Sanders administration are those Arkansas Republicans I met four decades ago. They no longer recognize their party.
“I just want to cry,” one of them told me after calling my house on a Sunday afternoon.
I can’t help but think back to 1996 when Mike Huckabee was thrust into the governor’s office following Tucker’s resignation. Huckabee dropped out of a U.S. Senate race he was going to win, choosing Arkansas over the lure of national politics. He surrounded himself with experienced Arkansans. His senior management team included highly respected former legislators such as Dick Barclay, Jim von Gremp and Joe Yates.
Huckabee also brought to his administration a string of strong women, all native Arkansans with long years of service to the state. There was former legislator Carolyn Pollan of Fort Smith and Judge Betty Dickey of Pine Bluff. Huckabee’s chief of staff his entire time in office was Brenda Turner of Texarkana. Turner worked behind the scenes and kept a low profile, but she was a force of nature.
Sanders has surrounded herself with political journeymen who have no concern about the people of Arkansas or this state’s future. It’s all about the boss’ national political standing. These aides will simply move on to other states when they’re done here, leaving the rest of us to deal with the damage.
Sanders and her top aides seem intent on bringing the chaos and divisiveness of the comical Trump administration to state government–rushing through a major education overhaul in order to avoid needed debate, avoiding the Arkansas media, relying on national far-right outlets, and putting out mindless tweets about national politics that have nothing to do with Arkansas.
Rex Nelson refers to Sanders and her team of inexperienced staff as “the Trumpettes.”
YOU ARE INVITED TO A “DAY OF ACTION” AT THE STATEHOUSE
Pastors for Indiana Children is a nonpartisan, independent ministry, not beholden to any special interest group, political party, or church office. We believe in local democracy, cooperation across lines of difference, and organizing to support public education opportunities for Indiana children.
WHO: Any Pastor, Community Leader, Parent, Student, Advocate who wants to keep public schools public, fully funded, and equitably meet the needs of ALL students. Pastor Charles Johnson, Executive Director of Pastors for Texas Children is planning to join us.
WHAT: Pastors for Indiana Children is hosting an Day of Action. We will be speaking with State Legislators directly about HB 1001, HB 1002 and HB 1591. These bills threaten the further destroy public education.
WHEN: Thursday, April 13th, 2023 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Press Conference to follow at 12:30PM
There are several reasons why pastors should stand up for public education:
Public education is a common good: Public education is a fundamental pillar of a healthy and just society. It provides all children, regardless of their background, with the opportunity to learn and develop the skills they need to succeed in life.
Equity and access: Public education is essential for promoting equity and access for all students. It provides a level playing field for students of different socio-economic backgrounds, and helps to reduce disparities in educational opportunities.
Moral imperative: As leaders in our/your communities, Pastors have a moral obligation to support the common good and to advocate for justice and equality. Standing up for public education is one way to fulfill this obligation.
Community engagement: Public schools are often the hub of their communities, serving not just as places of learning, but also as gathering places for community events and activities. Pastors can help to strengthen their communities by supporting public schools and advocating for their improvement.
Shared values: Public education is consistent with many of the values that Pastors hold dear, such as the value of education, the importance of social justice, and the idea that we are all called to work for the common good.
By standing up for public education, Pastors can help to promote equity, justice, and the common good, while also strengthening our communities and living out our values.
Pastors, Ministers and Congregants please take the opportunity to share with other Pastors who may not know what is going on. Although, I have listed 3 bills that are a problem, there are many bills floating through and being passed in our statehouse. We must stand together to push back on this attack of public education and in specific the most vulnerable, OUR CHILDREN.
The scientists point out that a major report was released a decade ago, warning of this trend, but it was generally ignored. Now, the situation has gotten worse, so that even less developed countries have longer life expectancy rates than we do.
NPR reports:
Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years. While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the second year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the U.S. did not.
Then, last week, more bad news: Maternal mortality in the U.S. reached a high in 2021. Also, a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found rising mortality rates among U.S. children and adolescents.
“This is the first time in my career that I’ve ever seen [an increase in pediatric mortality] – it’s always been declining in the United States for as long as I can remember,” says the JAMA paper’s lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Now, it’s increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred at least for half a century.”
Across the lifespan, and across every demographic group, Americans die at younger ages than their counterparts in other wealthy nations.
How could this happen? In a country that prides itself on scientific excellence and innovation, and spends an incredible amount of money on health care, the population keeps dying at younger and younger ages….
“American children are less likely to live to age 5 than children in other high-income countries,” the authors write on the second page. It goes on: “Even Americans with healthy behaviors, for example, those who are not obese or do not smoke, appear to have higher disease rates than their peers in other countries….”
Yes, Americans eat more calories and lack universal access to health care. But there’s also higher child poverty, racial segregation, social isolation, and more. Even the way cities are designed makes access to good food more difficult…
“Two years difference in life expectancy probably comes from the fact that firearms are so available in the United States,” Crimmins says. “There’s the opioid epidemic, which is clearly ours – that was our drug companies and other countries didn’t have that because those drugs were more controlled. Some of the difference comes from the fact that we are more likely to drive more miles. We have more cars,” and ultimately, more fatal crashes.
The scientists noted that New Hampshire’s state slogan is “Live Free or Die,” but nationally we seem to have adopted a mantra of “Live Free and Die.” They estimate the cost of poor health and excessive mortality to the economy at $100 billion.
We all know that the gun industry has succeeded in controlling one major political party through the power of political contributions; Big Pharma owns its share of politicians. Money in politics is literally killing us and our children, but the Citizens United decision in the Supreme Court has blocked regulation of the corrupting power of financial contributions to politicians.
Perhaps we should be grateful that the automobile industry did not control state legislatures, Congress, and the courts when autobiles were first introduced. If autos were like guns, we would have no regulation of speed, no stop signs or traffic lights, no regular inspections of auto safety, no seat belts. Every time you went for a drive, you would prepare for disaster. That’s the current state of gun laws.
What will it take to persuade the public that living a healthy life and surviving to adulthood should not be a matter of luck?
Religious extremists have continued their assault on the status of women as equal citizens under the law and full participants in the liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. After the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority engaged in the charade of “returning the question” of reproductive liberty “to the people’s representatives,” a rogue federal judge in Texas has issued a nationwide ban on mifepristone because of his personal disagreement with the FDA’s scientific conclusions regarding safety of the drug. The opinion is equal parts junk science and religious screed. It is an insult to the rule of law and the dignity of women as human beings with control over their bodies and reproductive choices.
The opinion is even more pernicious because mifepristone is frequently prescribed to help women safely manage miscarriages. In the absence of mifepristone and because of dozens of laws criminalizing abortion, a single federal judge with no science or medical training has ordered millions of women to risk infection, sepsis, and death before they can receive medical intervention in a miscarriage.
The DOJ has announced that it will appeal the ruling to the arch-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which may uphold the ruling. A competing and contrary ruling in Washington state suggests that the US Supreme Court will be forced to intervene soon.
The religious extremists who successfully took down Roe are now using that victory as a roving license to attack fundamental liberties everywhere. They have misread Dobbs, their limited mandate, the will of the electorate, and the rule of law. Whatever Dobbs stands for, it did not convert our democracy into a theocracy—which is the premise of Judge Kacsmaryk’s first in our nation’s history ruling by a federal judge overturning the scientific judgments of the FDA.
Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling is not only wrong, but it is also dangerous in its implications. Under the reasoning adopted by Judge Kacsmaryk, the next logical step is a ruling declaring fetal personhood under the Constitution and an order mandating every state to criminalize abortion. I am not being hyperbolic. I urge you to reach this superb analysis by Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling against mifepristone will force the Supreme Court to act fast. Stern writes:
[Kacsmaryk] deemed fetuses to “arguably” be “people” who are killed by mifepristone, seeking to establish the “fetal personhood” that has always been the end goal of the movement. For support, he cited a brief by anti-abortion advocate Robert P. George asserting that the Constitution compels every state to outlaw abortion.
There are more dangerous statements in Kacsmaryk’s opinion, which are detailed in Stern’s analysis. While we should not surrender to alarmism (not a comment directed to Stern), we must be realistic about the path to victory. Republican leaders know they have overstepped; editorials in conservative newspapers and conservative commentators are raising the alarm that Republicans have overstepped the advantage granted in Dobbs. See op-ed by Michele Golberg in NYTimes, The Abortion Ban Backlash Is Starting to Freak Out Republicans
But the Republican Party is captive to the religious extremists whose endorsements are now the price of election in Republican primaries. In other words, there is no going back for the GOP, and things may get worse for us before they get better. But Republicans have locked themselves into irreversible losing trajectory and are already paying the price. But we must step our efforts as they ratchet theirs. We can do that; we have begun to do that; we must continue, and most not lose hope. We will win; they will lose. It is just a matter of time.
Tennessee.
The anti-democratic, racially based expulsion of two young Black representatives from the Tennessee House by the GOP has attracted worldwide condemnation. People outside of America who had never heard the name “Tennessee” now associate it with the historical birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan and the modern home for the most virulent strains of racism in America. A reader (“CC”) posted selected citations in the Comments section, with a brief comment:
Justin Jones told the Tennessee legislature that the whole world was watching. Looks like he could be right.
Should Tennessee legislators care what the world media thinks about Tennessee? Only if Tennessee aspires to be part of the global, interconnected business community that will drive commerce in the future (like Nissan and Volkswagen, which both have plants in Tennessee). If Tennessee wants to rely on its other leading industry—entertainment—for future growth, it should consider whether most performers in the entertainment industry want to be associated with a state whose current top export is hate.
And my apologies and sympathy for Democrats and Independents in Tennessee who are fighting the good fight. We need you and will continue to support you. Everyone understands that the hate is coming from the GOP leadership, not from the good people of Tennessee who are struggling to create a more perfect democracy.
But Tennessee Republicans have not learned their lesson. Despite universal condemnation, major media outlets are reporting that Republican leaders are threatening the county commissions that might re-appoint Justin Pearson and Justin Jones—as they are legally entitled to do. Worse, Republicans are threatening not to seat Jones and Pearson if they are re-elected. It simply doesn’t get more totalitarian than that.
The reaction from the business community has been muted because the events occurred late in a week that included observances for Easter and Passover. But it is hard to fathom that the Memphis Grizzlies NBA playoff games next week will not be affected by Black athletes speaking their views on the events of Thursday. It is difficult to see why a nearly all-Black University of Tennessee football team would play in the face of such blatant racism. It is difficult to see why FedEx, Jack Daniels, Tractor Supply, and Nissan would want to support GOP legislators who committed one of the most overtly racist acts in a generation.
The state of Tennessee has yet to feel the business backlash that will follow the legislature’s action on Thursday. When it does, Tennessee Republicans will realize they have roused a sleeping giant.
Clarence Thomas.
Clarence Thomas issued a dissembling non-denial of his grotesque violation of judicial norms over two decades. Let’s set the quibbling aside and focus on the essence: The scale of Thomas’s corruption shocks the conscience. It appears that in some years, Thomas received more free travel by jet and luxury yacht that exceeded his salary by a significant percentage. Whatever the rules are, when someone is bestowing economic benefits on you that exceed your salary, it does not matter whether those benefits are hospitality, gifts, travel, or bribes—the amount of the benefit is corrupt. Period.
Thomas’s evasive non-denial studiously avoided any mention of free travel on a private jet—the clearest violation of the pre-existing rules. Despite his denial, Thomas was dishonest when he claimed that he understood—based on conversations with others—that he was not required to report “hospitality” in the range of a half-million-dollars. Thomas did not believe his own denial because in 2004, he was reporting “hospitality” in the from Harlan Crowe—and then suddenly stopped reporting gifts from Crow after the LATimers article. See After an L.A. Times story on Thomas’ gifts, he stopped disclosing – Los Angeles Times.com) [Behind a paywall.]
In other words, when Thomas’s compliance with the rules attracted attention from the media, he simply stopped reporting. There was no “misunderstanding,” just an intent to conceal corrupt benefits from a conservative mega-donor. Thomas’s flouting of the rules and norms of judicial conduct is entirely out of step with the conduct of most judges in the federal judiciary.
Here’s a personal story: I clerked for a federal court of appeals judge before cell phones were widely available. The federal court system participated in the federal WATS phone utility (“wide area telephone system”) that effectively allowed you to call toll-free anywhere in the US. At the time most landline calls outside of the immediate exchange area cost a dime for the first ten minutes, and then a nickel for each five minutes thereafter. Because the federal WATS system effectively conferred an economic benefit, personal use was prohibited.
The judge for whom I clerked was married to a leader in the civil rights community. Because of that fact and to avoid any appearances of impropriety by using the WATS line for personal communications, the judge installed a personal land line in chambers at great cost to him (about which he complained vociferously; he was complainer by nature).
Having spent countless hours in the judge’s interior office helping to draft opinions, I can attest that 99% of his conversations on his personal land line went something like this: “I’ll be working late again, tonight. . . . I love you, too.”
I don’t mean to hold up my judge as a hero; I mean to say that his attitude about avoiding the appearance of conflicts is emblematic of the high ethical standards followed by most federal judges. Against that backdrop, Thomas’s manifest disregard of judicial ethics is shocking.
You undoubtedly noticed that the federal judicial center issued guidelines a few weeks ago that now explicitly require Thomas to report most of the largesse he received from Crow. As Yogi Berra never said, “That’s too much of coincidence to be a coincidence.” Thomas (or Roberts) obviously got wind of the investigative work by Pro Publica and decided to provide a fig leaf of deniability for Thomas. There is more to this story. It will only take enterprising journalists and Supreme Court practitioners to speak up for the full story to emerge. It won’t be pretty. It isn’t now.
Speaking at Hillsdale College, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vowed to take vengeance on the Disney Corporation for pulling a fast one. Disney is the biggest employer in the state. The feud began when Disney objected to DeSantis’s anti-gay legislation, at the urging of its employees. DeSantis then got the legislature to dissolve Disney’s special self-governing district, the Reedy Creek district, and place Disney World under the control of a board appointed by DeSantis. But before the legislation passed, Disney’s Reedy Creek board made a deal to extend its existence for decades to come. DeSantis’ board was left with no powers.
DeSantis is an authoritarian who never admits defeat. So he must fight the Disney Corporation.
This is a warning to corporate America: Watch out for this guy. He will try to control you or destroy you.
Escalating an already hot feud, Gov. Ron DeSantis says he plans to void the Reedy Creek deal with Disney that stripped the new board of its power and consider imposing new hotel taxes and tolls on Disney World.
“Come hell or high water, we’re going to make sure that policy of Florida carries the day,” DeSantis said in a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Thursday night. “And so they can keep trying to do things. But ultimately we’re going to win on every single issue involving Disney, I can tell you that.”
In a question-and-answer session at the conservative Michigan college, DeSantis called the entertainment giant and largest single-site employer in the state a “joke.”
Disney is “acting like somehow that they that they pulled one over on the state,” DeSantis said.
Republicans are shocked, shocked that Trump was indicted. Lest we forget, Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reminds us that Trump has repeatedly called for the indictment of other presidents and, in 2016, his political opponent. Who can forget the chant “Lock her up,” a refrain that was truly unprecedented in presidential politics.
A persistent idea undergirds reactions by Donald Trump and the GOP to Trump’s indictment. Sometimes it’s explicitly stated, and sometimes it’s more implicit: Indicting a former president and a candidate in the next election is beyond the pale. It’s even election “interference” or the stuff of banana republics.
Trump ceded the moral high ground on this idea long ago.
He has advocated for the prosecutions of each of the last four Democratic presidential nominees — every single one since 2004.In two cases, he did it during the campaign, even suggesting they should be ineligible to run.
And that’s to say nothing of the many other political opponents he has suggested should be prosecuted. He even, in some cases, actually agitated for that outcome when he held sway over the Justice Department.
‘Lock her up’
The “lock her up” chant leveled at Hillary Clinton is the most well-known entry in this long succession. Trump at times merely goaded his 2016 rally audiences to go down that road, but at other times he endorsed it. He said late in the 2016 campaign, “Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail,” and he even told Clinton to her face at a debate that if he were president, “You’d be in jail.” He added at a later debate that “she shouldn’t be allowed to run.”
By 2020, Trump gave a similar treatment to both his predecessor as president, Barack Obama, and his then-opponent, Joe Biden.
A month before the election, Trump tweeted, “Where are all of the arrests?” He added: “BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!”
“But these people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country — and that includes Obama and it includes Biden,” Trump added during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network the next day. “These are people that spied on my campaign.”
Open the link and read the test, although it may be behind a paywall.
Ryan Cooper writes in The American Prospect that the anti-woke frenzy among Republicans is a purposeful smokescreen. While their followers rant and rave about WOKE targets, like books and drag queens, the Republican legislators will continue to pass legislation to protect the interests of the rich.
Cooper writes:
It’s long been a truism among liberal political writers that a great deal of conservative culture-war politics is misdirection that disguises the GOP’s real policy agenda. By far the most consistent laws the Republican Party has produced in office since the 1980s are tax cuts for the rich and deregulation. This type of thing is unpopular, even among Republican voters, and so a regular supply of shiny objects is needed to distract them.null
That is of course true of the latest conservative hate frenzy: the crusade against “wokeness,” which the right increasingly uses as a catchall slur for everything they dislike—diversity, reproductive rights, accurate history, climate policy, the dissolution of a failed bank, and so on. Meanwhile, beneath the din, typical pro-rich policy is quietly written up.
Yet not only is the anti-woke frenzy covering up the oligarchic economics of the GOP, it is also directly profiting the allies of Republican politicians. Helping corporate CEOs and anti-woke grifters: Like the gif says, why not both?
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are rushing through a law that would force banks not to use “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) criteria in their investing decisions. This is a version of a resolution that Republicans passed through Congress recently, leading to what’s expected to be President Biden’s first veto. As Jason Garcia writes at Popular Information, the Florida law would forbid any bank with accounts from state government from making banking or investment decisions based on a company’s “business sector,” or based on “support of the state or Federal Government in combatting illegal immigration.”
This idea is wildly impractical, as ESG or “business sector” questions must include many factors that directly affect the profits of an investment—like when Norfolk Southern spilled a huge amount of vinyl chloride in East Palestine, Ohio. (Would they get civil rights protections because of that in Florida?) Taken literally, DeSantis’s law would outlaw virtually half of all banking.
Of course, it is not meant literally. The subtext is that Florida banks better start lending again to DeSantis’s favorite immigrant detention camp company, or else. A private prison firm called GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, got cut off from mainstream banking in 2019, thanks to protests over its appalling treatment of detainees. The company has been one of DeSantis’s biggest campaign contributorssince 2018, as well as of Florida Republicans, and it stopped paying dividends in 2022. That is likely to weigh on company stock, unless those “woke” rules turn around and GEO Group can get its financing back.
In short, DeSantis would force Wall Street to once again fund his political cronies, and thence his own political campaigns.
Or in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced that the state government is taking control of the 200,000-strong Houston school district, supposedly because one of its 50 high schools has struggled academically. (The district as a whole was recently given a “B” by the state education agency.) It’s not a coincidence that, as Forrest Wilder writes at Texas Monthly, Abbott has recently been touring overtly right-wing private religious schools touting the benefits of his school voucher plan. These luxurious schools typically cost over $10,000 per year in tuition. The wealthy, ultra-right-wing families that use them—and the highly paid right-wing administrators and teachers who run them—would benefit from a voucher that might cover about half the cost, while undermining public schools. All that is needed to get the job done is to delete a provision in the Texas constitution separating church and state, which Texas Republicans have proposed, helped along by the fearmongering that woke schools are ruining children’s lives, no doubt.
Not only is the anti-woke frenzy covering up the oligarchic economics of the GOP, it is also directly profiting the allies of Republican politicians.
Perhaps most telling of all is the situation in Hungary, increasingly considered as an anti-woke utopia by American conservatives. CPAC invited Prime Minister Viktor Orban to their conference last year, and prominent conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Rod Dreher make regular pilgrimages.
Hungary is a quasi-dictatorship, and Orban has used his power to turn the country into a colony of international capital. When he took power in 2010, he made Hungary extremely attractive to foreign investors by slashing taxes on the rich and corporations while raising them on the working class. Together with Hungary’s low wages, this set the stage for a decade-long economic boom, concurrent with an explosion in domestic inequality. Orban’s latest plan is to entice a Chinese company into building the largest battery factory in Europe, though the idea is reportedly not popular among locals, who correctly suspect the company is not going to take proper precautions against pollution, and that workers and the local economy will see very little of the benefits.
Conservative politics is about creating, reinforcing, and preserving hierarchy. Oligarchic economics is only natural. Wedge issues that pit the lower classes against one another to cloak this hierarchy are also par for the course. If and when Republicans take national power again, it’ll be one more screaming tantrum after the next, while they rob the American people blind in the background.
