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Jonathan V. Last: Oligarchy is on the Rise

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
7

Jonathan V. Last writes at The Bulwark, the always interesting gathering spot for Never Trumpers. He wrote that he has been stewing about the intervention of Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of The Washington Post, to stop the editorial board from endorsing Kamala. after Bezos locked the editorial, three of the 10-member editorial board stepped down.

He wrote:

ON FRIDAY, after the Washington Post’s publisher announced that the paper was suddenly abandoning the practice of the editorial page endorsing presidential candidates, news leaked that—on the very same day—Donald Trump met with executives from Blue Origin.

Blue Origin, of course, is the rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media. It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.

This was neither a coincidence nor a case of Bezos and Trump being caught doing something they wished to keep hidden. The entire point of the exercise, at least for Trump, was that it be public.

When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.

Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.

Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.

So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside.

What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.

Which is why Trump met with Blue Origin on the same day that Bezos yielded. It was a demonstration—a very public demonstration.

But as bad as that sounds, it isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is the underlying failures that made this arrangement possible.

My friend Kristofer Harrison is a Russia expert who runs the Dekleptocracy Project. This morning he emailed,

America’s oligarch moment makes us more like 1990s Russia than we want to believe. Political scientists can and will debate what comes first: oligarchs or flaccid politicians. 1990s Russia had that in spades. So do we. That combination corroded the rule of law there, and it’s doing so here.

Russian democracy died because their institutions and politicians were not strong enough to enforce the law. Sound familiar? I could identify half a dozen laws that Elon Musk has already broken without enforcement. Bezos censored the Post because he knows that nobody will enforce the law and keep Trump from seeking political retribution. And on and on. The corrosive effect on the rule of law is cumulative.

The Bezos surrender is our warning bell about entering early-stage 1990s Russia. No legal system is able to survive when it there’s a class not subject to it because politicians are too cowardly to enforce the law.

And that’s the foundational point. The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him.

So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman.

Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.

Yesterday, Timothy Snyder issued a call to Americans to not obey in advance. He is correct, of course. We should continue to resist fascism as best we can. The stakes have not changed.

If Trump wins? Well, I suppose we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

What should change is our understanding of where our democracy currently sits on the continuum. We are not teetering at the precipice of a slide into autocracy. We are already partway down the slope. And that’s even if Harris wins.

But Bezos and Trump have just taught America’s remaining small-d democratic leaders: The time for normal politics, where you try to win bipartisan majorities by focusing on “kitchen-table” issues is past. The task in front of us will require aggressive, systemic changes if we are to escape terminal decline.

The hour is later than we think.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Breaking News: The Washington Post Will NOT Endorse a Candidate for President!

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
33

The Washington Post announced that it will not endorse a candidate for president in the 2024 election. The Post is one of the most liberal newspapers in the nation. It was purchased in 2018 by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos hired Will Lewis from the Rupert Murdoch news empire to lead the paper.

In a choice between the Democratic candidate, who respects the rule of law, and the former President, who incited an insurrection, The Washington Post will not render an endorsement.

This is the will of the billionaire who owns the paper. I extend my deepest sympathies to the members of the editorial board for the loss of their voice and editorial independence.

CNN wrote:

New York— 

For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in this year’s presidential election, the newspaper’s publisher announced Friday.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” Will Lewis said in a published statement. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post has endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since the 1980s. In his statement, Lewis referred to the Editorial Board’s past decisions to not endorse a candidate, noting that it is a right “we are going back to.”

“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable,” Lewis continued. “We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”

Ahead of the announcement, The Post’s editorial page editor, David Shipley, told staffers that Lewis would be publishing a public note with the decision.

“The news is significant – and I know there will be strong reactions across the department,” Shipley wrote in a memo obtained by CNN.

The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Newspaper owners typically play a role in their publication’s endorsements and sign off on the editorials which reflect their views.

Marty Baron, a former executive editor of The Post, sharply criticized the decision Friday.

“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Bezos (and others),” Baron wrote in a social media post. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

The decision comes just days after The Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, leading to resignations from three editorial board members.

Two additional members of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times resigned to protest the newspaper owner’s decision not to endorse either candidate.

It’s shameful that two major newspapers have been prevented from expressing the views of their editorial boards by the fist of their billionaire owners.

I sadly add the names of the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times –Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos– to the blog’s Wall of Shame. They won’t know or care. But I do. It’s my small gesture of support for sanity and editorial independence .

In a news story about the WaPo’s decision not to endorse, this was reported:

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Harris, Kamala, Trump, Wall of Shame

Politico: Tim Walz Takes on Elon Musk, Fearlessly!

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2024 //
6

Politico intends to name the big winner of each day’s political news. Tim Walz was the big winner of political news yesterday. He set his sights on the richest man in the world, who is pumping uncounted millions into the Trump campaign. In this country, rich people aren’t supposed to buy elections but no one told South Africa-born Musk that.

Adam Wren wrote:

Tim Walz is hunting big game.

On Tuesday, the Minnesota governor rediscovered the looseness that once had him casting Republicans as “weird,” skewering Donald Trump, JD Vance — and, more than anyone, Trump campaign surrogate Elon Musk.

“I’m going to talk about his running mate — his running mate Elon Musk,” Walz said in Madison, Wisconsin, on the first day of early voting in the Blue Wall battleground. “Seriously, where is Senator Vance after he got asked the simplest question in the world at the debate: Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election, and after two weeks he finally said, ‘No, he didn’t.’”

Next, Walz uncorked on the wealthiest man in the world and the owner of X.

“Look, Elon’s on that stage, jumping around skipping like a dipshit.”

The clip quickly went viral on Musk’s own site.

On a day when his running mate, Kamala Harris, had no events and an interview with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson, Walz’s line reverberated and drowned out other news on the trail.

And won Walz the day.

In some ways, that Walz has been scarce on the trail and in interviews, of which he’s doing more now.

His performance Tuesday came at a time when Democrats are increasingly desperate to remind voters about the dangers of a second Trump term — particularly in a battleground like Wisconsin. (John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and the onetime general, offered an assist on that front, kicking off a media tour explaining how Trump had asked “for the kind of generals that Hitler had” and talked of using the military against U.S. citizens, something Harris has been warning about on the trail).

It also comes as Harris continues amid a gender divide to struggle with male voters. She could use some of the same Midwestern bravado that originally landed Walz on her radar this summer.

Harris may have somewhat dampened Walz’s value-add to the ticket when she warned him“to be a little more careful on how you say things,” as he said in a recent interview.

Now, though, Walz is back.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Politics, Trump, Walz, Tim

Should Democrats Sign Elon Musk’s Petition? YES!

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2024 //
19

A friend suggested that Democrats should sign Elon Musk’s petition so that his prize of $1 million a day could be shared by voters from both parties.

I googled his petition and discovered that only voters in the 7 battleground states are eligible to win, so that rules me out.

There has been debate about whether Musk’s money offer is legal. I don’t think it is legal. Federal law forbids paying people to vote or to register to vote.

He is offering not only $1 million a day to one person who signs up (the first three winners were–Surprise!–in Pennsylvania), but the petition pays $47 for every other person you refer who signs up.

I conclude: Yes, sign up. Get a chance to win $1 million from Elon. Why not? If you win, send Kamala a gift.

Carol Burris agrees. She writes:

Elon Musk is too cute by half.

He is attempting to buy the election by encouraging potential Trump voters to sign a petition in favor of the First and Second Amendments.

There are questions about the legality of his attempt, but it will not shut down anytime soon.

There is a way to undermine, if not stop it. Disrupt it.

Sign it. https://petition.theamericapac.org

Let his money go to Harris voters.

Can you imagine what he would do if the million-dollar prize went to a Harris supporter?

Can you imagine if enough folks who do not support Trump entered his database?

Give Elon and his minions extra work and a headache.

America cannot be bought.

Sign the petition and disrupt it.

Here is the link https://petition.theamericapac.org

And be sure to put in a referral name– let’s drain Elon’s “buy the election” fund. 

Categories Billionaires, Elections, Trump

Quikwrit: Is the U.S. an Oligarchy?

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2024 //
9

Reader QUIKWRIT warns that the United States may no longer be a democracy, because of Supreme Court decisions that favor economic elites.

ALREADY AN OLIGARCHY

After researching government laws passed since Citizens United, Princeton University researcher Martin Gilens and Northwestern University researcher Benjamin Page documented that the U.S. is no longer a representative republic because the government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by the rich and powerful. The researchers analyzed 1,800 U.S. policies enacted over a period of two decades and compared the laws and regulations that were passed to those favored by average Americans to those favored by wealthy Americans and corporations, and here’s what the research revealed: “EVEN WHEN A MAJORITY OF CITIZENS DISAGREES WITH ECONOMIC ELITES OR WITH ORGANIZED SPECIAL INTERESTS, ORDINARY CITIZENS GENERALLY LOSE.”

America has become an oligarchy because of the Supreme Court. Today’s Roberts Court will live in the same odious infamy as the Taney Court whose 1857 Dred Scott ruling declared that human beings are mere property, which lit the fuse to the ruinous Civil War from which America has yet to recover. In its 2010 Citizens United ruling, the infamous odious Roberts Court ruled that mere property is equal to a human being, leading to corporations being given the “human right” to pour unlimited dollars into America’s political system, putting government up for sale to the highest bidder and corrupting the system to the extent that our nation has become an oligarchy.

Today, America has the best government that money can buy and has become an oligarchy, serving the interests of corporations and billionaires, thanks to the corrupt, infamous, odious Roberts Court.

LOOPHOLE IN CITIZENS UNITED

The U.S. Supreme Court left open a loophole in its Citizens United decision: The Court’s ruling says that if a significant risk of quid pro quo corruption can be shown to exist because of allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to contribute unlimited amounts of money to a super PAC , regulations can be instituted to limit the amount of money that corporations and the wealthy can contribute to super PACs.

With this loophole in mind, in the upcoming November elections there is an initiative on the ballot in Maine that, if passed, will limit to $5,000 the amount of money that can be contributed to super PACs because the evidence that has accumulated since the 2010 SpeechNow ruling clearly shows that allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to contribute unlimited amounts of money to super PACs has led to quid pro quo legislation and regulatory changes. SpeechNow is the March 26, 2010, DC Circuit Court ruling which applied Citizens United to super PACs, allowing unlimited contributions to super PACs.

While limiting super PAC contributions by corporations and wealthy people to $5,000, the Maine initiative sets no limits on how much money a super PAC can accept overall.

But by limiting the contributions from just one or a few super wealthy contributors and spreading the contributions out among the general populace, the risk is greatly reduced that politicians receiving money from a super PAC would be likely to engage in quid pro quo actions that serve only one or a few contributors to the super PAC because the contributions would reflect the interests of a wide range of individual contributors.

The Maine initiative is being bitterly opposed by corporations and the wealthy because it greatly reduces their ability to buy politicians, legislation, and regulatory escape.

If the Maine initiative survives the attacks from the Special Interest groups and is approved by Maine voters, the initiative will immediately be challenged in court — but the challenge will go to a new court: The Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals can agree with the evidence from the Maine Initiative and can rule that the unlimited contributions to super PACs by corporations and the wealthy has demonstrably caused quid pro quo lawmaking and regulatory changes.

The case would then proceed up to the U.S. Supreme Court where the Justices would be able to rule that risk of quid pro quo is such that contributions to super PACs can be limited by the Maine initiative. Such a ruling would trigger nationwide challenges to unlimited super PAC contributions, as well as triggering similar initiatives and laws in many states.

Unfortunately, even though the Maine initiative could begin the process that restores the core of our nation’s republic, the Democratic Party has its attention focused elsewhere and on other issues. Yet, the voices that typically champion such issues as the Maine initiative don’t even seem to be aware of the initiative. Why is that?

Passage of the Maine initiative can be the beginning of the end of super PACS buying legislators and laws. I hope that the voters of Maine pass this important initiative.

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism

Tom Ultican: The Plutocrat Privatizers Target Delaware

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2024 //
9

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced math, is a close observer of the public school privatization movement. In this post, he reviews the situation in Delaware, where the big money for privatization is coming from the DuPont family. The school board of the Christina district recently fired its superintendent, who was named superintendent of the year only two years ago. The reason, Tultican writes, was his opposition to charter schools.

He begins:

July 10th the Christina school board voted, at 2:45 AM, to remove popular Superintendent Dan Shelton. The seven member board split 4 to 3. It seems that Shelton’s opposition to allowing charter schools to take over the district motivated the vote. The Christina school district serves the small Delaware cities of Wilmington, Newark and their outskirts. It is a modest sized district with about 14,000 students. The unseen force behind the ouster was the DuPont family.

The attack by billionaires on schools in Delaware is similar to harm visiting public education throughout the nation. The local rich guy sets up tax exempt “charities” and uses them to undermine local schools. The “charities” hire young ambitious and talented people to lead the effort. Looking behind the scenes in Delaware illuminates the undermining of public schools nationwide.

Board President Donald Patton was joined by Vice President Alethea Smith-Tucker, Y.F. Lou, and Dr. Naveed Baqir in voting to oust the Superintendent two months before the new school year begins. It is alleged that they are the compromised four. In a local pod cast, Highland Bunker, board member Doug Manley reported that Matt Clifford, who dropped out of the recent school board election, was offered support if he agreed to vote with Board President Patton. Manley also speculated that Y. F. Lou received the same offer.

Trustee Manley stated that in his view the only reason Shelton was removed from office was because of his opposition to letting charter schools parcel out the district. It is notable that in 2022, Shelton was named Delaware State Superintendent of the Year.

Longwood Foundation

The Longwood Foundation is not called the DuPont Foundation because it was originally established in 1937 by Pierre DuPont to support Longwood Gardens. A tax reform act in 1969 caused a change and Longwood Gardens Inc. was formed to finance the gardens. The Longwood Foundation remained in existence to “principally support charitable organizations” and push forward the DuPont agenda.

Over the last decade, the foundation has spent $1,812,200 to support Reading Assist Inc. whose web page says:

“Reading Assist provides high-dosage tutoring for students in grades K-3 in the lowest 25% for reading proficiency, with a focus on serving in schools where there is the highest need.

“We recruit, train, and embed AmeriCorps members – known as Reading Assist Fellows – willing to commit a school year of service to provide our accredited, one-on-one intervention program to struggling readers.”

Reading Assist is a science of reading (SoR) advocate whose founder has ties to the dyslexia community. AmeriCorps has helped provide Teach for America (TFA) training and recruits. In other words, these organizations come with privatization blemishes. Many researchers believe SoR is bad science promoted by wealthy people and publishing companies while TFA is their army.

Longwood is still a DuPont family run organization. According to the 2022 tax form 990PF (TIN: 51-0066734), John DuPont is the current president and Margaret DuPont is Vice President. The tax records also show that in the last decade they have provided the fake education graduate school, Relay Graduate School, $1,300,000.

The Foundation concentrates its spending into the Wilmington area and does very little spending nationally. So their spending of more than $15,000,000 on charter schools in the last decade has made a huge impact locally. Margaret and one other DuPont family member also sit on the board of the smaller Chelsea Foundation (TIN: 51-6015638) which also provides grants to charter schools. It is this drive to privatize the Christina School District that seems to have led to firing a respected and popular administrator.

In 2017, Indiana scholars Jim Scheurich, Gayle Cosby, and Nathanial Williams posted an article on Diane Ravitch’s blog that outlined the model used by billionaires to gain control of local schools.  Point five of their rich guy privatization model is, “Development of a network of local organizations or affiliates that all collaborate closely on the same local agenda.”

Please open the link to finish the article.

One other interesting point in Ultican’s post. Remember Julia Keleher? She was appointed to be the Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico when the island was in dire financial straits. She pushed charters and vouchers and was widely opposed by teachers, parents, and students. She ended her time on the island with a jail sentence:

While serving as Secretary of Education in Puerto Rico, Keleher who is not Puerto Rican, secured a new law allowing for charter schools and vouchers plus the closure of hundreds of schools.

On December 28, 2016, Keleher was appointed Puerto Rico Secretary of Education by Governor-elect Ricardo Rosselló who became so hated he was driven from office in 2019. The appointment was just a few months before hurricane Maria hit. Keleher also became disliked as was demonstrated by San Juan protesters loudly chanting, “Julia go home!”

Things went sideways for Keleher. December 17, 2021, a federal judge in Puerto Rico sentenced her with six months prison, 12 months house arrest and a $21,000 fine. She plead guilty in June to two felony counts involving conspiracies to commit fraud. Almost as soon as she finished her prison term, she was hired by First State Educate. Now she is the executive director.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Delaware, Education Reform, Teach for America

Washington Post: Elon Musk’s False Tweets Are Misleading the Public about Elections

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2024 //
5

The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk has used Twitter to spread lies about our elections. He owns Twitter and is accountable to no one. Musk has 197 million followers on Twitter, he says. He has repeatedly posted lies and conspiracy theories about our elections that have been debunked by independent experts.

I follow Musk’s tweets, and I can attest that he regularly repeats lies about the election. He posts incendiary comments about non-citizens voting in large number. He seems to get his ideas straight from Donald’s mouth. He posted that some 2 million noncitizens had registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Arizona. He has used his personal account to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about the integrity of elections.

Musk’s online utterances don’t stay online. His false and misleading election posts add to the deluge of inaccurate information plaguing voting officials across the country. Election officials say his posts about supposed voter fraud often coincide with an increase in baseless requests to purge voter rolls and heighten their worry over violent threats. Experts say Musk is uniquely dangerous as a purveyor of misinformation because his digital following stretches well beyond the political realm and into the technology and investment sectors, where his business achievements have earned him credibility.

After Musk bought Twitter, he made deep cuts in staff responsible for maintaining standards on the site, courted major conservative figures, and reoriented the platform to boost the reach of his account, which frequently spreads false statements without being subject to the kinds of fact checks that previously existed on the site. He reinstated accounts previously banned for violating the platform’s rules, including Donald Trump’s, and promised to usher in a less restrictive era…

Musk, who bought Twitter in November 2022, has repeatedly claimed without evidence that Democrats are “importing” undocumented people to vote in the coming election, a popular 2024 iteration of the Great Replacement Theory, which holds that a global elite is replacing European-descended populations with non-White people. He has falsely asserted that electronic voting machines are unreliable and that the country should return to hand-counting ballots. And he has promoted deepfakes and other deceptive images aimed at undermining politicians he doesn’t support.

Between his purchase of Twitter and Thursday, Musk’s 52 posts or reposts about noncitizen voting — one of the main topics of false or misleading election claims he made in that time period — drew almost 700 million views, according to a Post analysis.

A separate analysis found that 50 of Musk’s false or misleading claims about the U.S. election between Jan. 1 and July 31 were debunked by independent fact-checkers and still generated almost 1.2 billion views, according to a recent study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. None displayed community notes, X’s term for user-generated fact checks that Musk has promised serve as an “immediate way to refute anything false” that is posted on the platform…

His frequent amplification of election untruths has spurred typically low-profile election officials to publicly fact-check him. His immense reach far outstrips theirs, so they say they attempt to blunt the damage of his false posts by piggybacking on them with truthful fact checks of their own.

But in their effort to spread accurate election information, they are up against a formidable adversary. “The great risk in a privatized public sphere,” said Sophia Rosenfeld, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Democracy and Truth: A Short History,” is that the owner, in this case, Musk, “can control both the flow of information and the content of that information to suit their own needs, whether financial, ideological, or both.”
Musk’s control of X and his large following mean a single post from him can effectively take fringe election-denial falsehoods mainstream, experts say.

In Michigan, Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said her office tracked a direct correlation between Musk’s inaccurate tweets about elections and subsequent waves of harassment of local and state election administrators.

Musk is an enthusiastic supporter of Trump. They share hostility to the most basic activity in our democracy: voting for our leaders. Discredit elections, and the ground is set for authoritarianism.

Categories Billionaires, Elections, Extremism, Lies, Trump

Elon Musk Posts Fake Image of Kamala in Communist Uniform

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2024 //
13

Twitter (X) has few rules but one of them bars fake images.

X belongs to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. He can do whatever he wants on X. Rules are for others. So he did.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, on Monday posted a fake image of what appears to be Vice President Kamala Harris dressed in a red communist uniform.

“Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, in response to the vice president’s post warning about Trump being a “dictator on day one.”

According to X’s policy, users “may not share synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm. … In addition, we may label posts containing misleading media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”

Musk’s post does not have any such label on it.

Last month, Trump posted a fake, AI-generated image depicting Harris speaking in front of a communist symbol at the Democratic National Convention. 

The least trustworthy tweets are those posted by Musk.

Categories Billionaires, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Lies, Media

Thom Hartmann: Republicans Are the Party of Cruelty

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2024 //
74

Thom Hartmann is a keen observer of American politics. A prolific writer, he sees issues in historical perspective. He knows that your grandfather’s Republican Party was conservative and imbued with a sense of devotion to community and tradition. Conservatives conserve, not destroy. That party today is devoted to disruption, to destroying communities and their public schools, to protecting the billionaires, and to mocking the weak. It is not your grandfather’s Republican Party.

Thom Hartmann writes:

During the 1950s, Republicans were the party that promoted labor unions, Social Security, and a top 91% income tax bracket and 70% estate tax on the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower successfully campaigned on what we’d call a progressive agenda for re-election in 1956.

During the Reagan years, Republicans embraced Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism with its free trade, opposition to unions, ending free college, and tax cuts for the fat cats. They called themselves “the party of new ideas.” They may have done more harm than good, but for most Republicans it was a good-faith effort. 

Today, they’ve pretty much given up on all of that.  All they have left is cruelty.

When Governor Tim Walz gave his heartwarming acceptance speech Wednesday night here at the DNC in Chicago, his son Gus was caught on camera proudly proclaiming, through tear-streaked eyes, “That’s my dad!” 

The response from Trumpy Republicans was immediate: Ann Coulter wrote, “Talk about weird.” Rightwing hate jock Jay Weber posted, “Meet my son, Gus. He’s a blubbering bitch boy. His mother and I are very proud.” Trumpy podcaster Mike Crispi ridiculed Walz’s “stupid crying son,” adding, “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.” Another well-known podcaster on the right, Alec Lace, said, “Get that kid a tampon already.”

Compassion for a learning-disabled child is dead on the right: all they have left is cruelty.

Ronald Reagan helped shepherd through Congress the most consequential border bill in American history, and when it needed updating Oklahoma’s Republican Senator James Lankford worked with Democrats to update it in a meaningful way. Trump demanded Republicans kill the legislation, invoking the memory of his tearing over 5,500 babies away from their mothers and trafficking them into fly-by-night “adoption” schemes (around 1000 are still missing) and his demand that the border patrol shoot immigrants in the legs.

Trump’s acolytes in Congress don’t even pretend any more to have a border policy: all they have left is cruelty.

President George HW Bush worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to unwind the USSR in the hope of creating a democratic Russia. Neither expected Vladimir Putin to turn that nation into a virtual concentration camp where gays are routinely murdered, child pornography is legal (and they’ve kidnapped over 700,000 Ukrainian children), and dissenters are tortured, poisoned, and sent to brutal Siberian gulags. Donald Trump celebrates Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy,” handing Putin’s ambassador a western spy and top-secret information in his first month in office, and trying to abandon America’s traditional role as a moral leader in the world.

Trump’s GOP has abandoned our founding principles: all they have left is cruelty.

During the 2020 election, Trump followers tried to run a Biden/Harris campaign bus off the road in Texas, threatening to kill the occupants (which they believed included Kamala Harris). A crazed Trump supporter broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer. Trump tweeted a picture of the bus being attacked, writing below it, “I LOVE TEXAS!” and repeatedly makes jokes about the attack on Pelosi, as if to encourage future attacks on the families of other Democratic politicians.

Not a single elected Republican (as best as I can find with a pretty thorough web search) has condemned either: all they have left is cruelty.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis turned down federal money that would have fed 2.1 million low-income children in his state; he was one of 13 Republican governors to do the same, in a nation where one in seven children — over 11 million every year — go to bed hungry.

We are literally the only developed country in the world with a massive child hunger problem because all Republicans have left is cruelty.

When President Obama succeeded in passing and signing the Affordable Care Act, it offered every state funds to expand Medicaid to give healthcare coverage to all their low-income citizens with the federal government covering 90% of the cost. To this day, ten states under Republican control have refused to accept the money, leading to millions of preventable illnesses and early deaths.

Republican states could have joined all the Blue states and every other developed country in the world by providing universal healthcare, but refuse to because all they have left is cruelty.

 When a 10-year-old girl was raped and impregnated, Republicans like Congressman Jim Jordan, Governor Kristi Noem, Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Jesse Waters, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost ridiculed the claim. When the rape and pregnancy were proven and the girl fled Ohio to a state where abortion was legal to terminate the pregnancy, Indiana’s Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita promised to launch an “investigation.”

Rokita didn’t investigate the rape, however: he instead went after the physician who performed the abortion. Because cruelty is all Republicans have left.

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by seven million votes, he sent a violent mob against the US Capitol. As they tried to murder the vice president and speaker of the house, covered the walls of the building with feces and defaced priceless paintings, Trump gleefully watched on live television for over three hours while refusing to call in the national guard or take any other meaningful action.

Five civilians and three police officers died as the result of his sending that murderous mob because all he and his GOP have left is cruelty.

This week Americans saw Democrats display compassion, care, respect, and reverence for our democracy. We saw the best of this country, hope for the future, and actual plans to improve the lives of Americans.

Last month, in sharp contrast, we watched the Republican convention and saw, instead, a cavalcade of anger, bile, grievance, hate, and, of course, cruelty.

Because cruelty is all Republicans have left.

Note to Thom:

Some things you didn’t mention.

The red states that have repealed or loosened their child labor laws so that teens can work in hazardous jobs at younger ages.

The red states that overturned local laws requiring regular water breaks for laborers working outdoors in hot weather.

The red states that are defunding their public schools.

The red states that have abolished all gun laws and allow open carry of guns without a permit.

The red states oppose free lunches for children.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Closing schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Republicans

Robert Hubbell Denounces Washington Post Editorial on Kamala’s Economic Plan

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2024 //
12

Robert Hubbell was outraged by the editorial in The Washington Post attacking Kamala Harris’s economic plan. The editorial said, basically, that her plans to help the middle class made no sense. Consider the source, he says. In one post, he listed and praised Harris’s economic priorities, then went into detail, explaining how they would benefit the average American.

This is the heart of her economic plan:

  • Increase the child tax credit.
  • Increase the earned income tax credit for wage earners without children.
  • Prohibit price gouging in food supplies.
  • Subsidize down payments for first-time [home] buyers.
  • Decrease the cost of prescription drugs.

Then he followed up by attacking the Washington Post editorial belittling her plan.

He writes:

Apologies for taking a second-bite at the apple, but Jeff Bezos just gave Kamala Harris a gift that cannot be ignored. The Bezos-owned Washington Post just issued an Editorial by the Editorial Board that was titled, “Opinion The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks.”

Oh, thank you, Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and one of the largest home delivery grocery services on the planet, thank you!

Here is what Kamala Harris should do at the convention: Put up that headline on big screen, and give a speech that contains these elements:

The Washington Post Editorial Board, which works for billionaire Jeff Bezos, thinks it’s a “gimmick” to give families with newborns a tax credit in the first year of the newborn’s life.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos thinks it’s a “gimmick” to expand the child-tax credit, the single most effective measure for lifting children out of poverty in three generations.

Billionaire Bezos, who has a super-yacht to ferry passengers to his mega-yacht, thinks it’s a “gimmick” to give low-income working Americans a $1,500 tax credit.

Billionaire Bezos, whose company, Amazon, is trying to take over the pharmacy business in America, thinks it’s a gimmick to limit out of cost prescription drug prices to $2,000 for ALL Americans, not just seniors.

Billionaire Bezos, who just bought his THIRD mansion on an island in Florida, thinks it’s a gimmick to give first time home buyers a $25,000 subsidy for a starter home.

Billionaire Bezos says that we shouldn’t prohibit “price gouging” because grocery stores are aggressively reducing prices. Let me hear from you: Is your grocery bill going down now that inflation is under control?

Billionaire Bezos is free to have his personal newspaper criticize my plan all he wants. This is America and billionaires are entitled to free speech, even if they get to buy an Editorial Board to promote their opinions.

But fair is fair. Donald Trump held a press conference last week to reiterate his plan for the economy, which has only two elements: Extending tax cuts that favor billionaires and imposing an economy killing 10% tariff on all imports.

Here is what Jeff Bezos’s editorial board had to say about Donald Trump’s insane plan that just happens to be good for billionaires like Jeff Bezos: Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. 

That’s right, in the face of an economic plan that favors Jeff Bezos but would destroy the economy for hundreds of millions of Americans, the Washington Post Editorial Board was silent–but roused itself to say that my plan aimed at helping the working poor and middle class is–according to Bezos–a bunch of gimmicks.

Now, Jeff Bezos and his employees on the Editorial Board will tell you that Bezos doesn’t weigh in the editorial stance of the Washington Post. If you believe that the panicked voice of Jeff Bezos wasn’t in the ear of every editor who did his bidding by writing that editorial–while ignoring Trump’s plan–I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.

I have promised a new way forward for all Americans, one that does not involve a handful of billionaires telling us what is good for the working poor and middle class in America. I suggest that Jeff Bezos leave his private island in Florida, sell his super-yacht AND mega yacht, and spend some time with people like you–the people who built America before Amazon arrived on the scene and who will sustain it long after Amazon is gone. You are America. You are the new way forward. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Categories Bias, Billionaires, Economy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media
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