Archives for category: Democracy

We learned recently that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito flew an upside-down America flag in front of his home, a flag carried by January 6 insurrectionists to protest the 2024 election. He blamed his wife.

Now we learn that Justice Alito flew another seditious flag in front of his vacation home. It’s called “Appeal to Heaven,” and it’s closely tied to white Christian nationalism.

Justice Alito’s arrogance and disregard for judicial ethics is staggering. He has a lifetime appointment on a Court with a 6-3 conservative majority. He thinks he is above the law.

Sarah Posner wrote on the MSNBC site:

News that an Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying outside the beach house of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito marks the second report in the space of a week that a symbol used by Jan. 6 insurrectionists was seen outside one of his residences. According to the report from The New York Times, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the flag was photographed flying at the home on multiple occasions between July and September 2023. Alito has remained silent about how and why the flag came to be flying at his property, but the more one knows about the background of the flag, the more chilling its presence at his house becomes.

This flag, which bears the words “Appeal to Heaven” and an image of a green pine tree, is an unmistakable emblem for an influential segment of Christian nationalists who claim the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, contrary to God’s will, and that believers’ spiritual warfare is essential to restoring God’s anointed leader to his rightful office. It was one of numerous Christian nationalist flags and other iconography carried by Trump supporters Jan. 6 and at the Jericho March, a series of prayer rallies that were like jet fuel for the insurrection. The Jericho March featured right-wing evangelical and Catholic speakers alongside militants such as conspiracist Alex Jones, Trump’s disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Oathkeepers founder Stewart Rhodes, now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy and other crimes.

After years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation.

The Appeal to Heaven flag originated in Revolutionary times as a call to take up arms against unjust rulers who ignored the pleas of their citizens. But after years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR’s founder, C. Peter Wagner, drew on existing strands and trends in charismatic Christianity to create a powerful network of self-proclaimed apostles and prophets who claimed to be leading a revolution in Christianity. NAR’s adherents, as religion scholar and MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler has written, believe “the government should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming.” They promote spiritual warfare, including spiritual “mappings” to identify demonic forces in communities, and “power encounters” like exorcisms “to cleanse not only people, but cities and communities.” They envision not only a Christian nation, but also a new Christianity at the head of it.

Sheets is a prominent “prophet” in the world of the NAR. He claims to receive dreams and visions from God about world events, including the 2020 election and its aftermath. According to the Times, in his 2015 book Sheets maintained that God had “resurrected” the Appeal to Heaven flag and urged his readers to “Wave it outwardly: wear it inwardly. Appeal to heaven daily for a spiritual revolution that will knock out the Goliaths of our day.” Sheets made multiple appearances in Christian media after the 2020 election, claiming that the election was stolen and that demonic forces were behind this supposed fraud. Christian nationalist support for Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results was suffused with themes of spiritual battles against mighty, seemingly unbeatable forces. The Jericho March’s overriding message was that the participants were brave warriors against forces of “corruption,” whose prayers were going to cause the “walls” of the “deep state” to fall, like the walls of Jericho in the Bible.

Matthew D. Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, and the author of a forthcoming book about the New Apostolic Reformation, told me that Sheets “believes he has a special anointing on his life, and a special anointing to bring the American government into alignment with his interpretation of Christianity, including, especially, the Supreme Court.” Sheets has claimed, for example, that his “apostolic decrees” helped swing the 2000 election to George W. Bush and that he prophesied changes at the Supreme Court after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist (who were replaced by Alito and John Roberts, respectively).

“Christian supremacists,” as Taylor describes Sheets and his allies, “would like to see the Supreme Court rule according to his interpretation of the Bible, that the law of God would become the supreme law of the land.” The court’s 2015 decision legalizing marriage equality dismayed Sheets, like many on the right, and he took a particular interest in the 2016 election. “They are praying for total changeover in American culture to restore America to its original covenantal purposes and covenantal arrangement with God,” Taylor said. “Abortion and same-sex marriage are seen as impediments to this.” While Sheets claims to be calling for a spiritual revolution, Taylor said, the Appeal to Heaven flag nonetheless signals “an implied threat of violence.”

After Sheets’ book, the flag’s use skyrocketed in evangelical communities connected to the NAR. It even received a boost from former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who said Sheets gave her one of her own. In 2020, the flag increasingly became highly associated with Trump and then the insurrection. Taylor said neo-Nazi and other extremist groups have since adopted it, as well.

According to Taylor, the flag’s use and significance spread like wildfire in some evangelical communities, even as other Americans were unaware of its popularity or meaning. But Alito is not just an ordinary citizen; he’s one of the nine most powerful jurists in the country. The leading proponent of the flag has very specifically taken an interest in the actions of the high court, and we already know from previous reporting that Alito is cozy enough with some evangelical activists to dine with them.

Legitimate questions need to be answered about who else had access to the justice. And Americans cannot be kept in the dark about how this radical antidemocratic symbol came to fly outside his house. The public particularly needs to know before the court decides, in the coming weeks, Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution for Jan. 6. If Alito acquired the flag on his own and chose to fly it, the public needs to know why. The flag’s proponents want a Christian supremacist revolution against the government. Does Alito?

Sarah Posner is the author of “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Religion, Separation of church and state

House Republicans Attack University Presidents as “Anti-Semitic” for not Clearing Campus Protests

By dianeravitch

May 24, 2024 //

From the beginning of the pro-Palestinian campus protests, I have objected to the students’ one-sided support of one side—Hamas. Their chant of “from the river to the sea” implicitly endorses Hamas’ demand to eliminate the state of Israel and to “Islamicize” all the land that includes Israel. With a better knowledge of history, the students would have condemned Hamas’ terrorism and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has launched a campaign of intimidation and terror against the civilian population of Gaza, who have been victims of not only mass bombing but famine.

The Washington Post reported that the campus protests have failed to win the support of the American public. Perhaps they remember 9/11 or the USS Cole or any number of other terrorist attacks where the victims were Americans.

Multiple polls in recent weeks have shown relatively little sympathy for the protesters or approval of their actions. And notably, large numbers of Americans have attached the “antisemitic” label to them.

The most recent data on this come in the form of a striking poll in New York, a hotbed of the protests at Columbia University, in particular.
The Siena College poll shows residents even of that blue-leaning state — Democrats tend to sympathize more with the Palestinian cause — agreed 70 percent to 22 percent that the protests “went too far, and I support the police being called in to shut them down.”

Public sentiment has encouraged Republicans to politicize the issue by harassing university presidents for their failure to close down the student protests. There is something richly ironic about the new-found Republican interest in anti-Semitism. If they really cared about Jew-hatred, they would ask Trump to testify about his relationships to known anti-Semites and neo-Nazis.

But no. Their audiences want to see them pillory the presidents of elite universities, to please their base. The most aggressive of the questioners, Rep. Elise Stefanik, is a graduate of Harvard University. Her low tactics are a disgrace to her university.

Yesterday, members of Congress, mostly Republicans, harangued three university presidents for ignoring anti-Semitism displayed by campus protestors who support Palestinians, and in some cases, the terrorist group Hamas.

Three university leaders were accused on Thursday, during a congressional hearing, of turning a blind eye to antisemitism on their campuses, while capitulating to “pro-Hamas” and “pro-terror” student groups.

During more than three hours of grueling questioning, Northwestern University President Michael Schill, Rutgers University Jonathan Holloway and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block were often bullied and taunted by members of the House Committee on Education & the Workforce for not cracking down more forcefully on anti-Israel protesters who had set up unauthorized encampments on their campuses.

“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students,” said Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.

Schill and Holloway bore the brunt of the wrath of the Republican-controlled committee for also cutting deals with the protesters rather than calling in police to clear the encampments. Seven Jewish members of a committee tasked with fighting antisemitism at Northwestern resigned in protest at the concessions made by their university president to the protesters.

Neither university agreed to an academic boycott of Israel, but they promised to hold discussions in the future on the possibility of divesting from companies with ties to Israel. As part of its agreement, Northwestern also promised to take in students from Gaza displaced by the war, while Rutgers agreed to form a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.

“I think your performance here has been very embarrassing to your school,” U.S. Representative Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, told Schill after the president of Northwestern refused to answer questions about a journalism professor at his university who had participated in the protests and scuffled with police.

When asked by Banks whether he allows professors at Northwestern to praise Hamas, Schill, who is Jewish, responded: “They have all the rights of free speech.”

Banks retorted: “Four billion dollars have gone to your university. We should not give you another taxpayers’ dollar for the joke your university has become.”

Elise Stefanik, the Republican congresswoman from New York, was especially hostile, accusing Schill of “unilateral capitulation to the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, antisemitic encampment.“

When he tried to clarify a point, Stefanik – who has been fashioning herself as a leading voice against the pro-Palestinian student protests – cut him off. “I’m asking the questions here,” she said angrily.

When asked by Stefanik if it was true that he had asked the director of the Hillel chapter at Northwestern whether it was possible to hire an ant-Zionist rabbi as university chaplain, Schill responded emphatically that he had never made such an inquiry.

“That’s not true according to the whistleblowers who’ve come forth to this committee,” retorted Stefanik.

Holloway was interrogated by Congressman Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia, about a think tank at Rutgers that has referred to Israel’s government as genocidal, among other anti-Israel statements it has issued in recent months. When asked, Holloway said he had no intention of closing down this Center for Security, Race and Rights.

Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?“

Holloway: “Sir, I don’t have an opinion about Israel in terms of that phrase.”

Good: “You do not have an opinion as to whether or not Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “No, sir. I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself.”

Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, sir.”

Good: “But you will not say that Israel’s government is not genocidal? You can’t say that?”

Holloway: “Sir, I believe the government . . . “

Good: “Are you in a position to answer any questions? Do you have an opinion on anything?

Later on in the hearing, Holloway was given a second chance to address the question, phrased somewhat differently. When asked by Congressman Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri, whether they believed Israel was genocidal, all three university leaders responded that they did not.

Categories Academic Freedom, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Idaho: A Conservative Republican Wins an Uphill Battle Against Extremists Who Run the State

By dianeravitch

May 24, 2024 //

Politico published a fascinating article about Idaho’s extremist Republican politics. The story focused on one former Republican state legislator, Jim Woodward, who is anti-abortion and pro-gun in a state where Democrats are a tiny minority, only 12.6% of registered voters.

Idaho has one of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

Woodward was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2020. But he lost in 2022 to Scott Herndon, an extremist who wants to criminalize abortion and codify it as murder; who wants vouchers for religious schools; and who wants guns everywhere.

This year Woodward is running as a moderate Republican, still anti-abortion but supporting exceptions like the health of the mother.

Idaho’s ban, which automatically took effect when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, begins at conception and doesn’t make an exception for the future health of the mother. In 2020, Woodward, a Republican, voted yes on a law that requires physicians to prove that a mother’s life is at risk before performing an abortion or face fines, lawsuits, jail time and revoked medical licenses. In March of 2022, Woodward voted yes on another law that allows family members, including those of rapists (although not rapists themselves), to sue providers for performing abortions.

But Woodward is now running to moderate the law, having realized belatedly that physicians are fleeing the states and the hospital in his own district has closed its labor and delivery service, leaving 50,000 women without access to OB-GYN health services. Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary. So Woodward must reach out to moderate Republicans.

His opponent Scott Herndon opposes any exceptions to the ban on abortion. Herndon believes that there should be no abortion allowed even for a child who has been raped. Instead, the child should view her pregnancy as “an opportunity.”

Woodward beat Herndon in a close election by 52-48%. But in the same election, other moderate Republicans lost their seats to extremists, who picked up two Senate seats and five House seats.

The Politico article uses the contest between Woodward and Herndon to illustrate the close link between extremist views on abortion and on vouchers. They want to ban all abortions and destroy public schools.

The Recall Replace Rebuild West Bonner County School District (RRR) group was started by a group of Priest River moms — both Republicans and Democrats — when their school board was infiltrated by far-right culture warriors in the 2022 election. In June 2023, those members, who held a majority as three of the five trustees on the board, elected a superintendent, Brendan Durst, with zero state-required education certifications and ties to the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right political activist organization that aims “to defeat Marxism and socialism”; it has called public schools “the most virulent form of socialism.” Militia members began showing up at school board meetings, the school levy that funds basic operations failed to pass as residents became divided into camps “for” or “against” public education, curriculum slipped out of state compliance, and Durst began working to have intelligent design taught in biology classes and offer an Old Testament course (neither came to pass). The resulting chaos, social and political division, and lack of resources sent nearly 50 teachers, counselors and a principal fleeing the district. Many families left as well. Durst told one reporter that “his takeover was a ‘pilot’ others could learn from.”

Less than three months after Durst was hired, RRR gathered enough signatures to hold a recall election — framed not along party lines, but as those who cared about a functioning school district for their children against those embracing extremism. An astonishing 60.9 percent of voters turned out, and two of the three far-right board members were voted off. Durst resigned the following month when the State Board of Education blocked his certification.

“Eight hundred people voted in the 2022 election where those three board members were elected, and they won by a handful of votes, literally single digits,” Woodward says as we pull up to the community center. “But when 2,100 people showed up to vote in the recall election, then two of those same people were told to pack their bags. When you get a bigger slice of the population showing up, you get a decision that really reflects the values of the community.”

The RRR meeting tonight is attended by at least 50 people, in a town of only 1,700 on a rainy Monday night; there’s a lot of work to be done still to pass a levy to fund the school district. It’s clear that there’s no love in the room for Herndon. People say he escorted Durst into the first school board meeting where Durst was considered as superintendent, which was packed with militia members (Herndon says he was at the meeting, but did not escort Durst). After finishing the meeting agenda, Dana Douglas, one of the group leaders and a self-described conservative Christian, introduces Woodward with a reminder to the group that in the 2022 election, “only a third of Priest River turned out to vote. And of those votes, 75 percent went to Herndon and 25 percent went to Woodward. We want to flip that this time, and we need your help.”

Even if Woodward does win this race, it’s doubtful how much he can accomplish in a legislature with a far-right caucus bullying legislators into voting in lockstep. But he’s optimistic that a stronger moderate showing in the election will empower more moderate lawmaking.

“It takes leadership and a few strong individuals to do the right thing,” he says. “If the voters are supportive of a more moderate position, then legislators can step forward and do that. The party’s controlled by the minority position, so that silent majority needs to step up and let people know that they want to be represented.”

The article is a stark reminder of the deep divide that splits the nation and the rise of extremist politics in the Republican Party.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Gender, Guns, Idaho, Vouchers

Greg Olear: Everything You Need to Know About Trump and the Threat to Democracy

By dianeravitch

May 23, 2024 //

In my meanderings through the Internet, I discovered Greg Olear’s blog. He is wise, insightful, always informative. In his most recent post, Greg announces a new book.

He writes:

Two months or so ago, it occurred to me that I should write a new Trump book: or, to be more accurate, that I should distill the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve produced about Donald Trump and his despotic plans for a second term, organize them into a coherent narrative, and produce a book-length argument for why this corrupt and hateful human being should never again set foot in the Oval Office—and what ugly future we should expect if he does.

The result is Rough Beast: Who Donald Trump Really Is, What He’ll Do if Re-Elected, and Why Democracy Must Prevail, which is, as of today, available in paperback and e-book format on Amazon, with an audiobook in the works, via Four Sticks Press. (Later this week, it will be available for bookstores to order directly, via Ingram Spark.)

As with Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia, which came out six years ago this month, Rough Beast is a short, easy-to-consume volume intended for readers who are not in the know, to alert them to the danger. It is, as I write in the sub-sub-title, “An Urgent Appeal to Independents, Undecideds, Fiscal Republicans, Third Party People, Voters Who ‘Don’t Like Politics,’ and the Biden-Hating Left.”

The most important—and, if Trump wins, the last—election in U.S. history is six short months away, and the polls show a dead heat. Rough Beast is my attempt to help the good guys prevail.

Rough Beast: Introduction, Slouching Towards Dictatorship by Greg Olear

Greg Olear

Donald Trump’s term in office can be summed up in four words: pandemic, protest, impeachment, and insurrection. He left the White House with 392,428 Americans dead of a plague he exacerbated; with Washington recovering from a coup attempt he instigated; with the economy teetering towards recession; with our standing around the world at its lowest point in a century; and with the U.S. an additional $8 trillion in debt. He had, by far, the lowest average presidential approval rating since Gallop started keeping track in 1938, and was widely reviled abroad. Four of the five largest protests in the history of the country happened on his watch. He was impeached twice. He could have been impeached a third time, in 2019, after the release of the Mueller Report—which, contrary to what Trump and the mendacious Bill Barr told us, did not exonerate him. Even his much-ballyhooed campaign promises fell flat: He failed to build the wall, and he failed to drain the swamp. He did, however, watch a lot of television and play a lot of golf.

In the various presidential surveys taken since Donald left office, historians have consistently ranked Trump dead last, behind even the contemptible white supremacist Andrew Johnson and the hapless James Buchanan. This is not recency bias. By any metric, Trump was a catastrophic failure: corrupt, sociopathic, cruel, venal, disruptive, artless, dumb, and pathologically inept—a terrible president and an even worse human being. He threw paper towels at hurricane victims! He called veterans of our armed forces “suckers and losers!” He invited the Taliban to Camp David! He banked $2.4 billion in emoluments during his four years in office! He characterized the neo-Nazis at Charlottesville as “very fine people!” He nominated an(other) alleged sexual assailant to the Supreme Court! He sat on his ass watching TV as his besiegers stormed the Capitol! He humped a flag! And that’s just off the top of my head.

We have never had a monster like this in the White House. No one comes close. That the country managed to survive four years of Trump suggests that Otto von Bismarck was on to something when he remarked that God seems to have a special providence for the United States of America. With Donald, we dodged a big orange bullet.

In a word, we were spared.

And yet as I write this, Donald John Trump is the presumptive nominee of one of our two major political parties. Only two individuals have a legitimate chance at winning the White House in November—I’ll talk about the myth of third parties and the perils of voting for the nihilistic likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in Chapter 9—and Trump is one of them. And he’s not just that political party’s nominee. Donald Trump has subverted the entire GOP, purged it of the disloyal, and taken total command. He installed his daughter-in-law—Lara Trump, desecrator of Tom Petty’s memory and wife of Eric Trump (Donald’s son who ripped off his own cancer charity)— as co-chair at the RNC, and changed the organization’s rules there so that the lion’s share of donations will be used to cover his mounting legal bills. As I explore further in Chapter 8, the conventional, old-school Republicans of yesteryear have either retired, lost, died, or kissed the ring. Don’t be fooled by the cute elephant logo. Whatever the branding, this is no longer the Party of Lincoln. There is no GOP anymore, only MAGA. It is an entire party built around a demagogue with dictatorial ambitions.

If the polls are to believed, that demagogue has a coin flip’s chance of retaking the White House. Like, this might actually happen! People in my family are going to vote for him. People in your family are probably going to vote for him, too. And if, God forbid, he succeeds, there are—as I explain in Chapter 7—a rabid battalion of religious zealots, Christian nationalists, and reactionary monarchists poised to make so many drastic changes to the country so quickly that the United States won’t be recognizable by the Fourth of July 2025. The threat is real. The situation is dire.

This isn’t me, a known “TRUMP HATER,” trying to frame the narrative to make Donald look bad. All of what I’m saying here is objectively true, as this book will make abundantly clear. As the kids say: #Facts…

Description

Who is the real Donald Trump? A serial liar with long ties to both organized crime and the Kremlin. A corrupt demagogue whom most historians consider the worst U.S. president of all time. And, most urgently, a vengeful wannabe dictator whose re-election would end American democracy. In this short and necessary volume, Dirty Rubles author Greg Olear presents the facts about FPOTUS: who he is, what he plans to do, and why the country cannot survive a second Trump term. Donald Trump is a Rough Beast. America is slouching towards dictatorship.

Table of Contents

Trump is a serial liar

Trump is a lifelong criminal and a longtime Kremlin stooge

Trump is corrupt

Trump was an awful president

Trump wants to be a dictator

The far right wants a dictator—a Red Caesar

Project 2025 is a despotic roadmap for Trump’s second term

The old GOP is dead and gone

Voting for a third party candidate helps re-elect Trump

Life of the real Donald Trump

Please open the link to finish reading Greg’s summary of the book.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Trump

Thom Hartmann: How to Fix the Supreme Court’s Devotion to Big Money

By dianeravitch

May 23, 2024 //

Thom Hartmann is convinced that We, the People, must find a way to restrict the Supreme Court’s devotion to the financial interests of the wealthiest Americans. There is a way, he writes, but note that it will require Democratic control of both houses of Congress. Another reason to vote and make sure your friends and family vote.

Hartmann writes in The Daily Kos:

Is there a way to reverse the decision by five Republicans on the Supreme Court that it’s OK for billionaires and big corporations to bribe politicians?

Americans are watching with increasing shock and dismay:

— President Biden tried to knock up to $20,000 off the debt of every person in the country with a student loan. Republicans decided this might somehow, someday mean fewer profits for banks — who financially support the GOP — so they sued at the Supreme Court. The Republican appointees on the Court, over the objections of the three Democratic appointees, killed the president’s effort without providing any cogent constitutional rationalization.

— Scientists have developed lab-grown meat that is healthier, easier on the planet, and, when manufactured at scale, cheaper than beef, pork, or chicken. The animal ag industry freaked out and threw a bunch of cash at Republican members of Congress, who are now trying to outlaw the product before the companies developing it can get to scale. Even the buggywhip makers back in the day didn’t think the way to protect their industry was to buy off politicians (of course that was before five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery).

— Climate change is devastating our planet and fine particle emissions from trucks cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and illnesses from heart disease, COPD, asthma, and cancer every year. To solve the problem, the EPA put forward new truck emission standards that will phase in between 2027 and 2032. This week, twenty-seven Republican-controlled states whose politicians take money from the fossil fuel industry sued to block the rules and protect the profits of the trucking and petroleum industries.

— Title IX of the federal code, which forbids gender-based discrimination in education, is being extended by the Department of Education to protect members of the queer community. Rightwing Christian groups, which provide billions of dollars and millions of votes to Republicans, pinged state-level politicians, so now Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Oklahoma have filed suit before hand-picked rightwing judges to allow schools to legally trash LGBTQ+ students.

— The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) promulgated a new rule limiting credit card late fees to $8 each, protecting America’s most vulnerable families. The banks pulled the GOP’s chain and Republican senators Tim Scott, John Thune, John Barrasso, Jerry Moran, John Boozman, Steve Daines, Mike Rounds, Thom Tillis, Marsha Blackburn, Kevin Cramer, Mike Braun, Bill Hagerty, and Katie Britt introduced legislation to reverse the policy and allow banks to again screw low-income people.

— In 2003, George W. Bush signed legislation to privatize Medicare through the so-called Medicare Advantage scam, which last year overcharged our government more than $140 billion while denying millions of claims from Americans unfortunate enough to have signed up for it. Republicans on the take from the insurance industry are now pushing a plan to gut or even shut down real Medicare, leaving all seniors to the tender mercies of this predatory industry.

— Ultra-processed foods are accused of causing obesity, diabetes, cancer, and host of other illnesses both physical and mental: American children, who consume as much as two-thirds of their calories from these products, are experiencing an epidemic of obesity and diseases associated with it. With Republican politicians running interference for them, the processed food industry has now succeeded in getting their ultra-processed “food” products placed in thousands of school lunch programs, paid for with our tax dollars. As The Washington Post noteda few months ago, “Republicans have continued to fight stricter standards” and, “Some Republicans are now threatening to block the USDA from further limiting sodium and reducing added sugar in milk…”

Increasingly, Americans are realizing the cancer eating our democracy is the power of great wealth and Supreme Court-legalized political bribery. And Sam Alito flying his flag upside-down in support of Trump’s coup and Clarence Thomas openly taking bribes are their ways of saying they think they’re completely immune from accountability.

In a 1978 Republican-only decision written by Lewis Powell (author of the notorious “Powell Memo” which told rich people how to take over our politics, schools, media, and courts), five corrupt members of the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are “persons” with full access to the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment right of free speech. They added that money is the same thing as “free speech,” legalizing political bribery by both billionaires and giant corporations.

In 2010, five other Republicans on the Court doubled down on that Bellottidecision with Citizens United, which overturned hundreds of good government and anti-bribery laws, some dating all the way back to the 19th century. As a result, it’s almost impossible to prosecute any but the most obvious and egregious examples of bribery (see: Menendez) of both American politicians and judges, including billionaires and religious corporations blatantly bribing Supreme Court justices.

Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito openly flaunt the gifts they receive from wealthy interests with business before the Court, as Trump fangirl Aileen Cannon and hundreds of other federal and state court judges are routinely wined and dined at luxury resorts. As long as they continue to rule the way the morbidly rich want and bribery continues to be legal, it appears the gravy train will never end.

Unless we do something about it.

Every single one of these problems — and hundreds more — continue to exist in the face of overwhelming public disapproval because one or another industry or group of rightwing billionaires has been empowered by the Supreme Court’s Bellotti and Citizens United decisions to bribe politicians and judges.

Democrats in Congress must reverse those bizarre, democracy-destroying decisions with a new law declaring an end to this American political crime spree. If they retake the House and hold the Senate and White House this fall, it’ll be their opportunity to re-criminalize bribery of elected officials.

To do that, they need to defy the Court’s declaration that money is “free speech” and corporations are “persons.” That defiance requires something called “court-stripping.”

Republicans understand exactly what I’m talking about: Since the 1950s, they’ve introduced hundreds of pieces of court-stripping legislation. They tried to do the same thing most recently in 2005 with the Marriage Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives on July 22, 2004.

That law, designed to override Supreme Court protections of LGBTQ+ people, contained the following court-stripping paragraph:

“No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C or this section.”

In other words, Congress wrote, the Supreme Court has no say in the matter of this particular legislation.

The Marriage Protection Act died in the Senate, but it’s one of hundreds of pieces of court-stripping legislation introduced — almost all by Republicans (House Whip Tom Delay was the master of this) — in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Brown v Board and Roe v Wade.

This process of “court-stripping” is based in Article 3, Section 2 of the US Constitution, which says:

“[T]he supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

Regulations? Exceptions?!?

Turns out, the Constitution says Congress can regulate the Court by, for example, expanding the number of its members, determining if Court hearings must be public/televised, or if they must live by a Judicial Code of Conduct (among other things).

Congress should be doing all these things as soon as possible.

Additionally, Congress can create what the Constitution calls “Exceptions” to the things the Court can rule on.

In today’s crisis, Congress could say, “Supreme Court, you may no longer rule on whether money in politics is ‘free speech.’ We’re taking that power from you because the Constitution gives it to us and you have screwed it up so badly.”

And, it turns out, Congress has already gone there, most recently creating exceptions to what our courts may do in a law that waspassed and signed by President Bush the very next year: The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

That law explicitly strips from federal courts — including the Supreme Court — their power to hear appeals against the Bush administration detaining, torturing, imprisoning in Guantanamo, or even killing suspected Muslim terrorists. It says:

“[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba…”

And that’s just the beginning. There’s even, as the Brennan Center notes, a court-stripping provision in the PATRIOT act of 2001. I lay out dozens of other examples and a history of court-stripping that extends back to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson — an outspoken advocate or reducing the power of the Supreme Court — in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America.

As House Speaker Tom Delay said back in the days of his court-stripping Marriage Protection Act: “Judges need to be intimidated” and “Congress should take no prisoners in dealing with the courts.”

Putting forward such a law would highlight how Citizen United’s SCOTUS-legalized political bribery is at the core of our political dysfunction, even if it doesn’t pass Congress or even if the Court itself strikes it down.

Rightwing oligarchs and giant corporations have now taken total control of the entire GOP and corrupted more than a few Democrats, all while polluting our public discourse with their think tanks and media outlets: such legislation would, at the very least, highlight this and pressure the Court to change their policies. “Intimidate” the Court, to quote Tom Delay.

Congress must stand up for what’s right and is consistent with American values: Legally bribed politicians and judges aren’t that.

It’s high time to end the bribery and get something done for We the People.

Categories Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Justice

Jan Resseger: Why Vouchers Are Disastrous Public Policy

By dianeravitch

May 23, 2024 //

Jan Resseger can always be counted on to add the voice of reason into heated issues, relying on research and calm discussion.

She writes:

In a thoughtful commentary, the Economic Policy Institute’s Hilary Wething and Josh Bivens deride as bad public policy today’s state-by-state wave of new and expanded private school tuition vouchers:

“Public education is worth preserving—it should be seen as one of the most important achievements in our c0untry’s history and crucial for the social and economic welfare of future generations… In the 21st century, unfortunately, too many policymakers seem determined to squander this legacy by starving public education of money and legitimacy, often in the name of ‘school choice.’ Their central claim (when they bother to make one with any clarity) is that public provision of goods or services is ineffective by definition and that a dose of private market-like competition will lead to better schooling outcomes for the nation’s children.”

Wething and Bivens explore the basic economic flaws in pro-voucher ideology and argue that “conditions needed for market competition to lead to better outcomes clearly do not exist in the educational realm.” In the first place, our nation benefits from educating all children, and the marketplace can’t be counted on to fill that role: “In other markets, if the private sector is doing a poor job at offering attractive options for a good or service, people can just consume other things.” “Second, competition works well when the cost of switching providers is small,” but “switching schools is an extraordinarily costly decision in time, administrative burden, and severed social networks.” Third, markets work when the choice of product affects only the buyer and seller, but, “Universal schooling generates positive spillovers to society at large, meaning that individuals would be inclined to underinvest in education relative to the full benefits it provides.”

Wething and Bivins describe voucher supporters presuming that diversion of dollars to vouchers will not harm the essential institution of public schools. In fact, however, public schools in most places are underfunded in terms of the actual cost of needed services: “Newer research with better methods confirms that more money for public schools does improve educational outcomes… In short, the evidence indicates that public schooling in the United States simply needs more resources to deliver even better student achievement—not some radical disruption in how it is delivered and by what institutions.”

Not only does more money improve schooling outcomes for children, but recent academic research demonstrates that by investing more public resources in their public schools, states and localities can “improve schooling outcomes for children… (with) the largest beneficial effects on the performance of particularly disadvantaged students.” Wething and Bivins cite peer-reviewed, 2016, research by Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico on the impact of statewide school finance reforms that increased public school spending between 1972 and 2010: “(A) 10% increase in school spending for 12 years led to increases in high school graduation rates, 7% higher wages, and 10% higher family incomes in adulthood for children from districts that saw the spending increase.”

New research also confirms that vouchers are ineffective as an educational investment. Dollars diverted from public schools often flow to private schools with inferior academics: “Several high-quality studies have investigated the impact of recent voucher programs and have found notably worse outcomes for student achievement… In Ohio, under the EdChoice program, students who went to private schools with a voucher performed worse than they would have had they remained in public schools. In Indiana, students that used the Indiana Choice Scholarship voucher program experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 standard deviations in mathematics.”

The expansion of vouchers inevitably sets up a long term drain on public resources: “Vouchers reduce public school resources, but introduce large new fiscal obligations overall… Where significant voucher programs have been instituted, the resources available to public school children have decreased… The failure to increase per-pupil (public school) funding leads to the erosion of public education services in all forms: everything from school meals, extracurricular activities, mental health and counseling services, vocational and technical programs and investments in teacher quality and pay. It is worth noting that flat per-pupil educational spending—even in inflation-adjusted terms—is effectively a decline in the quality of education over time.”

Wething and Bivens sum up the evidence: “Vouchers are not a cost-free policy that simply adds on another education option for children—they are instead an intentional attack on universal public education… Vouchers make no coherent economic sense, and the evidence shows that vouchers harm student achievement and expose state budgets to large future obligations that are hard to forecast, even while they divert spending away from public education.”

The new brief from Wething and Bivens describes in concrete economic terms,what the late political theorist Benjamin Barber formulates as a basic principle of good public policy: “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics… Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all. Public liberty is what the power of common endeavor establishes, and hence presupposes that we have constituted ourselves as public citizens by opting into the social contract. With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Vouchers

David Beats Goliath! NYC Retirees Win Legal Battle to Stop City from Forcing Them into a Medicare Advantage Plan!

By dianeravitch

May 22, 2024 //

For more than 50 years, New York City recruited new employees with an offer that included strong healthcare benefits in retirement. Recently, the City government decided that it could save money by forcing some 250,000 retirees to abandon Medicare and enroll in a for-profit Medicare Advantage Plan administered by Aetna. Retirees had no choice, and most of their unions sided with the City, not their own members.

One incredibly persistent, bold, fearless retiree refused to accept the deal that took away her Medicare and supplementary plan. Marianne Pizzitola, a retired Emergency Medical Technician with the Fire Department, created a group called the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees. The City had promised her those benefits, like other city employees, and she was not going to let the City take them away without her consent.

Pizzitola began to organize. She gathered research, allies, and funds to fight the City and some of its biggest unions, including the United Federation of Teachers. She set up a Facebook account and used social media to recruit other retirees and to explain why the deal was a sell-out. She frequently gave ZOOM briefings to members of her group, whose numbers continued to grow. MA plans, unlike Medicare, require patients to get prior authorizations before allowing major procedures; members of MA plans must use in-network doctors. MA plans have overbilled the federal government by billions of dollars.

The Chief-Leader, a publication for city employees, wrote about her battle with the City in April:

Pizzitola’s enterprise began on Aug. 13, 2021, a Friday, the city still under a Covid cloud, when 17 of the 40 people she had invited to hone opposition to the city’s proposed plan joined a Zoom call. Five would volunteer to mount a challenge to the city’s proposal. At the conclusion of the two-hour call, the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees was launched, and Pizzitola was chosen to lead it as president.

“In a few hours, we had a name, a mission, an attorney, a bank. And then that weekend, I started a PayPal, a YouTube, a Facebook, and I drafted our first website,” she said.

The organization, funded by donations, most of $25, has since grown to include a board of directors and an administrative board along with advisors and volunteers, some of them former city and union officials.

Since that August day, over hundreds of emails, at rallies, on YouTube, Threads, Twitter and TikTok, in strategy sessions with attorneys, at gatherings with retirees, and during court hearings, Pizzitola has parlayed her passion, belief and deep knowledge of sometimes opaque policy points and obscure legislation to, so far, preserve what she adamantly believes the retirees, herself among them, are due.

The NYC retirees’ group sued the City, on the grounds that the City was withdrawing benefits that were promised to its members when they were hired. Many had accepted lower pay because of the excellent benefits, especially the healthcare. The group won in the first court that heard the case. The City appealed, and yesterday the State Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in favor of the retirees and “permanently” barred the City from reneging on its promises to retirees.

Marianne Pizzitola proved that one person can win in the face of overwhelming power and money by recruiting allies, gathering sound research, and communicating effectively. Google her name and you will find numerous videos on YouTube where she explains why Medicare is better than Medicare Advantage and why other retirees should support the fight.

Yesterday, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees issued the following press release. The full decision is attached.

Retiree Update

WE WON!!!

On March 21, 2024 we had oral arguments and today, May 21, we were given a unanimous decision. We thank all of you for believing in us and our legal team. Without all of you, we would never have got this far. The Court said, the City cannot take away our Medicare Supplement.

This is the exact decision, “Accordingly, the judgment (denominated an order) of the Supreme Court, New York County (Lyle E. Frank, J.), entered September 19, 2023, which, in this hybrid proceeding-class action brought pursuant to CPLR article 78, granted the petition complaint to the extent of permanently enjoining the City respondents/defendants from eliminating petitioner/plaintiff retirees’ existing health insurance, automatically enrolling them in a new Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan, enforcing a June 30, 2023 deadline for retirees to opt out of the new plan, and implementing any other aspect of the City’s new retiree healthcare policy, should be affirmed, without costs.”

You can read it here

CELEBRATE. YOU EARNED THIS!

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Health, New York City, Union

Thom Hartmann: Will the Billionaires Destroy Our Society?

By dianeravitch

May 19, 2024 //

Thom Hartmann uses this post to illustrate the malign influence of concentrated wealth. Billionaires are giving generously to Trump in hopes of keeping their taxes low and their power intact. He urges us to organize against this threat to our democratic aspirations.

He writes:

The headline in this week’s Fortune reads:

“Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warns U.S. is ‘on the brink’ and estimates a more than 1 in 3 chance of civil war”

Billionaires and civil war? A billionaire-funded Supreme Court Justice flew the American flag upside down outside his house after January 6th in apparent support of Donald Trump‘s attempt to overthrow our government.

Americans for Tax Fairness reports that 50 billionaire families have, at this early stage, already injected almost a billion dollars into our political system — the overwhelming majority of it going to Republicans and in support of Donald Trump — in an effort to maintain enough control of our political system that their taxes won’t go up. And that total is just what’s reported: it doesn’t count the billions in unknowable dark money that’s sloshing around the system thanks to Citizens United.

Back in the day, the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis warned us:

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

The number one movie in America last month was Civil War. Rightwing militias are on the march. More than half of Republicans say they are “expecting” a civil war.

How did we get here? And what does oligarchy have to do with civil war?

The clear result of five corrupt Republicans on the 1978 and 2010 Supreme Courts legalizing political bribery of politicians (and Supreme Court justices) by both corporations and the morbidly rich is that America is now well past the halfway mark of a fatal-to-democracy slide into oligarchy and the strongman autocracy typically associated with it. And the conflict that can follow that.

You can see the consequence in any contemporary survey. The majority of people want things, from a strengthened social safety net to a cleaner, safer environment to quality, free education, that Congress refuses to do anything about because it is in thrall to great wealth.

As President Jimmy Carter told me eight yearsago:

“It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”

For example, just last week, Donald Trump solicited a $1 billion bribe from a group of fossil fuel executives in exchange for undoing all of President Biden’s climate regulations.

In a testament to how today’s form of transactional oligarchy has become normalized in America, the only national news organization that reported this shocking story was MSNBC; every other news outlet thought it was entirely normal for an American politician to have their hand out in exchange for legislative or policy changes. As Media Matters reported this week:

“CNN, Fox News Channel; ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, andThis Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press” all completely ignored the story.

What we are watching is the final stage of the 40-year neoliberal transition of our nation from a forward-looking and still-evolving democratic republic into a white supremacist ethnostate ruled by a small group of fascist oligarchs.

Some years ago, Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore (before he was Trump’s advisor) was a guest on my radio/TV program. I asked him, “Which is more important, democracy or capitalism?“

Without hesitation, Moore answered, “Capitalism.” He went on to imply this was how the Founders wanted things. After all, as George Orwell said:

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

That philosophy and a phony American history have held the Republican Party in its thrall for the past 40+ years and have brought America to this moment of great crisis and danger.

It has transformed America from a democracy into a late-stage oligarchy, and the point of no return is now visible. Which presents a true crisis for America, because oligarchy is almost always merely a transitional phase in the evolution to full-blown tyranny and/or fascism, and often civil war.

Oligarchies are inherently unstable forms of government because they transfer resources and power from working people to the oligarchs. Average people, seeing that they’re constantly falling behind and can’t do anything about it, first become cynical and disengage, and, when things get bad enough, they try to revolt.

That “revolution” can either lead to the oligarchy failing and the nation flipping back to democracy, as happened here in the 1860s and the 1930s, or it can flip into full-blown strong-man tyranny, as happened recently in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia, and nearly happened here on January 6th.

Oligarchies usually become police states, where any average person who dares seriously challenge the ruling oligarchs is squashed like a bug either legally or financially; the oligarchs themselves are immune from prosecution and get to keep their billions regardless of how many people’s lives are ruined or die because of their crimes.

Oligarchic governments almost always do a few predictable things, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy:

— They change monopoly laws and regulations so their rich buddies can take control of most of the nation’s businesses and media.
— They stack the courts and regulatory agencies with oligarch-friendly ideologues or outright corrupt toadies, while eliminating regulatory protections for average citizens.
— They cut taxes on the rich and drive wages low on working people while criminalizing and cracking down on dissent, particularly if it involves any sort of direct action or property damage.
— They distract voters from their own looting by demonizing minorities and encouraging racism, religious/gender conflict, and regionalism.
— They reinvent history to argue that the country was “always an oligarchy and that’s the way the nation’s founders wanted it. It’s what works best.”
— They actively suppress the vote among people inclined to oppose them (typically minorities and the young), or outright rig the vote to insure their own victory.
— And they transform their nations into police states, heavily criminalizing demonstrations, nonviolent resistance, or “direct action” while radicalizing and encouraging rightwing vigilante “militias” to put down the inevitable pro-democracy rebellions as people realize what’s happening.

To the end of cementing their own oligarchy here, the billionaires who own the GOP are now actively promoting the same sort of revisionist history the Confederacy did, claiming that the Founders were all rich guys who hated taxes, wanted rich men to rule America, and wrote the Constitution to make that happen. It was a story popular in the South leading up to the Civil War, now part of the “Lost Cause” mythology.

To that end, they’re purging our schools and colleges of books and history courses; professors and teachers who don’t toe their line that America was designed from its founding to be an oligarchy are being fired as you read these words. In this, they’re promoting — for their own benefit — a dangerous lie.

A lie that rationalizes oligarchy.

While there were some in America among the Founders and Framers who had amassed great land holdings and what was perceived then as a patrician lifestyle, Pulitzer Prize winning author Bernard Bailyn suggests in his brilliant 2003 book To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders that they couldn’t hold a candle, in terms of wealth, to the true aristocrats of England.

With page after page of photographs and old paintings of the homes of the Founders and Framers, Bailyn shows that none of those who created this nation were rich by European standards. After an artful and thoughtful comparison of American and British estates, Bailyn concludes bluntly:

“There is no possible correspondence, no remote connection, between these provincial dwellings and the magnificent showplaces of the English nobility…”

Showing and describing to his readers the mansions of the families of power in 18th century Europe, Bailyn writes:

“There is nothing in the American World to compare with this.”

While the Founders and Framers had achieved a level of literacy, creativity, and a depth of thinking that rivaled that of any European states or eras, nonetheless, Bailyn notes:

“The Founders were provincials, alive to the values of a greater world, but not, they knew, of it – comfortable in a lesser world but aware of its limitations.”

As Kevin Phillips describes in his masterpiece book Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich:

“George Washington, one of the richest Americans, was no more than a wealthy squire in British terms.”

Phillips documents that it wasn’t until the 1790’s — a generation after the War of Independence — that the first American accumulated a fortune that would be worth one million of today’s dollars. The Founders and Framers were, at best, what today would be called the upper-middle-class in terms of lifestyle, assets, and disposable income.

In 1958, one of America’s great professors of history, Forrest McDonald, published an extraordinary book debunking Charles Beard’s 1913 hypothesis that the Constitution was created exclusively of, by, and for rich white men. McDonald’s book, titled We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, bluntly states:

“Economic interpretation of the Constitution does not work.”

Over the course of more than 400 meticulously researched pages, McDonald goes back to original historical records and reveals who was promoting and who was opposing the new Constitution, and why. So far as I can tell, he is the first and only historian to do this type of original-source research, and his conclusions are startling.

McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich.

“These [debt relief laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard’s hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent,” says McDonald. He adds: “Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write.”

While Beard theorizes that the Framers were largely drawn from the class of wealthy bankers and businessmen, McDonald shows that wasn’t true at all:

“The most common and by far the most important property holdings of the delegates were not, as Beard has asserted, mercantile, manufacturing, and public security investments, but agricultural property.”

Most were farmers or plantation owners and, as noted earlier, owning a lot of land did not always make one rich in those days, particularly compared to the bankers and mercantilists of New York and Boston.

“Finally,” McDonald concludes, “it is abundantly evident that the delegates, once inside the convention, behaved as anything but a consolidated economic group.”

After dissecting the means and motivations of the Framers who wrote the Constitution, McDonald goes into an exhaustive and detailed state-by-state analysis of the constitutional ratifying conventions that finally brought the U.S. Constitution into law.

For example, in the state of Delaware, which voted for ratification:

“[A]lmost 77 percent of the delegates were farmers, more than two-thirds of them small farmers with incomes ranging from 75 cents to $5.00 a week. Slightly more than 23 percent of the delegates were professional men – doctors, judges, and lawyers. None of the delegates was a merchant, manufacturer, banker, or speculator in western lands.”

In other states, similar numbers showed up. Of the New Jersey delegates supporting ratification, 64.1 percent were small farmers. In Maryland, “the opponents of ratification included from three to six times as large a proportion of merchants, lawyers, and investors in shipping, confiscated estates, and manufacturing as did the [poorer] delegates who favored ratification.”

In South Carolina it was those in economic distress who carried the day: “No fewer than 82 percent of the debtors and borrowers of paper money in the convention voted for ratification.” In New Hampshire, “of the known farmers in the convention 68.7 percent favored ratification.”

But did farmers support the Constitution because they were slave owners or the wealthiest of the landowners, as Charles Beard had guessed back in 1913?

McDonald shows that this certainly wasn’t the case in northern states like New Hampshire or New Jersey, which were not slave states.

But what about Virginia and North Carolina, the two largest slave-holding states, asks McDonald rhetorically. Were their plantation owners favoring the Constitution because it protected their economic and slave-holding interests?

“The opposite is true,” writes McDonald. “In both states the wealthy planters – those with personality interests [enslaved people] as well as those without personality interests – were divided approximately equally on the issue of ratification. In North Carolina small farmers and debtors were likewise equally divided, and in Virginia the great mass of the small farmers and a large majority of the debtors favored ratification.”

After dissecting the results of the ratification votes state by state — the first author in history to do so, as far as I can determine — McDonald sums up:

“Beard’s thesis — that the line of cleavage as regards the Constitution was between substantial personality interests [wealth and slave ownership] on the one hand and small farming and debtor interests on the other — is entirely incompatible with the facts.”

Here we find the explanation for James Madison sealing his notes on the Constitutional Convention until every man who participated was dead (they were finally published more than 50 years later in 1840). He and many others at the convention were essentially betraying their own economic class in favor of democracy. Something today’s wealthy Americans apparently can’t imagine doing.

No matter how hard Republicans try to reinvent the Founders and Framers of this nation in the image of their libertarian billionaire patrons, and no matter how imperfect and even brutal their time was, the simple reality is that in 1770’s America this nation’s Founders undertook American history’s first truly great progressive experiment.

And they all put their lives on the line to do it: when they signed their names on the Declaration, a death warrant was issued against each one of them by the largest and most powerful empire in the world.

And then, four generations later, we backslid.

The only other time in American history when an entire region of America was converted from a democracy into an oligarchy was the 1830-1860 era in the South. It’s why Republicans are so fond of the Confederate flag and Civil War memorial monuments.

The invention of the Cotton Gin made a few hundred families of southern planters richer than Midas; they seized political control of the region and then destroyed democracy in those states. Even white men who dared stand up to them were imprisoned or lynched, ballot boxes were stuffed, and social mobility came to a standstill.

By the 1840s, the South had become a full-blown police state, much like Trump and his acolytes would like America to become in the near future.

Offended and worried by the democratic example of the Northern states, the Confederacy declared war on the United States itself with the goal of ending democracy in America altogether. Almost 700,000 people died defending our form of government.

And now, for a second time in American history, we’re confronted with a near-complete takeover of about half of our nation by America’s oligarchs.

And with it has come not just the threat of political violence, but the reality, from the death of Heather Heyer to the George Floyd protests to January 6th and the assault on Paul Pelosi.

All driven by oligarchs determined to pit us against each other so we won’t recognize how they’re robbing us blind.

Unless and until our tax laws are changed and the Supreme Court’s legalization of political bribery is reversed, we’ll continue this disintegrative slide into fascism and the danger of domestic armed conflict.

This fall we’ll have the opportunity to elect politicians who actively oppose oligarchy and fascism while embracing the true spirit of American egalitarianism.

President Biden is the first president in 80 years to actually raise taxes on rich people and corporations. That political bravery has brought him powerful enemies: this fall’s election will be hard fought.

Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote, and if you live in a Republican-controlled state double-check your voter registration every month at vote.org.

America’s future — and the integrity of our history — depend on it.

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Trump

Greg Olear: “Casablanca” Has a Message for Us Today

By dianeravitch

May 19, 2024 //

When I was in college, I remember classmates going to the local art-movie house to see “Casablanca,” and laughing about how many times they had seen it. I had never seen it, but since then have seen it many times, at least a dozen times.

My partner and I recently decided to introduce our 17-year-old grandson to classic movies. The first one we chose was “Casablanca.” (The second was Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.”) That was a few months ago. Recently “Casablanca” was playing on Turner Classic Movies, and I was going to skip it but was immediately drawn in and watched to the end. It never grows stale. Then I saw this column by Greg Olear, who explains why the film speaks to us and remains fresh.

He writes:

Dear Reader,

The first time I saw Casablanca was in 1992, at the Key Theatre, a now-defunct arthouse cinema on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, at a special theatrical release celebrating the film’s 50th anniversary. The most recent time I saw Casablanca was last night. In between, I’ve seen it probably two dozen times. On each viewing, I notice something I hadn’t seen before, walk away with something new.

Casablanca is often described as a romance—and it is. Bogart and Bergman are one of the all-time Hollywood pairings, and, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” is probably the film’s best known line. The conflict in romances derives from the insurmountability of the obstacle, on what is keeping the two lovers apart: Romeo and Juliet are the teenage kids of two families in a blood feud; Harry and Sally don’t want to risk their friendship for a romantic engagement that might not work out; Tom Hanks lives in Baltimore and Meg Ryan lives in Seattle. The obstacle in Casablanca, which I will not spoil, is realistic, tragic, and completely insurmountable. It is a riddle that cannot be solved, a problem that has no solution, like how to fix the United States while the Senate exists.

But Casablanca is not just a romance. It is a drama. It is a war film. It is a buddy movie, replete with some of the sharpest comic dialogue ever written. It is a heist picture—we don’t see the two German couriers murdered on the train, we don’t see the letters of transit stolen from them, but the rush to obtain those two documents animates one of cinema’s greatest plots. It is an exploration of how to deal with heartbreak and loss. It is a story about sacrifice and courage and redemption and standing up to tyranny. It is an allegory for a world that, when it was made in 1942, was very much still at war—and, as such, is an overtly political film. Casablanca contains multitudes.

When I first watched the movie, I was more concerned with the romantic content. I loved Rick, loved his café, loved his white tuxedo jacket and his gruff manner and how he threw the best party but always held himself at a remove. But it is impossible to watch Casablanca in 2024 and not focus on the Nazis.

The first action we see in Casablanca is a violent police crackdown. And not just any violent police crackdown. This part of North Africa is controlled by unoccupied France, the German rump state based in Vichy. A prominent Nazi is coming to town, and the local authorities are detaining all the potential rabble-rousers—the usual suspects, as it were—who might not welcome the Gestapo’s jackbooted presence in French Morocco. One fellow is menaced by the police, who shoot and kill him when he tries to resist arrest; when they search his body, they find he is carrying leaflets for Free France.

If the film were made today, this scene would have been shot on location, in Casablanca or a city that could reasonably pass as Casablanca, and the terror of the crackdown would be amplified in one of those grandiose action scenes that modern movies often open with. But the film was produced in 1942. It was shot on a soundstage in Hollywood. The danger is cloaked behind old-timey cinematic production. No matter. The opening distinctly shows brutal, Nazi-aligned cops using unnecessary force, shooting and killing an agent of the Resistance: an anti-Fascist.

Similarly, the first time we see Rick—after we meet Captain Renault, the French prefect of police, and Major Strasser, the Nazi big wheel—he is alone at a chess board in the casino part of the club. His first lines of dialogue are directed to an arrogant Nazi—an official at Deutsche Bank, no less!—whom he bars from entering the inner sanctum:

—Your cash is good at the bar.
—What? Do you know who I am?
—I do. You’re lucky the bar’s open to you.

Rick owns and manages the café, and he is a good boss. He supports his employees, reassuring Emil after the house loses 20,000 francs, and keeping everyone on the payroll when the police shut him down. But he keeps himself aloof. “I stick my neck out for no one,” he says when the police arrest Ugarte. “I’m the only cause I’m interested in,” he tells Ilsa. But this is a false front, a defense mechanism. He doesn’t want his heart broken again. He is, as Victor Laszlo astutely observes, a man trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t really believe.

At 17 and a half minutes into the movie, Ferrari, criminal overlord and owner of the Blue Parrot, remarks to Rick that “isolationism is no longer a practical policy.” That line may as well have been spoken to the entire country. Rick and Sam, his friend and piano player, are the only Americans in Casablanca, and as such, represent the United States. The staff and clientele at his club come from everywhere: Carl is an anti-Nazi German, Sascha is Russian, Emil and Yvonne are French, Abdul is Moroccan, Berger is Norwegian, and so on. In that sense, the café is a microcosm of Europe. (In real life, many of the supporting actors are European war refugees who had escaped the actual Nazis—including the astonishingly good actor who plays the Gestapo’s Major Strasser, Conrad Veidt, who fled his native country with his Jewish wife when Hitler came to power.)

It is no accident that the action in Casablanca takes place over three days in early December, 1941—just before Pearl Harbor. Rick, like the U.S. in the late fall of 1941, preferred to remain neutral. But ultimately, like the U.S., he is drawn into the fight—and his presence ultimately helps the good guys prevail.

Perhaps the film’s most rousing scene is when the orchestra, with its brass instruments, overpowers the Germans singing patriotic songs at the piano, with a stirring rendition of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. In 1992, I chalked it up to Hollywood schlock; now, I recognize the scene’s awesome power: music becomes the field of battle. Even Yvonne, last scene flirting with a handsome Nazi, is moved to tears:

But the film is not all doom and gloom. Casablanca rewards us with sharp dialogue and genuinely funny moments. When Victor Laszlo arrives at Rick’s, he orders drinks, only to have his orders upgraded and put on someone else’s tab, which annoys him; it’s a running joke that he can’t pay for his own drink. Carl’s aside with the couple practicing their English before leaving for America is comic gold. And as Captain Renault, Claude Reins drops one-liner after one-liner, in a remarkably modern performance—not least of which the famous “I’m shocked, shocked” scene.

When Rick sits down for his interrogation by the Nazis, he is asked his nationality. “I’m a drunkard,” he says dryly—and it looks like the men at the table are genuinely laughing, as if the line was ad-libbed. But Renault immediately supplies the rejoinder: “And that makes Rick a man of the world.”

We learn that what causes Rick’s moral paralysis is his heartbreak. Ilsa Lund—the wife and traveling companion of the Resistance leader Victor Laszlo, who has just arrived in town—is, improbably, the woman who broke his heart. The chances of them meeting again like this are a million to one, which Rick alludes to in yet another famous line: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

During their confrontation later in the film, Ilsa accuses him of, basically, nurturing a grievance: “You want to feel sorry for yourself, don’t you? With so much at stake, all you can think of is your own feelings. One woman has hurt you, and you take your revenge on the rest of the world. You’re a coward and a weakling.” She may as well be addressing Elon Musk, or any one of a thousand other alt-right Twitter incels.

But by then, Rick has already started to change. Precedents are being broken. He’s having a drink with customers now. He’s involving himself in politics more overtly. This is made clear in the scene with the Bulgarian refugee, Annina. She is, Rick observes, underage and should not be at the bar. But she seeks him out. She wants to be reassured, without explicitly saying so, that if she has sex with Captain Renault, he will honor his promise and let her and her husband leave for America. This is dark, dark stuff, concealed by the soft lighting and the beautiful actress:

Oh, monsieur, you are a man. If someone loved you very much, so that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world—but she did a bad thing to make certain of it—could you forgive her?

Rick replies with a punch to the gut: “No one ever loved me that much.”

But this is not true, although he doesn’t realize it yet. Ilsa did love him that much. And he is sufficiently moved by Annina to arrange for her husband to win at roulette, securing enough money to finance their visas—much to the delight of the staff.

The first time I saw the movie, I knew what the last line was, so I had some idea of the ending, but I didn’t know anything else. Twenty minutes from the end, Rick gives Victor Laszlo the letters of transit. Renault emerges from the shadows to arrest him. And I remember thinking, “Holy shit! How the hell are they going to resolve this?” I wasn’t the only one. Even the screenwriters didn’t know, well after production began. All they did was devise the best ending of all time.

[This is a good time to stop reading, if you haven’t seen the movie, because spoilers are coming.]

We think Rick and Ilsa will take the letters of transit and leave. Ilsa thinks that, too. But that’s not what happens. Once at the airport, Rick informs Renault that Ilsa and Victor will be the ones leaving. This surprises Ilsa, Renault—and the audience. But this is Rick putting away his personal grievance for the greater good. This is him atoning for the sins of the past. This is also him entering the fray, as Laszlo tells him on the tarmac, in a line I use in the intro to my podcast: “Welcome back to the fight. This time, I know our side will win.” That line is spoken in December of 1941—for all we know, Japanese planes are bombing Pearl Harbor as Laszlo’s plane flies to Lisbon. If Rick represents America, this is America entering the war. And, remember, the movie came out in 1942! “Our side” winning was not a sure thing.

(Also: Rick told Victor that the letters of transit were not for sale at any price. At the end, he refuses to take Victor’s money—which both makes the comment about the letters not being for sale true, and also continues the running joke about Laszlo not being able to pay for his own drinks.)

The Resistance leader and his wife get on the plane. The plane taxis out to the strip. And then, the Nazi big wheel shows up! After warning him to put down the phone, Rick shoots and kills him. Renault explains how “unpleasant” this is going to be. “I’ll have to arrest you, of course.”

The plane takes off, heading for Lisbon. The couple makes it out of Casablanca. Rick wins his 10,000 franc bet with Renault. Then the police show up. And watching the movie, we prepare for Rick’s impending arrest. “Major Strasser has been shot,” Renault tells his charges. And there is a long, dramatic pause, before he delivers yet another of the film’s famous lines: “Round up the usual suspects.” With those five words, he lets Rick go free.

Renault—an unscrupulous lech who “blows with the wind,” a “poor, corrupt official” who exploits his authority by bedding desperate refugee women—has found his own way back to the light. He, too, is back in the fight. And he and Rick leave together, bound for the French garrison at Brazzaville, and adventures to come, and a continuation of what is already a beautiful friendship.

Watching the film again last night, there was something else I realized about Casablanca. No one wants to be in Morocco. Everyone wants to go to America. The word is spoken countless times: America, America, America. Rick is American but can’t go back to America, although he desperately wants to. America is the symbol of freedom, of safety, of security, of respite from the Third Reich. The entire black market of French Morocco revolves around guarantees of safe passage to America. It’s taken as a given that America is the land of the free.

But now, somehow, 82 years after the release of Casablanca, this is no longer a given. Nazis are again on the rise—only this time, they’re not in Europe or North Africa but here, in America, among us. What would those supporting actors who fled the Third Reich have made of that? What would Rick have thought?

While helping dress his wound, Rick asks Victor if he thinks what he’s fighting for—that is, democracy, freedom, anti-fascism—is worth it. I leave you with Laszlo’s response: “You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we’ll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.”

The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.

Categories Creativity, Democracy, History

New York Times: Justice Alito Flew an Upside-Down U.S. Flag, a Trump Symbol, at His Home After 2020 Election

By dianeravitch

May 18, 2024 //

Judges and justices are supposed to be impartial arbiters of conflicting claims. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is not. The New York Times reported that an upside-down flag flew in front of Justice Alito’s home after the 2020 election. That symbolism was adopted as a protest by Trump’s zealous and disappointed fans. Alito was one of them. He blamed his wife, as if he had no decisions about what flag was flying in his front yard. How can he be expected to rule impartially on cases about that election?

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.

One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed. President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the Capitol a little over a week before. Mr. Biden’s inauguration was three days away. Alarmed neighbors snapped photographs, some of which were recently obtained by The New York Times. Word of the flag filtered back to the court, people who worked there said in interviews.

While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision. In coming weeks, the justices will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, including whether Mr. Trump has immunity for his actions. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances for re-election in the upcoming one.

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Justice

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New York Times: Justice Alito Flew an Upside-Down U.S. Flag, a Trump Symbol, at His Home After 2020 Election

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