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Follow @Uncle-Ernie Visit me on Face Book Lying Donald's Pardoning Frenzy By Ernest Stewart "If you really think that the environment is less important than the economy, try holding your breath while you count your money." ~~~ Guy McPherson "...you don't even need to do the research part of oppo-research because his (Bernie Sanders) policy positions are opposed by big majorities of Americans." ~~~ Mara Liasson
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
However, those seven were only the latest in a long line of similar crooks and thieves. Let's start at the beginning and list them all! Starting with Sheriff Joe. AUGUST 25, 2017And here's his latest: FEBRUARY 18, 2020Rumor has it that Lying Donald has offered to pardon Julian Assange if he would deny that Russia was behind 2016 election interference. Oh, and what do you think Roger Stones chances of being pardoned are? In Other News I see where "ocean currents are moving faster today than they did two decades ago," so why am I not surprised? New research, published on February 6th in the journal Science Advances, finds that this acceleration is occurring around the globe, with the most noticeable effects in the tropical latitudes. The enhanced speed isn't just at the ocean's surface, but is occurring as deep as 6,560 feet or 2,000 meters. "The magnitude and extent of the acceleration in ocean currents we detected throughout the global ocean and to 2000-meter (6,560 foot) depth was quite surprising," study co-author Janet Sprintall, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. "While we expected some response to the increased winds over the past two decades, that the acceleration was above and beyond that was an unexpected response that is likely due to global climate change." Winds over the ocean have been picking up at a rate of 1.9% per decade, the researchers found. This increase in wind speed transfers energy to the ocean's surface, and subsequently, deeper waters. About 76% of the upper 6,560 feet or 2,000 meters of the oceans have seen an increase in kinetic energy since the 1990s. Overall, ocean current speeds have crept up about 5% per decade since the early 1990s, the study found. Of course, there are many questions left to answer about changes in ocean circulation. For example, there are few observations of circulation at lower depths, so little is known about changes in the very deep oceans. Understanding changes in ocean circulation is important for understanding global warming and its effects, the researchers wrote. Ocean currents move heat around the globe, which can in turn affect ocean habitats, local weather and local temperatures. Good news is because of this the gulf stream is still working. Many thought because of all the fresh melt water pouring in at the top of the stream from Greenland the gulf stream would slow and eventually stop working and Northern Europe would pay the consequences. As you may recall it's the gulf stream that gives Northern Europe it's extra warmth. As I've said so many times before global warming creates winners and losers and sometimes you get both! Warmer winters, but broiling hot summers! And Finally Once upon a time National Public Radio was a beacon of truth in a sea of madness but that was a long time ago. Back in the day I was a strong supporter of NPR and my company was always on standby waiting for the next fund rasier with a nice check in hand. I was an eager listener through the 70's and 80's and "All things Considered" was a daily thing. Then the Rethuglicans took over and NPR goose stepped off to the far right and left all us liberals behind. I haven't tuned in or sent a nice check since the early 90's. When I heard of what Mary Louise Kelly and her partner in crime Mara Liasson had to say just before the Iowa caucuses I wasn't a bit surprised, but I was just a wee bit pissed off! It used to be that the folks at NPR were mostly all liberal with the one exception of Cokie Roberts who was a little to the right of, guess who... Darth Vader. I didn't agree with Cokie but she helped balance the programs by pointing out what Rethuglicans were all about to the uninformed. However, Kelly and Liasson who pretend to be informed journalists and who are nothing of sort but could be paid by the DNC laid a whole bunch of lies and half truths in the run up to Iowa. I looked high and low for a single fact about Bernie and couldn't find a single one, all lies and BS. So how can I condem NPR for the like of these two Bozos. As I've said before if you don't like something in this magazine, don't blame the writers, blame me. Everything published in this magazine crosses my desk and get's my approval before it's allowed in. Just as Kelly and Liasson's song and dance was approved by John Lansing, former head of the "Voice Of America" the US governments overseas propaganda radio network, ergo Nation Public Radio's CEO John Lansing wins this week's Vidkun Quisling Award! Keepin' On
If you think that what we do is important and would like to see us keep on, keeping on, please send us whatever you can, whenever you can, and we'll keep telling you the truth!
 08-10-1933 ~ 02-14-2020 Thanks for the film!
 04-13-1953 ~ 02-14-2020 Thanks for the film!
 01-16-1948 ~ 02-16-2020 Thanks for the film!
 12-28-1933 ~ 02-17-2020 Thanks for the read!
 08-05-1932 ~ 02-18-2020 Thanks for the film!
(c) 2020 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Facebook. and like us when you do. Follow me on Twitter. |
 The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders By Norman Solomon More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for power elites that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020 campaign is a direct threat to the undemocratic leverage that extremely wealthy individuals and huge corporations constantly exert on the political process. No wonder we're now seeing so much anti-Bernie rage from leading corporate Democrats -- eagerly amplified by corporate media. In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned. Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide range of mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has long documented the problem, illuminated by one piece after another after another after another just this month.) In sharp contrast, positivity toward Sanders in mass media spheres is scarce. The pattern is enmeshed with the corporatism that the Sanders campaign seeks to replace with genuine democracy -- disempowering great wealth and corporate heft while empowering everyday people to participate in a truly democratic process. Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid reporters and pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate power, including the prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors. And, in news coverage of politics, there's an inexhaustible supply of former Democratic officeholders and appointees who've been lucratively feeding from corporate troughs as lobbyists, consultants and PR operatives. Their corporate ties usually go unmentioned. An important media headquarters for hostility toward the Sanders campaign is MSNBC, owned by Comcast -- a notoriously anti-labor and anti-consumer corporation. "People need to remember," I pointed out on Democracy Now! last week, "that if you, for instance, don't trust Comcast, why would you trust a network that is owned by Comcast? These are class interests being worked out where the top strata of ownership and investors hires the CEO, hires the managing editors, hires the reporters. And so, what we're seeing, and not to be rhetorical about it, but we really are seeing a class war underway." Routinely, the talking heads and go-to sources for mainline news outlets are far removed from the economic pressures besetting so many Americans. And so, media professionals with the most clout and largest megaphones are quite distant from the Sanders base. Voting patterns in the New Hampshire primary reflected whose economic interests the Sanders campaign is promising to serve. With 10 active candidates on the Democratic ballot, Sanders "won 4 in 10 of voters with household incomes under $50,000 and nearly 3 in 10 with incomes between $50,00 and $99,000," the Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute for New Economic Thinking -- Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul Jorgensen -- found that "the higher the town's income, the fewer votes cast" for Sanders. "Lower income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders; richer towns did the opposite." The researchers saw in the data "further dramatic evidence of a point we have made before: that the Democratic Party is now sharply divided by social class." It's a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain sight. The often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous attacks on Sanders via powerful national media outlets are almost always coming from affluent or outright wealthy people. Meanwhile, low-income Americans have virtually zero access to the TV studios (other than providing after-hours janitorial services). With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end of the nation's extreme income inequality. Viewed in that light -- and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and advertising dominate mainstream media -- it shouldn't be surprising that few prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with the working class. "If there is going to be class warfare in this country," Bernie Sanders told the Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, "it's time that the working class of this country won that war and not just the corporate elite." To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable. (c) 2020 Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" and "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State." |
 Democratic Socialism Bring it on Corporate Socialists! By Ralph Nader Crooked Donald Trump, the erstwhile failed gambling czar and corporate welfare king, is assailing Bernie Sanders for his "radical socialism." How ludicrous given Trump's three-year giveaway of taxpayer assets and authorities to giant corporations - a perfect portrait of crony capitalism. Others are joining the socialist labeling bandwagon, including corporatist right-wing radio talk show blowhards, themselves freeloaders, profitably using the public airwaves. This pack includes Lloyd Blankfein, former lawbreaking chairman of Goldman Sachs. Bernie knows, of course, how to rebut this distorted interpretation of "democratic socialism." But will his rebuttals be enough given that the Biden-Bloomberg-Klobuchar wing of the Democratic Party is determined to label Bernie "unelectable" against the boastful Don the Con? Some suggestions for Bernie and others to use in this upcoming back and forth on "democratic socialism" vs. "corporate socialism" of the super-rich corporations: Go after the corporate socialists who have invited Wall Street and Big Business to socialize the means of government against the peoples' necessities and freedoms. It is a government of, by, and for the dominant corporations. Such private power dominating our government in so many reported ways was called "fascism" in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a formal message to Congress. This is a fertile field for taking the offensive.The American people of all backgrounds like their public libraries, public local control waterworks, municipal fire departments, police precincts, and public schools. They seem okay with government highways, bridges, public transit, and want their taxes spent to repair and upgrade these vital pieces of our infrastructure. Taxpayers don't want our commonwealth being owned by tax-escaping, gouging corporations. There are over 1,000 municipal public utilities providing electricity. The "Red" states of Tennessee and Alabama would fight any corporatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which 87 years ago, brought electricity to a large poor region that the private electric companies didn't think was profitable enough. The unfairly maligned Veterans Administration brought free hospitals and health care to millions of veterans. Millions of Americans are favorably disposed to life-saving Medicare and Medicaid and are economically saved by Social Security and unemployment compensation. Hey! There must be a lot of "democratic socialists" out there in "blue" and "red" states. New Hampshirites are mostly okay with state-owned, revenue-producing, hard-liquor retail stores. At a meeting long ago with top medical officials at the Walter Reed Army hospital, I was told that after learning the second leading cause of hospitalization for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam was malaria, the U.S. Army asked the drug companies to develop remedies. The negative response was that developing medicines to deal with malaria wasn't profitable enough. In response, the Pentagon brought together skilled doctors and scientists and started its own "drug company" inside Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals. For less than 10 percent of what the big drug companies say it costs, our government developed three out of four of the leading anti-malarial drugs in the world and made them available everywhere without any patents producing big pharma-like profits. If the political and corporate Trumpsters and the Clintonite Democrats snort at all this, tell them that they do agree on one thing. Those in both these camps have been eager to have collapsing capitalism, as during the 2008 Wall Street dive, always saved by reliable socialism - aka - trillions of taxpayer dollars via Washington, D.C. funding the bailout of the reckless bankers and speculators.
(c) 2020 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us" (a novel). |
 Bloomberg Wants To Swallow The Democrats And Spit Out The Sandernistas By Glen Ford If, somehow, Bernie Sanders is allowed to win the nomination, Michael Bloomberg and other plutocrats will have created a Democratic Party machinery purpose-built to defy Sanders -- as nominee, and even as president. The oligarchy has awakened to the threat to its dictatorship from the left-most ranks of one of its own corporate parties. Michael Bloomberg, the 8th richest man in the world and former three-term mayor of New York City, has vowed to spend unlimited cash to defeat Donald Trump. But Bloomberg's real mission is to retain oligarchic control of the Democratic Party, the corporate mechanism that squats like a giant toad on the most ethnically and ideologically diverse half of the U.S. population, including virtually all Black electoral politics. Bloomberg threw his hat and billions into the race when it became clear that corporate surrogates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg could not be depended on to halt Bernie Sanders, the purported socialist who now leads the Democratic pack. Joe Biden's aura of electability, which was always a media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the basement in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Black voters of South Carolina are his only hope for resurrection. But Blacks don't back Biden for ideological reasons, or even on the strength of his service as Barack Obama's number two. Older (and scarier) African Americans were under the impression that Biden was the Democrat best equipped to beat Trump - but it turns out he can't even beat previously unknown Democrats. Some of those Black Biden supporters will now switch to Bloomberg, believing he is the one Democrat rich enough to drown Trump in November. Blacks don't vote their own ideological preferences in Democratic primaries. Rather, many will support whomever they perceive as the strongest opponent against the White Man's Party, the Republicans. That invariably means the Democrat favored by corporations and their media. Thus, the duopoly system effectively negates the core political aspirations of Black America, the most left-leaning constituency in the nation. The duopoly is a trap that neutralizes independent, progressive Black politics - a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather than their aspirations. However, as BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley points out in this issue, there are threats to Black lives and rights even worse than the flaming orange racist now squatting in the White House. As three-term mayor of New York City, Bloomberg increased the frequency of his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani's stop-and-frisks by 700 percent. Although real estate magnate Donald Trump infamously called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, it was Mayor Bloomberg who for years delayed payment of a $41 million settlement to the grievously wronged young Black men. And Bloomberg was the nation's most aggressive, unrepentant ethnic cleanser, gleefully removing more Black and brown people from the city's five boroughs than any of his predecessors. Mayor Bloomberg was not yet in the top tier of billionaires, but he was busy creating a paradise for the super-rich at the expense of Harlem, Bed Stuy and the South Bronx. In Bloomberg's world, gross income inequality is wondrous. "If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here, it would be a godsend that would create a much bigger income gap," said the mayor. Even Giuliani was more discreet than to gush at the mass expulsion of fellow Americans. As the 2020 campaign continues, diligent reporters and researchers will rediscover a treasure trove of statements by Bloomberg in praise of oligarchy. The rich man's wonderland that Michael Bloomberg has worked so hard to create and protect is predicated on eternal job insecurity and deteriorating living standards for the masses of people - and absolute insecurity for Blacks, whose very presence in a racist society devalues surrounding properties, requiring their constant displacement. This "austerity" regime - better described as the global "Race to the Bottom," has been a joint project of both Republicans and Democrats for two generations. Enforced mass precarity - buttressed by endless wars abroad and growing police repression at home -- created the class of super-oligarchs like Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos, who are determined to defend their Billionaire's Oz against Bernie Sanders' political "revolution" within the Democratic Party, a property bought and paid for by the plutocrats. Sanders is no genuine socialist. He does not propose to overthrow the Lords of Capital, but his program of health care, housing, employment and retirement "rights" (entitlements) and a sweeping Green New Deal represent the most serious threat yet to the austerity/Race to the Bottom regime, and therefore to the plutocrats plans for the nation and the world. Sanders' position on all these issues is supported by super-majorities of Democrats, creating both a potential crisis of governance as well as the already existing crisis of legitimacy for the ruling class. The oligarchy has already seen one of its governing parties, the Republicans, taken over by a maddeningly undependable and incompetent egomaniac, who rejects the "diversity" political ethic favored by the multinational corporate order. But that's only an annoyance, compared to the threat of a Bernie Sanders victory in November, a sea change that could make it impossible for pro-corporate and anti-austerity forces to occupy political space in the same party: the death of the corporate duopoly. We at Black Agenda Report welcome such a break-up, as the only way that Black folks and progressives can be freed from the duopoly straightjacket, to vote their aspirations and beliefs, not their fears. Bernie Sanders' leftish followers stuck with the Democrats despite their deplorable treatment by the Party, four years ago. This time, the corporate Democrats and their media machine will pull out all the stops to save the austerity/Race to the Bottom regime and their own legitimacy. The oligarchs are quite capable of physically killing the old New Dealer. But if, somehow, Sanders is allowed to win the nomination, Michael Bloomberg and other plutocrats will have created a Democratic Party machinery purpose-built to defy Sanders -- as nominee, and even as president. Bloomberg has already laid the groundwork to directly seize the party machinery, the old fashioned way: by buying it and stacking it with his own, paid operatives, with a war-against-the-left budget far bigger than the existing Democratic operation. Bloomberg's participation in Wednesday's debate, against all the rules, is proof-of-purchase. In addition to the nearly million dollar down payment to the party in November that sealed the deal for the debate rules change, Bloomberg has already pledged to pay the full salaries of 500 political staffers for the Democratic National Committee all the way through the November election, no matter who wins the nomination. Essentially, Bloomberg will be running the election for the corporate wing of the party, even if Sanders is the nominee. In an interview with PBS's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday night, senior Bloomberg advisor Timothy O'Brien made it clear that the DNC is in no condition to refuse being devoured by Bloomberg, even if they wanted to. O'brien predicted the Republicans will spend at least $900 million on the election, while the DNC has only about $8 million on hand. Even the oligarch's underlings are telegraphing the takeover game plan. Bloomberg is not so much running for president as making sure that the Democrats don't go "rogue" anti-corporate to accommodate the Sandernistas. He is ensuring that the Democratic Party will be an even more hostile environment for anti-austerity politics than in the past - not in spite of the phenomenal success of the Sanders project, but because of it. Such a party cannot possibly accommodate both sides, and is ultimately destined to split. No one knows how much abuse and humiliation the Sanders faction is willing to endure to remain in the bosom of the corporate political beast. They remained faithful to their tormentors in 2016, and most are probably still inclined to give their corporate abusers yet another chance. But even if the Sandernistas punk out again, the oligarchy will relentlessly corral them in the tightest space possible in the party, with the aim of forcing them out. (c) 2019 Glen Ford is the Black Agenda Report executive editor. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com |
 What's Scaring The Bejeezus Out Of Billionaires? By Jim Hightower There's a new political army on the march in America: Tromp-tromp-tromp they came, it's the Billionaire Brigade! It's actually a very small army - only 749 Americans rank as billionaires. But they have a lot of firepower - collectively, they've amassed some $4-trillion in personal wealth and are now grabbing nearly all of the new wealth that our economy generates. In response to the extreme inequality their greed has created, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other Democratic leaders are proposing a widely-popular wealth tax on the opulence of this tiny group. And oh, what wails of anguish this has generated in the lairs of billionaires! They're indignant that fortunes above $50-million would be assessed a teeny surtax to help fund education, health care, infrastructure, and America's other essential needs. So, with a rallying cry of Save the Poor Rich, the Billionaire's Brigade seeks your pity: Mark Zuckerberg laments that taxing his gabillions would hurt charities; Michael Bloomberg suggests that the tax could turn America into Venezuela; and Wall Street baron Leon Cooperman actually teared up while wailing that a wealth tax would harm his family. As one money manager said, "These tax proposals are scaring the bejeezus out of people who have accumulated a lot of wealth." I don't think there's much Jesus in these people! The Biblical Jesus would bless Sanders, Warren, and the majority of Americans who favor a wealth tax to benefit the Common Good. No need to cry for the few hundred haughty families whose love of money would be only slightly dinged by this tax - every one of them would still be fabulously rich. Plus, they'll be privileged to live in a country that's a little more closely aligned with its people's egalitarian values. And that's priceless. (c) 2020 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates," is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition. Jim writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. |
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Trump began indulging his need for revenge with a vicious State Department purge that chopped down both national security adviser Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman and European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland, two key witnesses in the impeachment investigation.
Col. Vindman's twin brother was also summarily removed from the National Security Council by Trump. Yevgeny Vindman, a decorated lieutenant colonel in the Army like his brother, has been punished for the offense of sharing the last name of someone on Trump's enemies list. The implications of this are chilling.
Not long after the State Department purge, Trump barged into the sentencing process for Roger Stone, who was convicted in November of lying to investigators and obstruction of witnesses, all of which he appears to have done in the name of Donald Trump. Prosecutors on the case recommended Stone be given a sentence of seven to nine years, which hewed precisely to federal sentencing guidelines. Trump came down the Twitter mountain to denounce both the sentence and the judge on the case.
Attorney General William Barr, hearing Pavlov's presidential bell ring, immediately intervened to lessen Stone's sentence to a still-indeterminate length. In response, four career federal prosecutors withdrew from the case and one - an attorney in the public integrity section of the Justice Department - resigned altogether.
Trump's attacks on Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has been presiding over the Stone case, were both personal and factually incorrect. Attorney General Barr was motivated to scold Trump for his actions, stating that the ceaseless Twitter outbursts directed at the Justice Department and the judiciary make it "impossible" for him to do his job.
The mainstream press, properly cynical at long last, mostly scoffed at the notion that Barr's comments represented a noteworthy break with Trump. Instead, Barr's statements were properly interpreted as the attorney general telling the president his tweets were making the ongoing cover-up more difficult to manage. Trump responded by proclaiming he has "the legal right" to intervene in criminal cases, a statement that is wrong and dangerous in equal measure.
Claims by Republican senators like Susan Collins that Trump had learned "a pretty big lesson" from the impeachment trial have been proven laughable. Even now, there is no pushback against this president from that compromised chamber. "Republicans who control the Senate resigned themselves this week to the reality that they are unable to check or even influence Trump," reported The Washington Post last Tuesday. Again, a statement that is wrong and dangerous in equal measure.
Others, however, are stepping into the void of leadership created by Mitch McConnell and his senatorial cohort of Trump doormats.
On Sunday, an open letter was published carrying the signatures of more than 2,000 former Justice Department employees from prior Republican and Democratic administrations. The letter demands the immediate resignation of William Barr for his interference in the Stone case at the behest of Trump.
And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump's close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes.... Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.
Neither the Federal Judges Association nor the letter from former Justice employees carry any legal weight, but they represent a coalescing of dissident voices from within the legal system that may prove difficult for senate Republicans to ignore.
The fact that those senators have shrugged at everything else Trump has done would seem to indicate they will simply do the same in this instance, but Election Day looms on the horizon, and a number of them run the risk of sudden unemployment come November if they maintain their seamless fealty to the brigand in the White House.
(c) 2020 William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co_written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.
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Donald Trump promised his supporters that Mexico would pay for his vanity project along the southern border of the United States: "a great wall" that he has variously claimed will "secure the border," block "unlawful entrants" and "stop much of the drugs from pouring into this country." Despite fact-checks that dispute his claims, Trump pursues the wall fantasy - especially when elections are looming and he needs to rally his base.
But one thing has changed. While the president is loathe to acknowledge this particular fact, he has decided to make others pay for his wall. Who? Wisconsin manufacturers and workers.
Last week, Trump's Pentagon issued a "reprogramming" notice that says it will shift $3.8 billion in funding away from planned projects in order to build additional sections of the border wall.
"The President's unilateral action takes $101 million that was appropriated by Congress for Oshkosh Defense to build Heavy wheeled defense vehicles for the Army," noted the office of U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, who worked to secure the funding for the Oshkosh initiative and other defense projects that support jobs in the region.
"President Trump promised the people of Wisconsin that Mexico would pay for his border wall and now he is making American taxpayers fund it," Baldwin said. "Wisconsin manufacturers strengthen our national defense and create jobs, but Trump is taking funding away from our economy and the workers that build it."
The president's move has inspired bipartisan objections.
For her part, Baldwin joined a group of senators in writing to Defense Secretary Mark Esper about their concerns that the "reprogramming" will undermine national security and poison relations between the White House and Congress when it comes to budgeting. They noted that this is the third time in less than a year that the Pentagon has moved unilaterally to bypass Congress.
"We are dismayed that the Department decided to target congressional increases to a vast number of critical programs, from aircraft to ships, including the perennially-underfunded Army National Guard, Air National Guard, and other Reserve Components," the senators wrote. "The raid on this funding is quite simply an attack on the efforts to ensure our citizen-soldiers are prepared to respond to disasters, both overseas and in nearly every community in all fifty states and four territories."
Like many senators in both parties, Baldwin sought to address concerns about waste, fraud and abuse in military budgets by working with experts on budgeting, military leaders and contractors to identify projects that are necessary. When the Trump administration and its cronies tear up budgets that have been approved by Congress in order to find billions for the border wall, they abandon fiscal responsibility.
They also abandon workers, in communities such as Oshkosh.
And Trump is far from finished with his raids on funding that was supposed to come to Wisconsin. As Baldwin's office explained, "in January, it was reported that President Trump intends to raid $7.2 billion from military funds this year to pay for his wall, diverting funding from military families and forcing American taxpayers to pay for his vanity project and failed campaign promise."
(c) 2020 John Nichols writes about politics for The Capitol Times. His book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, is published by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising.
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They don't know why but scientists say the human brain has been getting smaller. Does that mean we are losing intelligence or is something else going on?
Indeed, researchers have found that our brains have generally decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 centimeters. This study looked at both male and female brains. It is happening everywhere on Earth. Should we be worried?
Looking at the news reports from around the world we sometimes have to wonder about human behavior. We seem to all be caught up in some kind of religious fervor, sparked to hate anybody different from us, willing to go to war, caught up in gluttony for junk food, shiny merchandise, drugs, sex and football, and racing to extinction by recklessly polluting our air, land and water. Overall, it doesn't appear that we are very smart at all.
The music and art being produced . . . at least for the public eye . . . literally stinks. Our television programming appears designed for idiots. Our schools in America are failing to teach even the basics like reading, writing and simple mathematics. Students graduate from high school not understanding how our government works, how to make proper change when operating cash registers, or even understanding the geography of the world.
Yet there are researchers among us who are making amazing advancements in science, astronomy, medicine and philosophy that rivals anything ever done in history. There are writers, musicians, poets and artists at work behind the scenes creating amazing works, but not being recognized by people with the money needed to promote them.
We don't perceive humans as having less brain power today, but instead they are victims of a defunct education system, a commercialization of too many "toys" that preoccupy their minds, and a clever system of brainwashing by the electronic and printed media that is leaving them confused and uneducated.
When compared to students in foreign countries, American students are ranked low in mathematics, science, political science and all of the other things they should know. Thus it is clear that human brain size is not causing the mental devolution.
Indeed, this writer has always struggled to find hats to fit him because of an unusually large head size. My late wife, Doris, who I considered to be much more intelligent than I, was a small person with an unusually small head. She had to be fitted with children's eye glasses and clothes. Yet she had an astounding intellect.  When researching the skull of Cro Magnon man, researchers discovered its brain was about 20 percent larger than that of contemporary humans. Yet Cro Magnons were the real "cave dwellers" of the past. They walked the Earth some 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, and preceded homo Sapiens, who had smaller sized brains, but became the dominant species that began building monuments, cities and farms. There is a troubling aspect of this picture. When we look back at the remains of the great monuments erected by ancient civilizations we find great stone block structures, architectural wonders apparently erected without the help of modern technology. Some believe it may still be impossible for contemporary architects to duplicate many of these ancient buildings, like the Great Pyramid of Giza. There is no way for us to measure the intelligence of our ancestors, even those who lived a century before us, so it is impossible for us to compare ourselves with the people of the past. One thing we do know is that because of computers, i-Phones and Blackberries, and the invention of satellite global positioning systems to guide aircraft, ships and even our cars, humans today are not using their brains as much as they once did. We don't have to memorize routes, use mathematics to locate our position at sea, or even learn how to spell the words we write. Computers do it all for us. One of the early copies of MAD Magazine offered a cartoon story about a future society that had become so dependent on computers, everything operated under a master computer that controlled all of the machines in the world. People had become so lazy they rode around in wheeled vehicles that took them where ever they wished at mere thought. One day the master computer broke down and the people discovered that they not only forgot how to repair it, but they lacked the muscular power to get out of their wheeled machines and walk. Their muscles had atrophied. Are we doing this to our brains? (c) 2020 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles. |
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Indigenous people in Canada are giving the world a demonstration of the power of nonviolent action. The justness of their cause - defending the land from those who would destroy it for short term profit and the elimination of a habitable climate on earth - combined with their courage and the absence on their part of cruelty or hatred, has the potential to create a much larger movement, which is of course the key to success.
This is a demonstration of nothing less than a superior alternative to war, not just because the war weapons of the militarized Canadian police may be defeated by the resistance of the people who have never been conquered or surrendered, but also because the Canadian government could accomplish its aims in the wider world better by following a similar path, by abandoning the use of war for supposedly humanitarian ends and making use of humanitarian means instead. Nonviolence is simply more likely to succeed in domestic and international relations than violence. War is not a tool for preventing but for facilitating its identical twin, genocide.
Of course, the indigenous people in "British Columbia," as around the world, are demonstrating something else as well, for those who care to see it: a way of living sustainably on earth, an alternative to earth-violence, to the raping and murdering of the planet - an activity closely linked to the use of violence against human beings.
The Canadian government, like its southern neighbor, has an unacknowledged addiction to the war-oil-genocide problem. When Donald Trump says he needs troops in Syria to steal oil, or John Bolton says Venezuela needs a coup to steal oil, it's simply an acknowledgement of the global continuation of the never-ended operation of stealing North America.
Look at the gas-fracking invasion of unspoiled lands in Canada, or the wall on the Mexican border, or the occupation of Palestine, or the destruction of Yemen, or the "longest ever" war on Afghanistan (which is only the longest ever because the primary victims of North American militarism are still not considered real people with real nations whose destruction counts as real wars) , and what do you see? You see the same weapons, the same tools, the same senseless destruction and cruelty, and the same massive profits flowing into the same pockets of the same profiteers from blood and suffering - the corporations that will be shamelessly marketing their products at the CANSEC weapons show in Ottawa in May.
Much of the profits these days comes from distant wars fought in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but those wars drive the technology and the contracts and the experience of war veterans that militarize the police in places like North America. The same wars (always fought for "freedom," of course) also influence the culture toward greater acceptance of the violation of basic rights in the name of "national security" and other meaningless phrases. This process is exacerbated by the blurring of the line between war and police, as wars become endless occupations, missiles become tools of random isolated murder, and activists - antiwar activists, antipipeline activists, antigenocide activists - become categorized with terrorists and enemies.
Not only is war over 100 times more likely where there is oil or gas (and in no way more likely where there is terrorism or human rights violations or resource scarcity or any of the things people like to tell themselves cause wars) but war and war preparations are leading consumers of oil and gas. Not only is violence needed to steal the gas from indigenous lands, but that gas is highly likely to be put to use in the commission of wider violence, while in addition helping to render the earth's climate unfit for human life. While peace and environmentalism are generally treated as separable, and militarism is left out of environmental treaties and environmental conversations, war is in fact a leading environmental destroyer. Guess who just pushed a bill through the U.S. Congress to allow both weapons and pipelines into Cyprus? Exxon-Mobil.
Solidarity of the longest victims of western imperialism with the newest ones is a source of great potential for justice in the world.
But I mentioned the war-oil-genocide problem. What does any of this have to do with genocide? Well, genocide is an act "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." Such an act can involve murder or kidnapping or both or neither. Such an act can "physically" harm no one. It can be any one, or more than one, of these five things:
When the treaty to ban genocide was being drafted in 1947, at the same time that Nazis were still being put on trial, and while U.S. government scientists were experimenting on Guatemalans with syphilis, Canadian government "educators" were performing "nutritional experiments" on Indigenous children - that is to say: starving them to death. The original draft of the new law included the crime of cultural genocide. While this was stripped out at the urging of Canada and the United States, it remained in the form of item "e" above. Canada ratified the treaty nonetheless, and despite having threatened to add reservations to its ratification, did no such thing. But Canada enacted into its domestic law only items "a" and "c" - simply omitting "b," "d," and "e" in the list above, despite the legal obligation to include them. Even the United States has included what Canada omitted.
Canada should be shut down (as should the United States) until it recognizes that it has a problem and begins to mend its ways. And even if Canada didn't need to be shut down, CANSEC would need to be shut down.
CANSEC is one of the largest annual weapons shows in North America. Here's how it describes itself, a list of exhibitors, and a list of the members of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries which hosts CANSEC.
CANSEC facilitates Canada's role as a major weapons dealer to the world, and the second biggest weapons exporter to the Middle East. So does ignorance. In the late 1980s opposition to a forerunner of CANSEC called ARMX created a great deal of media coverage. The result was a new public awareness, which led to a ban on weapons shows on city property in Ottawa, which lasted 20 years.
The gap left by media silence on Canadian weapons dealing is filled with misleading claims about Canada's supposed role as a peacekeeper and participant in supposedly humanitarian wars, as well as the non-legal justification for wars known as "the responsibility to protect."
In reality, Canada is a major marketer and seller of weapons and components of weapons, with two of its top customers being the United States and Saudi Arabia. The United States is the world's leading marketer and seller of weapons, some of which weapons contain Canadian parts. CANSEC's exhibitors include weapons companies from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
There is little overlap between the wealthy weapons-dealing nations and the nations where wars are waged. U.S. weapons are often found on both sides of a war, rendering ridiculous any pro-war moral argument for those weapons sales.
CANSEC 2020's website boasts that 44 local, national, and international media outlets will be attending a massive promotion of weapons of war. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Canada has been a party since 1976, states that "Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."
The weapons exhibited at CANSEC are routinely used in violation of laws against war, such as the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact - most frequently by Canada's southern neighbor. CANSEC may also violate the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by promoting acts of aggression. Here's a report on Canadian exports to the United States of weapons used in the 2003-begun criminal war on Iraq. Here's a report on Canada's own use of weapons in that war.
The weapons exhibited at CANSEC are used not only in violation of laws against war but also in violation of numerous so-called laws of war, that is to say in the commission of particularly egregious atrocities, and in violation of the human rights of the victims of oppressive governments. Canada sells weapons to the brutal governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
Canada may be in violation of the Rome Statute as a result of supplying weapons that are used in violation of that Statute. It is certainly in violation of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. Canadian weapons are being used in the Saudi-U.S. genocide in Yemen.
In 2015, Pope Francis remarked before a joint session of the United States Congress, "Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade."
An international coalition of individuals and organizations will be converging on Ottawa in May to say No to CANSEC with a seris of events called NoWar2020.
This month two nations, Iraq and the Philippines, have told the United States military to get out. This happens more often than you might think. These actions are part of the same movement that tells the Canadian militarized police to get out of lands they have no rights in. All actions in this movement can inspire and inform all others.
(c) 2020 David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
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 Alberta's 'War Room' Is An Attack On Democracy By David Suzuki Canada is respected globally for the freedoms we who live here enjoy. It's not perfect, but it's a geographically and culturally diverse land with spectacular environments and friendly people. I've always appreciated having the freedom to speak my mind. A diversity of ideas and perspectives, based on facts and evidence, contributes to a healthy, prosperous country. Society is better when people are informed and educated. Governments have fostered and should continue to foster education and healthy discourse, and should be open to criticism. That's not what's happening in Alberta. The government's scandal-plagued $2.5-million public inquiry and $30-million-a-year "war room," called the Canadian Energy Centre, are founded on a conspiracy theory and are designed to silence or stigmatize those who raise legitimate questions about an expanding fossil fuel industry during a climate crisis. The war room is also set up as a corporation so it's not subject to freedom of information requests - not a transparent use of tax dollars. The conspiracy theory is that U.S. philanthropic foundations are funding Canadian environmental organizations to "unjustly" criticize the oilsands industry, in order to give U.S. counterparts a competitive advantage. Strange, because the same foundations also support critics of the U.S. fossil fuel industry. War room managing director Tom Olsen calls it "a direct response to the domestic and foreign-funded campaigns against Canada's oil and gas industry that have divided Canadians and devastated the Alberta economy as energy production in the United States and elsewhere has ramped up." Alberta's premier has even singled out the David Suzuki Foundation, an organization I co-founded and where I'm now a volunteer. I'm extremely proud of its work, which from the beginning has been evidence-based, using the best available scientific research and traditional Indigenous knowledge. Although most of the foundation's money comes from Canadians, it accepts donations from any funder that meets its ethical gift acceptance policy. Like many environmental organizations, it's transparent about financial resources. Others, such as Sandy Garossino in the National Observer, have done more thorough analyses than we could of the Alberta government's disingenuous, secretive strategy - and the conspiracy theory on which it's based - to attack and silence those who care about the future of humanity. That our efforts to research and communicate the overwhelming science of climate disruption and its solutions could be considered a plot to help U.S. oil companies is nonsense. During a time of cutbacks, why are governments spending citizens' money to defend the most profitable enterprise in human history? Yes, the fossil fuel industry has been an important contributor to Alberta and Canada's economies, but to avoid climate catastrophe, we need to alter course, quickly. We should have started long ago, when a "gradual" transition was possible. Governments should support workers who are losing their jobs through automation, economic forces (such as the 2014 oil price collapse) and a necessary response to global heating. That support should extend to people in many sectors facing challenges in a changing world, including forestry. Energy conservation and efficiency, renewable energy and zero-emissions technologies are all growing fields that need support and workers. Unlike fossil fuels, clean tech and clean energy industries are growing, employing many more people. It's not just environmental groups saying we need to wind down the fossil fuel industry and get to work on alternatives and ways to reduce waste. It's Moody's, which downgraded Alberta's credit rating because of the economic risks of over-relying on oil and gas in the face of accelerating climate change. It's Sweden's central bank, Riksbank, selling its Alberta bonds because of the province's climate footprint. It's the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, moving away from coal and fossil fuels and putting its investment strategy through a climate lens. It's pretty much every scientist who studies the various aspects of climate. It's religious and business leaders. It's medical professionals. It's young people marching in the streets for their future. Those who fail to accept the climate crisis and the opportunities resolving it will create should get out of the way of those who know we humans are an ingenious species, capable of progress and innovation. The longer we delay, the more difficult it will be for those displaced from the industry, and for those who must face the increasingly severe consequences of our fossil fuel addiction. (c) 2020 Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co_founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. |
 Elizabeth Warren Needs A Lift. Michael Bloomberg Could Be A Gift From The Gods The man couldn't more embody everything she's made a career fighting against if he were drawn by Thomas Nast. By Charles P. Pierce The Democratic National Committee is not the den of Machiavellian fixers that some of the more fervent members of the Sanders crowd think it is. The DNC is too enamored of its donor class. It is too capable of regularly producing titanic blunders. It's stepped on its own dick so often that "L.L. Bean" is probably permanently imprinted there. But it really isn't competent enough to connive itself into the mess it's in right now. Consider Wednesday night's debate in Las Vegas. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro are no longer running for president, in part because they couldn't raise enough money to get on the debate stage due to the rules cooked up by the DNC. However, Michael Bloomberg will be on the stage, because the DNC monkey-wrenched its own rules to allow him to be there. In fact, it went out of its way to do that. And he's not even on any ballot until two weeks from now. So, pardon me if I point out that the DNC's rules screwed every single person of color in the field into oblivion before the DNC greased the skids so a 78-year-old white billionaire could make his grand entrance. Does the DNC even know what its base is any more? I know, "vote blue no matter who" and all that, but, trust me, this is not going to be forgotten by a lot of voters the Democrats really are going to need next fall. It's simply a terrible look, and somebody should get fired behind it. But the reality is that Bloomberg will be up there with the rest of them, and the dynamic of the primary process will be changed because of it, for good and (mostly) ill. Bloomberg has a history of rank public statements, rank racial attitudes, and rank Republicanism. He also has a unique capacity for irritating the current president*. He also has more money than god, which he has put to use on causes like gun control and climate action. He has a network of mayors who love him, and a network of their staffers that he's trained through luxurious trips to exciting New York City. That is the organization that he brings with him, plus a flood of advertising and a promise that the flood will continue even if he doesn't get the nomination, and I will not be holding my breath on that one, especially if he gets treated roughly throughout the primaries.  Bloomberg will change the debate-stage dynamic. Which leaves us with Senator Professor Warren, whose people got very energetic on the electric Twitter machine over the weekend. Her campaign really needs a lift. If they are smart, and if they play this right, Michael Bloomberg could be a gift from the gods. The man couldn't more embody everything she's made a career fighting against if he were drawn by Thomas Nast. Again, he's not even on any Democratic ballot until Super Tuesday, but he bum-rushed the DNC into putting him on the debate stage, and he's trying to money-whip the nomination before anyone actually gets to vote for him. (Hell, Trump at least ran the whole race last time around.) If you're running on how monopoly power and the money power have had a corrupting influence on how we do politics in this country in the 21st century, could you have asked for a bigger fish in a smaller barrel?  Sanders and Warren will go after Bloomberg full-throttle. Biden? Who knows. Perhaps coincidentally, Bloomberg leaked his Wall Street reform plan to the New York Times on Tuesday. Perhaps coincidentally, its words are very similar to what you might expect if Warren or Sanders had been born Michael Bloomberg. A financial transactions tax of 0.1 percentAnd millions and millions of dollars in TV ads to push it. It's going to be fun watching Bloomberg try to sell himself as the scourge of everyone with whom he's ever had lunch. (c) 2020 Charles P. Pierce has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently 'Idiot America.' He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.
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 Kerner Report Set Standard For What A Serious Presidential Candidate Should Champion The report became famous for its stark warning: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal." It was the last attempt to address honestly the structural inequalities that plague African Americans. By Jesse Jackson As the Democratic presidential primaries move onto Nevada, South Carolina and the many Super Tuesday states, candidates turn their attention to people of color, and particularly African Americans. Many candidates find their rhetoric contradicted by their record; their promises conflicting with their performances. Donald Trump now seeks to woo black voters by taking credit for the economy, by touting the first steps in reducing mass incarceration, and by hyping so-called "opportunity zones." His history-rising to prominence with the vile racist campaign about whether Barack Obama is American, embracing the Nazis at Charlottesville, dedicating his administration to erasing all things Obama, framing his political appeal on race bait politics-gives lie to his histrionics. The same occurs on the Democratic side. Pete Buttigieg always sounds good, but African American leaders in his town excoriate his record as mayor on race and policing. Amy Klobuchar runs as a moderate, but her brutal record as a prosecutor limits her appeal. Mike Bloomberg has the resources to flood the zone, but he too struggles to explain his harsh, racially biased stop-and-frisk policies as mayor of New York or his laughable embrace of right-wing nutcase theories that somehow anti-redlining policies triggered the financial crisis. Bloomberg is joined by Joe Biden on what seems like an endless apology tour. African American voters are not easily fooled. They have a clear agenda. They suffer structural inequality-more unemployment than whites, lower wages, worse jobs, worse schools, inadequate health care, unaffordable housing, unsafe neighborhoods befouled by pollution and poisons, inadequate childcare, lack of recreational facilities, and the outrages of a criminal justice system that is structurally biased against them. They want what most Americans want, and they have a trained eye about politicians. Notably absent from the debate is a leader prepared to be as bold and as serious about the challenges facing African Americans as the Kerner Commission was 52 years ago. The commission, chaired by Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, was created by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the devastating urban riots of the late '60s. It included leaders from both major parties, as well as representatives of labor, the police, business and civil rights groups. It became famous for its stark warning: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal." Dr. Martin Luther King pronounced the report a "physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life." In many ways, it was the last attempt to address honestly and seriously the structural inequalities that plague African Americans. It told harsh truths: "What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget - is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." It concluded that one main cause of the urban violence was white racism that left too many young African Americans without hope. It offered not nostrums and pablum but a serious agenda to redress the maladies: new jobs, new housing, an end to de facto segregation, integration of schools, day care for children, higher wages or income supplementation, greater services, and more diverse and sensitive police forces. It did not blink at the billions that this would cost, suggesting that the cost of not acting would be far greater. The Kerner Report-and Johnson's War on Poverty-was lost in the jungles of Vietnam. The costs of that misbegotten war-in money, in lives and agony, and in political upheaval-torpedoed any serious effort to address our problems at home. What the Kerner Report did leave was a marker: a measure of what it means to be serious in addressing the problems of our society. Much has changed over the last half century, yet too much is the same. Affirmative action has opened closed doors for some people of color. America is more diverse, yet still deeply divided. De facto residential segregation has been largely sustained. Inequality has grown more extreme. Schools are even more divided by class and race. Affordable housing is even less available. Structural racism still stains our criminal justice system. So, as the politicians come campaigning for African American votes, they will get a hearing. We appreciate the attention and the gestures. But the Kerner Report set the standard for what a serious leader would champion. We'll see who comes close-if anyone does-to accepting that challenge. (c) 2020 Jesse Jackson is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. |
Dear Geschaftsfuhrer Lansing, Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling, and last year's winner Volksjudge Samuel (the con) Alito. Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your constant lies about Bernie, Yemen, Syria, Iran and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account! Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Trump at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 03-15-2020. We salute you herr Lansing, Sieg Heil!
Signed by, Heil Trump |
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Bad enough that a tyrant is destroying American democracy. Now an oligarch is trying to buy the presidency.
Michael Bloomberg's net worth is over $60 billion. The yearly return on $60 billion is at least $2 billion - which is what Bloomberg says he'll pour into buying the highest office in the land.
I'm not saying that great wealth should disqualify you from becoming president. America has had some talented and capable presidents who were enormously wealthy - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, for example.
The problem lies at the nexus of wealth and power, where those with great wealth use it to gain great power. This is how oligarchy destroys democracy.
So far, Bloomberg spent over $380 million on campaign advertising. That's more than Hillary Clinton spent on advertising during her entire presidential run. It's multiples of what all other Democratic candidates have spent, including billionaire Tom Steyer.
Encouraged by the murky outcome from the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, Bloomberg has doubled his spending on TV commercials in every market where he is currently advertising and is expanding his campaign's field staff to more than 2,000.
That's not the only way he's using his billions to co-opt the election. He's been endorsed by House Democrats and Democratic mayors who were the beneficiaries of his fortune during their campaigns. He's also paying social-media "influencers" with large followings to promote his campaign.
His paid staff is already three times as large as Trump's, five times Joe Biden's. He's using his fortune to woo staffers away from other campaigns.
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee is putting Bloomberg onto the debate stage by abandoning the individual-donor threshold that it used for the first eight debates, presumably because Bloomberg - the self-funded billionaire - doesn't take donations.
To participate in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas, Democratic candidates need to show at least 10 percent support in four national polls. Bloomberg's wall-to-wall advertising makes that pretty much inevitable. He recently came in third place in a Morning Consult tracking poll, behind just Sanders and Biden. And he's in the top four in many Super Tuesday states.
Bloomberg has some attractive policy ideas about gun control, the environment, and a more progressive tax.
But he's also a champion of Wall Street. He fought against the reforms following the near meltdown of the Street in 2008. His personal fortune is every bit as opaque as Trump's. Through his dozen years as mayor of New York he refused to disclose his federal taxes. Even as a candidate for president, he still hasn't given a date for their release.
And because he hasn't taken individual donations, hasn't appeared on the debate stage, and bases his entire campaign on TV advertising, he isn't being held accountable for his despicable record on race and criminal justice - the discriminatory stop-and-frisk policy he implemented when he was mayor, or his defense of red-lining.
And, remember, he's trying to buy the presidency.
The word "oligarchy" comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning "few to rule or command." It refers to a government of and by a few exceedingly rich people.
Since 1980, the share of America's wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has declined.
The richest 130,000 families now own nearly as much as the bottom 90 percent - 117 million families - combined. The three richest Americans own as much as the bottom half. Michael Bloomberg is the eighth richest.
Big money inevitably engulfs politics, which is why a handful of extremely rich people like Bloomberg have more influence than any comparable group since the robber barons of the early 20th century.
Unlike income or wealth, power is a zero-sum game. The more of it at the top, the less of it anywhere else. And as power and wealth have moved to the top, everyone else has become dis-empowered. Today the great divide is not between left and right. It's between democracy and oligarchy.
Bloomberg is indubitably part of that oligarchy.
If the only way we can get rid of a sociopathic tyrant named Trump is with an oligarch named Bloomberg, we will be forced to choose the oligarch.
But let's hope it doesn't come to that. Oligarchy is better than tyranny. But neither is as good as democracy.
(c) 2020 Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His web site is www.robertreich.org.
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 Mortal Combat 34 things that Americans really don't want to hear about By Jane Stillwater 1. That America's foreign policy basically consists of piracy, theft and murder; 2. That our dangerous obesity epidemic is caused by eating GMO wheat, high-fructose corn syrup, processed food, unstable amounts of sugar/sugar substitutes, fast food and pesticides; 3. That Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden deserve to be treated as Superheroes for trying to save our freedom -- instead of being treated like Darth Vader and Joker; 4. That Trump may be bat-shite cray-cray but Pence has sold his soul to the Devil -- and I know this because I met him personally in Iraq in 2007 as he positively gloried in all the evil murder and "war" going on over there ; 5. That we are slowly but surely going back to the days of coat-hanger abortions. Is this really what we want for our wives and daughters? I would hope not; 6. That 5G will give us brain cancer as well as high speed; 7. That the human race's basic survival just might be more important than driving our cars to work and fueling up our F-35s; 8. That the nasty preservatives and fillers in flu shots could be giving us Alzheimers at an alarming rate but how are we to ever know -- because Big Pharma cleverly blocks any comparative studies on this subject (and if they actually are being done, Google doesn't list them); 9. That our country is currently twenty-two (22) trillion dollars in debt and almost none of that money was spent on you and me. At this rate, America will be going bankrupt just like the old Soviet Union -- and then we'll have oligarchs feeding on America's corpse too. Someone needs to cut up America's credit cards immediately. Screw the Federal Reserve! It's more dangerous to us than Russia, China, Israel and Iran combined; 10. That our very own political parties, congress members and supreme court justices are willing to do whatever it takes to get war-criminal presidents into office -- and I don't just mean Donald Trump; 11. That the chances of our children and grandchildren getting good jobs, receiving a good education, avoiding taking up residence on our couches and living happily ever after are shrinking daily; 12. That we need to use paper ballots and have our ballots counted only by Girl Scouts and nuns;  13. That primitive tribes in the Amazon jungle are much happier than we are; 14. That we currently spend multiple billions of $$$$ helping our Zionist "ally" create Greater Gaza in the Middle East -- but sooner or later this wanton spending on gulags is gonna come back to bite us in the butt; 15. That our babies' brains are too fragile to endure the onslaught of so many vaccinations at such a young age and thus really weird results may occur such as dyslexia, ADHD and gender confusion. Pretty soon a huge percentage of our kids may be illiterate, hyperactive, gay, autistic, infertile or even dead. Yuck! 16. That evil warmongers, heartless drug companies, greedy banksters and huge corporations are not our friends -- no matter what we are told by our televisions and SmartPhones; 17. That racism will also come back to bite us in the butt too (again); 18. That Zionists and Saudis, not Russia or Iran, are happily stabbing us in the back daily -- and Netanyahu and Prince BnB are not our BFFs either; 19. That America is anything but a Christian nation even despite all that dust-up about the unborn (don't believe me? Go ask Jesus how He feels about compassion, charity, murder and mercy); 20. That since the "war" on Vietnam, Americans have become so increasingly afraid of their own shadows that 22,000 gun owners showed up at a rally in Virginia recently, many of them clutching ugly brutal military-grade weapons as if their very lives depended on possessing these monsters -- just to prove how very very afraid that they actually are; 21. That our Congress is bought and paid for by huge corporations -- and so is our Presidency and Supreme Court; 22. That the very next homeless person gasping for clean air, unemployed, dying without healthcare, eating out of dumpsters, being a hater and contemplating suicide could be you (or me); 23. That our elections are all stolen, rigged, gerrymandered, poll-taxed and/or hacked (and not by Russians either); 24. That FaceBook, Google, CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, etc. all happily censor our news and shamelessly lie to us; 25. That human beings are wondrous creations. All human beings. Even women and children. Even socialists. Even poor people. But will the earth miss us when we have finally driven ourselves extinct? Not for a minute; 26. That by murdering so many people abroad, we are also sealing our own doom here at home. What goes around comes around; 27. That those aren't "climate refugees" at our border. They are asylum-seekers fleeing America's pirate foreign policy in Latin America. And those 5,000-plus babies we are currently keeping in cages? Words fail me. We don't even treat puppies that badly; 28. That the Trump impeachment was just a tacky side-show meant to distract us from seeing what is really going on in the Big Top -- where Wall Street and War Street perform in the center ring; 29. That America's true artists and creators are forced to molder away in poverty like they were some unwanted outcasts starring in the opera La Boheme -- starvation, attic garrets, tuberculosis and all; 30. That Trump, like some weird horny guy who will say anything to get into our pants, told us all kinds of lies just to get elected -- and has gone back on almost all of them. For instance, Trump promised to lower taxes but when I went in to get my taxes done yesterday, I was told that a $4,000 earned income credit for low-income wage earners had been eliminated under Trump. Trump also promised to reduce the national debt but just look at us now. We're more in debt now than we have ever been -- and with much more debt to come. He also promised to shrink the Federal Reserve. Ha! 31. That America is a top manufacturing giant -- but only of weapons of mass destruction. And these deadly weapons are being sold to the Saudis so that Prince BnB can massacre helpless Yemeni babies. That's embarrassingly shameful; 32. That America claims to be a democracy. Ha! America is just one more sleazy top-down oligarchy. Get used to it; 33. That President Assad of Syria is actually a good guy and Syrians love him because he has become their High Noon hero who saved them from all those gun-toting American-Zionist-Saudi oil-mad dry-gulching propaganda-spewing rustlers -- and also saved Syria from ISIS too; 34. That life in America doesn't have to be this way. Unless we have a death wish. (c) 2020 Jane Stillwater. Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you're at it, please buy my books!
~~~ Daryl Cagle ~~~  |
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Parting Shots-
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