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Is This The End Of Trump?

By Ernest Stewart

"I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat." ~~~ Michael Cohen

"I believe that more CO2 is good for the world, that the world has been in a CO2 famine for many tens of millions of years and that one or two thousand ppm would be ideal for the biosphere. I am baffled at hysterical attempts to drive CO2 levels below 350 ppm [parts per million], or some other value, apparently chosen by Kabbalah numerology, not science." ~~~ William Happer

"Number 2 solution is to compensate me 3000 USD. We will name it as a donation in this situation i most certainly will asap eliminate your video tape. You will resume your daily life like this never occurred and you will not hear back again from me." ~~~ Darian Outram

"Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more." ~~~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.


I spent most of Wednesday watching Michael Cohen, tRumps former lawyer, testify before Congress, Here's Cohen's opening statement:

"Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today.

I have asked this Committee to ensure that my family be protected from Presidential threats, and that the Committee be sensitive to the questions pertaining to ongoing investigations. Thank you for your help and for your understanding.

I am here under oath to correct the record, to answer the Committee's questions truthfully, and to offer the American people what I know about President Trump. I recognize that some of you may doubt and attack me on my credibility. It is for this reason that I have incorporated into this opening statement documents that are irrefutable, and demonstrate that the information you will hear is accurate and truthful.

Never in a million years did I imagine, when I accepted a job in 2007 to work for Donald Trump, that he would one day run for President, launch a 2 campaign on a platform of hate and intolerance, and actually win. I regret the day I said "yes" to Mr. Trump. I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way.

I am ashamed of my own failings, and I publicly accepted responsibility for them by pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York.

I am ashamed of my weakness and misplaced loyalty - of the things I did for Mr. Trump in an effort to protect and promote him.

I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump's illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience.

I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is.

He is a racist.

He is a conman.

He is a cheat.

He was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.

I will explain each in a few moments.

I am providing the Committee today with several documents. These include:

• A copy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account - after he became president - to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign;

• Copies of financial statements for 2011 - 2013 that he gave to such institutions as Deutsche Bank;

• A copy of an article with Mr. Trump's handwriting on it that reported on the auction of a portrait of himself - he arranged for the bidder ahead of time and then reimbursed the bidder from the account of his non-profit charitable foundation, with the picture now hanging in one of his country clubs; and

• Copies of letters I wrote at Mr. Trump's direction that threatened his high school, colleges, and the College Board not to release his grades or SAT scores.

I hope my appearance here today, my guilty plea, and my work with law enforcement agencies are steps along a path of redemption that will restore faith in me and help this country understand our president better.

Before going further, I want to apologize to each of you and to Congress as a whole.

The last time I appeared before Congress, I came to protect Mr. Trump. Today, I'm here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump. I lied to Congress about when Mr. Trump stopped negotiating the Moscow Tower project in Russia. I stated that we stopped negotiating in January 2016. That was false - our negotiations continued for months later during the campaign.

Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That's not how he operates.

In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there's no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.

There were at least a half-dozen times between the Iowa Caucus in January 2016 and the end of June when he would ask me "How's it going in Russia?" - referring to the Moscow Tower project.

You need to know that Mr. Trump's personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it.

To be clear: Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.

And so I lied about it, too - because Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie. And he made it clear to me because his personal attorneys reviewed my statement before I gave it to Congress.

Over the past two years, I have been smeared as "a rat" by the President of the United States. The truth is much different, and let me take a brief moment to introduce myself.

My name is Michael Dean Cohen.

I am a blessed husband of 24 years and a father to an incredible daughter and son. When I married my wife, I promised her that I would love her, cherish her, and protect her. As my father said countless times throughout my childhood, "you my wife, and you my children, are the air that I breathe." To my Laura, my Sami, and my Jake, there is nothing I wouldn't do to protect you.

I have always tried to live a life of loyalty, friendship, generosity, and compassion - qualities my parents ingrained in my siblings and me since childhood. My father survived the Holocaust thanks to the compassion and selfless acts of others. He was helped by many who put themselves in harm's way to do what they knew was right.

That is why my first instinct has always been to help those in need. Mom and Dad...I am sorry that I let you down.

As many people that know me best would say, I am the person they would call at 3AM if they needed help. I proudly remember being the emergency contact for many of my children's friends when they were growing up because their parents knew that I would drop everything and care for them as if they were my own.

Yet, last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual.

For the record: Individual #1 is President Donald J. Trump. It is painful to admit that I was motivated by ambition at times. It is even more painful to admit that many times I ignored my conscience and acted loyal to a man when I should not have. Sitting here today, it seems unbelievable that I was so mesmerized by Donald Trump that I was willing to do things for him that I knew were absolutely wrong.

For that reason, I have come here to apologize to my family, to the government, and to the American people.

Accordingly, let me now tell you about Mr. Trump.

I got to know him very well, working very closely with him for more than 10 years, as his Executive Vice President and Special Counsel and then personal attorney when he became President. When I first met Mr. Trump, he was a successful entrepreneur, a real estate giant, and an icon. Being around Mr. Trump was intoxicating. When you were in his presence, you felt like you were involved in something greater than yourself - that you were somehow changing the world.

I wound up touting the Trump narrative for over a decade. That was my job. Always stay on message. Always defend. It monopolized my life. At first, I worked mostly on real estate developments and other business transactions. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Trump brought me into his personal life and private dealings. Over time, I saw his true character revealed.

Mr. Trump is an enigma. He is complicated, as am I. He has both good and bad, as do we all. But the bad far outweighs the good, and since taking office, he has become the worst version of himself. He is capable of behaving kindly, but he is not kind. He is capable of committing acts of generosity, but he is not generous. He is capable of being loyal, but he is fundamentally disloyal.

Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation - only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the "greatest infomercial in political history."

He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign - for him - was always a marketing opportunity.

I knew early on in my work for Mr. Trump that he would direct me to lie to further his business interests. I am ashamed to say, that when it was for a real estate mogul in the private sector, I considered it trivial. As the President, I consider it significant and dangerous.

But in the mix, lying for Mr. Trump was normalized, and no one around him questioned it. In fairness, no one around him today questions it, either.

A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of time. The answer is yes.

As I earlier stated, Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails.

In July 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump's office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of "wouldn't that be great."

Mr. Trump is a racist. The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots. You have heard him call poorer countries "shitholes."

In private, he is even worse.

He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a "shithole."

This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States.

While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way.

And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.

And yet I continued to work for him.

Mr. Trump is a cheat.

As previously stated, I'm giving the Committee today three years of President Trump's financial statements, from 2011-2013, which he gave to Deutsche Bank to inquire about a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills and to Forbes. These are Exhibits 1a, 1b, and 1c to my testimony.

It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.

I am sharing with you two newspaper articles, side by side, that are examples of Mr. Trump inflating and deflating his assets, as I said, to suit his financial interests. These are Exhibit 2 to my testimony.

As I noted, I'm giving the Committee today an article he wrote on, and sent me, that reported on an auction of a portrait of Mr. Trump. This is Exhibit 3A to my testimony.

Mr. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself. Please see Exhibit 3B to my testimony.

And it should come as no surprise that one of my more common responsibilities was that Mr. Trump directed me to call business owners, many of whom were small businesses, that were owed money for their services and told them no payment or a reduced payment would be coming. When I advised Mr. Trump of my success, he actually reveled in it.

And yet, I continued to work for him.

Mr. Trump is a conman.

He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair, and to lie to his wife about it, which I did. Lying to the First Lady is one of my biggest regrets. She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly - and she did not deserve that.

I am giving the Committee today a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer from me to Ms. Clifford's attorney during the closing days of the presidential campaign that was demanded by Ms. Clifford to maintain her silence about her affair with Mr. Trump. This is Exhibit 4 to my testimony.

Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign. I did that, too - without bothering to consider whether that was improper, much less whether it was the right thing to do or how it would impact me, my family, or the public.

I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later.

As Exhibit 5A to my testimony shows, I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank 14 account on August 1, 2017 - when he was President of the United States - pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea, to reimburse me - the word used by Mr. Trump's TV lawyer - for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf. This $35,000 check was one of 11 check installments that was paid throughout the year - while he was President. Other checks to reimburse me for the hush money payments were signed by Don Jr. and Allen Weisselberg. See, for example, Exhibit 5B.

The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws. You can find the details of that scheme, directed by Mr. Trump, in the pleadings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

So picture this scene - in February 2017, one month into his presidency, I'm visiting President Trump in the Oval Office for the first time. It's truly awe-inspiring, he's showing me around and pointing to different paintings, and he says to me something to the effect of...Don't worry, Michael, your January and February reimbursement checks are coming. They were FedExed from New York and it takes a while for that to get through the White House system. As he promised, I received the first check for the reimbursement of $70,000 not long thereafter.

When I say conman, I'm talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.

As I mentioned, I'm giving the Committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump's direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump's grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission. These are Exhibit 6.

The irony wasn't lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades. As you can see in Exhibit 7, Mr. Trump declared "Let him show his records" after calling President Obama "a terrible student."

The sad fact is that I never heard Mr. Trump say anything in private that led me to believe he loved our nation or wanted to make it better. In fact, he did the opposite.

When telling me in 2008 that he was cutting employees' salaries in half - including mine - he showed me what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving "someone like him" that much money back. During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he did not consider Vietnam Veteran, and Prisoner of War, Senator John McCain to be "a hero" because he likes people who weren't captured. At the same time, Mr. Trump tasked me to handle the negative press surrounding his medical deferment from the Vietnam draft.

Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.

He finished the conversation with the following comment. "You think I'm stupid, I wasn't going to Vietnam."

I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now.

And yet, I continued to work for him.

Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.

Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line, "Dirt on Hillary Clinton." Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened. Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father's desk - which in itself was unusual. People didn't just walk behind Mr. Trump's desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: "The meeting is all set." I remember Mr. Trump saying, "Ok good...let me know."

What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world. And also, that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone - and certainly not without checking with his father.

I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump's knowledge and approval. So, I concluded that Don Jr. was referring to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting about dirt on Hillary with the Russian representative when he walked behind his dad's desk that day - and that Mr. Trump knew that was the meeting Don Jr. was talking about when he said, "That's good...let me know."

Over the past year or so, I have done some real soul searching. I see now that my ambition and the intoxication of Trump power had much to do with the bad decisions I made.

To you, Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, the other members of this Committee, and the other members of the House and Senate, I am sorry for my lies and for lying to Congress.

To our nation, I am sorry for actively working to hide from you the truth about Mr. Trump when you needed it most.

For those who question my motives for being here today, I understand. I have lied, but I am not a liar. I have done bad things, but I am not a bad man. I have fixed things, but I am no longer your "fixer," Mr. Trump.

I am going to prison and have shattered the safety and security that I tried so hard to provide for my family. My testimony certainly does not diminish the pain I caused my family and friends - nothing can do that. And I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.

And, by coming today, I have caused my family to be the target of personal, scurrilous attacks by the President and his lawyer - trying to intimidate me from appearing before this panel. Mr. Trump called me a "rat" for choosing to tell the truth - much like a mobster would do when one of his men decides to cooperate with the government.

As Exhibit 8 shows, I have provided the Committee with copies of Tweets that Mr. Trump posted, attacking me and my family - only someone burying his head in the sand would not recognize them for what they are: encouragement to someone to do harm to me and my family.

I never imagined that he would engage in vicious, false attacks on my family - and unleash his TV-lawyer to do the same. I hope this committee and all members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will make it clear: As a nation, we should not tolerate attempts to intimidate witnesses before congress and attacks on family are out of bounds and not acceptable.

I wish to especially thank Speaker Pelosi for her statements in Exhibit 9 to protect this institution and me, and the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff and Chairman Cummings for likewise defending this institution and my family against the attacks by Mr. Trump, and also the many Republicans who have admonished the President as well.

I am not a perfect man. I have done things I am not proud of, and I will live with the consequences of my actions for the rest of my life.

But today, I get to decide the example I set for my children and how I attempt to change how history will remember me. I may not be able to change the past, but I can do right by the American people here today. Thank you for your attention. I am happy to answer the Committee's questions.

You could see and hear the Democrats smell the blood in the water. In a normal country this would be the end of citizen tRump, but with Turtle boy, and his fascist cabal in the Senate, I rather doubt it. Too bad Mikie, snitches get stitches!

In Other News

I see where the Democratic chairman of a key congressional subcommittee on Tuesday characterized the Trump administration's latest efforts to challenge the science behind global warming as "dangerous."

The comments by Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing federal climate funding, came amid news reports that White House officials are putting together a national security advisory panel aimed at countering the science behind human-caused global warming.

The panel's preconceived findings will give tRump, who has challenged his own government's conclusions about the causes of and threats from global warming, a convenient excuse to ignore it.

Serrano, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, said that would be perilous.

"This unaccountable working group appears set to deliberately cherry-pick data and science with the sole purpose of pushing back against the widely accepted science around climate change," he said at a hearing Tuesday that featured government scientists testifying on the crisis. "This only serves to diminish the magnitude of this crisis, and it is dangerous."

Which is the very reason that tRumps panels head "climate czar" William Happer won this week's Vidkun Quisling Award. You may recall that the Quisling Award is given weekly to the bigest traitor in America that we could find that week, and Happer certainly deserves it! On the bright side, the majority of Americans aren't buying tRump's smoke and mirrors tricks anymore and his panels lies won't be bought by any one except by his cult members which are a tiny minority of Americans!

And Finally

Somewhere along the dark web someone has my name and a password that I haven't used in 14 years. Those old passwords of 6 to 8 letters and numbers were replace by passwords that average 19 letters, numbers and symbols. So about every 3 or 4 months I get a letter like this one. This one is from Darian Outram at nhgrolliegxe@outlook.com As you can see, he's obviously an English major, 4th grade English would be my guess! As you can see by his sentence structor, it looks like tRump could have written it!

"I am aware yomama one of your pass. Lets get straight to purpose. No-one has compensated me to check you. You may not know mw and you're probably wondering why you're getting this e-mail.

Well, i actually setup a malware on the adult video vids (pornographic material) web site and there is more, you visited this website to have fun (you know what i mean) When you were watching videos, your web browser initiated working as a Remote Desktop having a key logger which provided me with accessibility to your screen and cam. immediately after that, my software gathered all your contacts from your Messenger, Facebook, and emailaccount, and then i made a video. 1st part shows the video you were viewing (you got a fines taste lmao) and 2nd part shows the view of your cam, and it's u.

You do have not one but two possibilities. Shall we look at these types of possibilities in detail:

1st alternative is to skip this email. in this situation, i will send your video clip to everyone of your personal contacts and also visualize regarding the disgrace you will definitely get. Furthermore in case you are in an affair, precisely how it will eventually affect?

Number 2 solution is to compensate me 3000 USD. We will name it as a donation in this situation i most certainly will asap eliminate your video tape. You will resume your daily life like this never occurred and you will not hear back again from me.

You will make the payment via Bitcoin (if you don't know this search 'how to buy bitcoin' in Google search engine.)

BTC address to send to 14mPEQqwquD9gUfaq6NhZLfyeAqfe42apxk
(CaSe sensitive copy & paste it)

Should you are making plans for going to the cops, very well, this e mail cannot be traced back to me. I have delt with my actions. i am just not trying to ask for much i wish to be paid, You have 48 hours to pay. I've a special pixel in this email, and right now i know that you have read this email message. if i don't get the Bitcoins, i definitely will send out your video recording to all of your contacts including family members, co-workers and so forth. having said that, if I receive the payment, i will destroy the recording immediately. if you want evidence reply Yea! then i will certainly send your video recording to your 6 friends. This is the non-negotiable offer, so don't waste my time and yours by responding to this email."

My reply...

"So you bought my name and a 14 year old password off the dark web thinking I'd fall for your scam? At least you charge half the price of the last guy that tried to blackmail me! The guy before wanted $2500 and like the two others I just turned them all over to the FBI! First off Bozo, I haven't used that password since 2005, 2nd my camera on my computer is covered over so you have no photo of me. When they come for you, tell the FBI I said hi! In 15 years when you get out of prison perhaps you'll get a real job where you'll ask, "Do you want fries with that, sir?" I think I'll expose you in next weeks column, so thanks for helping me write it!""

As I always recommend to families with children, cover your computers camera with a simple round bandaid to keep the perverts from watching your children, or yourself for that matter. It's always something, America!

Keepin' On

Nothing's changed folks, the time has come and gone, and so some of our arthors and artists won't be available to us. We turned up $1160 short of paying our bills for this year. That's the first time in the magazines history since our beginning in 2000 that we failed to raise the "rent."

For once I'm at a loss for words, imagine that! That's the trouble with being a sooth sayer. When people ask me what is it that I do, I have been known to say, "I piss people off." You'd be amazed how mad you can make some people by just telling the truth, saying the sooth! The Matrix, I hear, is very warm and comfortable, and over the years while we did unplug this, or that person, we found ourselves, mainly, just preaching to the choir! C'est la guerre!"

We'll keep fighting the good fight until the rest of the money runs out. 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 saying the sooth!

*****


04-13-24 ~ 02-23-2019
Thanks for the film!


05-23-25 ~ 02-24-2019
Thanks for the music!


01-30-51 ~ 02-26-2019
Thanks for the music!


04-06-29 ~ 02-28-2019
Thanks for the music!

*****

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So please help us if you can-?
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****** We've Moved The Forum Back *******

For late breaking news and views visit The Forum. Find all the news you'll otherwise miss. We publish three times the amount of material there than what is in the magazine. Look for the latest Activist Alerts. Updated constantly, please feel free to post an article we may have missed.

*****

So how do you like Trump so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it?

Until the next time, Peace!

(c) 2019 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.

A study just published in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that if we continue with business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions, the atmosphere will hold 1,200 parts per million CO2 in about a century from now, which will cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear. Their absence could leave the Earth to warm by a staggering 8 degrees Celsius (8°C).

The computer simulation used in the study showed that once that 1,200 parts per million (ppm) tipping point of atmospheric CO2 is breached, the Earth's temperature would soar by 4 degrees C just from the CO2. Then, it would increase by another 4 degress C due to the absent clouds no longer reflecting solar radiation back into space.

Stratocumulus clouds cover around two-thirds of the planet, and play a key role in keeping the planet cool, due to their white color and reflective qualities. Research has shown that planetary warming correlates with the loss of clouds. This is yet another unforeseen climate feedback loop that could catapult us into catastrophic warming.

Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a leading authority on atmospheric physics, told Quanta Magazine that the results of the study still needed to be replicated independently, but that the possibility of the simulation being accurate was "very plausible."

Crocodiles in the Arctic

It is highly unlikely that most complex life could survive on a planet that has warmed to 8 degrees C. A previous cataclysmic hot spell gives us clues as to what Earth's future could look like.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred 56 million years ago, was triggered by heat-trapping carbon causing the planet to gain 6 degrees C. (At the time, the Earth was already several degrees Celsius warmer than it is now.)

Global mass extinctions resulted, as the oceans warmed dramatically. Horses, monkeys, and other animals migrated northward as they chased vegetation that moved into the higher latitudes. Mammal life miniaturized over many generations as their food became less nutritious due to the warmer carbon-filled air, and flash flooding and increasingly violent storms became the norm.

During the PETM, the equatorial regions of Earth were scorched and nearly completely lifeless, while crocodiles swam in the Arctic.

"Schneider and co-authors have cracked open Pandora's box of potential climate surprises," Matt Huber, a paleoclimate modeler at Purdue University told Quanta Magazine of the study.

Huber added that, "all of a sudden this enormous sensitivity that is apparent from past climates isn't something that's just in the past. It becomes a vision of the future." The tipping point of the loss of clouds, and the instability it causes, is significant: It helps to explain the volatility in Earth's paleoclimate records.

"Climate transitions that arise from this instability may have contributed importantly to hothouse climates and abrupt climate changes in the geological past," reads the abstract of the study. "Such transitions to a much warmer climate may also occur in the future if CO2 levels continue to rise."

(c) 2019 Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

The original "Battle of the Billionaires" was a harmless entertainment event, pitting WWE chief Vince McMahon against Donald Trump in Wrestlemania 23. It was notable for being perhaps the last time Trump was not cast as the heel in a public showdown. Nothing was at stake beyond McMahon's hair, which Trump shaved on camera in the end.

The sequel - a war between Trump and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos - is less entertaining, namely because there is too much that matters at stake. Also, neither one is believable in the Good Guy role.

Much of the action lately surrounds Bezos. Who knows what someone worth $137 billion would consider a bad month, but Bezos is having a pretty rough February.

In addition to Amazon's much-panned withdrawal from a "second headquarters" deal in New York City - which had the New York Post comparing Bezos to ex-Yankees pitcher Sonny Gray for his inability to "take the kind of pressure New York can dish out" - the Pez-headed tech giant's dreams of Pentagon riches are suddenly being thwarted.

The blow involves a surprise delay in the award of the so-called JEDI contract, a $10 billion (or more) prize for Pentagon cloud management that once seemed gift-wrapped for Amazon.

The massive military deal, if and when it's handed out, will likely make Bezos the most powerful man in Washington, even without physically being there.

Bezos would have deep bonds with both the CIA and the Pentagon as a contractor, and own the Washington Post as a pulpit. Trump, fighting off investigations conducted by (among others) his own executive branch, has a couple of Senators, Fox News and a Twitter account. Bezos might easily wield more institutional might in the end.

JEDI would have put Amazon in charge of standardizing the Pentagon's disorganized mish-mash of computer systems, but federal claims court judge Eric Bruggink just stayed the award.

Paul Manafort's Lawyers Ask for Lenient Sentence, Citing His Altar Boy Past This started as a lawsuit filed by would-be bid competitor Oracle, whose co-CEO, Safra Catz, is reportedly one of Trump's biggest supporters in Silicon Valley. The suit suggested Pentagon procurement officer Deap Ubhi's involvement in the JEDI negotiations constituted a conflict. Ubhi used to work for Amazon and in 2017 tweeted, "Once an Amazonian, always an Amazonian."

This started as a lawsuit filed by would-be bid competitor Oracle, whose co-CEO, Safra Catz, is reportedly one of Trump's biggest supporters in Silicon Valley. The suit suggested Pentagon procurement officer Deap Ubhi's involvement in the JEDI negotiations constituted a conflict. Ubhi used to work for Amazon and in 2017 tweeted, "Once an Amazonian, always an Amazonian."

Oracle also charged the JEDI award was a violation of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, which put controls on so-called "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" (IDIQ) awards.

These are government awards in which the contractor is essentially on standby to provide services "from time to time." Such awards began to flourish after a 1994 law called the Federal Acquisitions Streamlining Act essentially limited the ability of rival firms to whine about it, when another company was given a fat IDIQ contract.

According to a later report by the Acquisition Advisory Panel, within a year after the passage of FASA, the government was spending more on services than on goods. Then, after 9/11, such contracts surged even more. The Department of Defense alone spent $141 billion on service contracts in 2005, a 75-percent increase from 1999.

The most infamous IDIQ award probably involved Halliburton in Iraq. In 2006, at a hearing on "lessons learned" from Iraqi reconstruction, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin testified about what Halliburton revealed about the inherent problems of IDIQ awards.

"That IDIQ contract," Levin said, "lends itself to abuse because when we finally decide what work we want done ... we will have no competition. As a result, we pretty much have to take whatever estimate the contractor offers." Should Amazon win the JEDI deal, it would essentially become the Halliburton of the cloud. In the same way you couldn't go to the bathroom in Iraq without seeing the name of former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, Amazon would be a ubiquitous digital presence in the Pentagon and the security services, making bank on an endless stream of services.

There have been charges that the deal was always rigged for Amazon. A pair of Republican congressmen, Steve Womack of Arkansas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, complained the Pentagon wrote the award in such a way that only one company could get it.

They said the deal requires Defense Information Systems Agency Impact level 6. This highest level of cloud security is a requirement that only Amazon meets, reportedly.

The press also critiqued the deal. A Vanity Fair piece from August of last year argued the 1,375 page JEDI proposal "contains a host of technical stipulations" that would rule out all but a few companies. The magazine pointed to one requiring $2 billion in annual cloud revenues, for instance.

Around that same time, a 100-page privately prepared "dossier" began to circulate in Washington, alleging corruption on the part of Defense officials in their effort to hand Amazon the contract.

The stories surrounding this "dossier," said to be prepared by the firm RosettiStarr (which has refused comment publicly) are remarkably similar to stories surrounding the Steele report. They suggest a private research firm has been spreading mysteriously sourced tales of corruption to reporters all over the capital, in the hope some of them would bite.

As with the Steele report, no one did bite initially, or at least "for months," according to NextGov. That site eventually wrote a story of its own in December: "Someone is Waging a Secret War To Undermine The Pentagon's Next Cloud Contract"

In other words, both Trump and Bezos have stinging, privately prepared research reports about them and their businesses ping-ponging around Washington.

Each man is convinced the other is scheming against him. Trump believes Bezos (he calls him "Jeff Bozo") and his minions at the "Amazon Washington Post" are helping lead the Russiagate charge against the White House. Bezos is meanwhile convinced Trump is behind recent attacks on his private life.

He has made this explicit since the National Enquirer ran an expose on the affair between Bezos and Laura Sanchez (an expose that triggered a divorce with Bezos' wife of 25 years). Bezos accused the Enquirer, its parent company AMI and AMI chief David Pecker of being in league with Trump in an effort to blackmail him with texts and a "below-the-belt selfie."

Bezos made the charge in a Medium post bearing the unfortunate headline, "No thank you, Mr. Pecker." A Daily Beast story claimed "investigators" from "Bezos' personal security team" were looking at "various figures in the president's orbit, who might have also had access to Bezos' or Sanchez's phones." It's come out that the investigation focused on Michael Sanchez, brother of Bezos' paramour, who is a Trump supporter and supposedly has ties to Roger Stone. All of which is interesting and also gross, but as the Verge put it recently, though it's "plausible" that texts and photos were leaked to the Enquirer for political reasons, "there is still no direct evidence to that effect."

The Bezos-Trump war has captivated Washington and paralyzed the public imagination with tales of far-reaching political conspiracies. So far, though, all we know for sure is that both men cheated on their wives incautiously enough that retch-inducing details about their genitalia have been foisted on the public through news reports.

The next presidential election is still two years away; Bezos-Trump is what we will live off for a while. It is the kind of grubby fight for power between unlikable oligarchs that populations in Third World countries are often forced to follow in place of elections.

If Bezos wins, he becomes the first plausible archetype for a real-world Big Brother, an unelected surveillance overlord with broad political and informational power. If Trump wins, that's bad for reasons Rolling Stone readers hardly need explained. Somehow, I miss Wrestlemania.

The plutocrats did not invest billions of dollars every election cycle in the Democratic Party to see it used as a tool of their disempowerment.

Having launched his second campaign for the presidency on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders is now the recurring nightmare of corporate Democrats: an old lefty who speaks the language of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the age of endless capitalist austerity and war. Sanders' signature proposals on Medicare for All, free higher education, a $15 an hour minimum wage, and dramatically higher taxes on the rich, are supportd by super-majorities of the Democratic electorate, most independent voters, and even about half of Republicans. On top of that winning array of issues, younger self-styled "socialists" have put forward a Green New Deal that is both wildly popular and potentially transformative of the oligarchic order.

If there was anything "democratic" about the Democratic Party, Sanders would be the consensus choice for the nomination and an odds-on favorite to evict Donald Trump from the White House in 2020 -- a fact painfully understood by the institutional servants of capital, if not the oligarchs, themselves. However, the Party is not a democratic institution, but an embedded apparatus of capitalist governance, control of which is not negotiable. If anything, the Democratic Party has become even more strategically vital to capitalist governance, in the U.S. and globally, since the takeover of the Republican half of the electoral duopoly by the erratic and untrustworthy real estate magnate, Donald Trump. The bulk of the ruling class has arrayed itself against Trump in the most serious split among the Lords of Capital since the Great Depression, throwing the whole system into a crisis of legitimacy. For most of finance and high tech capital, the Democratic Party has become an indispensable tool whose loss is unthinkable. But, here comes Bernie Sanders - again -- threatening to mobilize millions to seize control of the oligarchs' favored party of governance. When combined with the raging crisis of legitimacy, this is a volatile brew.

The billionaires will never assent to allow the Democratic Party to be deployed against their core policies of endless war and austerity: the ruling class consensus. Bernie Sanders "socialism" is not the issue. The Lords of Capital know as well as real Marxists do, that Sanders is a "semantic" socialist, not the kind they are sworn to kill (or else he would likely be dead already). But, Sanders' New Deal proposals would mean an end to domestic austerity, and would almost certainly also unleash irresistible pressures to dramatically shrink the war budget. This is totally unacceptable to the Lords of Capital and their servants, whose political task is to pacify society while wealth and power continue to devolve to an ever-shrinking group of oligarchs. The very idea of redistribution is anathema, a Pandora's box that must not be opened, lest it never be shut. Endless warfare keeps the people's minds on fake "existential" problems ("Russians") instead of the real, metastasizing crises of capitalism.

Therefore, Bernie Sanders' non-socialism is perceived by the rulers as almost as dangerous as the real thing. In truth, Sanders' agenda is derived almost wholly from Franklin Roosevelt's "Economic Bill of Rights ," spelled out in an annual address to Congress on January 11, 1944. Roosevelt's rights included:

*The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

*The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

*The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

*The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

*The right of every family to a decent home.

*The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

*The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

*The right to a good education.

"I believe that people are inherently entitled to health care. I believe people are entitled to get the best education they can. I believe that people are entitled to live in a clean environment, People are entitled to have decent-paying jobs."

Sanders' program does not directly threaten the rule of capital, but it would spell the end of the Age of Austerity. And, although some billionaires may be reconciled to sharing a portion of their wealth in the interest of social peace, there is nothing remotely approaching a consensus on redistribution among the Lords of Capital. At any rate, the plutocrats did not invest billions of dollars every election cycle in the Democratic Party to see it used as a tool of their disempowerment. If Sanders insists on playing FDR, the Lords of Capital are determined that he do so in one of the small, non-governing parties. They will take all measures necessary to keep control of the Democratic apparatus, especially while Trump remains the top Republican.

The Party is dutifully carrying out its masters' orders. Shortly after the votes were counted this past November House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had her minions meet with insurance corporation executives to assure them she would block Medicare for All from becoming law, by hook or crook. (See "Pelosi Sabotages Medicare for All, But Corporate Media Pretend Not to Notice," BAR, February 13). The corporate Democratic establishment moved early to field a colorful menagerie of presidential candidates in hopes of rendering Bernie Sanders irrelevant, or just hopelessly late. For good measure, they assigned two youngish Black senators, one of them a woman, to lay a trap for Sanders in the southern primaries, sparking a predictable (and infinitely cynical) scramble among the Black Misleadership Class to coalesce around the "Black" candidate -- almost certainly, the laughing corporatist Kamala Harris. Both Booker and Harris caught a (laughable) case of Me-Too'ism in preparation for their block-Sanders mission, claiming to have suddenly converted to the Church of Medicare for All.

The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and PBS either ignored Sanders and his frequent speech-making, or tried to make it seem as if he had missed the train. But the old New Dealer finally made it official, on Tuesday:

"Our campaign is taking on the powerful special interests that dominate our economic and political life. I'm talking about Wall Street, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industry and the large multinational corporations that exert such an enormous influence over our lives," said Sanders.

Sanders is calling forth a movement -- as opposed to the faux-movement orchestrated by Barack Obama, in 2008. "The only way we will win this election and create a government and economy that work for all is with a grassroots movement -- the likes of which has never been seen in American history.... [W]e need at least a million people to join our campaign and help lead the movement that can accomplish these goals."

It took only 12 hours for Sanders to raise $4 million from 150,000 mainly small donors, averaging $27 apiece. In contrast, corporatist Democrat show horse Kamala Harris took a full day to raise just $1.5 million. In 2016, Sanders amassed a phenomenal $228 million for his anti-corporate war chest, mostly from small donors.

The Sanders campaign, or the Sanders "movement," if such a thing crystallizes, will not be allowed to defeat the Lords of Capital on their own bought-and-paid-for property: the Democratic Party. At this strange and ominous juncture in history, with the ruling class's media organs incessantly blathering that the Republican President is a vassal of the Kremlin, the Democratic Party IS the party of the ruling class -- the only party they've securely got. It is inconceivable that the richest ruling class in the world would surrender such an indispensable political apparatus - crippling their ability to govern the rest of us - under any circumstances. Sanders must either be defeated -- by any means necessary - or be forced to capitulate under terms acceptable to the Lords of Capital (or, he can be incapacitated or killed).

There's nothing in Sanders' history that marks him as a hero. In the end, he'll fold, like last time around. But the whole world will bear witness to the perversions of democracy that the Democratic Party is preparing to inflict on Bernie and his movement. It would be poetic justice for Sanders, a purported socialist whose sense of solidarity is limited to European social democrats, were to have his democratic rights gang-raped in the full light of day, as has been the fate of so many folks in poor non-white countries targeted by the U.S. war machine, with not a peep from Bernie.

In the end, the Democratic Party may be so discredited it's not worth keeping, and the people will have to find other places to make politics.

As America rapidly urbanized in the 1920s and '30s, nearly every burgeoning city gave rise to a jumbled, boisterous side of town that lay somewhere between exciting and dangerous. One such place in my state, known as "Deep Ellum," was a stretch of Elm Street in East Dallas. A predominantly African-American community, it also hosted a freewheeling mix of immigrant laborers, rural migrants, musicians, saloonkeepers, preachers, fortune tellers, and assorted hustlers. It was both bedazzling and dicey-the sort of place where the blues lay in wait for innocents. As a popular song of the day warned:

If you go down in Deep Ellum,
Keep your money in your shoes
Or you'll go home
With the Deep Ellum blues.
Oh, sweet mama,
Your daddy's got them Deep Ellum blues.

Grifter nation

Some 80 years later, our whole country is living through a reign of pure flimflam-one without any of Deep Ellum's sketchy charms. Our media, politics, government, public discourse, and civic focus have been captured by the mesmerizing sideshow of AllThingsTrump-from the Putin bromance to the Saudi bone-saw horror, from constant Cabinet chaos to the caravan bugaboo, from his vanishing middle-class tax cut to his illusory wall, from peep-show vulgarity to full-monty corruption ... and to the nonstop spectacles emanating from this White House. As we gape 24/7 at the amazing ridiculousness of The Donald, however, our pockets are being picked, not by scammers who are barely getting by themselves, but by wildly rich, greedy, and powerful corporations.

While the corporate elite in America profess dismay at Trump's ignorance, arrogance, and all-around awfulness, they're delighted to exploit his power of distraction, which helps them grab more power and wealth at the expense of you and me. They've known all along that Trump's "drain the swamp" campaign pledge was a cynical political slogan. After all, he is the scion of a New York real estate con artist who followed Daddy into the mucky gurgles of deep financial rot. Sure enough, far from draining Washington's pay-to-play swamp, Trump promptly re-packaged it as a luxury hot-tub resort, selling off parcels to eager corporate buyers.

And lo, in practically no time, the slick ooze of Trump's swamp (including tax breaks, regulatory repeals, monopoly promotion, and labor suppression) has lubricated the way for the biggest, richest, and greediest of corporate powers to broaden and deepen their control over consumers, workers, suppliers, competitors, technology, and government itself.

The dominance of these profiteering interests did not, of course, begin with Trump. For the past half century, they and their acolytes have steadily spread the pernicious legalistic fiction that a corporation's sole obligation is to generate as much profit as possible for its shareholders (see The Lowdown, February 2016). Every administration since (Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) has essentially accepted this ridiculous fairy tale as fact-and, to one degree or another, each has taken steps that have incrementally advanced the supremacy of corporate interests over all others.

But when Trump Inc. crashed into Washington-KABLOOIE!-incrementalism exploded into a government of agencies almost wholly owned and run by Wall Street bankers, CEOs, industry lobbyists, and corporate lackeys often plucked from the ranks of former congresscritters. Rather than seeking favors from government officials, corporate interests have now largely become the government. And while we gawk at the president's monkeyshines, these gluttons are looting the people's treasury and fast locking in a permanent American oligarchy.

Let's look at a couple of their power grabs.

Where the money is

Famed bank robber Willie Sutton once explained that he busted into banks because "that's where the money is." What a small timer! Corporate thieves (including the biggest banks) know that the big scores are in the tax code and federal budget. So, seeing the Trumpsters as their inside enablers, America's superrich establishment-from the Koch brothers to Fortune 500 CEOs-set aside their personal revulsion at our crude charlatan-in-chief to kiss-up, wooing him and his fanatical constituency to back their agenda of plutocratic plunder.

It's working. The single legislative accomplishment of the guy who claimed to be a working-class hero is his 2017 Christmastime signing of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA). As most Americans now realize, the tax cut was not for them, but instead was a disgrace- ful trillion-dollar-a-year giveaway to corporate giants and their wealthiest shareholders. The Koch brothers alone invested $20 million on political ads and lobbying to pressure GOP lawmakers to unilaterally slash the corporate tax from 35 to 21 percent.

And why wouldn't the Koch boys spend big on this bill? As calculated by Americans for Tax Fairness, the billionaire duo and their private corporation will pocket about $1.4 billion each year from this dodge. Likewise, hundreds of TCJA's corporate backers are already making a killing. In just the first three quarters of 2018, big business quietly pocketed stunning tax savings they would have (and should have) paid to support America's public needs:

* Apple: $4.5 billion
* AT&T: $2.2 billion
* Bank of America: $2.4 billion
* Verizon: $1.75 billion
* Walmart: $1.6 billion

But ThinkProgress.org found that in 2018 RATE members-including AT&T, Capital One, CSX, Ford, General Dynamics, Intel, Kimberly-Clark, Lockheed Martin, Macy's, Northrop-Grumman, T-Mobile, Verizon, Viacom, and Walmart-have instead eliminated more than 100,000 US jobs. Verizon, for instance, promptly offered a "voluntary severance package" to 44,000 employees and offshored thousands of its US jobs to India. It was "an opportunity to find more efficiencies," the CEO told workers, "and help expedite ... an innovative operating model for our future." Or to put it more simply: It was greed.

Ah ... there you have it: Forget America's fundamental values of justice and opportunity for all, and don't expect even a modicum of honesty from rich shareholders and top executives. For example, Kevin Hassett, a far-right corporate ideologue chosen by Trump to head the White House Council of Economic Advisors, flat-out lied that the corporate gifts would spark "an immediate jump in wage growth" averaging as high as $9,000 a year.

Got yours yet?

So where did the money go? To the top. After all, only the tax giveaways were mandated-not a dime in obligations (not even thank-you notes) was written into law. With no strings attached and union voices largely hushed or marginalized, top executives and board members were free to allocate their corporations' multibillion-dollar windfalls as they pleased. And-surprise!-it pleased them to spend it on themselves and their big investors, hiding their grubby motives behind "stock buybacks," an accounting gimmick that hikes the pay of bosses who do nothing to earn it. The three-step fraud: (1) Humongous Incorporated gets a $1 billion tax gift from Uncle Sam. (2) HI quickly spends the booty to buy its own stock, which inflates the shares' value. (3) Since HI top executives are awarded big chunks of company stock-abracadabra!-they can reap huge gains by selling that stock at the inflated price.

[Hidden Tidbit: As economist Paul Krugman notes, since foreigners own 35% of US corporate stocks, roughly a third of the tax cut supposed to "Make America Great Again" flowed abroad. Shhhhh ... Trump and his fat-cat backers want to keep this secret.]

Workers, who mostly own no stock, gain little or nothing from these buyback scams. They're another financial maneuver that cynically widens inequality, deepens the federal deficit, and weakens America's economic potential. But today's corporate ethic (shamelessly practiced by the president) is clear: Take the money and run. Buybacks in 2018, the highest number on record, were expected to top $1 trillion, effectively gobbling up all the first year Trump/GOP Jobs Act money. So, at the same time as workers' real wages fall, CEO pay skyrockets. For example, as Politico reported last July:

* Two weeks after AbbVie, a pharmaceutical giant, announced a $10 billion buyback in February, its stock price soared and eight top execs cashed in $27 million in stock.
* Eight days after cigarette-maker Altria announced a $1 billion buyback, its CEO cashed in nearly $1 million in stock.
* The day after T.J. Maxx stock price was boosted by a February buyback, a top executive sold $11 million in shares.
* After Mastercard's $4 billion stock buyback, its CEO cashed in for a personal payday of $44 million.
* After Oracle jacked up its stock price with a $12 billion buyback, its co-CEO cashed in a whopping $250 million in shares.

Shouting "Down with big government," today's tea party Trumpateers claim to be tax rebels-direct descendants of the Boston bunch who boarded three British ships in 1773 and heaved their cargo of tea chests into the harbor. But, wait! That historic tea party wasn't actually a tax protest. The audacious colonists were rebelling against the British East India Company's tea monopoly that excluded local importers.

What the gutsy rebels were actually tossing was monopolistic corporate power. Get your heave-ho muscles in shape, for the monopolists are back, and they're going for more than our tea; they're rapidly locking up major economic sectors. The louder Trump touts his commitment to competition and free markets, the faster his corporate operatives, lobbyists, and congressional henchmen scheme to create cartels and combines. His justice department, regulatory agencies, monetary policies, tax rules, judicial appointees (especially Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch), and other inside players are all at work greasing the skids for the monopolization of America.

This era's corporate dominance did not, of course, begin with Trump. The merger wave swelled in the Reagan years, but since his Federal Trade Commission stopped collecting industry consolidation data in 1981, its full extent is hidden. But we do know, thanks to public interest watchdogs, that a tsunami of monopoly power now threatens our economy at the very time Trump Inc. is dismantling consumer protections and facilitating the rise of dominating behemoths in airlines, banks, computer tech, pharmacies, groceries, hospitals, meatpacking, media, oil, online sales, pharmaceuticals, railroads, software, telecom services, and other essential industries. While Americans are told to worship the magic of the free market, real markets are being hogtied by a handful of crony capitalist oligarchs.

High tech Two giants, Verizon and AT&T, control 69% of US cellphone service last year. Two others, Facebook and YouTube (owned by Google) have 64% of social network visits, and another two, Android (launched by Google) and Apple, control 99% of smartphone operating systems.

Banking

Five Wall Street mega-powers now control nearly half of all US financial assets; 20 years ago, the top five controlled only about 20%.

Air travel

In recent years six of the largest US airlines merged into three, which now control 50% of US flights.

Mass media

Three decades ago, 50 conglomerates owned 90% of media outlets; today, just 6 mega-monopolists control 90% of the market. America's two largest newspaper owners are not even media chains, but Gatehouse Media and Digital First Media Wall Street hedge funds that now own some 670 papers, including dailies in Augusta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Phoenix, and St. Paul. And Digital First is now attempting to take over the Gannett chain of 100 more papers.

Wealth

As of August 2018, Apple's stock value was greater than that of Bank of America, Boeing, Ford, Volkswagen, Walt Disney, and 20 other colossal corporations-combined. In 2015, just 30 super-sized corporations grabbed half the profits generated by all corporations listed on the stock market.

Miscellaneous

The two largest truck and bus manufacturers now control 62% of the market; the two largest drug store chains, shipbuilders, and mattress makers have over 60% of those markets, and the two largest home improvement chains control about 80% of the market.

The real target

"We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~~~ Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice, 1916-39

Periodically throughout American history the tension between democracy and plutocracy has reached a breaking point, and people have risen up in great confrontations with elites who assert that their property rights and wealth must reign supreme over the majority's interests and our nation's common good.

And here we are again. A handful of corporate consolidators and property rights supremacists is dictating pay and conditions to America's workers, crushing unions, jacking up prices, squeezing out independent businesses, controlling the media, suppressing the vote and public dissent, literally running our government ... and becoming even bigger, richer, and more powerful. That's our real fight. We're not merely up against the Little Tweeter Man in the White House-but against the unfathomable greed and oligarchic ambitions of the moneyed powers who are using him.