The election is too close for comfort, but there’s no turning back. It’s time to vote, not only to save democracy, but also to crush Big Lie Trumpism, which has transformed the Republican Party into a personality cult operating as a subsidiary of the convicted felon’s Trump Organization.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has been indefatigably traveling across the country seeking to display her qualifications for office and her plans to put the middle class and small businesses at the heart of the US “opportunity economy.” Her proposals include a $6,000 tax credit for families during the first year of a child’s life; a $3,600 tax credit per child for working families; and holding off from increasing taxes on households with less than $400,000 of annual income.
Her economic proposals also include a $25,000 tax credit and other incentives for first-time home buyers, expanding a small business creation tax break, while taxing long-term capital gains for wealthy individuals at 28%, universal childcare and paid family leave, and enacting a federal ban on corporate price gouging. She also proposes to include home health care as part of Medicare, which would help seniors, as well as their children who otherwise would face the financial burden of caring for their elderly parents. In contrast Trump plans to renew tax cuts for billionaires, cut corporate tax rates and impose tariffs to protect US companies from foreign competition and raise the costs of imported goods in the U.S.
The right-leaning Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) analyzed Trump’s economic proposals and found that, if enacted, Trump’s agenda would worsen Social Security finances by $2.3 trillion over 10 years, requiring a 35% benefit cut in 2035.
Trump has threatened to strip TV networks of their right to broadcast news because of coverage he doesn’t like, regardless of First Amendment protections of the press and news media.
“CBS should lose its license,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” He has repeated his demands in speeches and in interviews, echoing his earlier calls for ABC’s license to be “terminated” because of his displeasure with how the network handled his debate against Kamala Harris.
On Oct. 20, Trump ratcheted up his threats against CBS. “We’re going to subpoena their records,” he told Fox News in an interview, repeating his claim that the network’s edit of Harris’s recent appearance on “60 Minutes” was misleading. Asked if revoking a broadcast license was a “drastic punishment,” Trump did not answer directly, instead lobbing a string of insults at Harris, whom he called “incompetent” and “a Marxist,” The New York Times reported.
Broadcast networks like ABC, CBS and NBC do not actually need licenses to produce or publish news content. But local affiliate stations that carry network broadcasts do need licenses, which are overseen by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is independent from the White House, but a commissioner appointed by Trump, Nathan Simington, wrote on X, “Interesting. Big if true.” Trump later shared a screenshot of Simington’s post on Truth Social.
Since 2022, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, including President Joe Biden, NPR reported.
Trump has repeatedly indicated he would use federal law enforcement as part of a campaign to exact “retribution.”
Trump also has suggested he would use military tribunals to try his political opponents, including former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, and use the military to round up immigrants, regardless of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of military for law enforccement.
Meanwhile, Trump has been increasingly erratic as he has cut back his rallies and interviews, showed signs of mental lapses, such as when he shut down audience questions at a “town hall” and instead shuffled aimlessly to music for 39 minutes. He also baselessly slurs Harris’s intellectual capabilities and continues to lie shamelessly about activities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in response to Hurricane Helene, which resulted in threats against FEMA workers in North Carolina.
A 12-minute ramble on the late golfer Arnold Palmer, at an Oct. 19 rally in Palmer’s hometown of Latrobe, Pa., concluded with a tribute to the golfer’s penis. “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women, and I love women,” Trump said. “But this guy, this guy—this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough, and I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it. I had to say it.”
Trump sought to burnish his credentials with White supremacists Oct. 18 when he said on Fox News Abraham Lincoln was “probably a great president,” but he could have been better if he had “settled” the Civil War by cutting a deal with the South.
He was returning to a theme he brought up during the primary campaign, when he said history could have been different, if only Lincoln had read “The Art of the Deal.” “The Civil War was so fascinating, so horrible,” Trump said at a January event in Newton, Iowa. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died. You know, that was the disaster.”
Civil War historian Charles B. Dew noted in the Tampa Bay Times Jan. 13 that Trump was talking nonsense. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven states of the Deep South already had left the Union. Beginning with South Carolina on Dec. 20, 1860, and ending with Texas on Feb. 1, 1861, these states (which also included Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) had sent delegates to a constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama, and formed the Confederate States of America, with a provisional president, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, and Vice president Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia and a Confederate army had been rapidly assembled from state militia units. Confederate forces amassed heavy ordnance that threatened Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor before Lincoln’s inauguration.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter and two days later, with supplies nearly exhausted and his troops outnumbered, Union Major Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter to Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s Confederate forces. Anderson and his men were allowed to sail to New York. Six more Southern states joined the Confederacy. Both the North and South mobilized for war, which lasted four years, cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans, and freed 3.9 million enslaved people from bondage. Many in the South still can’t deal with it. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024
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