Hitler's Halloween:
Trump's recent hate filled rhetoric and threats to use military force against those who disagree with him have reminded all of us just how much he and his campaign have borrowed from the Nazi Party of old.
Trump's not just a Fascist. Trump is a Nazi.
For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to: https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
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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EDITORIAL
Time to crush Trumpism
FRANK LINGO
Trump’s willing executioners
DON ROLLINS
Cussing comes to CNN
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Keep your eyes on the prize, voters
DISPATCHES
Conservative think tank finds Trump plans would wreck Social Security.
Trump and his allies try to rally early vote, while crying fraud.
Trump also wants to destroy American education system.
Central Park 5 Sue Trump for defamation.
Boeing union wins contract with 35% hike.
Harris edges Trump on economic positions.
Trump used D.C. hotel to enrich himself, fleeced taxpayers while president: probe ...
ART CULLEN
What do pork, quartz and saline solution have in common?
ALAN GUEBERT
Big mac bites big meat over alleged ‘artificially higher prices’
SONALI KOLHATKAR
Scapegoating immigrants hurts all of us — except elites
JOHN YOUNG
Down the stretch in a cloud of lies
CLAIRE CARLSON and LANE WENDELL FISCHER
Walz assails ag monopolies and touts healthcare policy in speech on rural plan
DICK POLMAN
The sultan of stupid strikes again! This time, he flunked the most basic mathematics
JOE CONASON
Trump, Musk and the hideous campaign of hate
A.J. SCHUMANN
Who’s reallyl a populist? Henry Wallace set the standard
LES LEOPOLD
135.9 million reasons why the working class is so angry
ELWOOD WATSON
Obama’s condescending message to Black men
ROBERT KUTTNER
How hurricanes are a profit center for insurers
THOM HARTMANN
No one has ever been as dangerous to America as Trump — it can happen here
SABRINA HAAKE
Oil billionaires, not taxpayers, should pay for climate destruction
THE BIG PICTURE/Glynn Wilson
Lilly Ledbetter of Alabama, champion of pay equality, dies at 86
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Cruelty cloaked in morality
SAM URETSKY
Be wary of covid ‘cures’
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
True grift
WAYNE O’LEARY
Crumbling wall of ivy
JOEL D. JOSEPH
Ten simple things you can do to reduce plastic pollution
SETH SANDRONSKY
Reviewing ‘Rez Ball’
N. GUNASEKARAN
Taxing corporations for social, economic justice
LEW KINGSBURY
Lawsuit challenges restrictions on church political activities
JAMIE STIEHM
Waves and walls higher for Harris’ catwalk
BARRY FRIEDMAN
The Trump biopsy
RALPH NADER
Last clear chances for November
JONATHAN THOMPSON
Wyoming shoots itself in the foot
ROB PATTERSON
The family helps Willie Nelson keep going
RED SCHOMBURG
The tipped wage system is failing us. Removing taxes on tips won’t save it.
ED RAMPELL
When John and Yoko seized TV
AMY GOODMAN
Medical workers demand a ceasefire in Gaza
GENE NICHOL
A finale
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024
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The Trump-Witch:
The Trump campaign is attempting to conger up the impression of a failed socioeconomic, dystopian world. According to Trump, it was created by the Biden administration and can only be remedied by the Nazi police state described in the Project 2025 manifesto.
Trump has essentially hollowed out the Republican Party. It stands for nothing.
Instead, Trump has replaced its values with those expressed in the Project 2025 Manifesto. Project 2025 would replace our republic with an authoritarian regime - a police state.
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to: https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
The vast damage Hurricane Helene did to the southeastern United States from Sept. 26 to 29 was another demonstration that climate change is real. Republicans whose political careers have been financed by Big Oil and other polluters have been in denial about climate change for decades. But farmers know climate change is real, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz noted at the Vice Presidential Debate Oct. 1. “They’ve seen 500 year droughts, 500 year floods, back to back.”
Hurricane Helene made landfall with Category 4 intensity on the evening of Sept. 26 in the Big Bend region of western Florida, near the city of Perry, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph. Helene weakened as it veered north inland but it still had plenty of rain to dump before it dissipated on Sept. 29, leaving many in its path without working roads, power food, and water. Catastrophic rain triggered flooding in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, and spawned numerous tornadoes. The death toll attributed to the storm was at least 231 across six states.
Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimate that “climate change may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas” in its 500-mile path inland.
Helene’s huge size and speed are linked to increasingly hotter water in the Gulf of Mexico. Steve Curwood noted at InsideClimateNews.org. hurricanes have usually weakened when they make landfall, but Helene’s impact was just as devastating in the inland mountains of western North Carolina as on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
During the storm, President Joe Biden put the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the service of the stricken states.
In reaction, Donald Trump told outrageous and reckless lies, as he tried to take political advantage over the catastrophe. He even blamed immigrants as well as the administration for hampering the response.
Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday, Sept. 30, that he planned to go to North Carolina, “but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” But there is no evidence that the Biden administration was ignoring Republican areas. In fact, Republican governors in Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee praised the Biden administration for its fast response, and FEMA designated counties in several states — including dozens won by Trump in the 2020 presidential election — as eligible to apply for federal assistance.
At a news conference Sept. 30, Trump said of Republican Georgia Gov. Kemp, “He’s been calling the president, hasn’t been able to get him.” But earlier in the day Kemp said he had talked with Biden the previous day. Kemp said he missed the president’s initial call Sept. 29. “He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him: ‘You know, we got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process.’ He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which I appreciate that. But we’ve had FEMA embedded with us since a day or two before the storm hit in our state operations center in Atlanta; we’ve got a great relationship with them.”
Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said at an Oct. 1 press conference that federal assistance had “been superb,” noting Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had both called and told him to let them know whatever the state needed. McMaster also said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell had called.
Still, in a social media post Oct. 3, Trump wrote that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “are universally being given POOR GRADES for the way that they are handling the Hurricane, especially in North Carolina.”
CNN’s fact checker, Daniel Dale, wrote, “That wasn’t even close to accurate. Though the Biden administration’s response had certainly received criticism, it had also been praised by various state and local leaders — including the Republican governors of some of the affected states and the Democratic governor of North Carolina, plus local leaders including the Democratic mayor of the hard-hit North Carolina city of Asheville,” which saw historic water level rises after it received 13.98 inches of rain Sept. 25-27.
In a Michigan rally Oct. 3, Trump placed Kamala Harris at the helm, lying that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.” He added a related conspiracy theory: “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
First, there is no scheme to get undocumented immigrants to vote illegally in November. Voting by noncitizens is a felony.
Second, there is no basis for claiming FEMA disaster assistance money was stolen — by anyone, let alone Harris personally — for housing migrants. No disaster funding has been spent on those shelters.
In late September, President Biden signed into law short-term funding that extended 2024 fiscal year funding levels through Dec. 20. It specifically gave FEMA access to a full year’s worth of disaster relief funding.
“FEMA absolutely has enough money for Helene response right now,” Keith Turi, acting director of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery said. He noted that Congress recently replenished the agency with $20 billion, and about $8 billion of that is set aside for recovery from previous storms and mitigation projects.
Trump repeated his debunked claim about migrants getting FEMA money to reporters at least twice on Friday, Oct. 4 — and then said it again at a Friday night town hall in North Carolina.
Saturday, Oct. 5, Trump falsely claimed at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania the federal government was only giving $750 to people who lost their homes. “Think of it: We give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re handing North Carolina $750,” he said.
As FEMA explained earlier in the week, trying to to combat misinformation, $750 is merely the immediate aid survivors can get to cover basic, pressing needs like food, water, baby formula and emergency supplies. Survivors may apply for additional forms of assistance, such as for temporary housing and home repairs, that can be worth thousands of dollars; the current maximum amount for home repair assistance, for example, is $42,500.
Trump also claimed at the Pennsylvania rally there were no helicopters doing rescues in North Carolina, which was nonsense as National Guard helicopters were delivering supplies, picking up stranded people, dropping off firefighters and search-and-rescue crews and radioing for assistance for others who could be ccessed from the ground..
Meanwhile, as another hurricane, Milton, heads toward Tampa, Fla, the lies of Trump and running mate J.D. Vance are magnified on social media and have an impact on low-information voters who respond to wild rumors. All Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have to offer in response is competent leadership. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2024
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A state of shock in North Carolina
EDITORIAL p. 2
Climate changes; Trump still lies
FRANK LINGO p. 3
Will UN conferences finally get real?
DON ROLLINS p. 4
Kris Kristofferson: A sublime yearning
RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen p. 5
New voices needed in political coverage
DISPATCHES p. 5
How bad was Trump at handling disasters?
Conservatives struggle to see the bad in good jobs report.
Dockworkers suspend strike after winning tentative deal with 62% wage boost. They’ll continue talking about other issues.
UAW slams Trump-Vance as “menace to the working class.”
Trump lied about Haitian immigrants. Now he wants to deport them.
Analysis: Trump tax plan would make rich people richer, poor people poorer ...
ART CULLEN p. 6
How do we talk to each other anymore?
ALAN GUEBERT p. 6
Tough 2024 gets tougher
ANNABELLE ORTIZ p. 7
There just aren’t enough services to prevent homelessness
JOHN YOUNG p. 7
OMG! The Venezuelans took over!
SARAH MELOTTE p. 8
Neighbor helping neighbor takes many forms in hurricane-hit Western N.C.
JOE CONASON p. 9
MAGA’s Nazi infestation just got worse
DAVID McCALL p. 10
Opportunity for all
LES LEOPOLD p. 10
Wake up Democrats! Trump is eating your working-class lunch
ROBERT KUTTNER p. 11
The Justice Department challenges Visa’s predatory power
SARAH ANDERSON p. 11
Lawmakers target corporations paying executives more than Uncle Sam
THOM HARTMANN p. 12
Radio silence: How progressives lost the airwaves
SABRINA HAAKE p. 12
The intelligent conversation we aren’t having on immigration
SONALI KOLHATKAR p. 13
What we can learn from Gen Z workers
THE BIG PICTURE/Glynn Wilson p. 14
Vice presidential debate — J.D. Vance is a smooth liar, but Tim Walz nailed him on who won the 2020 election and Jan. 6
HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas p. 15
Health insurance: On the electoral brink
MARTHA BURK p. 15
Meet the newest abortion rights supporters: Men in red states
WAYNE O’LEARY p. 16
The great debate
ANNIE NORMAN and SHAWN SEBASTIAN p. 16
Postal Service plan writes off rural America to save a buck
JUAN COLE p. 17
The path to Nasrallah’s assassination
JASON SIBERT p. 17
The case for an Israeli-Palestinian confederation
JAMIE STIEHM p. 18
Election roundup: Painting the House blue, Harris in white
BARRY FRIEDMAN p. 18
Where did the fun go?
SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson p. 18
In this corner ...
RALPH NADER p. 19
Public radio, public media and local news deserts — our new report
ZAK PODMORE p. 20
Glen Canyon Dam faces deadpool
ROB PATTERSON p. 20
Jon Voight’s thespian skills lift him above lunatic politics
SETH SANDRONSKY p. 20
Globalize this: Reviewing ‘Socialist Register 2024’
ED RAMPELL p. 21
Decolonizing Hispanic history onscreen
AMY GOODMAN p. 22
Israel cannot bomb its way to peace
GENE NICHOL p. 23
A simple reminder
From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2024
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Shut Up J.D.
Yeah we'd all like JD Vance to stop with the conspiracy theories, false accusations and hate speech.
It won't happen but we can dream.
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
Trump The Big Chicken
The first debate between Trump and Harris was a disaster for Trump. He was left looking like an addle brained old man. So, he doesn't dare agree to a second debate. Such a re-match would spell the end of his campaign and a possible post election prison stay.
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite