The Progressive Populist Today Blog

Saturday, August 14, 2021

Editorial: R’s Test Positive for Hate

Republican leaders aren’t ashamed of Donald Trump’s deep vein of lies. Far from it: They’re vying to become the next Trump, following his example of misleading and distracting.

Texas Gov. Greg Abott (R) got an early start on blaming President Biden for the COVID resurgence, accusing him in March of “recklessly releasing hundreds” of COVID-positive undocumented immigrants into the country. Biden had condemned as “Neanderthal” Abbott’s decision to “reopen” Texas and restrict local governments from requiring mask use. He also signed a bill that prohibits Texas businesses from requiring “vaccine passports.” At that time, cases were declining in Texas as vaccines spread among the population.

Then, on July 28, as the Delta variant led a surge in infections, Abbott took the initiative of issuing an executive order instructing the Texas National Guard to assist law enforcement officers in stopping civilian drivers, including federal contractors, who appeared to be transporting migrants. If drivers refused to cooperate, Abbott’s executive order instructed that officers might seize their vehicles.

That order lasted a week before US District Judge Kathleen Cardone blocked Abbott’s order, ruling that it posed “irreparable harm,” after US Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland filed a lawsuit that called Abbott’s order unconstitutional, stating that it threatened to impede contractors working on behalf of the federal government, as well as interfering with the federal government’s “broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration.”

Abbott’s order had stakeholders, including city and county officials, confused about how it would be carried out. Civil rights and legal experts warned the order would cause racial profiling. “Would any car carrying Latino passengers in Texas be subjected to a traffic stop? Given that the state is home to more than 11 million Latinos, according to the US Census, comprising more than 40% of the population, that seems like a Texas-size recipe for the violation of Latinos’ civil rights,” wrote CNN columnist Raul Reyes.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) rejected any responsibility for the surge on COVID cases in his state after he had forbidden state or local officials from requiring masks to be worn in public. He even threatened businesses that tried to require customers to provide proof of vaccination. Instead, DeSantis also blamed Biden for the surge. “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies,” DeSantis wrote in a fundraising letter Aug. 4. In a bit of projection, he also suggested Biden was a “power-hungry tyrant.”

In a news conference, DeSantis added, “He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border.” He challenged Biden, “Why don’t you do your job? Why don’t you get this border secure? “And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.”

DeSantis insisted he’s handled the crisis well, even as he has fought against COVID vaccine mandates and barred schools from requiring students and staff to wear masks, while hospitals fill up.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), who sent state troopers to Texas to help Abbott patrol the border, also dodged responsibility for the COVID surge in her state by blaming immigrants entering the country over the US-Mexico border. “Part of the problem is the southern border is open and we’ve got 88 countries that are coming across the border and they don’t have vaccines so none of them are vaccinated and they’re getting dispersed throughout the country,” Reynolds said at an Aug. 3 news conference.

Republicans have managed to convince 32% of respondents to an Axios/Ipsos poll that “people from other countries traveling to the US” are to blame for the current surge in coronavirus cases. But 58% of respondents correctly blamed unvaccinated Americans and 28% noted former President Trump shares the blame.

The Washington Post noted in an Aug. 6 Fact Check that there has been an increase in the number of people seeking to cross the southern border, but the US Border Patrol has apprehended more than a million migrants since last October, and the Department of Homeland Security expects a record number of encounters this fiscal year. But under a public health emergency declaration, the department also is returning a record number of migrants to Mexico. For example, the Border Patrol caught 178,416 in June, and expelled more than 100,000 of them — mainly individual adults traveling alone.

The Rio Grande Valley has experienced a disproportionate share of those encounters, and city officials in McAllen, in Hidalgo County, said 87,000 migrants have passed through the city limits so far in 2021. Mayor Javier Villalobos, a Republican, has joined fellow Republicans in blaming migrants for an increase in COVID cases, with more than 7,000 migrants confirmed positive for coronavirus since February (a positivity rate of about 8%). But even as the COVID positivity rate among migrants increased to 13.1% in late July, that is still lower than the 18.55% positivity rate among tested residents in Hidalgo County. And migrants who test positive for the virus are immediately quarantined, along with any family members who might have been exposed but test negative. They are not released until they test negative, so infected migrants have little interaction with the community.

Philip Bump of the Washington Post noted that the current surge in coronavirus cases doesn’t overlap with the surge in immigration or with the locations where those immigrants end up. “The surge in new cases began in late June. The increase in immigration began in March, when coronavirus cases in the United States were going down.”

Then there’s the geography. “The places that are hardest-hit by the virus at this point are mostly not along the border with Mexico. Instead, they’re on the Gulf Coast, in Florida and stretching north from Louisiana up through Arkansas and Missouri.”

Bump added, “Of the 10 counties that are currently experiencing the highest rates of new infections relative to population, eight are more densely White than the United States as a whole and nine are less densely Hispanic. That doesn’t suggest that they are likely destinations for migrants.”

“Obviously, there will be migrants who have COVID, and it would be ridiculous for anyone to say that migrants are not susceptible to COVID. Of course they are,” US Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, told the Dallas Morning News. “But based on the numbers I’ve seen, the percentages of migrants who have COVID are very low. … The governor of Texas knows that this kind of xenophobia, racism and hate fuels hate crime. That’s something we in El Paso know all too well.”

On Aug. 3, 2019, a gunman, apparently inspired by Trump’s rants about invading immigrants, drove 10 hours from a Dallas suburb to El Paso, where he killed 23 people and wounded dozens more at a Walmart. In a manifesto the alleged shooter posted online before the shooting, he echoed Trump’s comments on immigration and said he made the trip to “stop the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Abbott, DeSantis and other GQPers should know better than accuse immigrants of spreading COVID, given the Republican Party’s recent history of race-baiting, but they went there anyway. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2021

Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links

About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the September 1, 2021 issue

COVER/Benjamin Waddell

Willing workers are right at the border

EDITORIAL
R’s test positive for hate

FRANK LINGO
Dialogue with Delta

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
GOP putting lives at risk, with or without Trump

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Deconstructing industrial ag

DISPATCHES
Senate Judiciary Committee hears testimony on Trump coup attempt.
Biden vehicle plan would cut US emissions by one-third.
UN panel says climate change must be reversed.
Postmaster general’s ex-company gets $120 million USPS contract.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka dies.
Dems must raise debt limit on their own.
Voters aren't clear about Biden's economic success. Senate Dems plan to change that ...

ART CULLEN
Auctioning off rural America

JILL RICHARDSON
Dial down the panic over ‘critical race’ theory

JOHN YOUNG
Deadly disease is no trolling matter

SETH SANDRONSKY
Exploiting immigrant labor

THOM HARTMANN
Civilization-ending climate change is knocking on our door

DICK POLMAN
Abbott and DeathSantis, the sluggers of murderer’s row

BILL JOHNSTON
Unions aren’t rebuilding in communities

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
Thinking and acting locally and globally

SHEA LEIBOW
To save the planet, we need to demilitarize the police

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Shrinking the insured/uninsured schism

SAM URETSKY
The great inflation scare

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The dangers of anti-terror laws

WAYNE O’LEARY
Florida is as Florida does

JOHN BUELL
The politics of unemployment insurance

PHYLLIS BENNIS
The triumph and tragedy of the Olympic refugee team

BARRY FRIEDMAN
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Carrots and sticks

ROB PATTERSON
The return of David Crosby

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
What a send-off

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
New Zealand Maori movie about family separation and land rights

GENE NICHOL
Foxhole folks

and more ...

Friday, July 30, 2021

Editorial: Pelosi Keeps Probe Going

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right when she rejected two provocative House members whom Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy had nominated to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Among the five Republicans McCarthy nominated for the committee were Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who participated in the pro-Trump rallies that immediately preceded the Capitol attack and was a potential material witness to the investigation, and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who made public statements indicating he intended to disrupt the committee’s work by demanding it probe Black Lives Matter and other events unrelated to the Jan. 6 violence.

Pelosi already had asked Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who already had been dumped from Republican leadership because she supported Trump’s impeachment, to serve on the committee. Pelosi said she would seat the other three Republicans McCarthy proposed. But McCarthy pulled those nominations in a fit after Jordan and Banks were rejected, and he said, “Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”

Pelosi got a second Republican on the committee when Rep. Adam Kinziger (R-Ill.), another Republican on the outs with party leadership, announced he accepted her request that he serve. When asked if he would punish Cheney and Kinziger for agreeing to participate in the probe, McCarthy replied, “We’ll see,” and dismissed them as “Pelosi Republicans.”

Nominating Jordan and Banks for the select committee was McCarthy’s attempt to distract from the real purpose of the committee. McCarthy apparently hoped to discredit any work the committee could do, and he succeeded in suckering some Washington pundits into believing Pelosi was the problem. Chris Cilliza of CNN was one of the first taking the bait, noting, after she rejected Jordan and Banks, “Nancy Pelosi just doomed the already tiny chances of the 1/6 committee actually mattering.” As if the Republicans ever showed good faith in probing Jan. 6.

Republicans have been lying about the election results since before the election; they’ve lied about the insurrection since Jan. 6, at first claiming members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter led the riots, even though we all saw it on TV and the rioters were almost all White, many of the rioters wore Trump/MAGA paraphernalia and many of them were eventually caught by the FBI because they proclaimed on social media that they had gone to DC to overturn the election. Now Republican lawblockers are seeking to obstruct the investigation of who is responsible for the violent attacks on Capitol and Metro DC police, the storming of the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, attempts to find and capture members of Congress and the vice president during the riot, breaking into congressional offices and literally smearing their feces in Capitol hallways.

McCarthy has reversed his position from the week after the insurrection, when he said Trump “bears responsibility for [the Jan. 6] attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

McCarthy called Trump during the riots, asking him to speak out to stop the mob, but Trump was unmoved. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding,” McCarthy said Jan. 13. “These facts require immediate action by President Trump to accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term.”

At that time, McCarthy said he supported a censure resolution against Trump. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was still Senate majority leader, also signaled his openness to conviction in the impeachment. But accountability for the outgoing president didn’t last long for either of them, and in the past six months other Republicans also have unified in obstruction of the investigation, as they realize the investigation will yield nothing good for their party. After McCarthy was summoned to Mar-A-Lago to meet with Trump Jan. 28, he returned chastened, with renewed loyalty to the Lost Cause of the Great Misleader.

When Democratic congressional leaders offered to give Republicans equal representation and share subpoena power on a joint committee to investigate Jan. 6, both McCarthy and McConnell rejected it, on the instructions of Trump, and the minority blocked it in the Senate with a filibuster May 28. So Pelosi got the House to authorize the select committee on a nearly party-line vote.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), one of seven Republican senators who voted to remove Trump from office in February, is retiring and doesn’t need to pander to Trump, but he joined the obstructionists July 25, as he said on CNN investigating Jan. 6 “is politically to the advantage of Democrats, to try to keep this issue in the forefront” and argued “it is a constant reminder about a terrible episode in our history ... rather than looking at the policies of the current President.”

(Tim O’Brien noted that this is the same Pat Toomey who pushed hard in 2012 and 2013 for the sham Benghazi investigation. “I have long supported a congressional investigation and want to get answers to important questions,” Toomey said back then.)

The Justice Department had arrested and charged 590 people in the Capitol insurrection as of July 23, but there are still plenty of questions to be answered. Among those questions:

• Who organized the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, where Trump told the crowd to march on the Capitol?

• What role did Trump or the White House play in organizing the rally?

• What happened at a Jan. 5 meeting of Trump family members, Trump administration officials, Trump campaign advisers, Jan. 6 rally organizers and at least one US senator at the Trump International Hotel in Washington the night before the insurrection?

• Did members of Congress have communications with the insurrectionists? Who were they, and what role, if any, did they play? Did they give tours of the Capitol in the days before the insurrection?

• Did Trump prevent any law enforcement agency from responding to appeals for backup? Who was responsible for restricting the DC National Guard from responding to the riot?

• Was Vice President Mike Pence requested to overthrow the election results? What did he know about efforts to target him for refusing to steal the election? Did the vice president’s Secret Service security detail request assistance?

But the insurrection is not history. It’s not even over, as Trump is still rallying crowds with the Big Lies that ignited the insurrection, that Democrats “stole” the election. “In my opinion, there’s no way [Democrats] win election without cheating,” Trump said at a Phoenix rally July 24, even as Republican legislators across the country are fixing state laws to allow legislatures or courts to overturn elections. As Aaron Rupar of Vox.com noted, tweeted, “Irony just suffered a mortal wound.”

Trump still claims he’ll be returned to the White House after state-level “audits” of the 2020 election results, and he threatened that if Republican officials don’t amplify his claims about election fraud, Republican voters won’t want to vote for Republican candidates in future elections.

Trump and his Republican enablers must be held accountable. The House Select Committee must get the facts in public testimony and follow the facts where they lead. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2021

Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links

About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the August 15, 2021 issue

COVER/Hal Crowther

Chaos theory: When madness gains momentum

EDITORIAL
Pelosi keeps probe going
.
FRANK LINGO
A political ad we need now

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Complicating Roe: An intersectional approach

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
COVID’s back, but what about the bookshelves?

DISPATCHES
Republicans freak out because Delta variant they fostered is killing Republicans.
Doctor describes COVID-19 patients begging for vaccine.
Green energy shift would net 8M energy jobs.
Evictions, loss of unemployment aid threaten millions while COVID resurges.
Water is essential; companies trying to turn a buck on it are not.
Laredo celebrates wall termination.
Arizona lawmaker booed off stage by her own party.
Texas Senate says Klan had its good side.
Texas weighs sanctions against Ben & Jerry's overits boycott of Israeli settlers.
Union wins bargaining vote at Texas chicken plant ...

ART CULLEN
Rebuilding the food chain

ALAN GUEBERT
Riding the metal wave left by my iron-bending Uncle Honey

JILL RICHARDSON
Farm workers are dying. Blame our exploitative food system.

JOHN YOUNG
Comparing whom to Nazis?

RICHARD D. WOLFF
US underestimates China’s economic challenge at its own peril

ROBERT KUTTNER
When the chips are down, we need an industrial policy

TOM CONWAY
US must bolster retraining for workers harmed by unfair trade

SHAILLY GUPTA BARNES
Don’t go small on infrastructure

DOMENICA GHANEM
The mom and pop tax break

THOM HARTMANN
When does the greed stop?

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
A pandemic of disinformation continues to kill

SETH SANDRONSKY
California burning

BOB BURNETT
Global climate change

SAM URETSKY
Dealing with your emojis

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Pay now to ensure there is a later

WAYNE O’LEARY
Looking for the union label

JOHN BUELL
Our task is to transform, not predict

JASON SIBERT
Foreign policy and nukes

DICK POLMAN
Galileo would behold our climate change folly and say, ‘I’m not surprised.’

GARY PAUL NABHAM
Hard lessons from the border

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
What’s up with bats?

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Getting out, coming out, moving on

ROB PATTERSON
Bletchley circle decodes crime again

ELISA McCARTIN
Rein in private equity before it destroys more jobs

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
One solitary whale, heard for decades, never seen

MEDEA BENJAMIN and LEONARDO FLORES
Cubans are suffering. Biden need to end the embargo.

and more ...

Friday, July 16, 2021

Editorial: Different Paths to Progress

Republicans’ hopes to return to power in Congress in 2022 and prevent President Joe Biden’s re-election in 2024 largely depend on blocking Democrats from accomplishing anything in the next year and a half. That’s why Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was caught in a video as looking forward to “18 more months of chaos” so Republicans would have a shot at reclaiming Congress in the 2022 midterm election.

“For the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022 and then get in here and lead,” Roy said in a video recorded by a Democratic activist.

Roy added: “Nobody knows what anybody’s gonna do right now. That’s the thing; this is the problem. I actually say, ‘Thank you, Lord, 18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done.’ That’s what we want.”

Roy, a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus but he committed the sin of voting, after the Capitol riots Jan. 6, to certify the election results that put Biden in the White House. After House Republicans stripped Rep. Lynn Cheney (R-Wyo.) of her third-ranking position in May, Roy sought to replace her but lost a bid to Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) after Trump not only endorsed Stefanik but called for Roy to face a primary opponent. So Roy is trying to climb back into good graces with the Trumpers.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is pretty open about his intention to stop any progress. “One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” he said May 5. “We’re confronted with severe challenges from a new administration, and a narrow majority of Democrats in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn America into a socialist country, and that’s 100 percent of my focus.”

Progressive Democrats are frustrated by the resistance of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to doing away with the filibuster so the slim Democratic majority in the Senate can proceed with bills that, among other things, would stop Republican legislatures from suppressing votes and allowing legislatures to set aside votes they don’t like.

Current Senate rules allow the minority to stop bills with a bloc of 41 or more senators, so Democrats would need to find at least 10 Republican senators to pass the “For the People Act,” and there are only a few that will even admit they are considering supporting portions of the bill that would re-enact and strengthen the Voting Rights Act.

Biden on June 24 announced a bipartisan $579 billion deal negotiated with moderate Republicans and Democratic senators that includes $309 billion for transportation, including $109 billion for roads, bridges and other “major projects”; $49 billion for public transit; $66 billion for passenger and freight rail; and $266 billion for other infrastructure, including water systems, broadband infrastructure, environmental remediation and power grids.

The bipartisan bill made substantial cuts from Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which proposed roughly $2.2 trillion in new infrastructure spending over the next eight years. Some of those items tossed from the bipartisan bill may have ended up in the $3.5 trillion budget package Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) got out of the Budget Committee (down from a $6 trillion wish list), which includes Medicare expansion, safety-net programs, green energy and other progressive agenda items, which would be passed in the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority for budget-related items.

Biden initially tied the bipartisan infrastucture passage to the success of the reconciliation bill, but he backed down on his veiled threat after criticism from Senate Republicans. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters that the lower chamber will not vote on bipartisan infrastructure legislation until the Senate also passes the reconciliation bill containing those Democratic priorities.

McConnell is trying to scuttle the bipartisan compromise. “The era of bipartisanship on this stuff is over … This is not going to be done on a bipartisan basis,” he said at an event in Kentucky. “This is going to be a hell of a fight over what this country ought to look like in the future and it’s going to unfold here in the next few weeks. I don’t think we’ve had a bigger difference of opinion between the two parties.”

In the meantime, Biden is trying accomplish as much as he can through executive orders. On July 9, Biden rejected the pro-monopoly world view of the last 40 years, issued 72 directives to over a dozen executive agencies, and created a council to make sure agencies do their job in rulemaking to achieve this vision.

“Biden directed agencies to use their rulemaking authority aggressively to stop corporate monopolies in agriculture, defense, pharma, banking, and tech—to name a few,” Zephyr Teachout noted at TheNation.com. “For instance, he directed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban noncompete agreements, so that employers can’t trap employees but have to actually provide benefits that make them choose to stay. He ordered the Department of Agriculture to use its full power under the Packer and Stockyards Act to break the stranglehold of distributors and other corporate giants that crush farmers and farmworkers. He directed the Consumer Financial Protection Board to issue a rule that would allow bank customers to take their financial transaction data with them to a new bank. He directed federal health officials to enable importation of cheaper drugs from Canada in a direct confrontation with Big Pharma.”

Biden’s appointment of LIna Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission was also a move in that direction of realigning the Democratic Party back to the New Deal era of the 1930s through the ’70s, when the party stood for workers, small businesses and producers against the “middlemen” and corporate monopolists. “They understood that anti-monopoly laws were partly about keeping prices down—but also about preserving equality and dignity, and making sure that everyone who contributed to the production of goods and services got a fair cut,” Teachout wrote.

After the Reagan and Bush administrations increased corporate power at the expense of unions and other Democratic constituencies, some Democratic officials were co-opted by advocates of monopolization and offshoring industry. “Since Bill Clinton became president, corporate Democrats have been in the driver’s seat when it comes to economic policy, and shut down all dissenters in the antimonopoly policy, Teachout wrote. One key anti-monopoly question remains for the president: his choice as assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division. “Biden has a chance to be the first trust-busting presidency in over 50 years—and we keep getting strong signals that he’s got it in his sights. That’s great news for workers, for small businesses, and for the small communities that have been left out in the collapsing concentration of our country for the last 50 years. He’s well on his way, but a strong appointment at the Department of Justice would go a long way towards finishing the job.”

That, and strong jobs and infrastructure bills should put the Democrats in good shape to keep their majority in the House and add to their Senate majority. And if McConnell manages to derail the bipartisan compromise, he might just finally convinces Manchin and Sinema that the filibuster is a corrupt relic that is used to stop good bills — such as the For the People Act that would stop voter suppression tactics being enacted by Republican legislatures. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2021

Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links

About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the August 1, 2021 issue

COVER/Steven Rosenfeld

GOP threatens American Democracy as Trumpers press for voter suppression

EDITORIAL
Different paths to progress

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
College athletes: One step closer

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Justice for black farmers

DISPATCHES
Biden fires Trump’s Social Security boss.
CPAC has become the place Republicans go to scare themselves sillier.
A sanctions hearing on the baseless ‘Kraken’ lawsuit ws a disaster for Trump’s lawyers.
Black Texan arrested on felony charges for voting in 2020 primary while fraudulent White voters get wrists slapped.
Eviction tsunami looms despite $46 million in rental relief.
Trump's tariffs caused drop in exports that hasn't recoverd. ...

ART CULLEN
Crisis breeds bipartisanship

ALAN GUEBERT
Ag politics of being agriculturally apolitical

JILL RICHARDSON
A dangerous moment for academic freedom

JOHN YOUNG
A valedictory about pride — and prejudice

THOM HARTMANN
How the Reagan revolution collapsed America & the Florida condos

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Water in all the wrong places

TOM CONWAY
Closing the digital divide will strengthen America and help US workers

DICK POLMAN
Yo, Delta dolts: Is it worth getting sick or dead just to own the libs?

SARAH ANDERSON
Now’s the time to unrig the tax code

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
How to teach race in Brown

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The abortion wars

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Hospitals: When Wall Street steps in

SAM URETSKY
Republicans think America can’t handle truth

JAMES M. CULLEN
The world was his country

WAYNE O’LEARY
Clawing back the giveaways

JOHN BUELL
We’re here because you were there

FRANK LINGO
Budging Big Oil

BOOK REVIEW/Kristian Williams
Abuse by police is an international problem

KAREN DOLAN
Historic relief for American families is on its way to your bank account

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
With Amazon, resistance isn’t futile

ROB PATTERSON
Tina Turner survived turbulent times with class and dignity

SETH SANDRONSKY
Harlem’s forgotten festival

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Freewheeling: Wheelchair-bound for glory

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Dueling Jax

GENE NICHOL
Supreme Court joins the fight against Democracy

and more ...

Friday, June 11, 2021

Manchin Coming and Going

Art by Kevin Kreneck

Editorial: Return of the Grifter

Donald Trump returned to political rallying on June 5 in North Carolina, repeating his unfounded claims that Joe Biden stole last November’s presidential election (which election officials and state and federal courts agree Biden won with more than 80 million votes, seven million votes more than Trump, and a comfortable 306-232 margin in the Electoral College).

Trump aired his grievances at the Republican state convention in Greenville, N.C., in his first public speech since February. He hopes a summer tour will help him raise funds to keep him afloat as he evades creditors as well as prosecutors while his party heads into the mid-term election season. But instead of focusing his message on the future, Trump has remained fixated on his failure to defeat a Democratic candidate he continuously belittled.

At the North Carolina convention, the Diapered Don hit on cultural issues that Republican have used to stir the party’s right-wing base. “The Biden administration is pushing toxic critical race theory ... into our nation’s schools,” Trump claimed during a riff against his successor, CNN reported. “Joe Biden and the socialist Democrats are the most radical Democrats in our nation’s history.”

Trump got the crowd on their feet when he suggested that China should pay the US $10 trillion in COVID-19 reparations. “The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from the Communist Party of China. We should all declare with one unified voice that China must pay — they must pay,” said Trump, who last year was praising the Chinese government for their work in controlling the virus.

Trump also attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci as “not a great doctor, but a hell of a promoter.” Fauci has “perhaps never been more wrong than when he denied the virus and where it came from,” Trump charged, referring to Fauci’s initial dismissal that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan — back when Trump was publicly minimizing the threat of the virus.

Some Democrats hope Republican candidates will suffer electorally for continuing to embrace Trump, as federal prosecutors close in on his role in organizing the Jan. 6 rally that turned into a violent attack on Congress and New York state prosecutors close in on his potentially criminal business dealings.

Trump remains the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and Republican elected officials who have challenged his dominance of the party, such as US Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, have been ousted from Republican leadership and face likely primary challengers by Trump cultists at home.

Trump reportedly has told several people he still believes he will be “reinstated” to the White House in August, although there is no constitutional procedure to reinstate a president after the Electoral College returns are certified that he lost the election.

Jason Miller, an adviser to the former president, told the New York Times, “There are two types of Republicans inside the Beltway. Those who realize President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and those who are in denial.”

But, as much as Trump’s cultists like to mock Joe Biden’s health and stamina, Trump appears to be the one in mental and physical decline. The odds are against him being in any condition to run for office in 2024, if he manages to avoid prison. So ambitious Republicans are paying their respects now, hoping to attract Trumpers and co-opt their grievances when their idol passes.

Republican candidates who put their principles in a blind trust to attract the Trump supporters in the Republican primary might repel centrists in the general election. That’s why they figure they must rig the elections so Democrats can’t win.

With public opinion turning against Republicans, Democrats ought to have a good chance to buck the historic trend that a new president’s party loses seats in Congress in midterm elections. But even if Democrats get the vote out, they face the challenge of getting the vote counted, as Republican legislatures, using the Trumped-up claims of voter fraud, have been passing bills to make it harder for Black, Brown and elderly voters to cast ballots, while making it easier for Republicans to challenge and overturn returns that go against them.

Texas Democrats walked out of the state House Chamber May 30 with an hour left in the session to deny a quorum and stop Republicans from passing a voter suppression bill. In retaliation, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) threatened to veto the Legislature’s budget and said he would call the Legislature back for a special session to pass the bill.

Meanwhile, more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a public statement that calls on Congress to pass the For the People Act, which would set national standards for voting procedures. “Our entire democracy is now at risk,” the scholars said. “We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary — including suspending the filibuster — in order to pass national voting and election administration standards.” The For the People Act passed the House but is stalled in the Senate by a Republican filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) is leading the resistance to doing away with the filibuster to protect voting rights. In a June 6 column for the Charleston, W.V., Gazette Mail, he wrote that he supports protecting the right to vote, but it “should never be done in a partisan manner.” But, with the Senate split 50-50, and having a Democratic majority only with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote, any Democratic senator can sideline a bill as long as Republicans remain united — so Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), another filibuster defender, are enabling the Trump party’s blockade of voting rights.

Democrats must test that Republican unity by putting HR 1, the For the People Act, up for a vote. If that fails, Dems should force votes on individual provisions of the bill. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) should also make Republicans vote on HR 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which at least would restore the Voting Rights Act to require states to get preclearance from federal authorities before changing election procedures. Republicans on the Supreme Court defanged that law in 2013, ruling the law was outdated, even though it had been reauthorized in 2006.

If Democrats can’t shame Manchin into doing the right thing, they must concentrate on making the 2022 election a referendum on saving democracy, letting no Republican go unchallenged.

Democrats also must flip several GQP Senate seats so faux Dems like Manchin and Sinema can no longer hold the Democratic caucus hostage. Among the top pickup opportunities for Democrats next year are in Pennsylvania, where Sen. Pat Toomey (R) is retiring and Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman already is building up a war chest; Wisconsin, where Sen. Ron Johnson is a vulnerable Trumpite in a state Biden won; North Carolina, where Sen. Richard Burr (R) is retiring; Ohio, where Sen. Rob Portman (R) is retiring; Florida, where Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is likely to face a strong Democratic challenger in a swing state; and Missouri, where Sen. Roy Blunt is retiring.

Democrats also must protect their own senators in swing states, including Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) who are seeking full terms after winning unexpired terms last year, as well as Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2021

Populist.com

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Selections from the July 1-15, 2021 issue

COVER/Sonali Kolhatkar

Does the US really need another oil pipeline?

EDITORIAL
Return of the Grifter

FRANK LINGO
The ReTrumplican party

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SARAH ANDERSON
A plan to end poverty in the United States

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Be ready when the internet goes down

DISPATCHES
Far-right gang plotted violence to blame on left, then members killed cops.
Arizona ‘fraudit’ recount generates tourism.
Biden, Obama celebrate record ACA enrollments while Supreme Court ponders the law’s fate.
Republicans 'forget' that Trump fired embedded CDC observer in China months before outbreak.
Dems won Georgia, but gerrymanders kept legislature Republican.
Turns out people are less anxious about money when they have money.
Study shows conservatives hear, and believe, more fake news than libs.
Texas AB says Trump would have 'lost' Texas if he hadn't blocked mail-in ballot applications.
QAnon believers seek local positions of power. ...

ART CULLEN
‘Storm Lake’ film is a labor of love about Iowa

JILL RICHARDSON
If you love our country, don’t ban its history

JOHN YOUNG
Trust research or, um, Tucker Carlson?

MOLLY ABSOLON
You can explore the West and escape the crowds

SETH SANDRONSKY
NBA Kings financial flop to hit city services?

JASON SIBERT
AI may be moving in the wrong direction

TOM CONWAY
Ending the race to the bottom

SAM PIZZIGATI
How everyone getting more equal slices of the economic pie can curb the ‘velocity of wealth’

THOM HARTMANN p. 13
Could QAnon reign mean the ‘end times’ for democracy?

ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ
The killing of people of color approximates wartime nubers

BOB BURNETT
California faces water crisis

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Cheap insurance: Trump’s minefield surprises

SAM URETSKY
Taxes should promote philanthropy

WAYNE O’LEARY
The world of woke

JOHN BUELL
Take this job and ...

LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN
Biden’s unconscionable military budget

N. GUNASEKARAN
The COVID surge and Asia’s distress

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Such delightful sisters

ROB PATTERSON
Left journalists move online

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
The news never sleeps in ‘Storm Lake’

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
You think the coronavirus was bad? Ha!

GENE NICHOL
Destroying Carolina

and more ...

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Editorial: Republicans Obstruct Truth

The Republican Party is now the Grand Obstructionist Party, as its leaders refuse to cooperate in setting up a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6 violent attack on Congress. House Democrats should proceed to set up a select committee to come up with the truth.

After Republican negotiators reached a deal with House and Senate leaders on an independent commission, Donald J. Trump released a statement May 18 slamming the bill as a “Democrat trap” and urging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to start “listening.”

McCarthy had authorized Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) to negotiate with House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), after discussions with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke down this spring over disputes regarding the commission’s composition and scope. Democrats wanted to focus on the right-wing groups that promoted the Jan. 6 demonstrations, while Republicans demanded the panel look into left-wing “extremism” at racial justice rallies in the summer of 2020 as well.

Thompson and Katko agreed on legislation that would give the proposed 10-member commission the power to subpoena witnesses on a bipartisan basis. Five commissioners, including the chair, would be appointed by Democratic congressional leaders, while five, including the vice chair, would be picked by Republican leaders.

McCarthy rejected the compromise out of hand May 18, saying the deal was “shortsighted,” “duplicative” and “potentially counterproductive.”

McConnell at first said his members were open to voting for the plan but needed a chance to read the “fine print.” After Trump came out against the commission, McConnell said he opposes the bill to set up the commission because it is a “slanted and unbalanced proposal.”

On the Senate floor May 19, McConnell said, “It’s not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could actually lay on top of existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress.”

The bill setting up the commission passed the House 252-175, with 35 Republicans voting for it, but its chances in the Senate, where it would need at least 10 Republican votes to pass, were all but obliterated by the opposition of McConnell and Trump.

Republicans claim we already know everything there is to know, but they know there are plenty of questions that need to be answered, and the truth about Jan. 6 that a commission would reveal would not help their cause or that of their Great Misleader.

Among the questions that need to be answered (working off a list developed by Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post):

• Who organized the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse, where Trump told the crowd to march on the Capitol?

• Who paid for buses to get participants to the event?

• What role did Trump or the White House play in organizing the rally?

• How many members of the military, law enforcement or federal, state and local officials were involved in the insurrection?

• Who were the violent insurgents? Where did they come from, how were they organized and what motivated them? Were any of them identified as leftists?

• Did members of Congress have communications with the insurrectionists? Who were they, and what role, if any, did they play? Did they give tours of the Capitol in the days before the insurrection?

• What was Trump doing during the riot?

• Who contacted the president during the riot? What requests or demands were made for him to call off his supporters? What did he say? Who witnessed these communications?

• Did Trump or his aides prevent any law enforcement agency from responding to appeals for backup?

• Who was responsible for restricting the DC National Guard from responding to the riot? Why was Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy “not available” for a call when Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was pleading for help when rioters were minutes away from the House Chamber? Why did the Army initially falsely and repeatedly deny that Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn (brother of disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn) was on the call?

• What did Vice President Mike Pence know about the Jan. 6 event? Was he requested to overthrow the election results? What did he know about efforts to target him for refusing to steal the election?

• What errors did the Secret Service make? Did the vice president’s security detail request assistance? What errors did the FBI make? Capitol Police? DC Metro police?

• What contact did former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen have with Trump, Pence, or White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about events of Jan. 6 and overturning election results?

• What trauma was inflicted on those who experienced the Capitol invasion? What resources were available to them?

These questions need to be answered for authorities to consider how the Capitol can be defended without compromising public access to the seat of government.

Congress also needs the information to help law enforcement track, understand and stop violent insurrectionists.

Congress also must consider whether to change the Presidential Transition Act to ensure an orderly transition when a president refuses to admit defeat.

How can we restore trust in the electoral system when one party claims the election was stolen, without any evidence to back up their claims?

If Republican leaders don’t want to cooperate on a commission, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should set up a Select Committee on the Insurrection, with Democrats controlling subpoena power to bring witnesses on everything from the conduct of the presidential election and efforts to overturn the election results to the insurrection and the refusal of Trump to cooperate with the presidential transition.

The committee should compel testimony from House Minority Leader McCarthy, as well as the former president and vice president, former Trump aides, members of Congress and their staffs, Capitol Police officers and other law enforcement and Defense Department officials who can shed light on what happened and what was not allowed to happen. Witnesses who refuse to appear or refuse to answer questions could be held in contempt, which the Biden administration could actually enforce in federal court.

While Republicans have stalled, the Department of Justice has been investigating the insurrection and compiling evidence. Attorney General Merrick Garland should name a special prosecutor to handle the Jan. 6 probe, regardless of what Congress does, and release the full Mueller Report that former Attorney General Bill Barr covered up. Whatever happens, Donald Trump likely will spend years fighting civil lawsuits as well as criminal charges in D.C., New York and Georgia.

What does the “GOP’ have to hide? Let the sun shine. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2021

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Selections from the June 15, 2021 issue

COVER/Reynard Loki

If we don’t protect the natural world by 2030, Earth may be unfit for life

EDITORIAL
Republicans obstruct truth

FRANK LINGO
Methane menace: It’s a gas gas gas

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Meritocracy: The pain and the hope

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Who will take care of people?

DISPATCHES
House Republicans call for raising Medicare, Social Security eligibility to 69.
Vaccination data suggests COVID spreading among Republicans.
Resuming in-person learning at Texas schools last fall accelerated COVID-19, study says.
Extremists seeking political office identify as Republicans, confident the base is on their side.
Republican governors cutting federal unemployment benefits for 4 million.
Decision to cut off federal unemployment benefits in Texas could backfire.
Their guy lost in 2020. Now they're running for statewide election posts to wreak havoc in 2022 and 2024.
Last days of Trump administration were bedlam.
Biden plans big increase in IRS funding, staffing to crack down on rich tax cheats.
Wage theft is a huge problem that requires a creative solution.
Bill would end Postal Service's crippling pre-funding mandate.

ART CULLEN
Drought a sign of a new reality

ALAN GUEBERT
Ag groups make a united, hollow call on meatpackers to play nice

JILL RICHARDSON
The bigger picture in Israel-Palestine

JOHN YOUNG
Gun lobby’s divide & conquer strategy

JOHN L. MICEK
Republicans and the return of class warfare

THOM HARTMANN
GOP is raising the next racist generation of right wing crackpots

DICK POLMAN
Hannah Arendt is long dead, but she’s hip to the lying Republican cultists

TOM CONWAY
America’s thirst

JOSEPH B. ATKINS
Republican governors put the squeeze on the unemployed

BOB HERTZ
‘Creeping Socialism’ would be good for America

ROBERT KUTTNER
China and Republican economic populism

ROBERTO Dr. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
How to teach race in Brown

TARAH HEINZEN
Factory farms are a deadly nuisance

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Costing out love, or the economics of filial duty

SAM URETSKY
Respect that puppy mama

SETH SANDRONSKY
Work to die for: COVID-19 and US labor

WAYNE O’LEARY
Working the middle

JOHN BUELL
TRIPS and the future of Big Pharma

JASON SIBERT
What about arms control?

TRACEY L. ROGERS
Palestinian lives matter

JOHN FEFFER
America’s immigration solution

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Know it don’t thrill you, hope it don’t kill you

BOB BURNETT
What happens next?

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Regrets, she has a few

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Masterpiece cinema: BFI player classics streams 200-plus British movies

GENE NICHOL
North Carolina critical race theory bill forces schools to lie

and more ...

Monday, May 17, 2021

How Will You Cope, Sans Your Serif?

Satire by Rosie Sorenson

Microsoft recently announced it was retiring this particular typeface (Calibri) for something new, more now-ish—something familiar, yet exotic; nice, yet a little bit slutty. (CNN Business, April 28, 2021)

Microsoft put out a call for new designs and the following have been chosen as the top five, the American Idol of fonts, if you will. I’ve included some of the designers’ own quotes for each of the five. (Comments in parentheses are those of the writer.)

1. Tenorite. “We were craving something very round, wide, and crisp.” (How about a toasted bagel?)

2. Bierstadt. “In today’s world, I believe a grotesque, (i.e. sans serif) typeface’s voice needs a bit of a human touch to feel more approachable and less institutional.” (Can I get a puppy instead?)

3. Skeena. “This sans serif … may be the quirkiest of the bunch, while still being compact and readable as body text or presentation titles.”(Oh, that rascal Skeena!)

4. Seaford. “This gently organic and asymmetric sans serif … is like a warm hug, or a cozy reading nook, or a cup of tea. Something makes you want curl up in it.” (Again, a puppy?)

5. Grandview. “This sans serif typeface is derived from old German road and railway signage, which was designed to be legible at a distance. Its roots in signage give this one a mechanical but sophisticated vibe.” (Nothing says Nazi” like an old German railway sign.)

Microsoft is asking people to vote on these, which many believe are very much like Calibri. So why did Microsoft bother? And who has time to vote? And also, they are not killing Calibri, just making it a little more difficult to find in the fonts menu. Ah, marketing—ain’t it grand?

If they wanted to spruce up their image, they could restore support for Windows 7, upon which millions of us rely. But, no. That would make too much sense. They must have been thinking something along these lines: “We’ve got to mess with the fonts instead. That proves … what? Oh, right. That we’re bigger than you, we’re more powerful than you and we have too much money and too much free time. Enjoy!”

One inventive young person named M. Polo came up with the best idea yet. Why not create a typeface named after your favorite or most hated politician?

The “Marjorie Taylor Greene,” for example. As soon as you type a coherent sentence, the letters melt into something resembling Q.

“Because,” as Marjorie says, “That’s all you need to know.”

Or the “Matt Gaetz.” Instead of a serif, it sports the male symbol. ♂

“This just proves,” Matt says, “that I’m a healthy red-blooded American male and no, I did not pay that teenager for sex.”

Last, but not least, the Biden: $$$. He’s your drunken uncle throwing fifties at you for Christmas. God Ble$$ that man!

Rosie Sorenson is a humor writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can contact her at: RosieSorenson29@yahoo.com

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2021

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Friday, May 14, 2021

Editorial: Big Lie Republicans

Republicans just can’t quit Donald Trump. He might be a compulsive liar, a cheater in business as well as in his personal life and he’s an accused rapist, among other things, but Republicans still believe he is their guy and they won’t tolerate anyone telling the inconvenient truth about the 45th President.

Liz Cheney told the truth about the Lying Don and now his GQP loyalists say she has to go.

Trump has insisted there is no way Joe Biden could have beaten him fairly last November, despite the fact that Biden clearly beat him by seven million votes in a record turnout and “Sleepy Joe” flipped five states Trump had won in 2016. That gave Biden a 74-vote victory out of 538 in the Electoral College, but only after Trump and his Republican allies exhausted their efforts to curtail the use of voting by mail and drive-by voting by Democrats who were wary of voting in person during the pandemic.

The Trump campaign filed 62 lawsuits in state and federal courts contesting election processes, vote counting and the vote certification process in many states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, but most were dropped or dismissed by state and federal judges and Biden still won all those states except Texas. Recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin didn’t change Biden’s win in either state. A majority of House Republicans signed onto a Trump lawsuit seeking the Supreme Court to throw out the election results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, which Trump had won in 2016. The Supreme Court declined to hear the suit.

Neither Attorney General William Barr nor Republican state officials were able to find evidence of widespread voting fraud or irregularities in the election, but Trump campaign officials and attorneys continued to make baseless accusations about voting systems and election officials. Trump urged his supporters to “Stop the Steal” at a rally in Washington on Jan. 6 that turned into a riot at the US Capitol, where Congress was preparing to accept the election results that had been certified by each state.

At a rally on the Ellipse, a park near the White House, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, endorsed the idea of a “trial by combat.” As the crowd yelled, “Fight for Trump,” Trump then told the supporters to head to the Capitol to demonstrate against Congress certifying Biden’s victory.

The storming of the Capitol followed, which forced the evacuation of the House and Senate as Capitol and Metro DC police were overwhelmed by the rioters and the Trump administration refused to send the DC National Guard to reinforce the police against the rioters who had erected a gallows on the Capitol grounds.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called the White House Jan. 6 in an attempt to get Trump to tell the mob to end the violence, but Trump seemed unconcerned.

On Jan. 25, when asked on “Fox News Sunday” by host Chris Wallace about Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s (R-Wash.) claim that Trump had told McCarthy,“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” McCarthy declined to confirm or deny it, but he did suggest Trump had responded sufficiently to his pleas for action. In fact, Trump released a video at 4:17 p.m. on Jan. 6, more than four hours into the riot, urging people to go home, but he added, “I love you, you’re very special.”

On the House floor Jan. 13, McCarthy said: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.” He said he would support a censure resolution against Trump. Instead, McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago on Jan. 28 to seek forgiveness and pledge his loyalty to Trump.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, and her refusal to accept the Big Lie that Joe Biden stole the election put her in the sights of the Trump Cult. That got her ousted as Republican Conference chair, the third-ranking Republican in the House, on May 12. She was replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)

Cheney has mainly supported Trump’s policies, with the exception of his lies about the election. She tweeted on May 3, “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”

In a Washington Post column May 5, Cheney wrote that Trump’s claim that he is still the rightful president, and President Biden is illegitimate, provoked violence on Jan. 6 and “there is good reason to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again. Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.

“The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution. In the immediate wake of the violence of Jan. 6, almost all of us knew the gravity and the cause of what had just happened — we had witnessed it firsthand.”

We note the irony that Rep. Cheney is one of the few elected Republicans speaking truth to power in the GQP. Her father is Dick Cheney, whose Big Lie about Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction led to the invasion that found no WMDs. Liz Cheney is a right winger who supported Trump’s election in 2016 and she enthusiastically supported his reelection in 2020.

But when Liz is right, we’ll give her credit. She has demanded accountability for the Jan. 6 insurrection and wrote that Republicans should “support the ongoing Justice Department criminal investigations of the Jan. 6 attack. Those investigations must be comprehensive and objective; neither the White House nor any member of Congress should interfere.”

Of course, when the House Republicans oust Cheney from the leadership, and the MAGA cult selects a challenger to take her out of her Wyoming seat next year, it will be a warning to other ambitious Republicans to put their principles aside, along with any sentimental attachments to democracy, and let the party complete its transition to fascism.

Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly asserting a willingness to overturn election results they don’t like. In Arizona, a recount of Maricopa County ballots ordered by the Republican-dominated state Senate is plainly designed to manufacture fake evidence bolstering the fiction that the election was stolen. Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who tried to overturn Biden’s election, plans to challenge the Georgia secretary of state in the 2022 primary with the promise to “aggressively” pursue “voter fraud.”

If Republicans control the House after the 2024 presidential election, they will be in a position to reject state election outcomes they don’t like, and accept alternate Republican electors, which would complete the coup that was started this past Jan. 6. Even after the rioters were cleared out of the Capitol, 139 representatives and eight senators voted to overturn state election results. Their first attempt failed to make the US government part of the Trump family business. That was the practice run. Don’t let the Big Lie Republicans try another coup. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2021

Populist.com

Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links

About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us

PO Box 819, Manchaca TX 78652

Selections from the June 1, 2021 issue

COVER/Hal Crowther

Abuse of Asian-Americans sets new cognitive low

EDITORIAL
Big Lie Republicans

FRANK LINGO
NRA enables gun terror

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
The comedy and tragedy of George W. Bush

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
We need teamwork to beat COVID

DISPATCHES
Cybercriminals threaten East Coast fuel supply.
Republicans block inquiry into alleged Trump campaign violations.
Most don’t get to be ‘disingenuous’ under oath the way Bill Barr was.
GQP leaders bury internal data showing Trump’s drag on House districts.
Biden’s success on Covid drives his approval as president.
GQP tries to bully another Republican Trump critic out of Congress.
Lawyer for Capitol riot suspect blames Fox News, Trump.
Arizona Republican admits GQP 'audit' of Trump election loss 'makes us look like idiots."
No longer seeking access, press admits Trump lies.
Dems will retain slim House majority in special elections.
Report exposes high cost of internet access during Trump era ...

ART CULLEN
Where’s the beef?

REBEKAH ENTRALGO
An invisible essential labor force

JOHN YOUNG
Where’s America’s apology for lie after lie?

TIMOTHY KARR
World press freedom during the US tech boom

THOM HARTMANN
America on the verge of re-fighting the American revolution?

BOB BURNETT
What’s happening in California?

DICK POLMAN
Big lie Republicans are doubling down

KAREN DOLAN
The man for the moment who must do more

SAM PIZZIGATI
FDR must be smiling

JON R. PIKE p. 11
Beer and politics in Wisconsin’s northwoods

TOM CONWAY
Upskilling America

ROBERTO Dr. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
The new/old Civil War ablaze

PETER ARNO and PHILIP CAPER
COVID-19 vaccinations: A shot in the arm for universal healthcare?

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
On George Floyd, police, health, and pogo: Thoughts

SAM URETSKY
Republicans dream of red meat blockade

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Police kill white men too

WAYNE O’LEARY
The public power imperative

JOHN BUELL
Pfizer, the bully on (Wall) Street

DAVID SCHMIDT
They myth of ‘the careless Mexican government’: US media continue to pandemic-shame Mexico’s center-left president

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
How will you cope, sans your serif?

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Check your bias, save the world

ROB PATTERSON
Streaming across the pond with British cop shows

MOVIE REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Lady day

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Stealing Chaplin: The great gravediggers

GENE NICHOL
Labor laws need new teeth

and more ...

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Editorial: GQP Crowd Control

Right wingers were counting on riots to break out after the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd. They figured Chauvin would get away with kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine and a half minutes until Floyd was asphyxiated, and outraged Blacks would take to the streets in violent protests, which would make great video for the white supremacist channels, including Fox “News.”

Scott Greer, a speaker at the recent white-nationalist America First PAC convention and a former writer for the Daily Caller, tweeted early on April 20 that “White boy summer starts with Derek Chauvin’s acquittal,” David Neiwert noted at DailyKos.com.

Instead, that afternoon, the Hennepin County jury convicted Chauvin of three counts of murder. Greer updated his tweet that, “Uhhh ... it appears white boy summer has been postponed.” So the wingers switched to Plan B, as Greer wrote, “Why even remain a cop? This system hates you and only needs you to enforce mask regulations. Get a job that won’t send you to jail for doing your job.”

Chuck Tanner of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, who collected reactions of far-right extremists after the Chauvin trial, noted that “the response across the far right and white nationalist movement demonstrated its base lack of compassion and lack of mooring in reality.”

Jaden McNeil of America First Students bemoaned that Chauvin “never stood a chance” in a multiracial America.

Self-proclaimed “groyper mommy” Michelle Malkin wrote that “Chauvin was sacrificed.” Tulsa, Oklahoma-area Proud Boys recirculated a post declaring that “Derek Chauvin Did Nothing Wrong.”

Peter Brimelow, founder/publisher of the white-nationalist site VDare, asked on Twitter, “Does anyone really see a way out except Civil War/secession?” Brimelow tweeted an article he wrote in 2017 predicting that “it will come to blood.”

Tucker Carlson’s rant on Fox “News” on April 20 — in which he claimed that Chauvin couldn’t receive a fair trial — was echoed widely on far-right channels, Neiwert noted.

“Everyone understood perfectly well the consequences of an acquittal in this case,” Carlson said. “After nearly a year of burning and looting and murder by BLM, that was never in doubt.”

Blaming Democrats for the verdict, Carlson echoed white nationalist themes as well: “No mob has the right to destroy our cities,” he said. “No politician or media figure has the right to intimidate a jury. It’s an attack on civilization.”

Carlson helped to build the myth that the Black Lives Matter movement was responsible for violent protests in the summer of 2020. Republicans used that myth to scare White suburban voters.

In fact, studies of racial justice protests have found the Black Lives Matter protests were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or right-wing provocateurs were directing it at the protesters.

A study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University in September 2020 found about 93% of protests since the death of George Floyd were peaceful and non-destructive.

ACLED recorded more than 10,600 demonstrations across the US between May 24 and August 22, 2020. About 7,750 of those protests were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. Peaceful protests took place in more than 2,440 locations across all 50 states and Washington, D.C, while violent demonstrations occurred in fewer than 220 locations.

Violence sometimes was initiated by law enforcement authorities, who intervened in 9% of BLM protests with force, using tear gas, rubber bullets or pepper spray. Of all other protests, including unrest over the COVID-19 pandemic, 3% were met with force.

As the use of force became more heavy-handed, the risks of violence increased, particularly in Seattle and Portland, the report noted. Violent demonstrations in Portland increased after federal agents arrived on the scene and “re-escalated tensions,” the authors wrote, in reference to demonstrations in Oregon.

“Prior to the deployment, over 83% of demonstrations in Oregon were non-violent. Post-deployment, the percentage of violent demonstrations has risen from under 17% to over 42%, suggesting that the federal response has only aggravated unrest.”

Right-wing gangs, such as Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois and the Ku Klux Klan also intervened in demonstrations and engaged in often-violent counter-protests.

Protesters or bystanders were reported injured in 1.6% of the protests. In total, at least three Black Lives Matter protesters and one other person were killed while protesting in Omaha, Austin and Kenosha, Wis. One anti-fascist protester killed a far-right group member during a confrontation in Portland, Ore. He claimed he acted in self-defense, but law enforcement officers killed the anti-fascist several days later, a killing Donald Trump applauded.

Now Republicans are seeking to use the myth of violent BLM protests to push new laws to criminalize protests. Legislators in at least 34 states have introduced bills to increase penalties against people who are convicted of protest-related crimes.

A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance. In Kentucky, where protests after the police killing of Breonna Taylor lasted for months, the state Senate passed a bill that would make it a crime to insult or taunt a police officer with “offensive or derisive” words or gestures that would have “a direct tendency to provoke a violent response.” Those arrested on such charges would be held in jail for at least 48 hours, which the Democratic Senate floor leader noted is more than those who are arrested for murder, arson or rape.

Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets.

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed sweeping legislation that toughened laws governing public disorder — a bill he’s called “the strongest anti-looting, anti-rioting, pro-law-enforcement piece of legislation in the country.” The law transforms many misdemeanor offenses into felonies. It denies bail to protesters until they see a judge. A “riot” is defined as at least three people who, together, pose a “clear and present danger” to someone. The law also increases penalties associated with taking down Confederate monuments, making it a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

These are authoritarian solutions to relatively minor problems. There are tough criminal penalties available to prosecute real cases of assault, arson and looting. Instead, Republicans are trying to suppress the right of the people to peaceably assemble. Under the new rules, a few unruly participants can give police the excuse to call that assembly a riot. Then police can “kettle” the participants in a confined area and wait for the crowd to boil over.

First they take away your right to vote, and then they take away your right to complain about it.

Apparently, the QAnon party believes suppressing protests is easier than getting police to stop killing unarmed people of color. — JMC