Category Archives: Politics

The Coming Reckoning.

Posted on by

In the 1930s and late 1960s, the U.S. experienced unparalleled social progress under Democratic leadership that made life better for the vast majority of Americans. In the 1930s, we saw the official end of the Gilded Age along with the economic rescue of millions of Americans after the Great Depression thanks to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR also created Social Security which meant that after a lifetime of work most Americans could finally experience a comfortable retirement.

Though he is most known for a war he did not start, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He also created Medicare and Medicaid as part of his war on poverty.

Though he never served as president, Ralph Nader had an enormous impact on our quality of life in the 1970s. As a result of his efforts, the Freedom of Information Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Clean Water Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, and the Whistleblower Protection Act were born. He also influenced the creation of the EPA to help clean up our environment and OSHA to improve the safety of workers.

In 1998, 1999, 2000 and part of 2001, after digging us out of a recession, President Bill Clinton oversaw federal budget surpluses for the first time in decades. This despite the fact that he invested heavily in education and technology, in additional police to lower crime, and in health initiatives such as the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Earned Income Tax Credit to help low-income families.

President Barack Obama continued the tradition of Democratic presidents repairing the economy after Republican shortcomings by digging us out of the Great Recession. He also created the Affordable Care Act to give tens of millions of Americans access to affordable health insurance. In addition, he pushed for initiatives to mitigate climate change.

And, like Democratic presidents before him, President Joe Biden rescued the economy following the botched pandemic response. He succeeded in getting an infrastructure bill passed after many before him had failed. And he oversaw historic investments in clean energy.

For their part, Republicans have almost universally fought all of these accomplishments along the way. Beginning with President Nixon, we have seen increased attacks on voting rights. And beginning with President Reagan, we have experienced the growth of corporate consolidation and wealth disparity until, in 2014, the U.S. was officially recognized as an oligarchy, which Wikipedia defines as “a type of political system in which the wealthiest citizens deploy unique and concentrated power to defend their unique minority interests.”

In other words, for decades politicians and their benefactors have rigged our government for their personal gain to the point that a significant percentage of our population feels so helpless they want to tear it all down. We’ve watched politics become a profession. We’ve witnessed unparalleled corruption by politicians and corporate leaders as they mortgage our nation’s future.

For example, the national debt now exceeds our GDP as a result of too many wars of choice which have led to uncontrolled military spending. Adding to the problem is the loss of revenue from continuous tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations. Former high-paying jobs have been shipped overseas so corporations can avoid paying worker benefits in their never-ending quest for increased corporate profits. Most industries have been captured by a few corporations that too often collude with one another to fix prices and flex their lobbying muscle for special treatment. This corporate consolidation has led to the collapse of many communities, especially in rural areas. Meanwhile multinationals and foreign corporations have set about controlling agriculture by swallowing up farmland and groundwater sources.

Americans’ overall health and lifespan have been diminished as a result of food scarcity, poor nutrition and lack of access to healthcare. Despite overpowering evidence of the causes and consequences of climate change, the oligarchs and many politicians have buried their heads in the sand refusing to acknowledge that it will devastate our planet with mass extinctions of species (maybe our own) along with extreme weather events, increased wildfires, sea level rise and weakening ocean currents. In addition, climate change is leading to mass migration which places stress on host nations often ending with human rights violations as we’ve seen in the U.S.

The extraction of commodities such as lumber, fossil fuels and minerals is given priority over our more important natural resources such as clean air and water, healthy forests, the diversity of wildlife and even human lives.

Moreover, our Constitution is under attack as never before. Billionaire oligarchs have taken control of our media turning long-standing news organizations into propaganda outlets that ignore reality and spew misinformation to advance their interests. Religion, race, gender and sexual preference are again being used as weapons to distract and divide us.

We are finally reaching the point where our democracy and our corrupted economy can no longer coexist. It is time for a reckoning.

It is time for congressional term limits and accountability for corruption. It is time for an effective FEC, election transparency, and limits on campaign financing. It is time to eliminate all forms of voter suppression and to make Election Day a national holiday. It is time for a strong FCC and the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine. It is time for a truly independent judiciary and Department of Justice. It is time for a wealth tax and real tax fairness. It is time for the application of antitrust laws, the reversal of Buckley v Valeo and the overturning of Citizens United.

It is time for universal healthcare and effective gun laws. It is time to fully fund and restore our public education system that was once the envy of the world. It is time to restore our international standing and strengthen relationships with allies.

And perhaps most important of all, it is time to address climate change with the urgency it requires as if the future of our planet depends on it. Because it does.

Kakistocracy? Idiocracy? Kleptocracy? Oligarchy? Theocracy? Or Autocracy?

Posted on by

I admit to being flummoxed by how best to describe our current regime, er, administration. A government of the worst and most unscrupulous blowhards? A government by self-serving and unqualified incompetents? A government designed to fill its leaders’ bank accounts with taxpayer money? A government run by democracy-hating billionaires? A government based on ethically and morally challenged evangelic Christianity. Or a banana republic-like dictatorship?

In truth, I believe it’s an amalgamation of them all.

Consider that it is being led by Felon-in-Chief Donald J. Trump, the 34-count convicted felon, adjudicated sexual assaulter, three-time adulterer, insurrection-leading conman, and former best pal of Jeffrey Epstein who spends most of his time golfing and rage posting on social media. His greatest accomplishments are hiding his alleged sex abuse of 13-year-old girls, regrowing his ear following an alleged assassination attempt, demolishing the East Wing of the White House, starting an economy-crushing unnecessary war, plastering his name and face all over government buildings, building monuments to himself, and using his office to fill the Trump family coffers with $4 billion during his first year in office.

Second in command is Vice-President James Donald Bowman, aka James David Humel, aka J.D. Vance, a deceitful author turned politician who was financed by the anti-democratic billionaire and government contractor, Peter Thiel. Among the most devoted of Trump bootlickers, the Veep’s greatest achievement is his ability to so frequently fit his size 11 shoe in his mouth. In a display of supreme hubris, the recent convert even lectured the Pope on the finer points of Catholicism.

There’s Acting Attorney General (emphasis on acting) Todd Blanche who has continued his role as Trump’s personal attorney to file Trumped-up charges against the Felon-in-Chief’s perceived enemies. Of course, he follows the more famous, more combative and more hateful Pam Bondi who was apparently brushed aside for releasing the Epstein files without clearly exonerating Dear Leader.

In charge of our nation’s health is HHS Secretary RFK Jr., the vaccine denier with a brain worm whose accomplishments include dining on roadkill and stopping his car to cut the penis off a dead racoon as his wife and children watched. He has singlehandedly brought measles back from eradication and is ambitiously cueing up the next pandemic.

The “Director of War” is Pete Hegseth, a hard-drinking, Bible-thumping Christian Nationalist and racist who has blown through the world’s largest military budget in record time while decapitating the top leadership of our military and publicly advocating war crimes.

At the helm of DHS is Markwayne Mullin, the three-win MMA fighter turned politician who notoriously physically threatened his Senate colleagues. It remains to be seen if he can be as successful as his predecessor, ICE Barbie, in advocating brutality while cheating taxpayers out of hundreds of millions for luxury jets and self-aggrandizing TV commercials.

The rest of this Cabinet of clowns and misfits are relatively silent partners in the regime doing the Felon’s bidding but escaping public attention. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is the primary proponent of inflation-inducing illegal tariffs and infamous guest of Jeffrey Epstein’s magical island of sex trafficking and abuse. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has given us the Felon’s signature on our currency and the creation of a Trump coin. The queen of pro wrestling, Linda McMahon, seems to have but one assignment – the demolition of public education. Similarly, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, seem to have been given the task of destroying our nation’s wildlands and poisoning our air and water.

And don’t forget Secretary of State Marco Rubio who seems to ideally fit the description jack of all trades and master of none. What he is good at is making things disappear. If there’s a task the Felon wants everyone to forget about, he simply piles it on Magic Marco’s desk and voila, you never hear about it again.

Finally, we must acknowledge the a**holes behind the scenes: Stephen Miller and Russell Vought. Miller acts as a Mafia-like caporegime for the Felon to initiate and oversee the regime’s most racist and cruel policies. While Director of Management and Budget Russell Vought acts as a reverse Robin Hood, taking money from the poor to give to the rich. He is also lead author of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s agenda intended to transform the American Dream into the American Nightmare. One in which the Executive Branch controls all the levers of power without restraint.

It’s as if our nation’s largest rival and global threat, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, handpicked our government leaders to dismantle NATO, weaken our military, accelerate climate change, impoverish tens of millions, and destroy the world’s greatest democracy.

And it’s not as if we had no warning of what might happen in the Felon’s second term. All you had to do was read the Muller Report, the court reports, and watch the videos from January 6.

The Surest Way To Make America Great Again.

Posted on by

For 2025-2026, the U.S. military budget is $921 billion, 35.5 percent of all global military spending and 63 percent more than China’s and Russia’s military budgets combined (our largest global adversaries). And 11 of the remaining top 15 are U.S. allies!

Given the fearsomeness of our military power, U.S. citizens have a greater likelihood of starving to death or dying for lack of access to healthcare than being killed by a military attack on our homeland. And a far greater chance of being gunned down in a church, theater, school, nightclub or shopping mall by a Second Amendment nutjob!

Yet the Trump regime is planning to ask Congress to increase our already bloated military budget to $1.5 trillion for next year.

That started me thinking: What if we cut our military spending to a more reasonable amount? Let’s say that we cut it to $502.6 billion – double that of China, the next largest spender and our greatest perceived global rival. That would save U.S. taxpayers a whopping $669.7 billion. Or, when compared to the regime’s planned 2027 military budget, nearly $1 trillion!

Assuming the Trump regime hasn’t completely alienated all of our longtime allies, we would still have a combined military budget of $1.14 trillion.

So, what if our government really did come to its senses? What could we do with that $669.7 billion or $1 trillion in annual savings? And what if we made U.S. billionaires pay a tax rate of 13 percent, the same as the average U.S. taxpayer? We would gain an estimated $224 billion annually in additional tax revenues. In addition, we would gain billions more if we closed tax shelters and forced multinational corporations to pay a tax burden equal to that of other advanced economies.

With the many billions in savings and the additional tax revenue, we could all but eliminate our annual $1.78 trillion federal deficit. That would save even more money that would otherwise be spent on additional interest for our national debt. Or we could take part of the savings and do some real good for our citizens.

For example, we could feed every hungry American for $33.1 billion a year – just 3 percent of our current military budget. And for an estimated $19.9 billion – roughly 2 percent of our military budget – we could house all of our homeless, many of them military veterans.

We could further cut costs and save lives by committing to some form of universal healthcare. Some estimates show that by replacing private insurance with Medicare for All we could cut our total annual healthcare expenditure by up to $313.5 billion per year.

Reimagining our federal budget would certainly be better than following our military-industrial complex further down the rabbit hole, especially when you consider that the Department of Defense has never passed an audit. Indeed, between 1998 and 2015, the DoD can’t account for $21 trillion in spending! $21 trillion – nearly 54 percent of our national debt!!!

Moreover, by cutting our military budget to a more sensible level, the politicians in Washington might feel more constrained in committing to a war of choice.

The Oppressed Become The Oppressors.

Posted on by

The bullied become the bullies.

At the risk of being labeled antisemitic (I most certainly am not!!!), I believe it’s time to hold the Israeli Zionist leadership accountable for its role in the ongoing violence and hatred in the Middle East. To begin, we must recognize that Israel has a right to exist. But we also must understand that Americans have been fed a one-sided account of the situation by religious institutions, the government, and Israeli lobbyists, as well as the media and entertainment industries.

To understand the current situation, a little history is in order.

The problems began in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the founding of the World Zionist Organization and the resettlement into Palestine of tens of thousands of Jews escaping persecution in Europe and Russia. (I think we can all agree that all humans have a right to live in peace free from persecution, including Jews and Palestinians.)

When, following WWI, the League of Nations authored the British Mandate recognizing British rule over Palestine and Transjordan, hundreds of thousands more Jews arrived in the area. At first, they purchased land and lived in concert with ethnic Palestinians who had occupied the area for generations. But, as millions more Jews immigrated during the build-up to WWII, conflicts began. In response, the British attempted to limit further immigration and recommended that an independent Palestine, governed jointly by Palestinians and Jews, be established within 10 years.

After the horrors of the Holocaust (the Nazi genocide of European Jews and other ethnic groups), illegal immigration into Palestine soared, resulting in Jews comprising 33 percent of the population. When Britain asked the United Nations for help, the UN recommended that the land be divided into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, and that Jerusalem be placed under an international trusteeship.

When the British Mandate was terminated in 1948, Britain withdrew from the area, and a civil war broke out as Jews tried to claim more land. When Jews declared independence and created the nation of Israel, the war expanded into a regional conflict with war crimes committed by both sides and ending in the Nakba with Jews taking 55 percent of the land and violently displacing more than 700,000 Palestinian residents who were forced into refugee camps in Gaza and Jordan.

Not surprisingly, that spawned an enduring hatred amongst the Palestinians who were determined to return to their homes. Those who continued to fight were, of course, labeled terrorists (a convenient label that can be applied by those on either side of a fight). The war also angered Israel’s Arab neighbors who were forced to accept Palestinian refugees. Then, in 1967, Israel initiated a pre-emptive strike against its Arab neighbors, capturing the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

In reality, the wars have never ended.

Israel has controlled all movement in and out of Palestinian lands for decades limiting weapons, even food and medical supplies. When frustrated Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, the soldiers were ordered to shoot at their legs. In addition, Israel began imprisoning Palestinians indefinitely without charges and without trial. (3,329 by the end of 2025.)

More violent Palestinian attacks on Israel have been met with mass killings and destruction, the latest following the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,100 Israelis. In response, Israel committed what Amnesty International, and others have called a genocide and on-going humanitarian crisis by turning most of Gaza into rubble. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 75,000 Palestinians, wounding an additional 171,000 and displacing more than 75,000. Since then, the IDF have also killed more than 560 humanitarian aid workers, along with more than 1,700 healthcare workers, and roughly 300 journalists. During the obliteration of Gaza, medical volunteers from the U.S. also reported dozens of cases of young children, including toddlers, being shot in the head by Israeli snipers.

Palestinian blood scarcely had time to dry in Gaza before Israel turned its attention to the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran.

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers and soldiers continue to brutally attack and kill Palestinians at will. They have razed Palestinian homes and olive groves in clear attempts to ethnically cleanse the land.

In Lebanon, the goal seems the same. Israel has set about creating a “buffer zone” for Israeli safety. That’s code for carpet bombing a swath of Lebanon, including Beirut, killing any Lebanese civilians who either refuse or are unable to leave. Those attacks have resulted in many thousands of Lebanese killed or wounded.

And to eliminate the threat of Iran as a regional power, Israel’s war criminal Netanyahu talked our own war criminal in the White House into launching a pre-emptive war on Iran. So far, that has led to the death of Iran’s supreme leader, in addition to the bombing of government buildings, military sites, at least one elementary school, universities, and residential buildings. In all, the U.S. has claimed to have flown more than 12,000 combat sorties over Iran and fired more than 850 Tomahawk missiles. And, within the first three weeks of the war, Israel had dropped more than 12,000 bombs – more than 3,600 on the city of Tehran. All to prevent potential Iranian-sponsored attacks from Hezbollah.

Is it any wonder that Israel has asked American taxpayers to pay for tens of billions in more weaponry?

Certainly, terrorist groups from Iran, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern nations have sporadically attacked Israelis since the 1948 Nakba resulting in more than 5,000 Israeli deaths. But over that same time span, Israel has killed more than 130,000 Palestinians – mostly civilians. Indeed, the stated belief of at least one Israeli military leader is that for each Israeli death, 50 Palestinians must die.

As long as that mentality exists, the war will never end as each death radicalizes family members and friends.

Perhaps even more worrisome is the belief held by many Zionists that they cannot stop their expansionist wars until the “Promised Land” is reunited – a view shared by Christian evangelicals who believe that will lead to the return of their Messiah and the rapture of all true believers. Of course, that would mean that the state of Israel would include parts of modern-day Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Such an expansion would only further broaden the conflict, creating endless deaths and destruction

It’s long past time for this cycle of violence to stop! A good place to start would be ending all arms shipments to the bullies at the center of it.

Paying For An Ill-Conceived War.

Posted on by

After starting an unnecessary and likely unwinnable war costing more than a billion dollars a day, the Trump regime is planning to increase the already bloated military budget by half a trillion dollars – raising it to an astonishing $1.5 trillion, which would make it approximately $350 billion more than the military budgets of the next 14 nations combined!

To pay for it, the regime plans to cut programs that impact the environment, education, healthcare, small business, infrastructure, and much more. Things that impact the lives of most Americans – except, of course, Trump’s family and the host of oligarchs who helped finance his election campaign, his inauguration, his corruption, his grotesque ballroom, and his planned Arch de Trump.

Following is the full list of the proposed cuts*:

$510 million – Grants for farmers and agricultural research
$82 million – Loans for rural small businesses (Fully eliminated)
$61 million – Support for farmers and food markets (Fully eliminated)
$240 million – School meals and food education for children abroad (Fully eliminated)
$659 million – Community building grants
$47 million – Support for minority-owned businesses (Fully eliminated)
$449 million – Economic development grants for communities
$1.6 billion – Weather forecasting, fisheries, and coastal protection (NOAA)
$993 million – Scientific research and technology standards
$150 million – Support for American exports and trade
$2.2 billion – Broadband and internet access programs
$8.5 billion – Funding for public schools
$1.5 billion – Vocational training and adult education (Fully eliminated)
$2.7 billion – College access and higher education support
$15.2 billion – Roads, bridges, and infrastructure projects
$1.1 billion – Home energy efficiency and clean energy programs (Fully eliminated)
$1.1 billion – Scientific research funding
$386 million – Environmental cleanup programs
$150 million – Cutting-edge clean energy research
$4 billion – Help paying home heating and cooling bills for low-income families (Fully eliminated)
$768 million – Refugee resettlement assistance
$819 million – Care and shelter for migrant children
$775 million – Local anti-poverty programs (Fully eliminated)
$5 billion – Public health programs, mental health services, and disease prevention
$5 billion – Medical research (NIH)
$129 million – Healthcare quality and safety research
$356 million – Emergency preparedness and disaster response
$1.3 billion – FEMA community disaster preparedness grants
$707 million – Cybersecurity protection for critical infrastructure
$52 million – Airport and transportation security
$40 million – Protection against chemical and biological weapons threats
$53 million – Funding for homeland security operations
$3.3 billion – Community development block grants (Fully eliminated)
$1.3 billion – Affordable housing construction grants (Fully eliminated)
$393 million – Programs to reduce homelessness
$529 million – Housing assistance for people living with HIV/AIDS (Fully eliminated)
$489 million – Housing and services for Native American communities
$50 million – Grants to help communities build more housing (Fully eliminated)
$60 million – Enforcement of fair housing laws
$58 million – Homebuyer and renter counseling (Fully eliminated)
$45 million – Renewable energy development (Fully eliminated)
$1.7 billion – Local law enforcement and public safety grants
$20 million – Civil rights mediation and legal access (Fully eliminated)
$1.6 billion – Job training for at-risk youth (Fully eliminated)
$395 million – Jobs for low-income seniors (Fully eliminated)
$234 million – Worker safety programs
$101 million – Equal pay and workplace protections
$46 million – Anti-child labor programs abroad
$2 billion – International humanitarian aid
$1.2 billion – Food aid abroad (Fully eliminated)
$4.3 billion – Global health programs
$2.7 billion – United Nations and international partnerships
$642 million – International economic programs
$315 million – Democracy and anti-corruption programs
$486 million – Public transit grants
$4.2 billion – EV charging infrastructure
$372 million – Rural airline service
$145 million – Sustainable infrastructure grants
$204 million – Investment for underserved communities
$1.4 billion – IRS taxpayer services
$100 million – Air pollution programs (Fully eliminated)
$1 billion – EPA environmental grants
$2.5 billion – Clean water infrastructure
$90 million – Diesel pollution reduction (Fully eliminated)
$3.4 billion – NASA science programs
$297 million – NASA innovation
$1.1 billion – International Space Station
$143 million – STEM education
$309 million – Small business development
$170 million – SBA operations
$158 million – Small business loans

This isn’t making America great. It’s not improving American lives. It’s not making America safer. It’s making America unrecognizable.

(*Source: MeidasTouch)

Measuring The Trump Regime 2.0.

Posted on by

When Trump campaigned for a second term, he promised to cut costs, lower inflation, reduce taxes, close the borders, and deport “the worst of the worst”. He also promised to bring peace to Ukraine and the Middle East, and to avoid any more “forever” wars.

So, what has his regime actually done?

  • Dismantled, or attempted to dismantle, much of the federal government.
  • Fired thousands of government employees replacing expertise and experience with loyalty.
  • Pardoned 1,600 criminals, including seditionists and drug traffickers.
  • Shuttered USAID leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in abject poverty.
  • Proclaimed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
  • Threatened to make Canada the 51st state.
  • Threatened to invade Greenland.
  • Threatened to invade Cuba.
  • Threatened to invade Mexico.
  • Violated the Constitution by accepting a $400 million aircraft from Qatar.
  • Forced the Smithsonian and National Parks to remove references to slavery and our genocide of Native Americans.
  • Removed high-ranking black and female officers from the military.
  • Cut ACA subsidies making healthcare unaffordable for millions of Americans.
  • Illegally withheld funds from Planned Parenthood clinics.
  • Forced law firms and universities to kowtow by withholding federal funds.
  • Attacked freedom of the press by filing frivolous lawsuits against media for publishing unflattering stories, helping engineer the takeover of CBS and CNN by a MAGA friendly billionaire, and threatening to revoke media broadcast licenses unless they behave as more regime friendly.
  • Attacked freedom of speech by pressuring networks to remove Colbert and Kimmel, deporting international students for standing up for Palestine, and arresting peaceful demonstrators.
  • Increased inflation through illegal tariffs and his war on Iran.
  • Paved over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden.
  • Uglified the Oval Office with hundreds of golden trinkets and doodads.
  • Destroyed the East Wing of America’s House (the White House) without permission or prior notice.
  • Placed Trump’s name on the JFK Center for the Arts before closing it for 2 years.
  • Released the Epstein files after redacting the names of predators while revealing the names of victims.
  • Removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords and set about further destroying the environment by returning to coal-fired power plants and permitting oil drilling on environmentally sensitive lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  • Illegally executed small boat operators in international waters claiming they were carrying drugs.
  • Weaponized the DOJ to falsely charge Trump’s political enemies with crimes.
  • Expanded ICE and CBP into a large, heavily armed police force answering only to Trump with the intent of arresting and deporting 1 million residents per year.
  • Sent masked, armed thugs into Democratic-led cities where they arrested and terrorized lawful residents and ignored the constitutional right to due process. Operation Metro Surge resulted in $200 million in economic damages to the City of Minneapolis and the murders of 2 U.S. citizens.
  • Weakened alliances with longtime allies and threatened to leave NATO.
  • Against international law, illegally sent troops into Venezuela to capture its president and his wife.
  • Along with Israel, began an illegal, and likely unwinnable, war against Iran committing numerous war crimes, including the bombing of an elementary school, universities and civilian residences.
  • Violated at least 19 provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
  • Spent $100 million of taxpayer money on golf outings with the expectation it will exceed $300 million by the end of Trump’s term.
  • Used the presidency to unconstitutionally enrich the Trump family by at least $4 billion.
  • Increased the national debt by $2.7 trillion thus far by cutting taxes on billionaires and multinational corporations.

When you elect a criminal convicted of 34 felonies you shouldn’t be surprised when he does criminal things. It’s not America first. It’s Trump first.

The Political Division That’s Most Concerning.

Posted on by

It’s not left versus right. It’s left versus left. Those who believe in democracy, human rights and a safe environment versus those who believe in democracy, human rights and a safe environment.

What do I mean by that?

By now it should be abundantly clear that the Felon-in-Chief and his MAGA followers are leading our nation down a path toward oligarchy and dictatorship. They’re succeeding in great part because the resistance has been fragmented and largely rudderless.

For many years, involved and caring voters have been split amongst a wide variety of single-issue organizations focused on guns, homelessness, hunger, wildlife, animal rights, air and water quality, climate change, sustainable energy, racial and gender equity, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, indigenous rights, immigrant rights, organized labor, religious freedom, Palestinian rights, Ukraine, healthcare, public education, reining in military spending, tax fairness, voting rights, breaking up corporate monopolies, etc., etc.

All of these issues are important, and I have personally supported most of them. But we are now facing an ideological movement that vehemently opposes progress toward each of these goals. Indeed, those in control of MAGA have pushed policies that are directly counter to them. And they now control all three branches of government, as well as much of the media.

If patriotic and caring people are to interrupt our nation’s slide into tyranny, we must set aside any inclination to base our votes on single or self-serving issues. We must come together and focus on what really matters. That doesn’t mean we have to abandon the goals we care about most. It means we have to ensure that we have a government that will allow us to pursue those goals.

There is only one issue that is important now: Saving our democracy. Period.

Constitution? What Constitution?

Posted on by

In little more than one year, the Trump regime and the MAGA party have violated or proposed violations of an astounding number of the provisions of the United States Constitution – to the point that one wonders if it any longer has any meaning.

Article 1, Section 4 gives states control of elections, including the times, places and manner of holding elections. Yet Trump and the regime have ordered red states to redistrict in order to gain more congressional seats. The regime intends to limit early voting and mail-in ballots. Trump has also announced his intentions to nationalize elections. And others in the regime propose declaring a national emergency to suspend mid-term elections permitting MAGA to continue its control of Congress.

Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress the exclusive power to raise taxes, control spending, impose tariffs, control commerce with other nations, and to declare war. Yet Trump and his regime have usurped and violated every single provision of this section.

Article 1, Section 9 directs that the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus protecting individuals from unlawful detention shall not be suspended. Yet the regime’s private army consisting of ICE and CBP have routinely arrested citizens and noncitizens alike often moving them to out-of-state detention centers without the opportunity to call their families or lawyers.

Further, Trump and the regime have completely ignored the provision that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” Ignoring this clause, Trump and his family have accepted a $400 million Qatari jet, a $500 million UAE investment in Trump’s crypto venture, and at least $50 million of Saudi investments in the Trump organization!

Numerous news sources have calculated that Trump and his family have raked in at least $4 billion during the first year of his second term.

Article 2, Section 1 details compensation for the President and clearly states that he shall not receive any other emolument from the United States. Nevertheless, Trump continues weekend trips to his own golf resorts where he charges his security detail top dollar for their accommodations resulting in millions in profits for his family organization.

Article 2, Section 3 clearly states that the President shall see that all laws are faithfully executed. Instead, he and his regime routinely break laws, even ignoring the courts that have ruled against them.

1st Amendment states “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” Yet the regime has punished many of those who have spoken out against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, even deporting students and noncitizens who were here legally.

1st Amendment also provides for freedom of the press. However, Trump and the regime have ordered the cancellation of Late Night with Stephen Colbert and the temporary removal of Jimmy Kimmel. The regime has also threatened media for truthful reporting that is unflattering to the Felon-in-Chief and used the FCC to directly influence the sale of Warner Brothers to a Trump supporter.

1st Amendment provides for the right of the people to peaceably assemble. But, in his first term, Trump ordered the military and police to violently attack peaceful protestors to clear the way for a photo op with a Bible in front of a church. Likewise, in his second term, the regime has encouraged ICE and CBP to attack legal observers overseeing immigrant detentions fatally shooting at least two of them.

4th Amendment states “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effect against unreasonable searches and seizures.” However, the regime has encouraged ICE and CBP to break down doors and remove residents without judicial warrants.

5th Amendment states “no person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” (Renee Nicolle Good, Alex Pretti and thousands of legal immigrants anyone?)

8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. But from videos and reports, nearly every ICE agent and detention center is in violation.

14th Amendment, Section 1 states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.” Despite the obvious clarity of the wording, Trump is seeking to end birthright citizenship by Executive Order.

14th Amendment, Section 3 states that no person shall hold any office, civil or military, who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion. Yet the leader of the January 6 insurrection now sits in the overly gilded Oval Office.

14th Amendment, Section 4 states that “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Yet Trump is demanding $230M from the DOJ for its investigations into his participation in the January 6 insurrection. He is also seeking $6M in legal fees from the State of Georgia for its investigation into Trump’s election interference. And Ashli Babbit’s family is being paid nearly $5M for her death while attempting to violently enter the House chamber during the insurrection.

15th Amendment ensures the right of black people to vote. But, for more than 40 years, the GOP (aka MAGA) has worked to make it increasingly more difficult for blacks in heavily Democratic areas to vote. And the Trump regime has demanded that MAGA-controlled states gerrymander districts in order to deny blacks equal representation.

19th Amendment gives women the right to vote. Yet the regime’s SAVE Act, if passed, would make it difficult for millions of women to vote.

22nd Amendment limits the President to two four-year terms. But Trump has often spoken about being President for life, and he and his supporters continue to suggest that there are ways around this amendment.

24th Amendment states that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged for failure to pay a poll tax or other tax. But, in effect, MAGA has created a version of the poll tax by requiring voter IDs in some states and making them increasingly difficult for working people to obtain by limiting the number of locations and closing them on weekends.

26th Amendment gives 18-year-olds the right to vote. But, again, MAGA has made it difficult for many to vote by refusing to accept college-issued IDs and requiring college students to vote in their parents’ home district.

And the Trump regime’s disdain for the law is not limited to violating the Constitution.

The regime has violated numerous laws, including the Hatch Act which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities while on duty. The regime violated the Impoundment Control Act, which requires the president to obtain congressional approval to withhold appropriated funds, when it blocked funds for governmental agencies, universities, research facilities and more. And it illegally dismantled independent agencies, such as USAID and the U.S. Institute of Peace without congressional approval.

In addition, Trump and the regime have committed a multitude of federal ethics violations, including misuse of federal resources for personal gain. (I’m thinking of you, Kash Patel, Kristi Noem, and Pete Hegseth.) Moreover, Trump and the regime continue to defy multiple court orders.

And unwilling to stop at breaking U.S. laws, Trump and his regime have broken international laws by kidnapping the president of Venezuela and pursuing an ill-conceived war against Iran led by the war criminal Netanyahu.

Tell me again: Which is the “Law and Order Party?”

A Democratic Project 2029.

Posted on by

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 embraced by the Trump regime has made the US virtually unrecognizable by creating an autocratic oligarchy that panders to the wealthy and the powerful and erodes the individual rights guaranteed by our Constitution. And it’s likely to get much worse as Project 2025 is only roughly 50 percent implemented!

When a Democratic president and congressional majority is elected to supplant the MAGA miscreants (assuming we have free and fair elections), we need to be prepared to not only restore our democracy but to improve it with a Project 2029. MAGA has shown us the way to quickly reshape the US according to its ideology. Democrats must not shy away from doing the same. Following are my suggestions:

1 – Immediately nullify all of Trump’s Executive Orders.

2 – Pass legislation to restore all powers to the legislative branch as enumerated in the Constitution.

3 – Order the Attorney General (AG) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to begin prosecutions of those who participated in the Trump regime’s many violations of the Constitution.

4 – Pass legislation to eliminate immunity for all federal employees past, present and future.

5 – Order the AG and DOJ to begin prosecutions of all international war crimes, including those committed by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes.

6 – Reduce, restructure or eliminate DHS, ICE and CBP.

7 – Break up corporate monopolies. No company should ever control more than 10% of any industry.

8 – Impeach Justices Thomas and Alito for their inexcusable grift and unethical behavior and replace them with liberal justices. If necessary, increase the size of SCOTUS to 12 with nonpartisan appointments.

9 – Eliminate financial and weapons support for Israel’s Zionist government until such time it demonstrates respect for the human rights of all people under its control.

10 – To prevent corporations and billionaires from further corrupting our elections, pass legislation to repeal the decisions of Citizens United v FEC and Buckley v Valeo. Ban private campaign donations beyond $500 and provide government funding for all legitimate federal candidates so members of Congress can work instead of spending 40 percent of their time fundraising.

11 – Pass legislation to require every high school graduate to pass a thorough civics test.

12 – Pass legislation to eliminate the electoral college and make election day a national holiday. Automatically register all high school graduates and naturalized citizens to vote.

13 – Pass legislation reinstating the Fairness Doctrine to clearly label and separate opinion from news. Revoke the licenses of any media outlet that fails to do so.

14 – Pass legislation to fully restore all civil liberties, including a woman’s right to choose.

15 – Pass legislation to ban any convicted felon from holding public office.

16 – Pass legislation to place strict controls on government surveillance and invasions of privacy.

17 – Expand IRS, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security regulators to catch fraudsters.

18 – Make the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes by eliminating tax loopholes.

19 – Eliminate all tax shelters, both on and offshore.

20 – Restore funding for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health.

21 – Restore funding for public education and research grants for universities. Pass legislation to ban government funding of private religious schools.

22 – Enforce rules for churches and 501c3s that ban direct political engagement at risk of losing tax-free status.

23 – Pass legislation instituting term limits on Congress – 4 terms for the House, 3 terms for the Senate.

24 – Restore funding for USAID and other international aid groups, including the UN.

25 – Hold the Department of Defense accountable for failing audits and its inability or refusal to account for more than $21 trillion in spending.

26 – Create a humane and practical immigration policy that accepts refugees and asylum-seekers, that provides renewable work permits for necessary workers, and that provides a path to citizenship.

27 – Address homelessness and food insecurity by recognizing that no one who works or has a disability should be unhoused or hungry.

28 – Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords and aggressively address climate change.

29 – Move quickly to eliminate reliance on fossil fuels.

30 – Ban drilling and oil exploration on federal lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

31 – Claw back all emoluments gained by the Trump family and members of the regime. Pass legislation requiring that anyone who uses a public office for financial gain be fired and prosecuted.

32 – Pass legislation to reinforce separation of church and state.

33 – Restore an accurate account of US history, including the genocide of indigenous people, slavery and Jim Crow.

34 – Pass legislation restoring the Voting Rights Act.

35 – Pass legislation creating Medicare for all.

36 – Notify all federal employees that anyone who makes decisions based on politics and religion will be fired.

37 – Rebuild the East Wing of the White House and restore the Kennedy Rose Garden.

38 – Pass legislation reaffirming our commitment to NATO and all long-standing treaties.

39 – Remove the Trump name from every federal building and edifice and make it illegal to display the name on any structure other than portable toilets.

40 – Instead of an eternal flame, equip Trump’s eventual grave with modesty panels and a catchment basin for the legions of people who will want to piss on it.

1984 In 2026.

Posted on by

Published in 1949, George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 warned of a future in which a totalitarian government, aided by technology, controlled nearly every aspect of its citizens’ lives through a combination of mass surveillance, propaganda, and lies.

It turns out that his prediction arrived 42 Years late.

Think that’s hyperbole? Consider this: In his first term, media documented that the Felon-in-Chief told more than 35,000 lies. And he has only accelerated his assault on the truth in the years since.

The propaganda began (ironically) in 1984 when Rush Limbaugh began spewing rightwing lies and half-truths on his syndicated radio show followed by imitators such as Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Dennis Prager and Bill O’Reilly. Their success led to the founding of TV propaganda outlets such as Fox News Channel, NewsMax, OAN, and now CBS News. In addition, we have Breitbart, Meta and X to spread the lies.

As for mass surveillance, it has increased over the past several decades to help law enforcement track criminals and terrorists. But, under the Trump regime, it has grown to track the entire population with more than 70,000 Automatic License Plate Reader cameras that can map the movements of vehicles. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used to track cellphones using Stingray/IMSI simulated cell towers. AI is being used to sweep social media using RAVEn. Drones and helicopters are used to track immigrants and who knows who else.

Facial recognition using the technology of Mobile Fortify and Clearview AI is being used by ICE to identify immigrants and to intimidate citizens. As I’ve written before, Elon Musk’s DOGE has compromised your personal data at the regime’s request. And Peter Thiel’s Palantir is in the process of consolidating all federal databases making it easy for anyone in the regime to invade your privacy as never before. The regime is even in the process of collecting voter data which can be used to compromise free and fair elections.

After the megalomaniac in the Oval Office has deported millions of people of color and permanently rigged elections so only his allies can win, what comes next? He has already compromised the courts, subjugated Congress, and willfully violated the Constitution. Will he be satisfied with total power and complete control? Will he continue to rebuild Washington, DC and splash his name on every building and entity of note? Will his desire to corruptly use his office to add billions more to his personal fortune ever be satiated? Will he be content to exact legal and monetary retribution against his perceived enemies?

Or will he need to see his political enemies punished in some sort of twisted version of the Hunger Games?