@brianklaas I think it's equally a financial decision. The NRA clique gives them a lot of bribes, er..... campaign contributions. #gopinbedwithrich

Anyone paying attention knows the GOP doesn't care about the national debt. It balloons under virtually every GOP administration, and they only care when Democrats are in office trying to enact policies that benefit working Americans. The GOP only wants policies that benefit the obscenely wealthy and despises any policies that help average Americans.

"The administration says the GOP doesn’t actually care about the national debt, but rather wants to slash welfare."

White House: The GOP’s Current Agenda Would Add $3 Trillion to National Debt - Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/white-house-the-gops-current-agenda-would-add-3-trillion-to-national-debt/

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheToolOfTheRich
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"The administration says the GOP doesn’t actually care about the national debt, but rather wants to slash welfare.

The White House is going after congressional Republicans for their current agenda, which the Biden administration says would add trillions of dollars to the national debt while making life materially worse for the American public.

In a fact sheet released on Wednesday, the White House highlighted four different recently proposed Republican policies that, if passed, would collectively add over $3 trillion to the national debt.

“Congressional Republican leaders insist that the national debt is among our nation’s greatest challenges, and reducing it is among their highest priorities. In fact, they claim that reducing the debt is so urgent it warrants endangering the entire U.S. economy through debt limit brinksmanship,” White House officials wrote. “But their legislative agenda to date points in a very different direction — with proposals that would increase the debt by over $3 trillion.”

President Joe Biden is expected to highlight the GOP proposals in a speech on the economy to Maryland union workers on Wednesday.

“If you add up all the proposals that my Republican friends in Congress have offered so far, they would add another $3 trillion to the debt over 10 years,” he is expected to say, per the Associated Press.

The messaging calls into question the sincerity of Republicans who often become deficit hawks under Democratic presidents, while completely disregarding the national debt under Republican leadership. In reality, as the White House points out, Republicans don’t care about the deficit — they care about slashing anti-poverty welfare programs and preventing the government from making the lives of working-class Americans materially easier.

Officials highlighted conservative advocates’ own words in making this argument.

“Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, exposed the political logic of Congressional Republicans’ fiscal hypocrisy. He told Republicans their focus should be ‘not the deficit’ after all: it’s to shift public discussion to cutting spending, paving the way for more tax cuts for the wealthy,” the White House wrote.

“That trickle-down economic theory has never worked. President Trump and President [George W.] Bush’s tax cuts added trillions to the debt and failed to deliver their promised benefits for the economy or American workers,” the fact sheet goes on to say. “And taking revenues — and even savings from cutting corporate subsidies — off the table means Congressional Republicans consistently propose deep cuts to programs seniors and middle-class and working families count on...”

"House Republicans are trying to slash lifelines for middle-class families on behalf of rich special interests," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. "Who on earth thinks that welfare for Big Pharma is worth selling out over a million seniors in their home state?"

"It is vital that all Americans understand what is at risk if MAGA extremists succeed in passing their latest dangerous idea: millions of lost jobs, millions more without health insurance, and higher costs for lifesaving insulin, utilities, and more," Gaspard added."

White House says GOP bill would force "one of the biggest Medicare benefit cuts" in US history | Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2023/02/05/says-bill-would-force-one-of-the-biggest-medicare-benefit-cuts-in-us-history_partner/

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"The White House on Saturday condemned a newly introduced Republican bill that would repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that includes a number of changes aimed at lowering costs for Medicare recipients.

Unveiled Thursday by freshman Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), the bill has 20 original co-sponsors and is endorsed by several right-wing groups, including the Koch-funded organization Americans for Prosperity.

The Biden White House argued that rolling back the Inflation Reduction Act, which also contains major climate investments, would represent "one of the biggest Medicare benefit cuts in American history" as well as a "handout to Big Pharma." According to Politico, which first reported the White House's response to the GOP bill, the administration is planning to release "state-by-state data indicating how this would affect constituents in different areas."

"House Republicans are trying to slash lifelines for middle-class families on behalf of rich special interests," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. "Who on earth thinks that welfare for Big Pharma is worth selling out over a million seniors in their home state?"

The Inflation Reduction Act authorized a $35-per-month cap on insulin copayments for Medicare recipients, as well as an annual $2,000 total limit on out-of-pocket drug costs.

The bill will also, among other long-overdue changes, allow Medicare to begin negotiating the prices of a subset of the most expensive prescription drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies, which fiercely opposed the law and are working with Republicans to sabotage it. The newly negotiated prices are set to take effect in 2026.

Ogles, whose two-page bill would eliminate the above reforms, repeatedly attacked Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs and protections during his 2022 campaign for the U.S. House.

The White House's critique of Ogles' bill comes as Biden is facing pressure from advocates and physicians to cancel a Medicare privatization scheme that his administration inherited from its right-wing predecessor and rebranded.

It also comes as the White House is locked in a standoff with House Republicans over the debt ceiling. Republican lawmakers have pushed for deeply unpopular cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and other critical federal programs as a necessary condition for any deal to raise the country's borrowing limit and avert a catastrophic default.

"In less than a month, MAGA extremists have threatened to drive the economy into a recession by defaulting on our debt, promised to bring up a bill to impose a 30% national sales tax, and now have introduced legislation to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act," Patrick Gaspard, president and CEO of the Democratic Party-aligned Center for American Progress said in a statement. "This will cut taxes for corporations who earn billions in profit while empowering Big Pharma and Big Oil to continue ripping off the American people."

"It is vital that all Americans understand what is at risk if MAGA extremists succeed in passing their latest dangerous idea: millions of lost jobs, millions more without health insurance, and higher costs for lifesaving insulin, utilities, and more," Gaspard added."

The GOP, the Rich and corporations want power. They couldn't care less about democracy or American sovereignty. An oligarchy looks just fine to them. Putin would love to have them working

Russiagate: The Opposite of a Hoax
https://politicususa.substack.com/p/russiagate-the-opposite-of-a-hoax#details

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#IlliberalDemocracy
#TheRichRWannabeOligarchs
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"Now Timothy Snyder*, a Yale professor...put the Russia story in badly needed context

*Full thread by Snyder:

In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why.

The person who led the relevant section, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged with taking money from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Follow this thread to see just how this connects to the victory of Trump, the Russian war in Ukraine, and U.S. national security.

The reason I was thinking about Trump & Putin in 2016 was a pattern. Russia had sought to control Ukraine, using social media, money, & a pliable head of state. Russia backed Trump the way that it had backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control 2/20

Trump & Yanukovych were similar figures: interested in money, & in power to make or shield money. And therefore vulnerable partners for Putin. They also shared a political advisor: Paul Manafort. He worked for Yanukovych from 2005-2015, taking over Trump's campaign in 2016.

You might remember Manafort's ties to Russia from 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the meeting called it, "the Russian government's support for Trump"

Manafort had to resign as Trump's campaign manager in August 2016 when news broke that he had received $12.7 million in cash from Yanukovych. But these details are just minor elements of Manafort's dependence on Russia.

Manafort worked for Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch to whom McGonigal is linked, between 2006 and 2009. Manafort's assignment was to soften up the U.S for Russian influence. He promised "a model that can greatly benefit the Putin government."

While Manafort worked for Trump in 2016, though, Manafort's dependence on Russia was deeper. He owed Deripaska money, not a position one would want to be in. Manafort offered Deripaska "private briefings" on the campaign. He was hoping "to get whole."

Reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection in 2016. Trump and other Republicans screamed that the FBI had overreached. In retrospect, it seems the exact opposite took place. The issue of Russian influence was framed in a way convenient for Russia and Trump.
...
It is entirely inconceivable that McGonigal was unaware of Russia's 2016 cyber influence campaign on behalf of Trump. Even I was aware of it, and I had no expertise. It became one of the subjects of my book
...
I had no personal connection to this, but will just repeat what informed people said at the time: this sort of thing was supposed to go through the FBI counter-intelligence section in New York, where tips went to die. That is where McGonigal was in charge.

The cyber element is what McGonigal should have been making everyone aware of in 2016. In 2016, McGonigal was chief of the FBI's Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section. That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI's NY office.

We need to understand why the FBI failed in 2016 to address the essence of an ongoing Russian influence operation. The character of that operation suggests that it would have been the responsibility of an FBI section whose head is now accused of taking Russian money.

Right after the McGonigal story broke, Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee. Schiff is expert on Russian influence operations. It exhibits carelessness about national security to exclude him. It is downright suspicious to exclude him now. 16/20

Back in June 2016, Kevin McCarthy expressed his suspicion that Donald Trump was under Putin's influence. He and other Republican members concluded that the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American security.

The Russian influence operation to get Trump elected was real. It serves no one to pretend otherwise. We are still learning about it. Denying that it happened makes the United States vulnerable to ongoing Russian operations.
...
The McGonigal question goes even beyond these issues. He had authority in the most sensitive possible investigations within U.S. intelligence. Sorting this out will require a concern for the United States that goes beyond party loyalty."

The GOP, the obscenely wealthy and large corporations want power. They couldn't care less about democracy or American sovereignty. An oligarchy looks just fine to them. Putin would love to have them working with him to erode liberal democracies in the world so there is no one to stand up to his corruption and tyranny. They see what Putin has and they start drooling.

Russiagate: The Opposite of a Hoax
Don’t be gaslit anymore. Russia is a danger to western democracy. They’ve been working hard to undermine the U.S..
https://politicususa.substack.com/p/russiagate-the-opposite-of-a-hoax#details

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#IlliberalDemocracy
#TheRichRWannabeOligarchs
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPInBedWithRich

“That rather astonishing discovery of the former FBI chief who seemingly betrayed his country to Russia didn’t happen in a vacuum, though. Globally, this story is quite frankly disconcerting. In the past week, there was a shocking accusation by a whistleblower that MI5 refused to investigate a Russian spy's “infiltration” of the conservative Tory party in Britain, news that "a vast cache of hacked emails shows that, under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, the UK Treasury issued special licenses in 2021 to let the oligarch override sanctions and launch an aggressive legal campaign against a journalist in the London courts." “The UK government helped the boss of Russia’s murderous mercenary army to circumvent its own sanctions and launch a targeted legal attack on a British journalist, openDemocracy can reveal.” Rishi Sunak has been the conservative Prime Minister since October, 2022 when the head of lettuce lasted longer than Liz Truss. He previously held two cabinet positions under conservative Boris Johnson.  Also, the European Court of Human Rights is demanding a response from the British government over a legal claim by opponents accusing it of failing to investigate alleged Russian interference in elections and referendums like Brexit. The thread between all of these stories is Russians-to-conservatives. Now Timothy Snyder*, a Yale professor whose course on Ukraine I am watching on YouTube and highly recommend, put the Russia story in badly needed context (full thread in next toot).

...Don’t be gaslit anymore.

Russia is a danger to western democracy. They’ve been working hard to undermine the United States of America, and Republicans, from leadership on down, have been willing to help them. Those who might be doing so unwittingly certainly have had every opportunity to know better. Those who have simply remained silent are also now complicit.

In 2019, a Senate investigation determined: “The congressional probe into the National Rifle Association’s relationship with Russia shows a U.S. tax-exempt organization working as a conduit to provide Russian officials access to Republicans with the quid pro quo of ‘lucrative personal business opportunities.’”

I pointed out then, “Looking for that quid pro quo Republicans claim doesn’t exist? Here it is, but with the Russians and elected officials of the NRA variety.”

Since then, Russia has spent millions spreading anti-vax conspiracies just to harm small d democracy, including paying influencers to lie and fear-monger about the vaccines.

Republicans and conservative activists mock journalists who bring up Russia because they want to shut down the discussion. But this discussion needs to be had. We all need a government that actually puts “America first” –- but the Republican Party is not currently on board with that most basic and primitive premise of patriotism."

More excellent info from EPI Study

Abortion is just one more way these red states seek to control and impoverish their working class citizens to make them easier to manipulate and control by corporate and wealthy interests. Talk about working hard to get their serfs back!! They don't want fellow citizens, they want assets they can control, profit off of and manipulate. Not people, just cogs!

"Abortion bans, low wages, and public underinvestment are interconnected economic policy tools to disempower and control workers"

EPI

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GreedKills
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy

“Introduction Abortion has long been framed as a cultural, religious, or personal issue rather than a material “bread and butter” economic concern. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, more economic policymakers have been emphasizing the issue as a pressing economic concern. In perhaps the first public comment on the issue by a major political figure, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen noted: “eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades” (Guida 2022). This direct connection between abortion and reproductive access and economic rights is critical (Banerjee 2022). This report argues that abortion access is fundamentally intertwined with economic progress and mobility. Specifically, in states where abortion has been banned or restricted, abortion restrictions constitute an additional piece in a sustained project of economic subjugation and disempowerment.1 The states banning abortion rights have, over decades, intentionally constructed an economic policy architecture defined by weak labor standards, underfunded and purposefully dysfunctional public services, and high levels of incarceration. Through a cross-sectional quantitative analysis of state level abortion access status and five indicators of economic security—the minimum wage, unionization, unemployment insurance, Medicaid expansion, and incarceration—we find that, generally, the states enacting abortion bans are the same ones that are economically disempowering workers through other channels. The results of the analysis underscore that abortion restrictions and bans do have economic effects, given the strong correlation between abortion status and various economic wellbeing metrics. Further, the consistent pattern of state abortion bans and negative economic outcomes shows how abortion fits into an economics and politics of control. Abortion restrictions are planks in a policy regime of disempowerment and control over workers’ autonomy and livelihoods, just like deliberately low wage standards, underfunded social services, or restricted collective bargaining power. Economic policymakers must prioritize this issue as widespread abortion bans will contribute to a loss in economic security and independence for millions in the current and future generations.”

Via https://www.epi.org/publication/economics-of-abortion-bans/

Conclusions of this EPI Study:

Abortion is just one more way these red states seek to control and impoverish their working class citizens to make them easier to manipulate and control by corporate and wealthy interests. Talk about working hard to get their serfs back!! They don't want fellow citizens, they want assets they can control, profit off of and manipulate. Not people, just cogs!

"Abortion bans, low wages, and public underinvestment are interconnected economic policy tools to disempower and control workers"

EPI

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GreedKills
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy

“Across the five measures of economic security, states with abortion bans of varying degrees generally follow similar association patterns. That is, states with abortion bans largely had lower minimum wages, unionization, and access to unemployment insurance and Medicaid expansion, and higher incarceration rates. Abortion bans as an economic policy have not appeared in a vacuum, or even as a narrowly tailored religious concern, since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1972. Rather, denial of abortion access is one additional policy that states have engineered over decades in a sustained project of economic subjugation, control, and worker disempowerment. States that have banned and restricted abortion have largely also kept minimum wages low, underfunded and complicated their unemployment insurance systems, declined to expand Medicaid, suppressed unionization, and preferred to over-incarcerate. These policies, in conjunction, keep working people economically disempowered.”

Via https://www.epi.org/publication/economics-of-abortion-bans/

Abortion is just one more way these red states seek to control and impoverish their working class citizens to make them easier to manipulate and control by corporate and wealthy interests. Talk about working hard to get their serfs back!! They don't want fellow citizens, they want assets they can control, profit off of and manipulate. Not people, just cogs!

Abortion bans, low wages, and public underinvestment are interconnected economic policy tools to disempower and control workers

EPI

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GreedKills
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy

"...the consistent pattern of state abortion bans and negative economic outcomes shows how abortion fits into an economics and politics of control. Abortion restrictions are planks in a policy regime of disempowerment and control over workers’ autonomy and livelihoods, just like deliberately low wage standards, underfunded social services, or restricted collective bargaining power. Economic policymakers must prioritize this issue as widespread abortion bans will contribute to a loss in economic security and independence for millions in the current and future generations.

“Key findings from the analysis
States with abortion restrictions or total bans have on average:

lower minimum wages ($8.17 compared with $11.92 in the abortion-protected states)

unionization levels half as high as those in the abortion-protected states

only three in 10 unemployed people receiving unemployment insurance (compared with 42% in other states)

lower rates of Medicaid expansion

an incarceration rate 1.5 times that of the abortion-protected states”

Via https://www.epi.org/publication/economics-of-abortion-bans/

The GOP only cares about the deficit when democrats are in charge. They are more than happy to run it up using tax breaks for the wealthy, as they have done numerous times. They don't have real policy ideas to help Americans, they just want to benefit the wealthy. They are more than happy to blow up the economy and destroy social security and medicare as they think creating chaos will help them take control of the senate and white house. They don't care about Americans, they are only interested in power and pandering to the wealthy.

“Who’s going to pay to run this government? The Republicans are real clear on that: not the rich folks,” she said."

Warren: Debt Ceiling Crisis Wouldn’t Even Exist Without Trump Tax Overhaul - Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/warren-debt-ceiling-crisis-wouldnt-even-exist-without-trump-tax-overhaul/

#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) dug into Republicans for their willingness to “wreck the economy” over the debt ceiling, pointing out that the GOP is only interested in protecting their rich allies and creating an economic crisis that would reflect poorly on President Joe Biden.

In an appearance on MSNBC, Warren said that the conservative regressive tax policies that the GOP has pushed for decades has led to the current crisis with the debt ceiling.

“If the Republicans had not pushed just two things, the Republican tax cuts that went mostly to those at the very top and the biggest corporations and hollowing out the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] specifically so they could not hold wealthy tax cheats accountable, wouldn’t be able to audit them,” she said. “If those two things had not happened, then we wouldn’t even hit the debt ceiling at any time during the first Biden administration.”

“This is a manufactured crisis. The real issue at stake here is, who’s going to pay to run this government?” the Massachusetts senator said. “The Republicans are real clear on that: not the rich folks.”

Indeed, as Warren pointed out in her op-ed published in the Boston Globe this week, the 2017 tax cuts have cost the government nearly $2 trillion, while Republicans have steadily eroded the IRS’s funding for decades, costing the government potentially trillions owed from wealthy tax cheats.

Congress has raised the debt ceiling twice under Biden, by about $3 trillion. Republicans voted three times to raise the debt ceiling under President Donald Trump, who added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt.
...
“If this were really about the national debt, then there are plenty of places we could go to stitch up loopholes — like no more of these tax havens abroad — that we could get that under control. But that is not where the Republicans want to go,” Warren said.

Even though the huge deficits in government funding have been caused in large part by Republican policies, the party is using its control of the House to threaten a debt default, which would spell disaster for the economy, unless their demands are met; some Republicans are planning to use the debt ceiling to force through cuts to crucial programs like Social Security, for instance.

Meanwhile, Republicans made it clear in their first few weeks with House control that their top priority is to protect corporations and the wealthy. The first bill they passed was to revoke billions of dollars pegged for the IRS to go after wealthy tax cheats, which analyses say would more than pay for itself.
...
Warren said that Republicans don’t care about the ramifications of their political gamesmanship. Rather, they want to cause chaos and destruction in order to win political points, she said.

“If there are cuts to Social Security that they can turn around then and blame on the Democrats, if the economy goes over a cliff, if the worldwide economy blows up,” said Warren. “There are Republicans, particularly in the House, who think, ‘Hey, that’s going to make it easier to get our guy back in the White House.’”

“And so long as that’s their mindset, that’s not a position of negotiating to try to make things better, safer in this country, to make this country work better for hardworking families,” she continued."

The GOP uses their "base" to get elected, while the right-wing establishment feeds the "base" lies to keep them scared, hating, misinformed and voting against their own interests. The GOP's real base is their benefactors, the obscenely wealthy who want to keep Americans poorly educated, misinformed, poor and too desperate to foment revolt or changes. In other words, they want their serfs back! They don't care that the average republican doesn't want them destroying the economy with the debt ceiling or killing social security and medicare. The GOP only cares that their wealthy benefactors want them to kill social security and medicare because they hate working class people and love being cruel.

"63 percent of all voters think that House Republicans should allow the debt limit to be raised to avoid economic disaster, without executing their cynical plan to tie the legislation to cuts to the crucial social programs. This includes 78 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of independents and even 50 percent of Republicans....a mere 15 percent (of republicans) saying they would support a plan to attach the cuts to debt ceiling legislation."

GOP Plan to Cut Social Security and Medicare Is Disliked Among Republican Voters - Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/gop-plan-to-cut-social-security-and-medicare-is-disliked-among-republican-voters/

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPDestroyDemocracyViaChaos
GOPsRealBaseIsTheRich

"New polling finds that the GOP’s plan to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare through debt ceiling legislation is vastly unpopular — even among a majority of the Republican voter base.

According to a new survey by Data for Progress, 63 percent of all voters think that House Republicans should allow the debt limit to be raised to avoid economic disaster, without executing their cynical plan to tie the legislation to cuts to the crucial social programs. This includes 78 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of independents and even 50 percent of Republicans.

This was by far the most popular response to the question of whether the GOP should force through the cuts among the Republican voters, with a mere 15 percent saying they would support a plan to attach the cuts to debt ceiling legislation. Only 24 percent of Republican respondents said that Republicans should refuse to raise the debt ceiling whatsoever — an extremist option that would drop a bomb onto the already fragile economy.

These results demonstrate that, if Republicans continue to pursue the cuts to Social Security and Medicare, they will be standing in opposition not only to what most Americans want, but also to what their own base wants.

The polling further found that a plurality of the Republican base believes that the party should make bipartisanship a priority for the debt ceiling, with 45 percent of Republicans in agreement and 42 percent saying that Republicans should prioritize “opposing Democrats..."

Yet another reminder that what is going on in Washington is not business as usual. The GOP, as the hand-puppet of the obscenely wealthy, is hellbent on destroying democracy and instituting autocracy and fascism. They are in bed with Mike Flynn and Putin and are using deluded Christian nationalists, and a partisan-captured Supreme Court to destroy our country and democracy. The election deniers/insurrectionists/fascists are now in control of the house of representatives. They aren't going to stop destroying our democracy until we stop them!!

"The point of everything Republicans do is to undermine democracy, with a huge helping of self-interest on top."

American Fascism, Billionaires, And You - by Sarah Jones https://politicususa.substack.com/p/american-fascism-billionaires-and

#GOPFacism
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GOPLies
#IlliberalIsFascism

"Stanley also explained the role of undermining truth in fascism: “The heart of fascist politics is the destruction of truth. Fascist politics is based on a friend/enemy distinction where your enemy's not a legitimate opponent. Your enemy is hiding terrible crimes, and you can't treat them as any kind of normal opponent. And this is the purpose of conspiracy theories like QAnon.”

All of this works in concert with the Republican efforts to undermine the working classes first with Trump’s tax cuts that largely were meant to benefit the wealthy and corporations, and now that Republicans lead the House, they want to use the debt ceiling to steal Social Security from working people and they’re also floating a 30% sales tax on people.

As I discussed yesterday in our podcast about the inspiring strikes in France and Britain, working people (which is all of us who are not the 1%) need to be united in order to fight encroaching fascism, and unions are one good antidote to oligarchical fascism, which is behind the propaganda funding for a lot of the global right-wing push for fascism.

“The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump,” Jason Stanley wrote in The Guardian in December of 2021, noting how the United States’ racism makes it fertile ground for fascists.

The conservative and racist Breitbart empire is funded by billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer and Daily Wire, for example, received several million dollars in funding from the billionaire fracking and petroleum interests. The Daily Wire is now a $100 million dollar a year enterprise, according to them.

All of this division, the anti-vax lies, the election lies — it’s all being funded by billionaires.

This is what The People are up against, all around the globe. Here in the United States, no one is funding media for The People. The only people doing it are people who have put the interests of their country and her citizens above their own self-interests because it does not pay, and actually, under Trump, it started to cost money due to a variety of forces, and many outlets went under.

The already embattled and barely made-it Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy also has a horrific track record on democracy:

Signed Texas amicus brief

Objected to certification of electoral college votes in one or more states

Made false and/or irresponsible public statements against democratic system

Voted against impeachment or conviction of Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection

Voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack

Voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress

The power grab is the point. All of the chaos we are witnessing, including Kevin McCarthy’s willing embrace of Representative George Santos, a man with many names and aliases and stories and cons, it all tells the same story.

If we look at the pieces, it is infuriating and frustrating. But if we look at the whole, it becomes the clearest call to unite with other democracy-minded people in order to battle fascism."

Yet another reminder that what is going on in Washington is not business as usual. The GOP, as the hand-puppet of the obscenely wealthy, is hellbent on destroying democracy and instituting autocracy and fascism. They are in bed with Mike Flynn and Putin and are using deluded Christian nationalists, and a partisan-captured Supreme Court to destroy our country and democracy. The election deniers/insurrectionists/fascists are now in control of the house of representatives. They aren't going to stop destroying our democracy until we stop them!!

"The point of everything Republicans do is to undermine democracy, with a huge helping of self-interest on top."

American Fascism, Billionaires, And You - by Sarah Jones https://politicususa.substack.com/p/american-fascism-billionaires-and

#GOPFacism
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GOPLies
#IlliberalIsFascism

"America is already in the legal phase of pre-fascism. This is not meant to be alarmist, but rather to clarify that there is actually a point to what Republicans are doing.

If people are waiting for the arrival of Russian-style fascism here in the United States, they are not looking for the right symptoms and signs. It’s Hungary style “soft-fascism” that we must be looking for. And that involves using the legal system to seize power from opponents.

Sure, Republicans are using some of Putin’s tricks, like using Christianity and “traditional morals,” as a cultural weapon, but so does Hungary.

What does legal fascism look like? One big sign is what we tepidly call “election denialism,” also known as eroding trust in small d democracy. It’s not just Trump who does this, and while the 2022 midterms offered a beating to Republicans’ slate of election deniers, some of whom proudly announced their plan to steal the next election for their side, the Republican-led House of Representatives is teeming with election deniers.

It is even led by an election denier. “President Trump won this election. Everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet, do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes, we need to unite together,” Kevin McCarthy said on Fox News when it was clear Trump was losing on November 5th, 2020.

It’s worth noting that the lower third on Fox News’ screen is also wrong, because of course it wasn’t an election failure for Democrats and Democrats did not “revolt” against Pelosi. This, too, is an effort to weaken democracy.

Democracy is not possible without shared facts. Fox News and other well-funded Republican and conservative media outlets (how can the Daily Wire afford to offer a conservative commenter $50 million when the entire digital publishing world is on its knees?) work daily to separate their listeners from facts, to repeat conspiracies and outright lies, to make basic things like getting vaccinated into a culture war.

In an interview in 2020 with NPR, Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, explained fascism in a way that sounds exactly like Trump Republicanism: “So, fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by minorities, liberals and immigrants. He represents the cities as corrupt, filled with foreigners and disease, and the heartland as the true nation that he represents. And then he takes over a political party, transforms them into a cult of the leader and says only he can deal with the problem.”

“So we're - we've seen his election campaign focus on Black Lives Matter, on a minority social justice movement. We've seen him promise patriotic education in a second term - all sorts of tactics that we ideologically associate with far-right ultranationalism, i.e., fascism.”

We are already there in terms of the Trump cult. We kicked them out of the White House, but now they now lead the U.S. House of Representatives."

The GOP wants to make sure their base, that is, the obscenely wealthy and corporations, don't have to pay taxes and guess who they want to step up and take their place; the rest of us.

Let's Talk About About Fairness As 34% Of Large Profitable Corporations Pay 0 In Federal Taxes https://politicususa.substack.com/p/lets-talk-about-about-fairness-as?

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"GAO Study Finds Big Profitable Corporations Aren’t Paying Their Fair Share
The GAO study found:

In each year between 2014 and 2018, approximately 68 percent of all corporations had no federal income tax liability after credits. This level remained stable throughout the time period, remaining within a percentage point of the 5-year average. A lower share of large corporations, of which there are approximately 50,000 in each year of our data, had no federal income tax liability in each year from 2014 through 2018.

Over the 5-year period, an average of 51 percent of large corporations had no federal income tax liability. However, this share increased from a low of 47 percent in 2014 to a high of 58 percent in 2018. A still lower share of profitable large corporations had no federal income tax liability in each year from 2014 to 2018.

The share of profitable large corporations owing no federal income tax after credits increased from approximately 22 percent to approximately 34 percent between 2014 and 2018, averaging 25 percent over the 5-year period. The number of profitable large corporations in the data ranged between approximately 25,000 and 35,000 between 2014 and 2018.

The number of large profitable corporations remained stable between 2014 and 2018, but the percentage of these corporations that paid zero federal taxes grew.

It is time for a real conversation about fairness, and Republicans have already made it clear which side they are on."

The GOP is divorced from reality and believing their own made-up conspiracy theories. They'll spend all their time tossing red meat culture issues to the base while ignoring the pressing needs of our country.

Can you govern on a lie? House Republicans give it a try.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/13/house-republicans-govern-lie-weaponization-committeee/

#GOPLies
#GOPWontGovern
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPInsane
#GOPDrunkOnOwnKoolAid

“Despite the ‘deep state’s’ repeated attempts to stop me, I stand before you as a duly elected member of the United States Congress and tell you that a deep state exists and is perhaps the strongest covert weapon the left has against the American people,” he told the House.
...
Yee-haw! Zinke was speaking in support of a new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, or, as Democrats call it, the “Tinfoil Hat Committee.” In substance, it’s the QAnon committee, with a remit to probe the “deep state” and other wacky conspiracy theories. With the panel’s creation, QAnon completes its journey from message board for the paranoid to official policy of the House Republican majority.
...
how could Republicans possibly govern? Now we know. They are going to govern by fantasy and legislate on the basis of fiction.

On Monday, their first day of legislative business, they voted to repeal funding for a fictitious “87,000 IRS agents” who don’t exist and never will.
...
What next? Sorry, that’s secret. And therein might be the biggest falsehood of all. After numerous promises of “transparency” from the new leaders, they are refusing to reveal multiple backroom concessions Kevin McCarthy made to secure the speakership.
...
One change Republicans did reveal is the gutting of the Office of Congressional Ethics (it won’t be able to hire new staff when current employees leave), which will help shield lawmakers’ wrongdoing from public scrutiny. Also made known: a commitment to vote on abolishing the IRS and eliminating income taxes.
...
Boasting to reporters about passage of “the bill to repeal those 87,000 IRS agents,” he claimed that the Congressional Budget Office “confirmed” that those agents would “go after people making less than $200,000 a year,” including “the single mom who’s working two shifts at a restaurant.”

In reality, the IRS is hiring only about 6,500 agents — and that’s over a decade. In reality, the CBO said that only “a small fraction” of revenue from increased enforcement would come from taxpayers earning less than $400,000 a year.

Here’s what else CBO said: The Republicans’ bill to cut funds to the IRS — the new majority’s first legislation — would add $114 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.

But Republicans spent the entire debate repeating the outright falsehood that 87,000 “agents” would “target American working-class families” (Jason T. Smith, Mo.) and “harass and spy on middle-class and low-income families” (Michelle Steel, Calif.). Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) falsely said the CBO had projected “as many as 700,000 more audits, [of] Americans making less than $75,000 a year.”
...
Former majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told the House it was the “most dishonest, demagogic rhetoric that I have seen.”
...
Sean Hannity visited the Rayburn Room off the House floor this week where, under the watchful eye of a George Washington oil portrait, he broadcast interviews with McCarthy and his leadership team.

Total mentions of inflation: 1.

Total mentions of jobs: 1.

Total mentions of the economy: 2.

Total mentions of investigations: 20.

“Thank you, brother,” McCarthy said to Hannity before they got down to probing all of the planned probes: investigating the FBI, DOJ, China, the “weaponized” feds, the Afghanistan pullout, covid-19’s origins, Anthony Fauci, the “Biden family syndicate,” Hunter Biden’s laptop and more.

And now: President Biden’s handling of classified documents. Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (Ohio), who dismissed Trump’s hoarding of classified documents as a “bookkeeping issue,” now demands “a full and thorough review” of Biden’s conduct. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.), who said probing the Trump documents would “not be a priority,” said of Biden’s documents: “We’re probing it.”
...
And now comes word that Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and other Republican moderates, in a sign of their lack of faith in McCarthy, have begun talks with Democrats about a “discharge petition.” That would circumvent GOP leaders, increasing the debt limit without them.

Republican leaders are right to be paranoid about “weaponization.” But the biggest conspiracy might come from within."

Part 3
The GOP, as the tool of the wealthiest, has decimated education and the middle class, gutted regulations and civil rights, undermined democracy and packed the courts with partisans who ignore their oaths of office, all in order to gain more power and be ever more wealthy.

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#NeoliberalismIsAboutGreed
#CorporateGreed
#ReaganKilledMiddleClass
#GreedKills

"Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world. At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.

Now a small group of often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as you can imagine, are generally absent.

Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve and which they’d reject. They said this will “lower costs and increase choice.”

In all of the entire developed world — all the OECD countries on 4 continents — there are only 500,000 medical bankruptcies a year. Every single one of them is here in America.

Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.

As everybody can see, they lied. And are working as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment.

Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.

There was an explosion; lots of them, in fact, as over 60,000 American factories were torn down or left vacant because their products were moved to China or elsewhere. Over 10 million good-paying jobs went overseas along with those 60,000 factories.

Republicans told us global warming was a hoax: they’re still telling us that, in fact. And therefore, they say, we shouldn’t do anything to interfere with the profits of their friends in the American fossil fuel industry and the Middle East.

The hoax, it turns out, was the lie that there was no global warming — a lie that the industry spent hundreds of millions over decades to pull off. They succeeded in delaying action on global warming by at least three decades and maybe as many as five. That lie produced trillions in profits and brought us the climate crisis that is today killing millions and threatens all life on Earth.

And then, of course, there’s the biggest GOP lie of them all: “Money is the same thing as Free Speech.”

Five Republicans on the Supreme Court told us that if we threw out around 1000 anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws at both the state and federal level so politicians and political PACs could take unaccountable billions, even from foreign powers, it would “strengthen and diversify” the range of voices heard in America.

It’s diversified it, for sure. We’re now regularly hearing from racists and open Nazis, many of them elected Republican officials, who would have been driven out of decent society before the Reagan Revolution. American political discourse hasn’t been this filled with conflict and violence since the Civil War, and much of it can be traced straight back to the power and influence of dark money unleashed by five Republicans on the Supreme Court.

The bottom line is that we — as a nation, voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full Republican experience.

And now that we know what it is, we’re no longer listening to the Republican politicians who are continuing to try to sell us this bullshit.

We don’t want to hear Republicans sermonizing about deficits (that they themselves caused).

Or welfare (that they damaged and then exploited).

Or even whatever they’re calling “faith” these days, be it the death penalty, forcing raped women to give birth at the barrel of a gun, or burning books.

We’re over it, Republicans. A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer."""

Part 2
The GOP, as the tool of the wealthiest, has decimated education and the middle class, gutted regulations and civil rights, undermined democracy and packed the courts with partisans who ignore their oaths of office, all in order to gain more power and be ever more wealthy.

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#NeoliberalismIsAboutGreed
#CorporateGreed
#ReaganKilledMiddleClass
#GreedKills

"Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted wherever they wanted it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.

“An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill politicians. Five Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about history to make guns more widely available.

Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world.

Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.

Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.

Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus instead on science and math.

Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans that can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.”

Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have what they told us was “skin in the game,” we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.

Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses, or beginning families. While students are underwater, banksters who donate to Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable loans .

Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and better.

Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s impossible to start or find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs. It’s all giant chains, many now owed by hedge funds or private equity. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants.

Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.

Instead, nearly every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, millions and often billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives — while workers, the company, and society suffer the loss."

Part 1
The GOP, as the tool of the wealthiest, has decimated education and the middle class, gutted regulations and civil rights, undermined democracy and packed the courts with partisans who ignore their oaths of office, all in order to gain more power and be ever more wealthy.

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#NeoliberalismIsAboutGreed
#CorporateGreed
#ReaganKilledMiddleClass
#GreedKills

"The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.

Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses; unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.

When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class.

The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.” It became a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then America.

They then moved on to infiltrate our universities, seize our media, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to add millions of votes, and turn upside down our tax, labor, and gun laws.

That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.

By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented GOP was putting forward. They included radical tax cuts, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered people (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them dependent).

Their sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution.

It’s time to simply say out loud that it hasn’t worked:

Republicans told us if we just cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was at in 1980 down to 27% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else as, they said, the “job creators” would be unleashed on our economy.

Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over 40 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day. The middle class has gone from over 60% of us to fewer than half of us. It now takes 2 full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980."

GOP fiscally conservative? That's just marketing BS/lies used to defund or eliminate social programs! They've never seen a tax cut for the rich they didn't fall all over themselves to pass! They are willing to sacrifice the financial and overall well-being of their constituents in order to manufacture culture war issues to evoke hatred and fear in their base.

Arizona taxpayers to pay over $200 million for former Gov. Ducey’s border wall 'political stunt'
https://www.alternet.org/arizona-taxpayers-200-billion-border/?utm_medium=email&recip_id=462208&list_id=2

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPLies
#GOPCorrupt
#GOPRacist

"The removal of Arizona’s makeshift shipping container border wall will cost taxpayers over $200 million to remove, AZCentral reports.

Former Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey, whose idea it was to build the wall during his term, agreed to its removal after he was sued by the Department of Justice in December, just two weeks before newly elected Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs assumed office. Hobbs has staunchly opposed construction of the wall, dismissing it as a “political stunt” for the media.

Ducey's agreement with the government also came before the wall could be completed, as protestors have recently interfered with its construction

The money for its “construction, administration and maintenance” came from $335 million stored by the Arizona Border Security Fund. And now with the removal comes the steep cost of $200 million, which includes take down, transport and work costs.

AshBritt, a Florida-based emergency management company was awarded the contract to build and tear down the containers “without the regular bidding process” because “their solution was the most expeditious due to the emergency nature of the work,” Arizona Department of Administration spokesperson, Megan Rose, confirmed.

Although Governor Katie Hobbs’ office declined to comment on the matter, she spoke out against the “politicization of immigration and ‘political stunts’ used to incite media attention” during her recent “State of the State” address."

You can't guzzle that crazy kool-aid that Fox, Breitbart, etc. purvey to keep you on board with right-wing nonsense, and also spew constant lies to entrance your base, without completely losing touch with reality. And reality and covid don't care what you think!! Damn are they owning us now!

Paul Krugman: House Republicans’ economics are as 'divorced from reality' as their election lies - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/msn/kevin-mccarthy-2659094838/

#GOPDelusional
#GOPKoolAidDrunk
#GOPConspiracyTheories
#GOPInBedWithRich

"...And many Democrats have been warning that House Speaker McCarthy is now indebted to the most extreme members of his party.

In an opinion column published by the New York Times on January 6, liberal economist Paul Krugman argues that McCarthy “seems set to be speaker in name only” — which is Krugman’s way of saying that far-right MAGA conspiracy theorists, during the next two years, will have more influence in the House than McCarthy himself. Those MAGA Republicans, according to Krugman, believe “a number of untrue things.” And that includes things about the U.S. economy.

“Many, perhaps most, believe that the 2020 election was stolen, or at least that Joe Biden is somehow not the legitimate president,” Krugman observes. “Many believe that COVID vaccines do more harm than good, a belief that has contributed to thousands of excess deaths among Republican partisans. Quite a few either subscribe to or are at least friendly to beliefs of the QAnon cult, which claims that the world is run by a vast conspiracy of pedophiles. And just about all of them, again as far as I can tell, believe that the U.S. economy is in terrible shape, with the federal government at great risk of going bankrupt.”

Krugman goes on to describe “the current state of the U.S. economy” as one in which “inflation has been coming down” and unemployment remains how.

“There wasn’t a recession in 2022,” Krugman notes. “Indeed, the U.S. economy ended the year with continuing strong job growth, and the unemployment rate all the way back down to what it was before COVID…. As usual, the GOP is insisting that the budget can and must be balanced entirely by cutting spending. And as usual, this insistence runs up against the reality that spending cuts that big would be politically impossible…. Other than military spending — only a small fraction of which, even now, goes to defending democracy in Ukraine — federal dollars mainly go to retirement and health care programs on which scores of millions of Americans, including many Republicans, depend.”

Krugman continues, “So, the new House majority is living in a fantasy world, insisting on a completely unworkable solution to a largely imaginary crisis. Unfortunately, as we learned on January 6, 2021, political fantasies can have dire real-world consequences.”"

Part 2

Congress must listen to working families and overhaul healthcare, minimum wage and education | Bernie Sanders | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/09/congress-healthcare-minimum-wage-education-us-families

#GreedKills
#CorporateGreed
#GOPCorrupt
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPInBedWithRich

"...While psychologists tell us that the first four years of life are the most important in terms of human intellectual and emotional growth, it’s hard to deny that our childcare system is in disarray. The cost is unaffordable for many working parents, there are not enough slots available, the quality is spotty and the pay and benefits childcare workers receive is unconscionably low. This is not how we should be treating our children, the future of America.

The situation in K-12 education is not much better. For a variety of reasons – lack of respect, low pay, the stress of Covid and the politicization of school boards – thousands of gifted and dedicated teachers are quitting the profession, leaving students unprepared for the challenges they face as they enter the adult world. The future of this country depends upon the quality of education we provide our kids, and there is no reason why we cannot create the best public educational system in the world.

In terms of higher education, we face the absurd situation of hundreds of thousands of bright young people who have the desire and ability to get a college education but cannot do so because their families lack the money. How many great doctors, scientists, and teachers are we losing as a result? There are also millions of young people who need training in order to become skilled mechanics, carpenters, welders, and electricians who are not getting the post-high school training they need. Further, 45 million Americans are struggling with student debt – sometimes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

In terms of labor and our economy, we must recognize that we live in a period of more income and wealth inequality than at any time in the last hundred years. While the very rich become richer and three people now own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 60% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck and millions are trying to exist on starvation wages. Meanwhile, we have a pathetic federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour which has not been raised since 2009.

As more and more workers try to improve their standard of living by forming unions, they are facing fierce and illegal union busting from such employers as Starbucks, Amazon, McDonalds and other major employers.

There is a lot of discussion in the media about how “divided” our nation is and, on many issues, that is absolutely true. But what we don’t appreciate is that on some of the most important issues facing our country the American people – Democrats, Republicans, independents – are quite united.

The American people know we are being ripped off by the drug companies and they want lower prescription drugs prices.

The American people know that our healthcare system is outrageously expensive and they want universal and lower cost health care.

The American people know that education is essential to our lives and the future of this country and they want high quality and affordable education from childcare to graduate school.

The American people know that no one can survive on a $7.25-an-hour minimum wage, and they want to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

The American people know that workers have a constitutional right to form unions and that corporations that engage in illegal union busting activities must be held accountable.

And these are just a few of the issues within the jurisdiction of the Help committee that a strong majority of the American people want us to address.

At a time when too many Americans are giving up on democracy, now is the time to attempt to restore faith in our government. Now is the time for Congress to have the courage to take on the lobbyists and powerful special interests and show the American people that our government can work for them, and not just the 1%. Let’s do it.""