These supporters have been grifted and lied to by Republicans and their media for decades. They were never the brightest bulbs in the first place! These are the types of voters the GOP has been cultivating with their anti-science and anti-education policies, messaging and their sabotaging of public education through underfunding and voucher programs. A dumb electorate is easier to lie to and snowjob and that's what the GOP and their obscenely wealthy donors want!

'He didn’t mean to': Trump fans tie themselves in knots to explain he didn’t break the law - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/trump-fans-didnt-break-law/

#GOPHatesEducation
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPIsThePartyOfGreed
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithTheRich

"Supporters that came out for Donald Trump as he was arraigned in Miami, Florida on Tuesday were interviewed by the comedy group "The Good Liars." They had a lot of questions about the basic facts of the case that many MAGA loyalists didn't know.

One of the videos shows a Trump supporter claiming that the former president declassified everything. When told that Trump was on audio saying he didn't, the supporter refused to believe it.

A loyal Trump supporter told the "Good Liars" that he doesn't believe for a second Trump meant to steal the documents and that he probably didn't know the laws. He didn't explain why Trump refused to give the documents back.

Another video with Davram Stiefler showed a Trump supporter asking about the "Lock her up" chants and a man said Hillary Clinton was never investigated. He was told that the FBI announced the investigation 11 days before the election, and they had no idea.

What became clear to Jason Selvig is that none of the people were getting their news from actual news sources, and they were parroting the messages that Donald Trump has given. Instead of excuses, Trump has deployed the "what about" questions about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

At one point, a woman told Stiefler that Fox News never had to pay any money for lying to their viewers. He kept trying to tell her that Fox admitted to lying to them, and they paid a ton of money because of it. She refused to believe it.

Another woman refused to believe that Donald Trump would keep boxes of documents in his bathroom. She claimed that the bathroom with two chandeliers looked "like Joe Biden's bathroom." She maintained that Trump would never be so "messy." Selvig explained to her that the photos were in the indictment. They were in the court documents.

The Good Liars are known for going to many events. "The Daily Show's" Jordan Klepper was also known for doing the same kind of interviews, but due to the writer's strike, the show has been off the air."

'Zero courage': Ex-GOP strategist torches members who stand by Trump
https://www.rawstory.com/zero-courage-ex-gop-strategist-torches-the-sergeant-schultz-brigade-of-republicans-defending-trump-2661189855/?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"An MSNBC panel on Sunday fiercely rebuked the defiantly nonchalant reactions by many Republicans to the historic federal felony charges filed against former President Donald Trump.

"I don't know. After reading those forty-nine pages, it was impossible for the special counsel to not indict Donald Trump," host Jonathan Capehart opined.

Capehart's guest, ex-Republican strategist Matthew Dowd, showed no mercy toward Trump's defenders.

"Well, you know, it, it's as if, if Mike Pence is saying, 'if Donald Trump breaks the law, nobody should ever hold him accountable.' That's actually what he's saying. And as I listen to Christina, who's absolutely right about this, about Mike Pence — but Mike Pence is just one of many — is that I'm reminded of what Maya Angelou said, which is courage is the most important of all the virtues because it's the only one that allows us to practice the other virtues consistently," Dowd said.

"There is a complete abject lack of courage of Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, every, uh McCarthy, Speaker McCarthy," Dowd continued. "All these others have zero cur courage, zero courage, and the other one — so you put that in one bucket — the other bucket that I think is most, is also upsetting is the sort of 'Sergeant Schultz Brigade' of the Republican Party, which is, I see nothing. I know nothing. I'll say nothing.

"And they just sit by apathetically understanding Donald Trump and the corruption that exists around Donald Trump and the danger of Donald Trump, but will absolutely act like their fingers are in their ears. They close their eyes and they want nothing to do with saying or doing anything about 'em. And I put Mitch McConnell in that bucket.""

The media's misinforming the public about the GOP hostage-taking over the debt ceiling is dangerously close to disinformation and propaganda! The changes the GOP wants are only conducted within the budget process, yet they lack the votes to enact their dream list that way, so they are using the relic that is the debt ceiling to try extortion instead of democracy. They are threatening the livelihood and financial well-being of America and Americans to get their donor's wishlists enacted. Only the Democrats care about and are being motivated by America and American's well-being in this manufactured crisis, and the GOP is leveraging the Dems caring to enact concessions.

The hostage-takers don't care about the hostages, and the public ought to be aware of that! Yet the media is pulling their lame bothsidesism again and willfully misrepresenting this situation to the detriment of us and our country. This is yet another example of how most of the mainstream media is used by their wealthy owners to mislead Americans so they can achieve objectives that the rest of us don't want.

The rich have needs and goals that are not in the interests of America or average Americans. When the wealthy own media, our democracy is missing it's fourth pillar!!

The debt ceiling debacle is NOT a "partisan standoff"
"It was completely manufactured by Kevin McCarthy and his House Republicans"
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-debt-ceiling-debacle-is-not-a?publication_id=365422&post_id=123808361&isFreemail=true

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#TheRichOwnTheMedia
#TheRichHateAvgAmericans
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"This morning, the credit-rating agency Fitch put the nation’s AAA rating on a watch list, citing “increased political partisanship” over the debt ceiling. I just heard ABC attribute the standoff on the debt ceiling to “polarization” in Congress. NPR blames the fight on “hyper-partisanship” in American politics. Reuters blames the stalemate on lawmakers “digging in on partisan positions.”

“Partisan standoff” is the way most of the media is now characterizing the fight.

Hello?

Enough with the “both sides” reporting on the debt ceiling.

The current fight over raising the debt ceiling — and the growing possibility the United States might default on its debts — is not because of partisanship. It’s not due to political polarization. It’s not because lawmakers are “digging in” to “partisan positions.”

Republicans alone manufactured this looming disaster.

In order to become speaker, Kevin McCarthy made a deal with right-wing MAGA House Republicans to use the debt ceiling as a way to hold America hostage and force the Biden administration to come begging.

McCarthy and his band of MAGA crazies don’t give a fig about the national debt. Hell, they had no problem raising the debt ceiling three times under Trump — while providing trillions in tax cuts for the rich.

This current fight is entirely theirs.

The “both sides” reporting is misleading the public and giving a free pass to McCarthy and his extremists.

I admire Joe Biden, but he should not have allowed the media to so badly mischaracterize what’s happening. He never should have begun negotiating with McCarthy. Biden has the bully pulpit; he should have addressed the nation by now, pointing out that this fight is manufactured entirely by House Republicans.

The media’s reporting is inexcusable.

This is how you get your way when democracy doesn't give it to you. You do an end-run around democracy so you can have minority rule forever! Who needs democracy, congressmen, senators or presidents when you own the judiciary?

Court decision in clean water case is more legislating from the bench https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/supreme-court-clean-water-kavanaugh/?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"The Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Clean Water Act isn’t just a disaster for efforts to control pollution, although it is that, too. It is yet another illustration of the conservative supermajority’s aggressive willingness to rewrite statutes to its liking, abandon precedent and lunge to intercede in disputes that could be easily sidestepped.
...
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (good for him!) joined the court’s three liberal justices in a far more reasoned interpretation of the Clean Water Act that would have respected text and precedent while still finding for the Sacketts.

Once again, the conservative justices reveal themselves to be textualists of convenience. The Clean Water Act requires a permit for dumping pollutants — and this includes the backfilling that the Sacketts were doing to prepare their lot — into the “waters of the United States.” Such waters are explicitly defined to include “wetlands” that are “adjacent” to streams, rivers and other navigable bodies of water covered by the law.

The majority agrees on all this but then waves its magic statutory wand to redefine, and narrow, the meaning of “adjacent.” It transforms the definition to apply solely to wetlands that are actually adjoining — that have a “continuous surface connection” — to the larger body.

This disrespects — actually, it ignores — the law’s text and traditional methods of statutory interpretation. As Kavanaugh noted, dictionary “definitions of ‘adjacent’ are notably explicit that two things need not touch each other in order to be adjacent.”
...
No longer, according to the majority, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Kavanaugh charitably labeled the majority’s approach “unorthodox” and “atextual.” Another word might be lawless. The majority’s approach blithely dismissed some 45 years of consistent interpretation through eight presidential administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. Even the Trump EPA thought adjacent meant adjacent.
...
Sackett reinforces what we already knew: This is a court that doesn’t like government regulation and it is going to do what it can — text and precedent be damned — to neuter it. Thus the majority, in last year’s West Virginia v. EPA, invented a “major purpose” test to limit the reach of another major environmental law, the Clean Air Act. In this case, it adopts another new test — when Congress exercises such power “over private property” it must use “exceedingly clear language” — to rewrite the Clean Water Act to its liking.

As Justice Elena Kagan explained in a concurrence joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, this is nothing short of another judicial power grab. “The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,” Kagan wrote.

And why? Not because the law compels it, but because the majority doesn’t like the law. “Congress, the majority scolds, has unleashed the EPA to regulate ‘swimming pools and puddles,’ wreaking untold havoc on ‘a staggering array of land-owners,’” Kagan observed. “Surely something has to be done; and who else to do it but this Court? It must rescue property owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pollution control.”

More judicial power-grabbing to follow. The court next term will consider whether to ditch the four-decade old practice, known as Chevron deference, of having courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws they administer when the statutes are ambiguous. If Chevron falls, as seems all but inevitable, courts will be even more firmly in the driver’s seat to control policymaking.

This isn’t right, and it is also unnecessary. When the court reached out to take Sackett, the Biden administration was in the midst of rewriting the rules on how the Clean Water Act applied to wetlands. But the majority had its votes. Why wait? Why hold back? That could be the motto of this radical and impatient court."

The neutering of our government so it only works for them has been the goal of the obscenely rich for decades. They finally have the judicial, political and media pawns all lined up to do their bidding so our "democracy" only serves them.

Neil Gorsuch is Preparing His Revenge: Gutting America's Protective Agencies https://hartmannreport.com/p/neil-gorsuch-is-preparing-his-revenge?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"Fulfilling Bannon’s and Trump’s promise to dismantle — or eviscerate — most of America’s regulatory agencies, leaving us all subject to the tender mercies of the country’s billionaires & CEOs…

Republicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s.

If they pull it off, they could destroy the ability of:

— the EPA to regulate pollutants,
— the USDA to keep our food supply safe,
— the FDA to oversee drugs going onto the market,
— OSHA to protect workers,
— the CPSC to keep dangerous toys and consumer products off the market,
— the FTC to regulate monopolies,
— the DOT to come up with highway and automobile safety standards,
— the ATF to regulate guns,
— the Interior Department to regulate drilling and mining on federal lands,
— the Forest Service to protect our woodlands and rivers,
— and the Department of Labor to protect workers’ rights.

Among other things on the rightwing billionaire wish-list: virtually the entirety of America’s ability to protect its citizens from corporate predation rests on what’s called the Chevron deference (more on that in a moment), which the Court appears prepared to overturn with a case they just accepted last week.
...
Far-right conservatives and libertarians have been working for this destruction of agencies — the ultimate in deregulation — ever since the first regulatory agencies came into being with the 1906 creation of the Pure Food and Drugs Act...

Gutting these agencies is what Steve Bannon meant when Trump brought him into the White House and he said one of the main goals of that administration was to “deconstruct the administrative state.” If there’s any coherent explanation of the phrase “deep state” as used by Republicans, it’s our nation’s regulatory agencies.

The modern effort to destroy or at least neuter America’s protective agencies began when Ronald Reagan put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

She directed the agency to dial back restrictions on expansion of factories and other operations that were already polluting the atmosphere. That provoked a challenge to the Supreme Court, Natural Resources Defense Council, v. Gorsuch, where the Court overruled the Reagan administration.

Gorsuch nonetheless continued her efforts to gut the EPA. In her first year heading the agency, there was a 79 percent decline in enforcement cases, and a 69 percent drop in cases the EPA referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. She pushed a 25 percent cut in her own agency’s funding into Reagan’s first budget proposal.

It took Congress years to overturn her cuts to the Clean Air Act “on everything from automobiles to furniture manufacturers,” according to Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

She took a meataxe to President Carter’s renewable energy programs and “set solar back a decade” according to Clapp.

Gorsuch finally resigned her office to avoid prosecution for what Newsweek described as “a nasty scandal involving political manipulation, [Super]fund mismanagement, perjury, and destruction of subpoenaed documents, among other things.”

Her son, Neil Gorsuch, was devastated by his mother’s resignation. In her memoir Are You Tough Enough? she tells the story of how Neil confronted her when she resigned:

“Neil,” she wrote, “got very upset. Halfway through Georgetown prep and smart as a whip, Neil knew from the beginning the seriousness of my problems. He also had an unerring sense of fairness, as do so many people his age.

“‘You should never have resigned,’ he said firmly. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You only did what the president [Reagan] ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter?’

“He was really upset,” she added.

Now, it appears, her son is preparing his revenge.

To get there, he and at least three other Republicans on the Court (the number required to accept a case) appear hell-bent-for-leather to turn regulatory agency rule-making upside-down."

Clarence Thomas is an unethical, despicable, self-serving, resentful, mentally imbalanced and grudge-holding piece of work that is not qualified or worthy of being on the supreme court. He was only nominated to further the right's long-orchestrated attempt to use the judiciary to seize power from the democratically elected branches of government so that the GOP and their obscenely wealthy donors could get their way even if they can't via elections.

How the Clarence Thomas Scandals Explain His Right-Wing Rulings – Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/05/video-clarence-thomas-scandals-harlan-crow-billionaire-black-nationalism/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#EndRunAroundDemocracy
#TheRichHateAvgAmericans
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"“Live through Jim Crow, so you can live off of Harlan Crow.”

That’s how MoJo’s Garrison Hayes archly summarizes the hypocrisies of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in light of recent blockbuster revelations that he accepted elite private school tuition money from the real estate mogul for his grandnephew, alongside other lavish, all-expense-paid holidays and gifts from the Texas billionaire.

“If these things are true,” Garrison observes, ironically, in his new video about the many contradictions of Thomas, “your favorite Black conservative appears to be the most exaggerated version of a welfare queen, feeding off the generosity of a wealthy white benefactor who showers him and his family with unlimited trips.”

Since discovering that Thomas once identified as a Black nationalist, Garrison has been fascinated with better understanding the events that led him to become one of the most prominent figures in right-wing politics. Garrison has spent the last few weeks diving deeply into Thomas’ on-the-record speeches, biographies, interviews, and judicial opinions. In this video, he highlights instances where Thomas has opposed programs designed to help Black communities, despite personally benefiting from similar programs. Thomas attended Yale’s law school in 1971 through an affirmative action program but later opposed a similar program in a judicial opinion. When he couldn’t find a legal job after graduation, he saw affirmative action as the reason for his difficulties, writing in his 2007 memoir, “Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference. I was humiliated—and desperate.”

Despite receiving extraordinary opportunities and assistance throughout his life, Justice Thomas, Garrison concludes, seems committed to subjecting other groups—particularly Black people—to a rigid “bootstrap” individualism. In other words: opportunity for me, but not for thee.

Watch Garrison’s latest video below:" Click on the link to the article to watch this very informative, interesting video...

How disconcerting and intellectually lazy and dishonest! It would seem that Fox viewers don't tune in because they believe the lies they are being fed. They tune in because those lies make them feel good as they confirm their bias so they can enjoy owning the libs and being "right" even though neither are actually occurring. They are willing to help destroy our country and other people's lies just so they can feel smug and secure. That puts a whole new spin on deplorable and uncaring. Not all that different than their take on Christianity; all the feel-good benefits without all that pesky loving others and helping them. We shouldn't forget that they were encouraged to think and feel this slothful way by the obscenely wealthy and the religious leaders who both use them without any concern for their welfare.

Don’t expect Fox’s ratings dip to be permanent
Amanda Marcotte's Articles at Salon.com https://www.salon.com/writer/amanda_marcotte?

#GOPUsesRacists
#GOPUsesFundamentalists
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#InsecurityComplex

"It’s actually quite remarkable how half the Fox News viewership refused to tune into the network in the aftermath of Tucker Carlson’s firing. It’s further proof that their audience has been radicalized by social media, enough to punish the network in lockstep for dropping the loudest white nationalist on the channel. Fox viewers really do, as the Dominion lawsuit also demonstrated, tune in to hear their conspiracy theories and bigotries validated, not because they mistake it for the news.

Still, that’s why I think this “boycott” is temporary. Fox, with its New York offices and high production value, puts a high status gloss on right wing bullshit that is badly spelled and formatted on social media. Right wing media junkies can only deprive themselves of that affirmation for so long. They’ll come slithering back, eager for those bright studio lights to reassure them that their bizarro world views are legitimate."

Without the greedy, obscenely wealthy people who just want more money and less taxes and regulations propping up the deplorable racists, nazis, supremacists and Christian nationalists on the far right, they would never stand a chance in our democracy. But with those wealthy, greedy sleazeball's help, our democracy is in danger.

"So, to the question about what’s really behind the war Republicans are waging against American democracy, the answer is simple: rightwing billionaires who want more, more, more money and are willing to make common cause with bigots, fascists, and wannabee killers to get it.:"

What’s Behind the GOP’s War Against Democracy? https://hartmannreport.com/p/whats-behind-the-gops-war-against?

#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPUnholyAlliance
#GOPUsesDeplorables4Votes

"...As German industrialist Fritz Thyssen writes in his apologetic book I Paid Hitler, he pressured German President von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, and then lobbied the Association of German Industrialists, that country’s and era’s version of the US Chamber of Commerce, to donate 3 million Reichsmarks to the Nazi Party for the 1932 election.

While Thyssen did it primarily because he wanted tax cuts for morbidly rich people like himself and government contracts for his company, his efforts combined with Hugenberg’s media empire brought Hitler and his bigots to power.
...
If the German people were victims, Hitler told them, the villains were German minorities, promoting degeneracy like jazz and swing music, tolerance of homosexuality and transgender people, and the “international Jewish conspiracy.”

Once the Nazis took power they banned books, outlawed drag shows and homosexuality, changed school curricula to remove mention of their atrocities in WWI, and rewrote election laws so they’d never again lose an election.
...
This is all echoed in the crisis today facing both the GOP and the Democratic Party’s opposition to it.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently wrote:

“My friends, the Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy. It is rapidly becoming the American fascist party.”

Rightwing American billionaires, parroting Fritz Thyssen, have spent the past decade pouring money into Republican-aligned groups working to change school textbooks, ban library books, outlaw healthcare for queer people, criminalize trans participation in civil society, and make it harder for college students and Black people to vote.

Like Thyssen, most probably aren’t all that bigoted themselves: their primary motivation is lowering their own taxes and increasing their companies’ government purchases and subsidies.

But to get there they must have Republicans in power, and the GOP’s base — while they don’t much care about billionaire’s taxes or corporate deregulation — are fervent bigots.
...
There are signs that a few of the billionaires funding the modern neofascist wing of the GOP’s rise to power are having second thoughts, much as Fritz Thyssen ultimately did in Germany.
...
The billionaire-funded movement to pass anti-voting, anti-trans, anti-Black history, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, and anti-public school legislation and policy is roaring down the track, as is the billionaire-owned media campaign to promote fascism.

And since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with Citizens United, the deck remains stacked in their favor.

There is no Democratic equivalent to Fox “News,” 1500 rightwing radio stations, hundreds of subsidized rightwing podcasts and media sites, The Wall Street Journal, ALEC, Heritage Foundation, Musk’s rightwing reinvention of Twitter, Facebook’s GOP-leaning algorithms, or the hundreds of other state and national policy operations and think tanks.

The American people, however, seem to be waking up even in the face of this onslaught of billionaire-owned and -funded media and political infrastructure.

The velocity with which Republican governors are leaving ERIC so they can quietly purge people from their voting rolls (now that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized that in 2018) and passing over 400 new make-it-harder-to-vote laws shows how concerned they are about this trend.

So, to the question about what’s really behind the war Republicans are waging against American democracy, the answer is simple: rightwing billionaires who want more, more, more money and are willing to make common cause with bigots, fascists, and wannabee killers to get it.

Given how far we are down this road to fascism — and how the GOP’s fascist faction is being supported by both American billionaires and outsiders like Orbán, Putin, and Xi — the 2024 election may well be the equivalent of the November, 1932 German elections: a make-or-break moment for American democracy."

Great article. HIs point about our elites running our government and our economy very poorly is right on. The government is our government, by and for the people. Yet that isn't how it's been run, more like by and for the oligarchs and elites! Taxation and general economic policies have transferred many, many trillions of dollars from the middle class to the 1%.

That wasn't an accident, that was the plan. And they keep coming back for more, with the Trump tax cuts and the new ones the GOP is itching to put in place and the way the Federal Reserve is attacking inflation by destroying the economy for the working class and eroding their wages rather than going after the real culprits and breaking up monopolies and taxing excess profits.

And there are so many other ways our government has been hijacked and turned into the rich's lapdog! We have our work cut out for us to restore our government and economy so that they ensure that all citizens are healthy and secure financially while working and retired. This is what the government is supposed to do, not spoil and only serve the wealthy!

Government For the People Shouldn’t Keep Secrets From the People – Ian Welsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/government-for-the-people-shouldnt-keep-secrets-from-the-people/

#MoneyIsNotFreeSpeech
#GovtByN4ThePeople
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GovtByN4TheRich

"This is hard to talk about, because we live in a debased period.

Government’s job, in a democracy, should be to increase the welfare of the people and represent their will.

Because people elect the government, they need to know what the government is doing and has done in order to choose who to elect.

This is fundamental.

When people do not know what the government is doing, they cannot make good decisions.

Further, elected representatives (in principle, not in current practice) are the employees of the population. As employers, the population has a right to know what the representatives are doing. (Or if you prefer another metaphor, perhaps better, they are trustees.) They don’t have the right to know everything, but anything related to the job, including corruption and double dealing, they do.

The only possible exceptions are certain military related issues which would be very useful to enemies, but even there, the span is limited.

The reason for this, because apparently it’s not obvious, is that if electors don’t know what the people they elected and the government those people run are doing, they can’t make good decisions, like choosing to, oh, fire them.

As an aside, this is also why we have a right to know what our government is doing and why they don’t have a right to spy on us: they work for us, we do not work for them. Even so, their personal lives, other than graft and blatant hypocrisy should be off the line. But what they do officially we need to know.

If government doesn’t serve the people, it becomes tyranny.

The current system of classifying virtually everything and then lying and lying and lying is clearly anti-democratic and tyrannical.

What we have right now in most countries (see France, Pensions for a non-American example) is not democracy. It is oligarchical tyranny: the rule of the few over the many.

Nor is this just about “ought”, the problem with endless propaganda is that our elites have been running our countries terribly. They have mishandled the economy repeatedly since 1968 or so, have completely bungled climate change and ecological collapse, have made the middle and working classes poor and the rich richer. They have been running government for the benefit of the few, not the many. The only major notable exception is China, and from what I hear from those on the ground, that’s changing for the worse and has been since after the 2008 financial crisis.

Governments which impoverish the many to benefit the few are tyrannies and need to be overthrown. But one of the ways they get there is by constant lying and saying “we’re lying and concealing for your own good. You’re children, it isn’t safe for you to know.”

Anyone who thinks you don’t deserve or need to know what they claim to be doing on your behalf isn’t your friend or your employee, they are your master and they see you as their slave.

This quote says it all; "the corporation can reasonably be described as a sociopath if not a psychopath. The Guardian summarizes this: "If you did a psychological profile of the corporation, what would it look like? Self-interested, manipulative, avowedly asocial, self-aggrandising, unable to accept responsibility for its own actions or feel remorse - as a person, the corporation would probably qualify as a full-blown psychopath.""

The corporate attack on democracy | Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2023/04/24/the-corporate-on-democracy/

#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GreedIsAntiSocial

"A key part of America's national mythology is that democracy and capitalism are one and the same thing and that corporations and big business and "free markets" are essential indicators of "freedom" and "democracy." In reality, the corporation supports those arrangements of political economy that allow them to maximize their profits. Democracy is not a prerequisite for such an outcome. There are many examples, almost too many to list, where corporations have in the past and continue to support anti-democratic and authoritarian policies -- and antisocial and anti-human policies more generally including genocide, slavery, war profiteering, and global climate disaster -- if they deem it in their financial interests to do so.

Based on its behavior as compellingly demonstrated by law professor Joel Balkan in the bestselling book "The Corporation" (and in the award-winning documentary of the same name), the corporation can reasonably be described as a sociopath if not a psychopath. The Guardian summarizes this: "If you did a psychological profile of the corporation, what would it look like? Self-interested, manipulative, avowedly asocial, self-aggrandising, unable to accept responsibility for its own actions or feel remorse - as a person, the corporation would probably qualify as a full-blown psychopath."

SVB failed because it was a perfect example of greedy capitalism. They took risks, they exploited GOP-led deregulation, and they gambled ineptly with other people's money. The GOP, their obscenely wealthy donors and their fawning sold-out servants, will do or say anything to make it look like it wasn't what it was; greedy capitalism in action. If they could, they would blame it on trans people, or whoever is the right-wing scapegoat of the day. This was greed, plain and simple. Greedy bankers bought off politicians, mostly republicans but others, like Synema, to weaken regulations put in place to prevent another financial meltdown. The bribes paid off, they made a fortune, got their bonuses, and like the last time, will probably not pay a price for this travesty! Our system continues to serve the wealthiest and pillage the rest of us, and that is exactly how the GOP and their donors want it!

Silicon Valley Bank didn't fail because it's "woke" https://link.motherjones.com/view/5eb477beb01fd7378a70b24cicnru.1jsi/da299f9e

#GreedKills
#GreedKillsTheEconomy
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPLovesTheGreedy

"Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on Friday amid a bank run. The reasons are complex, even for those well-versed in the jargon of finance. (I am not.) The gist is that the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in hopes of taming inflation. That requires banks to pay higher rates on their deposits. But since SVB's assets (like loans) were issued at the lower rates, they earn far less. At the same time, the higher rates from the Fed caused Treasury bonds to go down in value. SVB over-diversified on Treasury bonds and had to sell them at a lower value, leaving the bank without enough capital, as Michael Hitzlik explained in the Los Angeles Times.

So, you can blame increased interest rates. You can blame deregulation for allowing SVB to act as more of an investment tool than a bank, which made it particularly susceptible to a bank run. You can blame the very idea that this is how financialized capitalism works. You can even maybe blame Peter Thiel? Or, if you choose not to attempt to understand what happened, you can blame some DEI programs and say the word "woke" a lot.

"I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds of stuff," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. "I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission." The idea, as a former Trump economist said on Fox News, is that SVB over-invested in green-energy products, leading to its doom.

"SVB is what happens when you push a leftist/woke ideology and have that take precedent over common sense business practices," Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, not mentioning the role his father played in loosening bank regulations.

Investor Andy Kessler, in a Wall Street Journal opinion column, went so far as to suggest that SVB's focus on diversity and inclusion was somehow responsible for the bank's collapse:

SVB was regulated like a bank but looked more like a money-market fund. Then there’s this: In its proxy statement, SVB notes that besides 91% of their board being independent and 45% women, they also have “1 Black,” “1 LGBTQ+” and “2 Veterans.” I’m not saying 12 white men would have avoided this mess, but the company may have been distracted by diversity demands.

This is, of course, nonsense. As my colleague Michael Mechanic explained in a newsletter last week, American conservatives (and some Democrats) have been loath to accept any whiff of progressivism in our financial institutions. That's why the Senate blocked a Labor Department rule that would have allowed retirement fund managers to let clients invest in ESG funds—those that consider environmental and social factors. And it's also why they choose to focus not on Silicon Valley greed or lax government regulations, but on the bank's stated support of LGBTQ causes.

Do you think Bear Stearns was "distracted by diversity demands"? Lehman Brothers? Bailey Building and Loan from It's a Wonderful Life? Give me a break."

Our economic "system" was crafted by the obscenely wealthy and power-hungry. They hold all the cards and we don't have a seat at the table. They bought politicians and judges, till they had a supreme court that would make corporations people and money free speech. Then they went to town and destroyed unions, worker's rights, cheap college, effective education, high tax rates on the rich and a democratic party that would stand up to them. Our compensation is no longer tied to productivity and they awarded themselves huge tax breaks so they have nearly all the wealth in the country and we have virtually nothing but debt to them and poverty wages. Bernie has a plan!

Bernie Sanders is right about capitalism https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/opinions/bernie-sanders-capitalism-freedom-powers/index.html

#GreedKills
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GreedKillsFreedom
#GreedKillsSociety
#CapitalismIsGreed

"In his new book, “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism,” Bernie Sanders chooses the moniker “uber-capitalist” to describe our current economic system — one that feels perfectly designed to enrich a tiny few while making life miserable for nearly everyone else.

...“hyper-capitalism” or “late-stage capitalism,” (is) capitalism untethered to morality or decency. Whatever you call it, it’s not working, except for the super-rich, who Sanders aptly labels oligarchs.
...
Rather than making the case for a Democratic socialist government, Sanders appears to want a reform of American capitalism and to see the country embrace a kind of New Deal liberalism.

Sanders has said...that he sees Scandinavia’s generous social safety nets as a model of the kind of system he supports. In his book, he emphasizes an inspiration closer to home: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — in particular, FDR’s insight that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”

Any person who is living paycheck to paycheck, working to the point of exhaustion just to survive and stay on top of their debt surely recognizes this statement is true. How “free” is a person really if all they do is work?

How “free” is someone who lives with a debilitating health condition because they can’t afford the medication or health care that could cure them? How “free” is a person who starts adulthood weighted down with a mind-bending amount of debt incurred just to get the education they need to get a job?

Many Americans are essentially indentured servants to an overclass that continues to amass wealth and power, while failing to pass on their largesse to their employees. Between 1978 and 2018, CEO pay skyrocketed by more than 900%, while worker pay grew by just under 12%...

These chronically underpaid employees are also often treated as objects by their employers...Workers complained that “their jobs are relentless, that they don’t have control — and in some cases, that they don’t even have enough time to use the bathroom.”
...
Much of what we consider normal here — such as “hustle and grind” culture or working around the clock for employers who would fire us without a second thought — is baffling to our peers in many industrialized countries who prioritize their mental and physical health and don’t suffer from a late-stage capitalist productivity fetish.

Major companies in the United States don’t just mistreat their workers; they lack even a modicum of decency when it comes to their responsibility to consumers and the society in which they live. Today, we are a country where pharmaceutical companies making record profits and paying their executives obscene amounts of money price gouge on drugs that Americans need to survive.
...
Most people can’t even afford a home mortgage while a subsection of society is plunking down cash for their new domicile. The share of buyers purchasing a home for the first time is at a 41-year low
...
But we don’t need this trend to continue to know our society is off the rails. The results are in. This system is not just unjust, it is deadly: The US has earned the unwelcome distinction of having the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rate among wealthy countries.
...
Perhaps most of all, Sanders has powerfully articulated — both in his campaigns and his latest book — the profound lack of decency and utter immorality of the current American economic system."

Corporations are using the dark-money bribery legalized by conservative supreme court justices to control and undermine our democracy, just like the conservatives intended. All the important agencies that are designed to regulate industry and protect us, are now compromised and captured, making the government work only for big money. Our votes mean little any more, as they capture our government with their money and turn it into their puppet, destroying our democracy in the process.

Joe Biden's agenda faces an unprecedented onslaught of dark money: The FCC is just the start
https://www.salon.com/2023/02/19/how-much-of-bidens-agenda-will-be-defeated-by-dark-money-fcc-is-just-the-start/

#GreedKills
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GreedCheatsNLies
#GreedHatesDemocracy

"Joe Biden's struggle to get FCC nominee Gigi Sohn confirmed by the Senate offers an early warning sign of the legislative battles ahead.
...
Dark money spending — untraceable political donations funneled through super PACs that aren't required to report who their donors are — topped $1 billion in the 2020 election cycle. Perhaps surprisingly, that funding largely benefited Democrats, and that sum exploded to the unprecedented $8.9 billion midterm spending spree of 2022.
...
Sohn has pointed to ISP and telecom dark money as the cause of a delay that now threatens to divide Biden from members of his own party, aiming to peel off key Democratic votes and sink her nomination.
...
Craig Holman, Public Citizen's Capitol Hill lobbyist on ethics and campaign finance, argued in an email to Salon that the telecom industry offers a prime example of how dark money transcends pure partisanship.

"While some dark money groups spend most of their money supporting candidates of a single party...many dark money groups could care less about party affiliation and support anyone who promotes their specific causes," Holman said.

"This is particularly the case for industry-related dark money groups, such as in the telecom industry.
...
All this Big Telecom dark money, he adds, has endangered Sohn's nomination, "despite the fact that she espouses traditionally Democratic values and thus should otherwise easily be confirmed by the Democratic majority in the Senate."
...
"Corporate-backed nonprofit groups are an easy and effective vehicle for special interests to push a particular policy or decision without necessarily having their name attached to the campaign," said Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

"These groups are often made to look like legitimate grassroots organizations when in reality they're consultant- or lobbyist-run astroturf groups, crafted specifically to fit the policy goals of their corporate funders, whose identities are often difficult or even impossible to suss out."
...
According to public records gathered by Open Secrets, 254 businesses and organizations sent lobbyists to the FCC in 2022, for a total body count of 781 actual human lobbyists. Forty-two percent of those actual humans were former government regulators, former members of Congress members or former congressional staffers. Leading the pack were the usual industry players: T-Mobile, Charter Communications, Verizon, Comcast and the NCTA, a leading cable and broadband trade group.
...
Members of the 2022 Senate Commerce Committee, where Sohn now awaits a vote, received $4.5 million in campaign contributions from internet industry groups. Those members, both Democrat and Republican, received $3.8 million from telecom services industry groups.
...
But dark money's best strategy isn't always aimed at determining outcomes so much as delaying them endlessly, by preventing basic governmental bodies from functioning as intended.
...
"These dark money efforts are designed around shaping outcomes in government without revealing to the public who is behind it," he told Salon.
...
Falcon tweeted last year: "...It is not the people, it's functional government under attack,"

"Why attack functional government? Because billions of $ are made from the current dysfunction...If you make billions from a bad status quo and Biden's Administration signals they want to fix it, you'll spend a lot of dark money to stop them."
...
"It's clear the industry sees no problems with the status quo," said Getachew. "In a Senate where the Democratic majority is not high, they only need a couple of Democrats to tilt the balance in their favor."

The wealthy, corporations and the GOP have worked hand-in-hand to rig the economy against average Americans and in their favor over the last 50 plus years. Monopolies dominate many industries and they are responsible for much of our inflation. This costs workers and the economy billions of dollars every year in needlessly high prices like the exorbitant costs for pharmaceuticals that no other country has to pay. Their greed has made them very wealthy and successful but at the expense of the rest of us. Too often our government doesn't serve or protect us, it only works for corporations and the wealthy. Biden is aggressively trying to change that, but corporate interests are entrenched in our agencies and laws and are fighting him, and us, every step of the way. Knowledge and outrage about this situation can help tilt this in our favor. Great Article!

A Pitched Battle on Corporate Power - Biden’s expansive executive order seeks to restore competition in the economy. It’s been a long, slow road to get the whole government on board—but there are some formidable gains.
The American Prospect https://prospect.org/economy/2023-01-25-pitched-battle-corporate-power/

#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GreedKillsTheEconomy
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#MonopoliesKillTheEconomy
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden signed one of the most sweeping changes to domestic policy since FDR. It was not legislation: His signature climate and health law would take another year to gestate. This was a request that the government get into the business of fostering competition in the U.S. economy again.

Flanked by Cabinet officials and agency heads, Biden condemned Robert Bork’s pro-corporate legal revolution in the 1980s, which destroyed antitrust, leading to concentrated markets, raised prices, suppressed wages, stifled innovation, weakened growth, and robbing citizens of the liberty to pursue their talents. Competition policy, Biden said, “is how we ensure that our economy isn’t about people working for capitalism; it’s about capitalism working for people.”

The executive order outlines a whopping 72 different actions, but with a coherent objective. It seeks to revert government’s role back to that of the Progressive and New Deal eras. Breaking up monopolies was a priority then, complemented by numerous other initiatives—smarter military procurement, common-carrier requirements, banking regulations, public options—that centered competition as a counterweight to the industrial leviathan.

It’s been a year and a half since Biden signed the executive order; its architect, Tim Wu, has since rotated out of government. Not all of the 72 actions have been completed, though many have. Some were instituted rapidly; others have been agonizing. Some agencies have taken the president’s urging to heart; others haven’t. But the new mindset is apparent.

Seventeen federal agencies are named specifically, tasked with writing rules, tightening guidelines, and ramping up enforcement.
...
The small team that envisioned and executed the competition order put the weight of the presidency behind it, delivering a loud message to return to the fight against concentrations of power. It’s alarming and maybe a little disconcerting that you have to use a high-level form of peer pressure to flip the ship of state. But that battleship is starting to change course.
...
THE EXECUTIVE ORDER’S PREAMBLE VALIDATES Khan and Kanter’s aggressive perspective on competition policy, hinting at the practices of previous reform eras. For example, antitrust enforcement since the Bork revolution of the 1980s has relied solely on one criterion: Does an anti-competitive action explicitly harm consumer welfare, defined as higher prices. But the preamble to Biden’s order stresses the plight of workers in a concentrated economy, which impedes the ability “to bargain for higher wages and better work conditions.” Though the consequences of too few buyers in an economy (monopsony) had been the subject of numerous studies in recent years, presidential-level discussion of monopsony and monopoly in the same breath was novel.
...
Perhaps the most quietly radical passage of the preamble states that “the United States retains the authority to challenge transactions whose previous consummation was in violation” of the antitrust laws, citing the Standard Oil breakup of 1911 as an example. Retroactive merger review had essentially been abandoned since the Microsoft case in the late 1990s. “We wanted to bring it back to the mainstream of conversation,” Wu said."

Part 2
The GOP is so dirty!! They have colluded with Russia to steal elections and destroy our democracy--neither Putin or the GOP have any use for democracy. They've created unwarranted investigations, as the House GOP is about to start more, they've weaponized the Justice Dept. even as they falsely claim that Democrats did that, they worked with a high-ranking Justice Dept. official, who just so happened to be on Putin's payroll, to "steal" the 2016 election from Hillary, and they all worked together to steal the 2020 election. They are guilty of treason among other heinous crimes against our country and democracy! They don't care about governing or helping our country, they only care about seizing power anyway possible and lavishing tax cuts and gutting regulations on their donors/benefactors. When is their base going to wake up to how shamelessly they have been manipulated and used to destroy our country and democracy!

Opinion | Barr is the one who outrageously politicized the Justice Department - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/justice-department-barr-dunham/

#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPGreedy

"...Joyce White Vance concurred:

"Three responses are warranted, although sadly none is likely to hold Barr accountable.

Jaw dropping reporting. Lots here including an explanation of why Durham's colleague resigned: under pressure from Barr to release an "interim" report damaging Clinton & the FBI as the election drew near, Durham had a draft prepared that wasn't factual."

First and foremost, Attorney General Merrick Garland should have the spine to remove Durham for gross misconduct. Moreover, any report issued should remove the names of those exonerated in court or who were never charged. They are victims of a political smear, which Garland should not enable by allowing baseless allegations to circulate publicly. Don’t hold your breath, however. Garland has shown little willingness to revisit the department’s conduct in the prior administration. (As an alternative, the inspector general could investigate Barr and Durham.)

Frankly, Garland erred in never conducting a top-to-bottom review of politicization during the Trump era (including Barr’s politicization of sentencing recommendations and the department’s misrepresentations in the U.S. Census case). Instead of prioritizing the department’s outside reputation over the need to remove the stench of corruption, Garland should have gotten to the bottom of the Barr/Durham debacle long ago. (At the very least, it would have preempted the false MAGA narrative that Democrats have been the ones engaged in misconduct).

Second, Barr and Durham should face disciplinary action just as coup architect John Eastman (coincidentally on Thursday) was charged with 11 counts by the California state bar for “violating a variety of attorney ethics rules in multiple episodes, court cases and other conduct,” as CNN put it. Unless and until attorneys such as Barr and Durham face accountability, the threat of professional disgrace and the loss of their law license, other lawyers will be tempted to engage in such shenanigans.However, Eastman, Jeffrey Clark (facing bar proceedings) and Rudy Giuliani (suspended from practice in New York) have sadly been the exception to the rule of sloth and passivity from state bars. Scores of attorneys who signed onto frivolous lawsuits after the 2020 and 2022 elections (including challenging Kari Lake’s defeat in Arizona) have yet to face any penalty.

The list of attorneys who participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 election but as yet have faced no consequences (Kenneth Chesebro, Cleta Mitchell) is far too long. (And none of the members of Congress who signed onto the utterly baseless Supreme Court brief seeking to disenfranchise millions of Americans has been taken to task.) State bars need to do their job to restore integrity to the legal profession.

Finally, Congress should be investigating Barr and Durham’s gross misconduct. You can be sure, however, that MAGA Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and the “weaponization of government” select subcommittee won’t be interested.

Two options remain, however. Senate Democrats can take up the matter, hold public hearings and demand answers from Garland as to why he has not cleaned house already. In addition, Democrats on the weaponization subcommittee should press at every hearing to investigate this matter and, when Republican witnesses are called, demand they respond to the facts regarding Barr and Durham.
...
In sum, just as Garland seeks to hold accountable political leaders who threatened our democracy, he must hold his own department lawyers’ responsible for misconduct. If not, an inspector general, state bars and congressional Democrats should do the job.""

Part 1
The GOP is so dirty!! They have colluded with Russia to steal elections and destroy our democracy--neither Putin or the GOP have any use for democracy. They've created unwarranted investigations, as the House GOP is about to start more, they've weaponized the Justice Dept. even as they falsely claim that Democrats did that, they worked with a high-ranking Justice Dept. official, who just so happened to be on Putin's payroll, to "steal" the 2016 election from Hillary, and they all worked together to steal the 2020 election. They are guilty of treason among other heinous crimes against our country and democracy! They don't care about governing or helping our country, they only care about seizing power anyway possible and lavishing tax cuts and gutting regulations on their donors/benefactors. When is their base going to wake up to how shamelessly they have been manipulated and used to destroy our country and democracy!

Opinion | Barr is the one who outrageously politicized the Justice Department - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/justice-department-barr-dunham/

#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPGreedy

"House Republicans are right that politicization of the Justice Department has been a jaw-dropping abuse of power. They’ve got the wrong culprit, however. As a blockbuster New York Times article made clear, then-Attorney General William P. Barr and special counsel John H. Durham engaged in unethical, abusive manipulation of the Justice Department in pursing the baseless conspiracy theory that the intelligence community had conducted a witch hunt of then-President Donald Trump in connection with Russian manipulation of the 2016 election.

The Times reported that “the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.” Durham brought two baseless cases, both resulting in acquittal. When Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s thorough investigation debunked their entire theory, Barr tried to pressure him to keep it under wraps. Then, as he did with the Robert S. Mueller III report, Barr publicly mischaracterized and trashed the report.

Durham also used a grand jury to pry into the record of major Democratic donor George Soros. Moreover, while supposedly operating independently, he met frequently with his pal Barr, in violation of the basic precept that a special counsel must operate with a high degree of independence. (From the Times article: “Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work. They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together.”)

Worst of all:

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
Their conduct was so egregious that several career prosecutors quit rather than participate in (to borrow a phrase) the witch hunt. In the end, Barr conceded there was no there there — but only after the 2020 election.

Former prosecutors reacting to the Times report were outraged. Andrew Weissmann tweeted, “This is all about the Trump weaponization of the DOJ — but we know that the House Rs won’t give a damn about it.” ...

The GOP has been for sale like this for decades. They take huge donations from fossil fuel companies and then do their bidding to keep us addicted to fossil fuels. The GOP isn't even pretending to care about climate change and neither are their fossil fuel donors. The GOP-appointed supreme court justices made this kind of bribery legal exactly for these purposes. They have handed the government over to large business interests and the wealthy. What democracy?!

GOP House Puts Big Oil's Revolving Door Into High Gear https://www.commondreams.org/news/accountable-us-maga-big-oil

#GreedKills
#GOPInBedWithBigOil
#LegalizedBribery
#CitizensUnited
#GreedKillsDemocracy

""These lobbyists are not getting hired to advocate for American energy consumers—they will push an agenda that benefits the new majority's donors no matter what it costs taxpayers."

An analysis published Friday by the nonpartisan watchdog Accountable.US revealed that numerous former fossil fuel lobbyists are being hired to work for the Republican-controlled 118th Congress, including in high-level positions on the House Natural Resources Committee.

"As the Republicans majority begins the new Congress, former oil industry lobbyists will have new and growing influence as top staffers for congressmen on key committees," the analysis states.

Accountable.US detailed the close ties between Nancy Peele—chief of staff to House Natural Resources Committee Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.)—and fossil fuel interests.

"It's no surprise that Big Oil is infiltrating the halls of Congress after spending millions to elect some of the most extreme legislators in American history."

Peele's history includes:

Lobbying Congress on behalf of Taylor Energy Co. LLC, an oil company liable for causing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the "longest running oil spill in U.S. history";
Representing Hercules Offshore Inc., a gas company that caused a "massive blowout" and two-day fire in the Gulf of Mexico; and Lobbying on behalf of Hornbeck Offshore Services to ensure that they continued to profit off the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The publication continues:
Majority Leader Steve Scalise's [R-La.] Chief of Staff Megan Bel Miller came to Scalise's office straight out of working as an oil and gas lobbyist... Miller lobbied Congress on behalf of National Oceans Industry Association, a group representing the offshore oil and gas industry. Bel Miller advocated for polluting industry interests on numerous conservation issues, including the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and offshore leasing. Majority Whip Tom Emmer's [R-Minn.] new Policy Director Ian Foley is an energy and mining lobbyist. In 2022, Foley lobbied Congress on behalf of the uranium mining industry and public utilities with oil and gas portfolios.
These are but a handful of the many examples of the revolving door between Big Oil and Congress highlighted in the analysis.

"It's no surprise that Big Oil is infiltrating the halls of Congress after spending millions to elect some of the most extreme legislators in American history," Accountable.US energy and environment director Jordan Schreiber said in a statement. "These lobbyists are not getting hired to advocate for American energy consumers—they will push an agenda that benefits the new majority's donors no matter what it costs taxpayers."

Underscoring the analysis' findings, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation that would require the federal government to lease a portion of public lands and waters for fossil fuel extraction for each non-emergency drawdown of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill was introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee and was the top recipient of oil and gas PAC money in the House Republican caucus during the last election cycle."

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."