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."

Far too many Americans aren't aware of how far the GOP has gone down the road of authoritarianism while abandoning democracy and this is mostly the media's fault. Is the media blind and delusional in not seeing what is right in front of their eyes, too cowardly or profit-oriented to rock the boat or are they complicit in this lurch away from democracy? Either way, our democracy hangs in the balance and it is long past time to call the GOP what it is. The party that wants to kill democracy, serve only the obscenely wealthy and help them get their serfs back.

Goodbye, CNN's Chris Licht. But what's the lesson? https://robertreich.substack.com/p/goodbye-cnns-chris-licht-but-whats?

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#TheRichOwnTheMedia

"CNN sought to move to a "center" that no longer exists
ROBERT REICH

As I predicted yesterday, Chris Licht is out at CNN.

David Zaslav — CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN — delivered the news this morning to CNN staff, noting that Licht’s job "was never going to be easy" and that Licht had "poured his heart and soul into it."

What should CNN or any other media enterprise learn from this debacle?

The lesson is that Licht’s goal of shifting CNN from anti-Trump confrontation toward an imagined political center was doomed from the start, because there is no longer a political center.

For years now — since Newt Gingrich took over the House in 1995 — Americans have been moving toward either authoritarianism or democracy.

The old political center of “liberal” Republicans like Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller and “conservative” Democrats like Scoop Jackson and Joe Lieberman (and, some would say, Bill Clinton) has been disappearing.

Before Newt there had been stirrings of rightwing fascism — led by Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, and by George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew in the 1960s.

But Newt turned the growing anger of the non-college white working class into the beginnings of an authoritarian political movement that would undergird the Republican Party for the next thirty years.

By 2016, Donald Trump was helpful to anyone who still had trouble making the choice between authoritarianism and democracy. Trump required they take sides.

Chris Licht’s predecessor at CNN was Jeff Zucker, who understood that the only big pool of viewers available to CNN were those who still believed in democracy. Zucker competed mightily with MSNBC for them.

Trump was helpful to Zucker in the same way he was helpful to Americans who had trouble making the choice. Trump forced viewers to choose between Fox News and the alternative, thereby giving Zucker’s CNN a fitting nemesis.

CNN’s new management came along at a time of establishment confusion over whether the old political center would return after Trump. America’s business establishment — including Warner Bros Discovery billionaire John Malone — hoped it would. But that proved a pipe dream. The division between authoritarianism and democracy is now too deep. If anyone had any doubts, CNN’s Trump town hall should have erased them.

What especially confused Chris Licht and the rest of CNN’s management was the difference between being politically partisan, and standing up against authoritarian demagogues. They assumed that holding Trump accountable for what he did (and continues to do) was inconsistent with so-called “balanced journalism.”

Wrong. It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy. That’s where CNN’s audience wanted — and presumably still wants — CNN to be.

That’s where most Americans want the nation to be."

They bought/groomed the GOP into their lapdog and they are doing the same with the media, all in an attempt to undermine our democracy and disinform the voting public. These obscenely wealthy, insecure, selfish, greedy, and power-hungry jerks, want to impose their will and views on our country as if it were theirs alone.

Why did CNN do it? - Robert Reich https://robertreich.substack.com/p/after-last-night-anyone-still-trust?

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#CNNIsNowFoxLite

"Why in hell did CNN give Donald Trump a full hour of prime-time television before an audience of ardent supporters who applauded every lie and laughed at every sexist insult?

The germ of an answer could be found last August, when Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, canceled Brian Stelter’s Sunday show, “Reliable Sources,” which had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican party.

Licht also fired Stelter and his staff.

The show had been commercially successful. It was doing better than several of CNN’s prime-time shows.

Around the same time, Licht told CNN staff they should stop referring to Donald Trump’s “big lie” because the phrase sounded like a Democratic party talking point. Licht also told the staff he wanted more “straight news reporting,” along with more conservative guests.

Why?

Follow the money. CNN’s new corporate overseer is Warner Bros. Discovery Inc, whose CEO is David Zaslav.

Zaslav has been pushing Licht to reposition CNN to be a network preferred by “everybody … Republicans, Democrats.”

But CNN was never going to be the network preferred by Republicans. Fox News has that sewn up.

Besides, facts, data, and logic are no longer relevant to the Republican base.

The anti-democracy movement in America is among the biggest issues confronting America today. Is reporting on it considered “straight news” or “opinion?” Wouldn’t failing to report on it in a way that sounded alarms be a gross dereliction of duty?
...
So, what’s motivating Zaslav? Keep following the money.

The leading shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery is John Malone, a multibillionaire cable magnate. (Malone was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN.)

Malone describes himself as a “libertarian” although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone also wants the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist.”

It’s unlikely that Malone instructed Zaslav to tell Licht to fire Stelter. Power isn’t exercised that clumsily in large corporate media bureaucracies.

It’s more likely that Licht knew what Zaslav wanted, and Zaslav knew what Malone wanted. A source told Deadline’s Dominic Patten and Ted Johnson that even if Malone didn’t order Stelter’s ouster, “it sure represents his thinking.”

When you follow the money behind deeply irresponsible decisions at the power centers of America today, the road often leads to right-wing billionaires.
...
Last August, on his last show, Stelter said:

“It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces.”

Precisely.

Sadly, there are still many in America — and not just billionaires like Malone — who believe that holding Trump accountable for what he has done (and continues to do) to this country is a form of partisanship, and that such partisanship has no place in so-called “balanced journalism.”

This belief is itself dangerous.

After I first criticized Licht for the direction he was pushing CNN, he phoned me. He was angry that I doubted his motives, and said he took the top job at CNN because he “believes in journalism.”

When I mentioned the particularly challenging time American journalism now finds itself in — with Trump, most of the Republican Party, and most Republican candidates for office denying that the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden, thereby on the way to undermining America democracy — Licht agreed that it’s challenging. He said, emphatically, that this was why he is so deeply committed to restoring CNN’s credibility as an “unbiased” source of news that “people can feel they can trust.”

Well, Chris, after what you did last night, you can forget the public’s trust in CNN."

The crazy nutjobs on the right, are going all in on Putin. Is that because they are all about authoritarianism and fascism or because they want his help winning elections? Clearly, they aren't interested in what's best for the U.S. as a whole. It's more about what will help them personally and their benefactors, the obscenely wealthy who see no personal advantage to democracy but would love an autocracy they control and their serfs back!

Rachel Maddow Calls Out The Doomed Pro-Putin Republicans https://www.politicususa.com/2023/02/20/rachel-maddow-calls-out-the-doomed-pro-putin-republicans.html

#RightWingLovesPutin
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#TheObscenelyWealthyHateDemocracy

"Rachel Maddow put a spotlight on the Republicans from Tulsi Gabbard to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis who criticized Biden’s historic trip to Ukraine.

Maddow said:

'This one tiny event, it was small. It was a weird assemblage of Americans. There were Proud Boys there. Some of the white supremacist groups you would recognize from the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville a few years ago. Also represented prominently, the remains of the bizarre Lyndon LaRouche cult. There were people with flags including the former Soviet Union.

Also, at least one person who guest hosts for Tucker Carlson on the Fox News Channel was there as a featured speaker. There were antivaccine conspiracy theorists, a lot of them. There were cryptocurrency promoters. It was a really weird group. It was a small rally and a weird one. But that’s what it looks like.
That assemblage of short straws and split ends and loose electrons that is advocating in this country that Russia is in the right and America should be on Putin’s side as he keeps invading other countries. I mean no disrespect to the Americans who turned out as part of this small event this weekend. But it’s not like they represent a big constituency that is arguing for this pro-Russia point of view.

While this happened this weekend, while president Biden was heading to Kyiv secretly, once he got there today and we found out that he had made the trip to Kyiv. At least one pro-Trump member of congress who happens to have a seat on the Homeland Security Committee called for him to be impeached for having gone to Ukraine. Other pro-Trump members of congress said it was a disgrace and a shame and how dare president Biden go to Ukraine today. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who wants the run for president, apparently he went on the Fox News Channel this morning and said President Biden was wrong to go and we shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine in this war. Whatever Russia is doing, it is nothing to worry about.

Again, it is not clear in political terms what the big constituency is for this stuff. But that is where at least the Trump and Trump-ish wing of the Republican party says they are on this issue. And good luck to them with it.'

Rachel Maddow brought up an interesting point. Who are the Trump Republicans catering to? It doesn’t seem to be a domestic pro-Russia audience, so it is logical to suspect that the person the GOP is catering to is Putin. Russia has spent decades attempting to infiltrate both political parties, but almost all of its success has come on the Republican side.

Republicans saw what Russian election meddling was able to do in 2016, so it could be that they are lobbying for the same support from Putin in 2024.

Murdoch has damaged the democracies of Australia, the U.K. and America, all for greed, power and god knows what else. He needs to be held accountable! The people who have most benefited from his actions, the obscenely wealthy and their foot servants, politicians, media personalities, lobbyists, etc., want democracy to fail so they can do whatever they want with no oversight or regulations. They would love to siphon all the money out of education, social security and medicare, while they're at it. Rupert has been their go-to guy, helping them destroy democracy and the middle class.

Twitter Foes Call For Rupert Murdoch To Be Deported After Peddling Fox News Lies | HuffPost Latest News https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rupert-murdoch-american-citizenship-deport-twitter_n_63f15168e4b0c87f32f1abd2

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheToolOfTheRich

"The billionaire's critics are raging on social media to boot him out of the country.

Twitter critics are lining up to demand Australian-born right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported after undermining American democracy with a cascade of recently revealed Fox News lies about the 2020 presidential election.

Murdoch, whose media operations frequently rail against immigration, became an American citizen in 1985, which allowed him to circumvent a law barring foreign nationals from owning more than 20% of a U.S. broadcasting license.
...
Despite Murdoch’s lucrative citizenship switch, he’s apparently no big fan of U.S. democracy. He and Fox News continued to peddle Donald Trump’s baseless claim of a fraudulent presidential election that news hosts and executives didn’t believe, according to a bombshell brief filed earlier this week.

Murdoch blasted a memorably unhinged press conference by Trump ally Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell after Trump’s election loss that bizarrely claimed voting machine software had been manipulated in a plot spearheaded by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who had been in the grave for seven years by then.

“Really crazy stuff. And damaging,” Murdoch wrote in a November 2020 text message, revealed in a brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems. The company is suing Fox News and its parent Fox Corporation for $1.6 billion over alleged defamation.

Carlson said in a message obtained by Dominion that Powell was “lying” about having proof of her wild claims and called Trump a “demonic force,” according to the brief. Fox executives were so worried about the danger Trump posed that they refused to allow him on Lou Dobbs’ program on Jan. 6, 2021, deeming that to do so would be “irresponsible,” the brief noted.

Yet despite that, Murdoch’s Fox continued to support Trump and his tale of a rigged election to pander to the former president’s supporters.

Now, his enemies are raging on Twitter to boot him out of the country."

All these policy solutions would address not just the racial wealth gap, but the growing inequality in our country. They would help everyone by lifting those who need help the most and improving conditions and the economy for all of us. These are no-brainers, yet the GOP and their obscenely wealthy donors will oppose these with all they've got, as will their base who will also benefit from these policies, but who are happy to cut off their own noses if it keeps blacks and other minorities from being helped.

Reparations and the Enduring Wealth Gap | The Brian Lehrer Show | WNYC https://www.wnyc.org/story/reparations-and-enduring-wealth-gap/

#Racism
#RacialWealthGap
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#AllInThisTogether

"EPI economist Kyle Moore spoke with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer to discuss solutions to our country’s persistent—and growing—racial wealth gap.

Some policy solutions would benefit Americans more broadly—but would benefit Black workers and families disproportionately, helping to close gaps. These include a $15 federal minimum wage, universal health care, a federal jobs guarantee, baby bonds, and legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize.

______

Related:Unions help reduce disparities
and strengthen our democracy
______

More direct forms of reparation are being explored by some state and local governments. But, Moore says, “A plan that’s going to work to close the racial wealth gap on a national level has to come from the federal government.”

The federal government has the capacity to do so, says Moore. It is also the culpable party: It supported the institution of chattel slavery; it allowed the Reconstruction effort to fail and Jim Crow to rise; and it has perpetuated further systemic racial injustices, including redlining and mass incarceration. "

Musk is now clearly a right-wing nutjob/villian! He's an active participant in the right-wing/Murdoch/Putin/Oligarch's war to destroy liberal democracies and replace them with oligarchies. They are all clearly deranged, insecure, power-hungry, dysfunctional sociopaths who will destroy our functioning societies so they can have their ways!

"The "shadowbanning" myth is a pretext to boost far-right voices on social media — even if people don't follow them"

Elon Musk's latest Twitter tantrum is an attempt to amplify propaganda | Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2023/02/14/elon-musks-latest-twitter-tantrum-is-an-attempt-to-amplify-propaganda/

#ElonAndRupertIncahoots
#ElonRightWingNutJob
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#RightWingPowerHungry
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"The cartoonish villainy of Tesla CEO Elon Musk leveled up again last week after he fired an engineer for the high crime of telling him the truth.

Musk...was mad that his personal account wasn't getting more likes and retweets. The obvious reason for this is that Musk's tweets are boring. They're often sub-replacement-level right-wing trolling or failed attempts at humor...He's just not that interesting to people who aren't being paid to pretend to like him.
...
his tantrum is part of a larger Republican strategy of using false accusations of social media "bias" against the right as leverage to pressure the companies into disseminating even more right-wing propaganda — often to people who didn't ask for it. The goal is to create the illusion that far-right ideas are more popular than they actually are, helping normalize and mainstream the MAGA movement's war on democracy.

It's the same "working the referees" tactic that has long worked to tilt the mainstream media into a pro-Republican bias that often veers into outright disinformation. For decades, Republicans have used false claims of "liberal bias" to bully journalists into minimizing negative coverage of the right, while elevating often baseless stories about the left. It's how a nonsense story about Hillary Clinton's emails ended up dominating 2016 election coverage, while genuinely troubling stories about Donald Trump's long history of crime, from sexual assault to tax fraud, received only a fraction of the coverage. It's why the media currently conflates a real scandal regarding Donald Trump stealing and hiding classified documents with a nothingburger about President Joe Biden turning over accidentally filed documents without a fuss.
...
A delusional insistence that conservatives are subject to imaginary "shadowbanning."
...
On the contrary, study after study shows that social media is biased toward right-wing opinions, and toward spreading false information, despite the half-baked efforts to stop it.
...
But the myth of shadowbanning does serve a purpose on the right: It's a pretext to pressure social media companies to favor right-wing content, and even to go so far as to push it into the feeds of people who have not sought it out.
...
On the contrary, though Musk went out of his way to restore neo-Nazis, bigots, and other hate-tweeters, MAGA bloggers continued to bellyache about totally imaginary blacklisting. To make things worse, congressional Republicans like Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, have started to whine about non-existent "shadowbans," as well, often solely because they think they should be getting more retweets than they're getting.
...
The real concern is that tweaking the algorithms so that more authoritarian propaganda is visible will impact the heavily overlapping groups of gullible people and members of the mainstream press. Having far-right opinions crop up more often will have a subconscious effect. It will make those ideas seem more popular, more normal, and more reasonable than they are. It will open up more people to radicalization and cause the mainstream press to take preposterous GOP nonsense more seriously than they would have otherwise.

All of which is no doubt the point. The same day Musk used jargon-laden tweets to hint at a more right-leaning and disinfo-laden site, he showed up in a box seat next to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch at the Super Bowl. Murdoch, of course, has spent years using the trappings of cable news to create the illusion of credibility for right-wing propaganda. He did so by claiming right wing lies were necessary as "balance" to the mainstream media. Musk's presence by his side was a clear signal that Musk has similar goals for using social media to whitewash repugnant lies..."

Part 1
Wealthy right-wing extremists are trying to "buy" the racist, oligarchic, Christian nationalist country they want and dismantle public education, democracy and the separation of church and state. They are actively plotting and working to destroy our multi-ethnic, liberal democracy!

“Parents Defending Education” is overwhelmingly funded by big donors’ dark money rather than by “concerned parents.”

Tax Docs Link Right-Wing “Parents Group” to Leonard Leo’s Dark Money Network - Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/tax-docs-link-right-wing-parents-group-to-leonard-leos-dark-money-network/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#Fascism
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"Right-wing operatives are increasing their attacks on U.S. public education with an expanding number of legal complaints to censor books and target teachers on an array of issues —preventing them from teaching U.S. history accurately, treating LGBTQ+ students with the respect they deserve, and forming support groups for kids and teachers of color. These attacks will likely continue to escalate through 2024 as wedge issues intended to feed the right-wing voting base and lay the groundwork for redirecting funds from public schools to private recipients.

One of the main players in these attacks is Parents Defending Education (PDE), a dark money nonprofit group launched in 2021 in the midst of the Virginia state election cycle. Over the past two years, PDE has become a central actor in the right-wing assault on public schools across the nation. The group has trained local agitators to grab media attention, sued school districts for supposed anti-white discrimination, and railed against the teaching of social emotional learning, accurate U.S. history, and even ethnic studies in schools.

Lawyers affiliated with PDE filed at least four complaints in January with the U.S. Department of Education claiming affinity groups for kids or teachers are illegal. These are just a few of the many complaints the group has filed over the past two years.

As dark money in education expert Maurice Cunningham has written, PDE’s “real goal” in filing lawsuits and complaints appears to be to “create media attention and promote chaos and disruption.” Then groups like PDE can claim the solution to the chaos is increased right-wing “parental supervision” over school boards. That supervision appears to involve a minority of vocal, politically motivated parents dictating what other people’s kids are taught or what they can read, based on whether such lessons or books are consistent with their right-wing religious beliefs and political opinions.

PDE’s speakers are often portrayed in the media as simply “concerned parents,” despite the group’s ties to the network of oil billionaire Charles Koch, far right politicians and school privatization efforts. Due to the timetables for the filing of nonprofit IRS forms, the amount PDE had raised to mount these attacks was unknown — until now.

PDE’s 2021 990 nonprofit IRS form shows that the group raised more than $3.1 million in its first year, even though many genuinely local grassroots efforts take years to raise that much money. That form does not reveal how much money PDE raised in 2022, during the congressional midterm elections; the amount it received to fuel its operations last year is likely even higher than 2021. The $3.1 million disclosed for 2021 also does not include any money raised that year by PDE Action, its (c)(4) advocacy arm.

What does the new filing show? First, it reveals that although PDE describes itself as a group of concerned parents, almost all of its funding came from major donors rather than dues from parents. Specifically, PDE raised only $77,272 from membership dues out of the $3,178,345 it was given that year by funders who were not members.

That is, only 2 percent of the group’s funding came from local parents who paid a $10 fee for membership. The vast majority of PDE’s funding comes from big secret sources underwriting the attacks on public education, sources that paid the group a lot more than $10 in membership dues.

PDE’s figure and its disclosed fee suggest that around 7,700 people have paid dues, which would constitute .01 percent of all of the parents in the U.S. It’s a case study in the squeaky wheel getting the grease..."

Part 2
Wealthy right-wing extremists are trying to "buy" the racist, oligarchic, Christian nationalist country they want and dismantle public education, democracy and the separation of church and state. They are actively plotting and working to destroy our multi-ethnic, liberal democracy!

“Parents Defending Education” is overwhelmingly funded by big donors’ dark money rather than by “concerned parents.”

Tax Docs Link Right-Wing “Parents Group” to Leonard Leo’s Dark Money Network https://truthout.org/articles/tax-docs-link-right-wing-parents-group-to-leonard-leos-dark-money-network/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#Fascism
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"...Accordingly, the services Leo’s CRC Advisors provided to PDE are not publicly known.

Leo’s ambitions are, however.

Following on his success in capturing the Supreme Court — he hand-selected Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch for Donald Trump and opposed Democratic nominees to the court — Leo announced his plans to dominate other parts of society. He told The New York Times in a 2022 interview that he sought to take the lessons learned from his decades of experience pushing the law to reflect the right-wing agenda and apply them to “other areas of American cultural, policy, and political life.”

Leo’s desire to influence public education seems clear through the efforts of the groups his network is known to be funding.
...
Free to Learn was active in the 2021 gubernatorial race in Virginia, where the right-wing media credited the win of Republican Glenn Youngkin to his success in leveraging attacks on the state’s public schools. In September 2021, the group dropped more than $1 million in ads targeting Loudoun County alone. PDE was launched that year and was also intensely focused on public attacks on Virginia’s public schools.
...
IWF actively attacked Virginia schools as “toxic” during the 2021 governor’s race and has increasingly attempted to discredit public schools by promoting anti-trans fear mongering and assailing masking and vaccine requirements designed to keep students and staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. IWF has also supported an array of measures to privatize public schools or redirect public school funding.
...
For example, in 1986, Robert Thoburn, who later joined the Council for National Policy — a secretive group of powerful Christian/Catholic nationalists where Leo has been and may still be on the board of governors — explained in his book, The Children Trap: “I imagine every Christian would agree that we need to remove the humanism from the public schools. There is only one way to accomplish this: to abolish the public schools.” He urged Christians to run for school boards with the intent “to sink the ship.”

The Christian and Catholic right-wing has had significant success since then in targeting public schools. Since 2020 in particular, right-wing political operatives have sought to take over local school boards — throwing money into flipping control of boards of education across the country — with recent wins in some districts in Texas, California and Florida — and pushing for the banning of books they disapprove of in public schools.

PDE also filed an amicus brief in a pair of cases before the Supreme Court, where the right-wing supermajority is poised to gut affirmative action at the behest of a veritable army of Leo-tied groups. These groups, which Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has dubbed the “amicus flotilla,” provide support for the right-wing justices on the court to undercut Americans’ rights and overturn long-standing legal precedents.

Those cases were brought forward by the right-wing group Students for Fair Admissions, which itself received a quarter-million dollars from Leo’s 85 Fund in 2020. Ed Blum, who sits on PDE’s board, is a plaintiff in the joint case, despite not being a student at either of the universities being sued.

All this shows how PDE’s sudden arrival has been met with major funding from secret sources as it continues to portray itself in the media as merely “local moms.” The local activists PDE has aided are not paid the big bucks that PDE’s president pays herself, but they are benefiting from a multimillion-dollar infrastructure Neily has created to assail schools and teachers across the country, an operation that appears to be expanding as the group enters its third year of operation and eyes the 2024 elections."

The Rich have used their stooges, the GOP, to rig the economy in their favor. The rest of us have paid the price! Yet too many GOP voters are oblivious to this.

From a tweet by:
Fifty Shades of Whey
@davenewworld_2

This is what a rigged economy looks like

#Greed
#GreedKills
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

It's like I'm beating a dead horse yet the GOP won't stop sucking up to the obscenely wealthy and doing their bidding. They both hate working Americans and want them to suffer. They can't stand social security, medicare, SNAP, student loan forgiveness, Medicare expansion or unemployment benefits. The wealthy want bailouts, regulations rolled back, zero taxes, refunds and social welfare but don't want anything to go to the rest of us. Their quest for ever more money, possessions, power and esteem has left them hollowed out internally, resentful, hateful and cruel. They have become parasites that suck the vital juices out of our economy so that there is little left for the rest of us who are the ones that are generating all the productivity and wealth that they hoover up. Inequality has left them callous, uncaring, hateful and heartless and the GOP is happy to be their lap dog for scraps.

'Republicans keep saying the quiet part out loud': Pence calls for privatizing Social Security - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/economy/gop-2659378942/

#GOPRTools4TheRich
#TheRichHateAvgAmericans
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#TheRichRParasites
#Socialism4MeAndCapitalism4Thee
#GOPHatesAvgAmericans

"Experts have forcefully rejected the notion that private savings accounts of the kind Pence endorsed—which would allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll tax contributions into private investment accounts—would be more beneficial than Social Security's guaranteed benefits, as the former vice president suggested.

"The popular argument that Social Security privatization would provide higher returns for all current and future workers is misleading, because it ignores transition costs and differences across programs in the allocation of aggregate and household risk," Olivia Mitchell, John Geanakopolos, and Stephen Zeldes—economists sympathetic to the idea of privatization—wrote in a 2000 paper.

Experts have also said private accounts would not, as Pence put it, "save the government money."

In 2005, analysts with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated that a privatization plan put forth by former Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) and former Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would "create $85.8 trillion in additional debt (equal to 93.7% of GDP) by 2050" while not boosting Social Security's long-term solvency—something Republicans claim they want to do.

"Creation of a system of private accounts would not change the amount of revenue coming into the federal government, but it would increase government spending, because the federal government would be making regular payments into the private accounts," the CBPP analysts explained. "These payments would represent new government spending. This increase in spending, unaccompanied by an increase in revenues, would widen annual deficits."

Despite the myriad drawbacks of private accounts as a partial or full-scale alternative to Social Security, Republicans have continued to promote them.

Last year, the Republican Study Committee—a panel that Pence chaired during the Bush administration—released a budget proposal that urged lawmakers to "consider legislative options that allow employers and employees to reduce their payroll tax liability and use those savings to invest in private retirement options."

Pence's remarks Thursday came as the White House and House Republicans are locked in a high-stakes standoff over the debt ceiling, which the GOP does not want to raise without also inflicting steep cuts to federal spending.

As part of their sweeping austerity push, House Republicans have suggested raising the retirement age, which would cut Social Security benefits across the board.

"Republicans keeping saying the quiet part out loud: They want to cut and privatize Social Security and take away our young people's futures," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted late Saturday. "Democrats will never let this happen.""

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 uses racism, fear and outrage to fire up its base for support/votes while cutting taxes and implementing policies that benefit its rich benefactors/donors, usually at the expense of the suckers that make up its base! Their base doesn't care if they don't have health care, living wages or retirement security, as long as blacks and other minorities don't have them.

In blocking an AP Black studies course, DeSantis tells us who he is
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/23/desantis-african-american-history-college-board/

#GOPRacist
#GOPAllianceOfDeplorables
#GOPDogWhistles
#GOPFascists
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"...DeSantis has made a name for himself by harassing Black voters, setting up a system to sue teachers for teaching race in ways that might offend Whites, singling out LGBTQ youth (while gagging teachers) and engaging in extreme gerrymandering to reduce the voting power of minorities.

Now he’s gone full-blown white supremacist, banning the College Board’s Advanced Placement for African American studies course from Florida’s schools.

In what is surely among its most explicitly racist actions, the DeSantis administration determined (on what basis?) that the course is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,”
...
Jean-Pierre...pointed out that state officials “didn’t block AP European History. … They didn’t block our art history. But the state chooses to block a course that is meant for high-achieving high school students to learn about their history of arts and culture.”
...
I hate to point out — for fear of putting a target on its back — that the University of Florida has an esteemed African American Studies program (as does virtually every other well-regarded university). “The African American Studies program is one of the fastest growing majors at UF,” the college’s website explains.
...
The university goes on to provide the essential historical context for the program: “Before 1958, a state law in Florida banned black attendance at public universities in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs. Between 1945 and 1958, 85 black students applied for admission to all levels of UF, and all were rejected.” The University of Florida, like many institutions in the South, was the site of “massive resistance” after Brown v. Board of Education mandated desegregation:
...
This is fact-based history, and Florida did not explain how the AP course supposedly contravened state law. If it is referencing last year’s Stop WOKE Act, which blocks the teaching of material that could make students feel guilt or responsibility for historical racism, then one has to wonder whether something as simple and straightforward as the state’s own history of segregated education can be studied.

The DeSantis administration’s actions put to lie the notion that the attack on “critical race theory” is aimed at “socialist ideas” or educationally suspect pedagogy. This is about rewriting history to wipe out a critical part of our American experience, to deny the wrongs done to millions of Americans and to exempt institutions from the obligation to take a hard look at remedying past injustice.
...
Janai S. Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told me, “If the new Advanced Placement Course on African American Studies violates Florida laws, as alleged by the Florida Department of Education, it only proves the unconstitutionality of the state’s laws.”
...
Historically, a key aspect of white supremacy has been the denial of Blacks’ own suffering, their historical experience and their current scholarship. It’s the ultimate expression of contempt for certain Americans as unworthy and peripheral to the story of “real” — read “White” — America. The goal here is unmistakable: eradication of African American historical experience.
...
The long effort to exclude a complete history of America has left millions of Americans sadly ignorant.
...
DeSantis and those playing to White grievance may prefer that students never learn about such figures and incidents. But considering the damage already done in under-educating Americans, perhaps African American studies (and a complete study of the diverse American experience) should be included in every K-12 curriculum for every student.

Ron DeSantis should remind us that if we want a fully aware, educated population capable of functioning as competent citizens in a diverse democracy, the rest of us need to push back against nefarious attempts to erase history."

The Federal Reserve is ignoring their mandate to keep employment high, as they have for years, because they are and have been focused on protecting the wealth of the obscenely wealthy. They have helped create the large transfer of wealth from the middle class to the 1%. Think of how many times the Fed has ran interest rates up to protect the wealthy, put average Americans out of jobs and reduce workers' ability to get higher wages. The Fed keeps the rich rich and the poor poor.

How the Federal Reserve Protects the Top One Percent https://prospect.org/economy/2023-01-19-inflation-federal-reserve-protects-one-percent/

#TheFedIsTheRichsTool
#GreedKills
#TheRichHateWorkers
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#ReformTheFed

"Our central bank operates by and for the financial elite.

It’s hard to understand why the Federal Reserve kept interest rates very low for most of three decades and then shifted to keeping them unnecessarily high—until you appreciate one thing. A paramount goal of the Fed is helping owners of capital conserve and increase their concentrated wealth. Then the apparent inconsistency makes perfect sense.

Chair Jerome Powell and the Fed are willing to impose significant costs on workers and families in order to reduce inflation. The Fed’s policy of raising interest rates—by more than four percentage points in the last year—can work only if the higher interest rates end up throwing millions of workers out of their jobs.

This focus on inflation, by promoting high unemployment, contradicts the dual mandate given to the Fed by Congress. Specifically, the Federal Reserve Act mandates that the central bank conduct monetary policy “so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.” Yet the Fed has been laser-focused on keeping inflation extremely low no matter the harm it may cause to the labor market or the economy.

Why does the Federal Reserve treat its high-employment mandate so cavalierly when inflation is above 2 percent? The answer stems from the fact that since its founding, Fed officials have seen the world through “finance colored” glasses. Financiers do not like high inflation.
...
Another reason, perhaps a more political and self-interested reason, is that bankers and other financiers sit on the boards of directors of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks and have a role in making monetary-policy decisions. Banks and other financial institutions provide “revolving door” jobs for outgoing Federal Reserve Board governors and staff.
...
As the economist Michal Kalecki noted in the 1940s, capitalists are wary of sustained high employment because it tends to empower workers by reducing their fear of the bosses’ biggest weapon: exile to the reserve army of the unemployed. So big corporate CEOs from most industries, like others who make up the top one percent (or higher) of wealth owners, are aligned in prioritizing inflation-fighting over maintaining high levels of employment.
...
In short, as a first approximation, the current Fed policy of rapidly raising interest rates to fight inflation by throwing people out of work serves as a wealth protection device for the top one percent.
...
Still, neither side of this debate is particularly concerned about the impacts of these policies on the employment prospects of workers and the poor.

The Fed’s goal of protecting the wealth of the one percent can help us understand the current Fed anti-inflation policy. But the same logic explains the Fed’s policy in eras of low inflation, as in the 1990s and 2000s when the Fed was very proactive in halting stock market declines by keeping interest rates low. When inflation and worker bargaining power are low, the tension described earlier disappears as low-interest rates help to pump up asset prices, such as the stock market, benefiting the top one percent and even the top 10 percent.
...
We can break out of the persistent Fed loyalty to society’s wealthiest only by continuing to push for structural reform and for Federal Reserve appointees who broadly promote the public interest and resist the undue influence of the one percent."

The New York Times is really losing it here! Like so many media outlets, they appear to be in the bag for the obscenely wealthy's plan to destroy our democracy, create an autocracy and get their serfs back!! After all, they like so much of the media, are owned by the wealthy. It's like they have instructed their reporters to make it look like both sides are too blame and that the GOP isn't a looney bin, hell-bent on destroying our democracy, and fresh off an insurrection attempt! With reporting like this, who needs Fox News propaganda!

The New York Times is bad for America https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/20/2148287/-The-New-York-Times-is-bad-for-America

#BothSiderism
#NYTNotJournalism
#GOPFascists
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#MediaByAnd4TheRich
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#NotNewsButDisinfo

"What happens when journalists walk through the doors at 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan? Are they forced to check their rationality at the door? Made to wear some kind of perception-altering goggles that prevent them from seeing reality and then telling the readers of The New York Times about it? Because here’s how they explain the debt ceiling crisis in their “Morning Newsletter,” with German Lopez in the byline:

The bad news: Democrats and Republicans are divided. House Republicans say they want to use a debt-limit increase—and the threat of default—as leverage to cut government spending. Top Democrats have likened the Republican stance to a hostage-taking situation. The sides can’t agree even on whether to negotiate.
QAnon has seized the House of Representatives, and for Lopez and New York Times editors, it’s a “Routine crisis.” That’s how they titled this piece, with “A political fight is again putting the economy at risk.” There is one small concession in the rampant both-sidesing in the piece: “But the willingness of some Republicans to risk going into default poses potentially dire consequences.”

“Some Republicans” being the ones who control the House of Representatives, and they aren’t “risking” going into default, they are planning to go into default. How extreme is this? Donald Trump—yes, that Donald Trump—is warning them that attempting to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare with the debt ceiling is bad. “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” he tells them in a new video.

Why does what the Times says even matter? It matters because a lot of smart people who don’t follow politics like the readers of Daily Kos follow politics come away assured that everything is perfectly normal in this fight. That it’s the same old partisan warfare they’ve been reading about for years and that it’s basically playacting. It not only generates cynicism from a public that thinks “if it’s in the Times, it must be right,” it gives them the impression that a) this is just how it works nowadays, and b) the Democrats are as responsible for this with their crazy spending ways as the GOP, which wants to blow the system to smithereens.

That’s the same GOP that tried to overthrow the government just two years ago. Speaking of, 11 of the 17 Republicans tapped to head up House committees voted on Jan. 6 to reject the 2020 presidential election results. After Trump’s violent mob ransacked the place. The all-important House Oversight Committee now features “13 election deniers, 10 impeach-Biden-world advocates, and 3 congressional subpoena dodgers.”

There really isn’t anything that the GOP can do that the Times will condemn as extreme and un-American, including creating a constitutional crisis over the debt limit. Because that’s what it ultimately is. The Constitution says, in a number of provisions, that the executive branch pays the nation’s debts and maintains a functional government. It also says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” Period.

More than that, though, what the GOP is threatening could amount to a global financial meltdown. Just one side in this fight thinks that’s a thing that could/should be allowed to happen. Just one side is clutching that hand grenade, ready to pull the pin.

And the Democrats are to be equally blamed for taking a firm stance against negotiating with these economic terrorists? Only if you get your news from the Times."

The MAGA, fascistic, democracy-hating, no-nothing, conspiracy-loving, insurrectionists are now in control of the house of representatives thanks to McCarthy and his benefactors who want to destroy democracy so they can have their serfs back. They want to make democracy look ineffective and chaotic so people will support them as they drown it in the bathtub. And the media, owned mostly by the wealthy, is poised to give them a free pass to do it.

Our media is determined to learn nothing from the Trump era
https://read.letterhead.email/standing-room-only/letter/10043

#GOPFascists
#MediaBothSiderism
#GOPInsurrectionists
#MAGAIdiots
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"Without the “will he or won’t he” tension behind Kevin McCarthy’s bid for Speakership driving attention, I fear the media attention on the MAGA grip on the GOP majority in the House has started to wane. But man, it really shouldn’t, because the steady drumbeat of committee appointments makes it clear that there is no real separation between MAGA and the GOP, and that Republicans are wholly the party of fascist insurrection now.

The debate over how seriously to take the committee assignments given to The Talented Mr. George Santos is, I feel, somewhat missing the point. It doesn’t matter if his committees are powerful. What matters is McCarthy is fully committed to empowering every fascist and grifter in the party, because he sincerely believes that is their road to power.

That’s why the House Oversight Committee is now a train wreck of the most devoted conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists in the GOP, such Reps. Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert. McCarthy isn’t even trying to be subtle or spin this as something it’s not. He wants everyone to know that the plan is to turn Congress into a full-time propaganda outlet against democracy and in favor of fascistic corruption. He’s rubbing our noses in it.

Alas, the mainstream media has learned nothing from the 2016 election and the role they played in demonizing Hillary Clinton while generally letting Trump off the hook for his very real crimes. Bothsiderism is a deep addiction. They are letting it justify pretending there’s an equivalence to Biden immediately turning over misfiled documents and Trump deliberately stealing documents, and then conspiring to hide the stolen goods.

That’s why I have no faith the media can resist covering the Oversight hearings on fake controversies. The one silver lining is that McCarthy empowered such clowns that it’s unlikely even the soft focus coverage afforded them on CNN will conceal the malicious lying and nuttiness. Certainly, the Biden White House thinks that’s the case, and seems less worried than amused by all this."

The GOP and the ones pulling their strings, the obscenely wealthy, have been trying to gut social security, medicare, and any programs, like public education, that help working-class Americans. they are vicious and cruel and get off on hurting the rest of us. They don't care about deficits when it comes to defense spending or tax cuts for the wealthy, but when Dems are in power and social programs are involved, they pretend to be fiscally responsible to mask their naked cruelty!

Paul Krugman: House Republicans will risk a 'financial crisis' to 'slash Social Security and Medicare' - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/debt-ceiling-2659212146/

#GOPHatesAvgAmericans
#TheRichHateUs
#GreedKills
#GreedKillsMorals
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"In a scathing column published on January 12, Krugman warns that the GOP’s new majority in the U.S. House of Representatives is determined to “slash” Social Security and Medicare and is willing to risk a “financial crisis” in order to do it.

“The Republicans who now control the House will soon try to slash Social Security and Medicare,” Krugman writes. “They plan to achieve this by holding the economy hostage, threatening to create a financial crisis by refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling. The interesting questions are why they want to do this, given that it appears politically suicidal, and how Democrats will respond.”

CNN, Krugman notes, has “obtained a screenshot of a slide presented at a closed-door Republican meeting” held on Tuesday, January 10. And the slide outlines some things that Republicans have in mind economically.

“The first bullet point calls for balancing the budget within 10 years, which is mathematically impossible without deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” Krugman explains. “The second calls for reforms to ‘mandatory spending’ — which is budget-speak for those same programs. And the final point calls for refusing to raise the debt limit unless these demands are met. So, the plan isn’t a mystery. I would add only that if Republicans try to assure currently retired Americans that their benefits wouldn’t be affected, this promise isn’t feasible — not if they’re serious about balancing the budget within a decade.”

If House Republicans vote to butcher Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, there are two potential obstacles: (1) the U.S. Senate — where Democrats still have a majority — and (2) President Joe Biden, who has the power to veto bills he doesn’t like. But Krugman fears that House Republicans would be willing to use the debt ceiling to “blackmail” Biden. Many economists are warning that if the United States fails to raise the debt ceiling and defaults on its debt obligations, it would trigger a major financial crisis.

“All indications are that at some point this year, the Biden Administration will have to deal with a full-scale effort at economic blackmail, a threat to blow up the economy unless the safety net is shredded,” Krugman writes. “And I worry that Democrats still aren’t taking that threat seriously enough.”