All this philosophical -- and even economic -- stuff is great, but the onyl thing that actually moves Congressional Republicans is Epstein.
This morning Heather Cox Richardson reports that beginning in December 2010 under the Obama administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was running an investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and fourteen other people for drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering called Operation Chain Reaction.
"It suggests the government had ample evidence indicating he was engaged in large scale drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy and that Epstein was likely pumping his victims, including underage girls, with incapacitating drugs to facilitate abuse. I am at a loss to understand why you are blocking further investigation of this matter.”
Wyden says that the document in the files was “clearly marked as ‘unclassified’ at the top of every single page.”
DOJ is preventing Sen, Ron Wyden from getting the documentation from DEA. Ther DOJ of course is led by Trump's personal lawyers. Yesterday they tried to undermine the subpoena issued to Bondi by staging a "hearing" which actually was a PR stunt.
We have a day of action scheduled for March 28. We should be pressuring Congressional Republicans on Epstein. They are all in over everything else.
Michele Leonhart was the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for the majority of 2015, serving as Administrator until her resignation in May of that year. Following her departure, Chuck Rosenberg took over as acting Administrator..
What do they know, Thom?
Meanwhile Scott Bessent is stopping Wyden from getting other financial records. Please ask Khanna to ask the House Oversight Committee to subpoena the two sets of records.
Luke Kemp, author of "Goliath's Curse," argues that evidence from the study of 342 collapsed states suggests that elites took control, leading to extreme social, political, and economic inequality and, ultimately, collapse. He argues, like Hartmann, that democratic societies are more resilient and long-lasting. Oligarchs with dark-triad personalities don't make the best decisions for civilization when faced with shocks such as droughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or invasions by neighbors. The elites are worse off than the masses, who often become better off. Kemp doesn't think the masses of modern civilization would be better off, but makes a good case that they were in the past.
Hartmann's book, part of the Hidden History series, "Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity's Ancient Way of Living," is especially interesting in part I, "The Founders Meet Ancient Democracy."
In the past rural communities fed themselves, No one was dependen ton fossil fuels, all trade was local first, then the excess went to the cities.
City folk were dependent on trade to feed and cloth themselves
What we call rural today, is in reality thinly populated city folk. They are as dependent on the system as are city folk, those who have small farms, that grow a variety of crops, have chickens and hogs, can feed themselves for a while, but most rural folks live in small insular communities and towns, and are as dependent on trade and transportation as the denizens of NYC.
What does democracy depend on? Supremacy of the law, acceptance of facts, and trust in the goodwill of people and processes of governance. These sick sociopaths may be stupid, but they have an instinct for destroying this system that has always held them in check, and getting us to help them do it.
Except for a triad of superficial Bimbos, T is living in a toxic, mostly Himbo bubble. T is merely a figuratively blind czar being led by the nose like a water buffalo [and about as bright.] Easily influenced by nearly 50 foreign [the Knesset/Kremlin] and domestic Rasputins.
This is a gross imitation of governance. And, a proper travesty of the first order.
Normally, when one is in a hole, one stops digging. Perversely, but predictably, T has recently accepted an atomic-powered excavator [Iran] rom Netan Yahoo, and is well on his way to China.
A recent report states:
As of the time of writing, Trump has been in office for six weeks. The speed with
which American democracy is coming under strain has taken many observers
by surprise. The expansion of executive power, undermining of Congress’s power
of the purse, offensives on independent and counter-veiling institutions, and the
media, as well as purging and dismantling of state institutions – classic strategies
of autocratizers – seem to be in action. The enabling silence among critics fearful
of retribution is already prevalent.
-------------------------------------- end quote
To paraphrase a line attributed to but never uttered by The Lone Ranger,
"Tonto, our work here is Not done."
#VOTE #SEND FRIGGING BARRON, YOU DRAFT-DODGING COWARD
Some nations have rulers, others have governors. The distinction is important because, as we have seen with Donald Trump, he has no interest in governing - just ruling. He sucks at both.
Ruling is setting policies and programs that benefit the ruler at the expense of the ruled. Governing is setting policies and programs that benefit the governed at the expense of everybody, including the governors. US Democracy was designed to prevent rule in favor of governance.
As Thom has pointed out, corporate personhood and Citizens United have opened the door to rulers at the expense of the ruled. The Soviet Union discovered that local governance was an inefficient system for ruling the empire. Soon, all laws and order came from ruler. Now Trump is moving America in that same direction.
Texas and Florida are now actively disenfranchising local city and county governance. DeSantis, who now controls all education in the state K-PhD has three bills on his desk what will give the state control of all urban planning, regulation of pollution, and elimination of DEI policies statewide. Thus, Florida will soon be ruled, not governed. If MAGAism persists, governors will just supervise the enforcement of rule at the expense of the governed.
When Peter Thiel councels that capitalism and democracy are incompatible, he’s on to something. If we must choose, it appears democracy is preferable. The Iroquois would agree.
I rarely if ever have to differ with Thom. And the large portion of his analysis and conclusions in this essay are spot on.
However, it is with the opening premise:
Republicans want a top-down, hierarchical political and economic system. Democrats want a bottom-up system with maximum participation and broad sharing of society’s wealth.
That I must strongly disagree.
At least, over the last forty years... The National Democratic Party and its leadership have been pursuing what I refer to as a "Republican-Lite" vision. As with Lite Beer, it offer little of the flavor or substance.
I imagine it began with the boffins who decided that to compete with the Reagan mystique, and the "vision" he sold fresh off the Heritage Foundation presses, and more importantly the money behind it, the Democrats would have to invent something that could be sold as a bigger and better NEW DEAL to the American people, but could also..."wink-wink"... assure the big money boys that the new, more with-it, Democrats were on board with their particular Globalization vision.
And so the window-dressing of "Diversity" replaced a focus upon real stewardship of the commonwealth. And the right-wing echo chamber had a field day abusing that idea.
If only dealing with psychos and sickos were this simple, but some of it applies:
"Aberrant behavior in the animal world can be defined as actions that deviate from typical or expected patterns of behavior. This can include repetitive actions like pacing, self-harm, or unusual social interactions. Environmental stressors, such as habitat loss and climate change, can trigger these behaviors. Social factors like competition for resources or disruption of social hierarchies also play a role. Understanding these behaviors is crucial for conservation and management efforts to protect animal populations and their habitats."-connaissezvous blog
Our democracy starts in our counties, villages, towns, cities and states. It certainly does start at the bottom. It's endured because most of us want it to. See you in the streets. We will be coming for Brendan. That's what democracy looks like.
Your description of aberrant behavior in animals, leads to devolution and extinction of the species if allowed to reproduce
Thiel and capitalists are short sighted, all they see is short term gains and power, they are incapable of foresight, of future sight, they live in the moment.
As I pointed out in my post above. Fritz Thyssen, a capitalist, financed Hitler then came to be his victim.
The power the control that Musk, Thiel seek, will destroy the system that sustains them and enabled them to become rich and powerful, in other words they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
The problem is that until they feel the pain, hundreds of millions or even billions will feel the pain first.
Thom, you show how democracy aligns with nature with examples of animals and Native Americans cultures. Very true. But the alignment goes much further back than that. Here is the preface from the book, “A Manifesto for the Conscious Citizen” that argues that truth is a form of energy that drives growth in domain of shared ideas, where democracy exists. Please look it over.
Theory Behind the Manifesto
In science, we begin by observing the world and then forming a hypothesis to explain what we see. That hypothesis is tested, refined, challenged, and adjusted until its predictions consistently hold up under scrutiny. Through this long, cumulative process, scientists have discovered that our universe is shaped by four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—and governed by four fundamental laws of energy known as the laws of thermodynamics.
We do not know why these forces exist or who or what created them. We do not know the ultimate origin of matter or energy. But we do know, with extraordinary precision, how these forces behave, and their behavior produces stunningly predictable outcomes. Every advance in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering rests on these principles. Gravity works every time. Thermodynamic rules apply everywhere we look. They are the scaffolding of physical reality. Matter and energy, once thought separate, turn out to be two forms of the same underlying substance—E = mc².
When we zoom into the smallest scales of nature, we find that what we call “particles” sometimes behave as matter and sometimes as waves of energy. At a deep level, the universe may be woven from vibrating fields or strings, expressing themselves differently depending on circumstances.
Among the laws of thermodynamics, the second law is especially relevant to this manifesto. It tells us that when energy flows through a system, the system tends to grow more complex. Over time, that complexity stabilizes, adapts, and evolves into more efficient ways of using that energy. This is not poetic metaphor; it is one of nature’s most reliable patterns. The same principle helps explain how the universe evolved from simple particles to atoms, from atoms to molecules, from molecules to single-celled organisms, and eventually to multi-celled life—including human beings.
But evolution does not stop with biology. Once humans emerged, we produced something new: ideas, language, culture, and consciousness. And when many conscious individuals interact, they form societies, institutions, economies, and political systems. Ideas function like atoms; societies function like molecules. Some become extraordinarily complex, storing vast amounts of information and coordinating vast flows of energy, just like complex molecules in nature.
The core hypothesis of this manifesto is simple but profound: The same natural forces and laws that govern matter and energy continue to shape the evolution of ideas, consciousness, and societies. When human communities align themselves with these natural laws—when they flow with truth, transparency, cooperation, and balanced energy—they evolve, strengthen, and stabilize. When they violate these laws—when they distort truth, hoard power, or block the healthy flow of social energy—they decay, destabilize, and drift toward entropy, just like any closed physical system.
We use different words in the societal realm—truth, integrity, cooperation, empathy, fairness—but they represent forms of social energy. Truth is a kind of fuel that allows societies to move forward cleanly. Deceit is a pollutant. Cooperation increases usable energy; domination dissipates it. These parallels are not merely symbolic—they reflect deep structural similarities between natural systems and human systems.
This manifesto examines that hypothesis from many different angles. It does not claim to have final answers. There is still much we do not understand about consciousness or the deep architecture of society. But this framework offers an illuminating starting point: a way to understand politics, economics, fairness, democracy, and moral responsibility as part of the larger story of the universe—an ongoing struggle between order and entropy, cooperation and decay, truth and distortion.
Animals are democratic? Bison immediately come to mind...the railroads ran hunts after 1868 in a pure attempt to destroy the herds and starve the indigenous. They discovered that if they shot the lead bison, the rest just milled around...they didn't run away. So no democracy there, I think.
Dictatorial regimes are immune to economic arguments, because they don't operate for the benefit of the populace, only the well being and power of the dictator and his supporters and cronies
Fritz Thyssen learned that the hard way, after he financed Hitlers rise, only to find that Hitler shit canned him.
Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution made more or less the same argument in 1902, defending Darwin's theory against so-called Social Darwinists and Monopolists. But the Robber Barons and big biz tycoons with all the money didn't like that idea back then and are quite obviously just as hostile to the idea of group cooperation and democracy being the true guarantor of peace and prosperity today.
All this philosophical -- and even economic -- stuff is great, but the onyl thing that actually moves Congressional Republicans is Epstein.
This morning Heather Cox Richardson reports that beginning in December 2010 under the Obama administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was running an investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and fourteen other people for drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering called Operation Chain Reaction.
"It suggests the government had ample evidence indicating he was engaged in large scale drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy and that Epstein was likely pumping his victims, including underage girls, with incapacitating drugs to facilitate abuse. I am at a loss to understand why you are blocking further investigation of this matter.”
Wyden says that the document in the files was “clearly marked as ‘unclassified’ at the top of every single page.”
DOJ is preventing Sen, Ron Wyden from getting the documentation from DEA. Ther DOJ of course is led by Trump's personal lawyers. Yesterday they tried to undermine the subpoena issued to Bondi by staging a "hearing" which actually was a PR stunt.
We have a day of action scheduled for March 28. We should be pressuring Congressional Republicans on Epstein. They are all in over everything else.
Michele Leonhart was the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for the majority of 2015, serving as Administrator until her resignation in May of that year. Following her departure, Chuck Rosenberg took over as acting Administrator..
What do they know, Thom?
Meanwhile Scott Bessent is stopping Wyden from getting other financial records. Please ask Khanna to ask the House Oversight Committee to subpoena the two sets of records.
I'm. asking my Republican rep to get involved.
.
How will Epstein move anything Daniel?
Tell us how and let us rationally discuss
Luke Kemp, author of "Goliath's Curse," argues that evidence from the study of 342 collapsed states suggests that elites took control, leading to extreme social, political, and economic inequality and, ultimately, collapse. He argues, like Hartmann, that democratic societies are more resilient and long-lasting. Oligarchs with dark-triad personalities don't make the best decisions for civilization when faced with shocks such as droughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or invasions by neighbors. The elites are worse off than the masses, who often become better off. Kemp doesn't think the masses of modern civilization would be better off, but makes a good case that they were in the past.
Hartmann's book, part of the Hidden History series, "Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity's Ancient Way of Living," is especially interesting in part I, "The Founders Meet Ancient Democracy."
In the past rural communities fed themselves, No one was dependen ton fossil fuels, all trade was local first, then the excess went to the cities.
City folk were dependent on trade to feed and cloth themselves
What we call rural today, is in reality thinly populated city folk. They are as dependent on the system as are city folk, those who have small farms, that grow a variety of crops, have chickens and hogs, can feed themselves for a while, but most rural folks live in small insular communities and towns, and are as dependent on trade and transportation as the denizens of NYC.
What does democracy depend on? Supremacy of the law, acceptance of facts, and trust in the goodwill of people and processes of governance. These sick sociopaths may be stupid, but they have an instinct for destroying this system that has always held them in check, and getting us to help them do it.
Except for a triad of superficial Bimbos, T is living in a toxic, mostly Himbo bubble. T is merely a figuratively blind czar being led by the nose like a water buffalo [and about as bright.] Easily influenced by nearly 50 foreign [the Knesset/Kremlin] and domestic Rasputins.
This is a gross imitation of governance. And, a proper travesty of the first order.
Normally, when one is in a hole, one stops digging. Perversely, but predictably, T has recently accepted an atomic-powered excavator [Iran] rom Netan Yahoo, and is well on his way to China.
A recent report states:
As of the time of writing, Trump has been in office for six weeks. The speed with
which American democracy is coming under strain has taken many observers
by surprise. The expansion of executive power, undermining of Congress’s power
of the purse, offensives on independent and counter-veiling institutions, and the
media, as well as purging and dismantling of state institutions – classic strategies
of autocratizers – seem to be in action. The enabling silence among critics fearful
of retribution is already prevalent.
-------------------------------------- end quote
To paraphrase a line attributed to but never uttered by The Lone Ranger,
"Tonto, our work here is Not done."
#VOTE #SEND FRIGGING BARRON, YOU DRAFT-DODGING COWARD
Wow! Again, Thom, you have provided solid facts from disparate sources to solidify the stance to protect our democracy!
Some nations have rulers, others have governors. The distinction is important because, as we have seen with Donald Trump, he has no interest in governing - just ruling. He sucks at both.
Ruling is setting policies and programs that benefit the ruler at the expense of the ruled. Governing is setting policies and programs that benefit the governed at the expense of everybody, including the governors. US Democracy was designed to prevent rule in favor of governance.
As Thom has pointed out, corporate personhood and Citizens United have opened the door to rulers at the expense of the ruled. The Soviet Union discovered that local governance was an inefficient system for ruling the empire. Soon, all laws and order came from ruler. Now Trump is moving America in that same direction.
Texas and Florida are now actively disenfranchising local city and county governance. DeSantis, who now controls all education in the state K-PhD has three bills on his desk what will give the state control of all urban planning, regulation of pollution, and elimination of DEI policies statewide. Thus, Florida will soon be ruled, not governed. If MAGAism persists, governors will just supervise the enforcement of rule at the expense of the governed.
When Peter Thiel councels that capitalism and democracy are incompatible, he’s on to something. If we must choose, it appears democracy is preferable. The Iroquois would agree.
I rarely if ever have to differ with Thom. And the large portion of his analysis and conclusions in this essay are spot on.
However, it is with the opening premise:
Republicans want a top-down, hierarchical political and economic system. Democrats want a bottom-up system with maximum participation and broad sharing of society’s wealth.
That I must strongly disagree.
At least, over the last forty years... The National Democratic Party and its leadership have been pursuing what I refer to as a "Republican-Lite" vision. As with Lite Beer, it offer little of the flavor or substance.
I imagine it began with the boffins who decided that to compete with the Reagan mystique, and the "vision" he sold fresh off the Heritage Foundation presses, and more importantly the money behind it, the Democrats would have to invent something that could be sold as a bigger and better NEW DEAL to the American people, but could also..."wink-wink"... assure the big money boys that the new, more with-it, Democrats were on board with their particular Globalization vision.
And so the window-dressing of "Diversity" replaced a focus upon real stewardship of the commonwealth. And the right-wing echo chamber had a field day abusing that idea.
D. Laghezza
Guess Brendan Carr isn't done criming.....
If only dealing with psychos and sickos were this simple, but some of it applies:
"Aberrant behavior in the animal world can be defined as actions that deviate from typical or expected patterns of behavior. This can include repetitive actions like pacing, self-harm, or unusual social interactions. Environmental stressors, such as habitat loss and climate change, can trigger these behaviors. Social factors like competition for resources or disruption of social hierarchies also play a role. Understanding these behaviors is crucial for conservation and management efforts to protect animal populations and their habitats."-connaissezvous blog
Our democracy starts in our counties, villages, towns, cities and states. It certainly does start at the bottom. It's endured because most of us want it to. See you in the streets. We will be coming for Brendan. That's what democracy looks like.
Your description of aberrant behavior in animals, leads to devolution and extinction of the species if allowed to reproduce
Thiel and capitalists are short sighted, all they see is short term gains and power, they are incapable of foresight, of future sight, they live in the moment.
As I pointed out in my post above. Fritz Thyssen, a capitalist, financed Hitler then came to be his victim.
The power the control that Musk, Thiel seek, will destroy the system that sustains them and enabled them to become rich and powerful, in other words they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
The problem is that until they feel the pain, hundreds of millions or even billions will feel the pain first.
Thom, you show how democracy aligns with nature with examples of animals and Native Americans cultures. Very true. But the alignment goes much further back than that. Here is the preface from the book, “A Manifesto for the Conscious Citizen” that argues that truth is a form of energy that drives growth in domain of shared ideas, where democracy exists. Please look it over.
Theory Behind the Manifesto
In science, we begin by observing the world and then forming a hypothesis to explain what we see. That hypothesis is tested, refined, challenged, and adjusted until its predictions consistently hold up under scrutiny. Through this long, cumulative process, scientists have discovered that our universe is shaped by four fundamental forces—gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—and governed by four fundamental laws of energy known as the laws of thermodynamics.
We do not know why these forces exist or who or what created them. We do not know the ultimate origin of matter or energy. But we do know, with extraordinary precision, how these forces behave, and their behavior produces stunningly predictable outcomes. Every advance in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering rests on these principles. Gravity works every time. Thermodynamic rules apply everywhere we look. They are the scaffolding of physical reality. Matter and energy, once thought separate, turn out to be two forms of the same underlying substance—E = mc².
When we zoom into the smallest scales of nature, we find that what we call “particles” sometimes behave as matter and sometimes as waves of energy. At a deep level, the universe may be woven from vibrating fields or strings, expressing themselves differently depending on circumstances.
Among the laws of thermodynamics, the second law is especially relevant to this manifesto. It tells us that when energy flows through a system, the system tends to grow more complex. Over time, that complexity stabilizes, adapts, and evolves into more efficient ways of using that energy. This is not poetic metaphor; it is one of nature’s most reliable patterns. The same principle helps explain how the universe evolved from simple particles to atoms, from atoms to molecules, from molecules to single-celled organisms, and eventually to multi-celled life—including human beings.
But evolution does not stop with biology. Once humans emerged, we produced something new: ideas, language, culture, and consciousness. And when many conscious individuals interact, they form societies, institutions, economies, and political systems. Ideas function like atoms; societies function like molecules. Some become extraordinarily complex, storing vast amounts of information and coordinating vast flows of energy, just like complex molecules in nature.
The core hypothesis of this manifesto is simple but profound: The same natural forces and laws that govern matter and energy continue to shape the evolution of ideas, consciousness, and societies. When human communities align themselves with these natural laws—when they flow with truth, transparency, cooperation, and balanced energy—they evolve, strengthen, and stabilize. When they violate these laws—when they distort truth, hoard power, or block the healthy flow of social energy—they decay, destabilize, and drift toward entropy, just like any closed physical system.
We use different words in the societal realm—truth, integrity, cooperation, empathy, fairness—but they represent forms of social energy. Truth is a kind of fuel that allows societies to move forward cleanly. Deceit is a pollutant. Cooperation increases usable energy; domination dissipates it. These parallels are not merely symbolic—they reflect deep structural similarities between natural systems and human systems.
This manifesto examines that hypothesis from many different angles. It does not claim to have final answers. There is still much we do not understand about consciousness or the deep architecture of society. But this framework offers an illuminating starting point: a way to understand politics, economics, fairness, democracy, and moral responsibility as part of the larger story of the universe—an ongoing struggle between order and entropy, cooperation and decay, truth and distortion.
Animals are democratic? Bison immediately come to mind...the railroads ran hunts after 1868 in a pure attempt to destroy the herds and starve the indigenous. They discovered that if they shot the lead bison, the rest just milled around...they didn't run away. So no democracy there, I think.
Dictatorial regimes are immune to economic arguments, because they don't operate for the benefit of the populace, only the well being and power of the dictator and his supporters and cronies
Fritz Thyssen learned that the hard way, after he financed Hitlers rise, only to find that Hitler shit canned him.
Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution made more or less the same argument in 1902, defending Darwin's theory against so-called Social Darwinists and Monopolists. But the Robber Barons and big biz tycoons with all the money didn't like that idea back then and are quite obviously just as hostile to the idea of group cooperation and democracy being the true guarantor of peace and prosperity today.