If the six Republican justices rule the way the oligarchs who support their extravagant lifestyles want, America could be a very, very different place in just a few years…
It is absolutely abysmal what is happening in these court cases. The rationale that these developments weren't explicitly stated in a document from another century is disingenuous and telling, in my opinion. It shows the lack of imagination on the part of originalists, or willed lack of it. Another reason why Americans (in a healthy civic environment) shouldn't elect a GOP president for another decade at least until the Supreme Court is balanced out. It feels like dark times ahead as factions of rich individuals transform America into a less democratic place. We have factions of racist and ethnonationalists and factions of oligarchs. We fail to educate our citizens on why we enjoy the luxuries of the present and then they allow them to be undone out of an inconsequential attitude towards governing and civics.
Bullets are not mentioned anywhere in the constitution so they are not a protected right. Bullets weren't invented, but the gun industry makes money as long as humans are in season.
1. At the beginning, Republicans argued that the Soc. Sec. Act was unconstituutional. They later argued that if it were Consitutional, it was an imposition to employers who had to match FICA taxes. Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), held that Social Security was constitutionally permissible as an exercise of the federal power to spend for the general welfare and so did not contravene the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Ath that time, the Act did not apply to widow(ers) and orphans. ush1
2. Starting about 1975, I remember that Bush 1's brother and GWB's uncle, Prescott Jr. was arguing that if the trust funds were invested in the stock market, the country would boom. Of course he wanted to do the investing and take the commissions. During the late 70s Republicans argued among other things, that the trust funds should be given to savings and loans to help individuals become home owners. I remember that Charie Keating (of Keating 5 bribery fame) and his brother Bob, a Republican congressman arguing for it.
3. During the period of the Greenspan Commission, argument pro and con were tossed around. Thom mentioned the consumer protection case. This is partly from Michael Waldman, Brennan Center at NYU:
The CFPB gets its funding directly from the Federal Reserve; it doesn’t have to seek an annual appropriation from Congress. Lawmakers chose this approach in 2010, when they established the CFPB, for two primary reasons. First, the CFPB inherited some of the Fed’s work, so it made sense to inherit some of its money. Second, an independent source of funding insulates the CFPB from the influence of the same wealthy lobbyists it’s supposed to be regulating.
In a case brought by the payday lending industry, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this arrangement violates Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” In other words, according to the Fifth Circuit, Congress may not establish a permanent source of funding outside the annual budgeting process.
If the Supreme Court endorses this reasoning, the repercussions will be far-reaching. The Federal Reserve itself does not receive an annual budget from Congress, so its funding would be presumptively unconstitutional. Interest payments on the national debt are also permanently appropriated. The funding for Social Security would come into question. The payday lenders are asking for a decision explicitly limited to the CFPB, but it’s not clear on what constitutional principle such a distinction could be made. A decision against the CFPB would put it all into doubt. While the oral argument was promising for the agency, this dangerous legal theory never should have made it to the Supreme Court.
At the time of the Greenspan "fix" there were cases that addressed appropriations law. The Act has been attacked on this basis several times. I have heard many members of memebrs of the ABA Ad Law Section and ACUS who are members of the Federalist Society make this argument.
4. The latest version is that the Constitution does not speciically recognize the entire subject of administrative law. It used to be that there were arguments over the exgtent of the law, but everyone accepted that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA 1947) is constitutional and governs. But is some of the recent decisions, there isn't even mention of the APA.
In Philip Hamberger, "Is administrative law unlawful?" "Rather than accepting it as a novel power necessitated by modern society, he locates its origins in the medieval and early modern English tradition of royal prerogative. Then he traces resistance to administrative law from the Middle Ages to the present. Medieval parliaments periodically tried to confine the Crown to governing through regular law, but the most effective response was the seventeenth-century development of English constitutional law, which concluded that the government could rule only through the law of the land and the courts, not through administrative edicts. Although the US Constitution pursued this conclusion even more vigorously, administrative power reemerged in the Progressive and New Deal Eras. Since then, Hamburger argues, administrative law has returned American government and society to precisely the sort of consolidated or absolute power that the US Constitution—and constitutions in general—were designed to prevent."
5. Some of the lawyers argung are proteges of Hamburger. All attack "rulemaking" and thus make the APA irrelevant. To me West Virginia v EPA completely ignored the procedures set forth by the APA. In truth, the Biden administration did not help by failing to do fact finding to use as a ratiionale to regulate the EPA. From my perspective all of it, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which discusses "agency deference" and SEC v. Jarkesy, in which the Fifth Circuit struck down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s power to administer enforcement proceedings within the agency rather than in federal court.
This is a great overview of the GOP changing their legal perspective as the consensus changed to making money off of administrative instruments over seeing them as a function of securing the general welfare of the American public. It is also a lens into how originalists and legal conservatives have embedded the perspective that agencies and their continued funding have become similar to monarchs of Europe from medieval to early modern times. Instead of looking at it as a modern administrative tool to stabilize mass populations that are much more sophisticated than the days of old. It does come down to a matter of opinion, sure, but that opinion reflects ones belief in humanity's hierarchies and whether they are just or not. As we know, there is a deep strain of social darwinism in American conservatism.
The only thing is, the blow back from Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe, was so bad for the Republicans that they might defer a ruling, or at least keep it pretty narrow, until after the election. For the typical MAGA person approaching or past retirement, getting rid of "the bureaucrats" could sound good, and they might well go along with ending environmental regulations. After all, they've been told that climate change is a hoax. But if their Social Security and Medicare are taken away, that's a different story. So a more expansive ruling may be made on the next case, heard in 2025. Committing national suicide can be a slow motion process.
Red state governors paid no political cost for refusing Medicaid Expansion under ACA which would treat survivable ills if the red states paid 10% to Fed's 90% match. 125,000 Medicaid patients died in 2013-2015 of survivable ills that survived in Blue States as their Governors paid 10% of the 100% premium. Medicaid recipients are old, poor, disabled, and often non-white so putting them down is good practice in the bible belt.
And if the Democrats didn’t scream about this in the states that didn’t take the expansion they really made a mistake. But anyway, those who weren’t helped aren’t the poor deluded folks who vote for them, nor are they the cynics who just want power and profits. So these marginal groups can be ignored. It’s those who have just enough to kick in a few bucks and are active enough to wear the red hats who will suddenly understand that Republicans are not for the “little guy.” I know that should already be obvious given their record, how unions have been screwed and what Trump did to his contractors, but people will stay in denial until it hurts too much.
The people who are REALLY screwed are those who are in their 40s and 50s who have been paying in but have not reached age 62 or are disabled. They may not be gradfathered in if the trust funds (there are 2 of them) have to be liquidated. .
Since the statute of limitations for sedition is not up for another year and a half. The department of Justice needs to round up all of the GOP traitors and throw them behind bars, so they will not default on the national debt. The doj only has a month and a half to do it and they better put every person they have on it! 24/7
I was deeply concerned about Moore v Harper and they surprised me. Social security is the 3rd rail for a reason. And we PAID for it out of our paychecks. They would have to refund it all.
I say we call all GOP legislators and threaten extreme punishment at the polls if they don’t control this rogue court. Might work...
When the people are reduced to slaves the wealthy will start fighting amongst themselves...medieval times. Seems like there is NO clear agenda or foresight.
I have lived in both the UK and France (now) we know our History.
Thank you for the suggestion .aaarggghgh I will read more.
I am presently focusing on getting more Europeans on to substack.
Last idea: We have been through this in Europe "Christian Facist State.
We had the crusades.
I live in a small Town in Occitanie. Right on the Rhone.
When we were looking for a house we had a Realtor who said: Don't live on west side of the Rhone because they are all Protestants and they don't like fun.
The reverse is true.
We chose our Town Beaucaire because it was beautiful and had many nationalities. We are still happy here although we have a FN Mayor who is reprehensible.
Dear Jenny. I am in EU now, and it has returned: Hungary, Poland, Italy, Finnland, Austria, Slovakia. Parts of: France FN, Germany AFD, and others. The Christian Fascist state is returning to Europe and I am concerned. Yes you should get more Euro's on, but their public debates are in public, not hidden away in the stacks. So I've found it difficult.
Jenny, please read Chris's 2008 book. They are all racist! The Christian Nationals are fascists and therefore require a scapegoat. Whether it's Blacks, Women, Jews, Roma, Migrants, Uighur, Palestinians or Indigenous Peoples, Inuit, Aztecs, Maori, First Nations. Fascists have their pick of scape goats on 7 Continents.
Chris Hedges lost his credibility when he obliquely backed the neo Soviet Union under Putin in his criminal aggression against Ukraine. Whining about colonialism and imperialism is an oblique way of arguing for Putin.
Unfortunately, you are misinformed. Those who stuck with his writings and those who followed...did so because some of us understand when Niels Boer said: " I'm not so good at projections, especially about the future". We make mistakes, we learn from them and we go back to what we are good at. In my opinion Chris Hughes had/has deep insight into this topic. I'm sure your rather casual "blow off" was not helpful to Jenny. Espaecially as you offer no alternative to her question.
Just because I agree with a person, 9 times out of ten, does not mean that I should eat all of his shit with a smile.
I reserve the right to call him, Noam Chomsky and others out.
Only a dense fool, will accept all of the mutterings of a person
An example from the other side. You've heard of the broken clock... yes?
Well Trump is right like a broken clock.
1.
The media is the enemy of the people, it is responsible for him, by giving him free publicity, constantly.
2. The FBI, the same. It has for it's entire history, persecuted leftists, gays, people of color, and before and during the Jan 6th insurrection,, it was targeting BLM, and other left organizations, not the Republican party, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Bugaloo Bois.
So Trump is not calling for defunding the FBI, because it has turned on him.
And in irrational cases of reverse psychology, we have people who should be critiquing the media and demanding a reform of the FBI, now defending them because Trump attacked them. A great way to manipulate the public, that and swallow hook line and sinker, every utterance of an ideological guru.
As regards Jenny's question.
Do you mean this?
What exactly do these "liberalists" want?
What does she mean. What is a liberalist, and whose she talking about?
The best defense is a good offence. I will be publishing a piece shortly that will explain how we can save social security for those that have paid into it and replace it with something better for future generations. A system that will avoid the Supreme Court pitfalls that are so well articulated in this post.
I would be i nterested in the mechanics, if it involves turning the funds and responsiblity over to private firms;. I am against it.
My wife worked 20 years for municipalities as a building inspector, plans examiner and retired as a building official. The state of Washington, elected to allow municipalities, the option of opting out of social security and medicare, and invest in a private retirement firm, she also invested a large part of her paycheck in deferred compensation program, first managed by a retirement management company, but it sold out to another company (Mission Square), she is 70 and hasn't drawn from it yet, as my retirement income and social security, and her PERS are more than enough to get by.
But I worry, because there are no federal laws protecting these retirement accounts, and lesson learned from ENRON. back in 2001, I was selling my house and a potential buyer had to back out because her entire retirement was invested in the company she worked for ..ENRON, which went belly up
I certainly don't trust Goldman Sachs, investment bankers, Peter Thiel, Pete Peterson .
There is only one guarantor that can be trusted to deliver. The government
Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks recipients would continue to receive their Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits. However, about 15% of the Social Security Administration’s staff would be furloughed, which could mean the delay or suspension of benefit verifications, replacement of Medicare cards and determinations on disability claims.
Agree with your statements. The Singular System plan does not include privatization of Social Security, rather refundable tax credits that can be accumulated and that appreciate tax free at the rate of inflation to maintain their value. People would then have the option of saving their tax credits for retirement, or cashing them in and investing them as they see fit.
either way, this is an oblique way of privatizing social security, and it is actually the plan of those who want to privatize SS.
The government invests the insurance premiums called FICA in US Treasury bonds, private investor turn to the stock market or rather private investment corporations.
The social security privatization plans I am aware of do not tax credits or the ability of accumulating them until retirement, but rather forcing individuals to invest in private retirement accounts. That's a big difference. The tax credit is part of a much larger system of taxation, benefit distribution and healthcare payments, whose overarching goal is economic justice for workers and the restoration of the American Dream. I hope you'll give my piece a read and let me know what you think. Thanks.
Sorry to have to say it, but you are way off.... Social Security is social insurance, covers more than retirement, widow(ers), orphans and the disabled. It works like insurance, those who are "fully" and "currently" covered, usually about 10 years, may be entitled to benefits. Must meet strict tems of coverage. Can cover the wage earner and dependents, not just the taxpayer. Every wage earner has, on average, coverage of about a $million in benefits.
You may call it what you like. Insurance or a pension. It really is and always has been a social welfare program. One that has become antiquated and unsustainable and frankly unfair to younger generations. We can do better. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on an alternative that much better addresses the needs of a 21st century America.
The Social security "Singular" System is gigantic with many interacting nodes and vectors, especially when attacked. The dynamics and outcomes are governed by a mixture of algebraic and differential equations. When one tries to control any singular system construct, the complex nature of singular systems causes many difficulties in the analytical and numerical treatment. This is so, especially when there is much "noise". I trust that your treatment will cover such things as to the underlying math and the treatment of noise and the effect of filtering on the validity of your model. I always found that things got very complicated and messy exponentially. Maybe you have deep learning algorithms to substitute for stochastic modeling, and quantum computing to crunch through, past saddle points in the search for optimization. As I said looking forward to learn what you have. I hope it is not Multivariat Regression...that's been tried.
bruce, apparently you are not aware that you are talking to "civilians" and that your whole rant goes over their heads and is obuscatory.You have wasted your time with a barrage of snowballs, that are not comprehendable.
Very interesting that you are so intent on attacking me no matter the issue. I think you meant, incorrectly: OBFUSCATORY. I have reported you. Let's see who you really are. For the colleagues on this sub-stack. Let me reassure you that I know exactly what I am talking about and have the appropriate background. I just wanted Mar de Lotte to know that he has a knowledgeable listener colleague as he tells us his "everything changes" economic theory.
Don't personalize it. I am not attacking you, and there is no malice in my questions or comments. I seriously don't understand what you are saying, and I doubt that others do.
This is constructive criticism, don't assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge that you do. I don't. I have a deep background in history, econ and finance, but I try not to talk over the heads of others, and go out of the way to explain myself in plain words.
Who is Mar de Lotte. Not a commenter that I can recall, certainly not on this thread, so why talk to an absent reader or commenter.
And FYI I doubt that anyone other than some math enthusiast understands what you are saying
He also doesn't know intergral calculus. It's simple, every wage earner has a primary income amount, generated by the amount of FICA taxes paid, usually over 35 years if retirement benefits. The PIA is the benefit (before rounding down to next lower whole dollar) a person would receive if he/she elects to begin receiving retirement benefits at his/her normal retirement age. At this age, the benefit is neither reduced for early retirement nor increased for delayed retirement. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/retirebenefit2.html
As I set forth above, a person has to be fully and currently covered and meet coverage rules to begin receipt of benefits.
In the book Woman Behind the New Deal, there is a story about Labor Sec. Perkins and another Cabinet member seeing old women digging through the trash for food; that broke her heart. Still can happen on a small scale, but if she had not worked-out the New Deal, very few Americans could ever retire and afford to EAT. FDR gets the credit, but Frances figured it out, and she along with Eleanor pushed him.
I too believe we are in peril of losing everything we gained that makes life liveable for people that have had to work hard and serve all their lives. The Republican members of the Court want to ignore "promote the General Welfare" despite the fact that they are the 26th-29th words of the Constitution.
What they say isn't in the Constitution is in those four words. They and the rich bastards funding them simply don't like it. Who can eat, who dies early, and who is miserable is not their concern. They don't give a damn for the people that do all the work. Meanwhile, they are refusing to do THEIR JOB to uphold the Constitution, because it doesn't add to their bottom line.
alis-In addition, Frances Perkins was a witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and that was what motivated her to develop the concept of safety laws for workers (including exit signs), minimum wage, and the 40 hour work week. She was an amazing woman! (and Eleanor was as well!)
We cannot allow this to happen under ANY circumstances!! Rather let all us auld grey heads take up whatever weapon we can grab and use and MARCH with intent to STOP such evil!!!
Never imagined our 3rd branch of government would touch the 3rd rail of politics - much less put it in an absolute chokehold. But I never imagined DJ T-Rump would be spinning the record of the free world either.
It doesn't matter how we thought things were going to be, they are as they are. And right now we must acknowledge this truth, as inconvenient and uncomfortable as it surely is.
In the spirit of acknowledgment it would be prudent (for anyone concerned with the legitimacy of the openly corrupt Republican majority squatting in the Supreme Court) to understand that Congress holds domain over SCOTUS (per the Constitution, Article III).
We need to tell our representatives that this is still a republican democracy, bound by the very thing at stake - the Constitution - and ultimately, democracy.
It is absolutely abysmal what is happening in these court cases. The rationale that these developments weren't explicitly stated in a document from another century is disingenuous and telling, in my opinion. It shows the lack of imagination on the part of originalists, or willed lack of it. Another reason why Americans (in a healthy civic environment) shouldn't elect a GOP president for another decade at least until the Supreme Court is balanced out. It feels like dark times ahead as factions of rich individuals transform America into a less democratic place. We have factions of racist and ethnonationalists and factions of oligarchs. We fail to educate our citizens on why we enjoy the luxuries of the present and then they allow them to be undone out of an inconsequential attitude towards governing and civics.
Bullets are not mentioned anywhere in the constitution so they are not a protected right. Bullets weren't invented, but the gun industry makes money as long as humans are in season.
1. At the beginning, Republicans argued that the Soc. Sec. Act was unconstituutional. They later argued that if it were Consitutional, it was an imposition to employers who had to match FICA taxes. Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), held that Social Security was constitutionally permissible as an exercise of the federal power to spend for the general welfare and so did not contravene the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Ath that time, the Act did not apply to widow(ers) and orphans. ush1
2. Starting about 1975, I remember that Bush 1's brother and GWB's uncle, Prescott Jr. was arguing that if the trust funds were invested in the stock market, the country would boom. Of course he wanted to do the investing and take the commissions. During the late 70s Republicans argued among other things, that the trust funds should be given to savings and loans to help individuals become home owners. I remember that Charie Keating (of Keating 5 bribery fame) and his brother Bob, a Republican congressman arguing for it.
3. During the period of the Greenspan Commission, argument pro and con were tossed around. Thom mentioned the consumer protection case. This is partly from Michael Waldman, Brennan Center at NYU:
The CFPB gets its funding directly from the Federal Reserve; it doesn’t have to seek an annual appropriation from Congress. Lawmakers chose this approach in 2010, when they established the CFPB, for two primary reasons. First, the CFPB inherited some of the Fed’s work, so it made sense to inherit some of its money. Second, an independent source of funding insulates the CFPB from the influence of the same wealthy lobbyists it’s supposed to be regulating.
In a case brought by the payday lending industry, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this arrangement violates Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” In other words, according to the Fifth Circuit, Congress may not establish a permanent source of funding outside the annual budgeting process.
If the Supreme Court endorses this reasoning, the repercussions will be far-reaching. The Federal Reserve itself does not receive an annual budget from Congress, so its funding would be presumptively unconstitutional. Interest payments on the national debt are also permanently appropriated. The funding for Social Security would come into question. The payday lenders are asking for a decision explicitly limited to the CFPB, but it’s not clear on what constitutional principle such a distinction could be made. A decision against the CFPB would put it all into doubt. While the oral argument was promising for the agency, this dangerous legal theory never should have made it to the Supreme Court.
At the time of the Greenspan "fix" there were cases that addressed appropriations law. The Act has been attacked on this basis several times. I have heard many members of memebrs of the ABA Ad Law Section and ACUS who are members of the Federalist Society make this argument.
4. The latest version is that the Constitution does not speciically recognize the entire subject of administrative law. It used to be that there were arguments over the exgtent of the law, but everyone accepted that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA 1947) is constitutional and governs. But is some of the recent decisions, there isn't even mention of the APA.
In Philip Hamberger, "Is administrative law unlawful?" "Rather than accepting it as a novel power necessitated by modern society, he locates its origins in the medieval and early modern English tradition of royal prerogative. Then he traces resistance to administrative law from the Middle Ages to the present. Medieval parliaments periodically tried to confine the Crown to governing through regular law, but the most effective response was the seventeenth-century development of English constitutional law, which concluded that the government could rule only through the law of the land and the courts, not through administrative edicts. Although the US Constitution pursued this conclusion even more vigorously, administrative power reemerged in the Progressive and New Deal Eras. Since then, Hamburger argues, administrative law has returned American government and society to precisely the sort of consolidated or absolute power that the US Constitution—and constitutions in general—were designed to prevent."
5. Some of the lawyers argung are proteges of Hamburger. All attack "rulemaking" and thus make the APA irrelevant. To me West Virginia v EPA completely ignored the procedures set forth by the APA. In truth, the Biden administration did not help by failing to do fact finding to use as a ratiionale to regulate the EPA. From my perspective all of it, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which discusses "agency deference" and SEC v. Jarkesy, in which the Fifth Circuit struck down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s power to administer enforcement proceedings within the agency rather than in federal court.
This is a great overview of the GOP changing their legal perspective as the consensus changed to making money off of administrative instruments over seeing them as a function of securing the general welfare of the American public. It is also a lens into how originalists and legal conservatives have embedded the perspective that agencies and their continued funding have become similar to monarchs of Europe from medieval to early modern times. Instead of looking at it as a modern administrative tool to stabilize mass populations that are much more sophisticated than the days of old. It does come down to a matter of opinion, sure, but that opinion reflects ones belief in humanity's hierarchies and whether they are just or not. As we know, there is a deep strain of social darwinism in American conservatism.
The only thing is, the blow back from Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe, was so bad for the Republicans that they might defer a ruling, or at least keep it pretty narrow, until after the election. For the typical MAGA person approaching or past retirement, getting rid of "the bureaucrats" could sound good, and they might well go along with ending environmental regulations. After all, they've been told that climate change is a hoax. But if their Social Security and Medicare are taken away, that's a different story. So a more expansive ruling may be made on the next case, heard in 2025. Committing national suicide can be a slow motion process.
Red state governors paid no political cost for refusing Medicaid Expansion under ACA which would treat survivable ills if the red states paid 10% to Fed's 90% match. 125,000 Medicaid patients died in 2013-2015 of survivable ills that survived in Blue States as their Governors paid 10% of the 100% premium. Medicaid recipients are old, poor, disabled, and often non-white so putting them down is good practice in the bible belt.
And if the Democrats didn’t scream about this in the states that didn’t take the expansion they really made a mistake. But anyway, those who weren’t helped aren’t the poor deluded folks who vote for them, nor are they the cynics who just want power and profits. So these marginal groups can be ignored. It’s those who have just enough to kick in a few bucks and are active enough to wear the red hats who will suddenly understand that Republicans are not for the “little guy.” I know that should already be obvious given their record, how unions have been screwed and what Trump did to his contractors, but people will stay in denial until it hurts too much.
The people who are REALLY screwed are those who are in their 40s and 50s who have been paying in but have not reached age 62 or are disabled. They may not be gradfathered in if the trust funds (there are 2 of them) have to be liquidated. .
...and somehow liquidated into the donors' pockets!
Since the statute of limitations for sedition is not up for another year and a half. The department of Justice needs to round up all of the GOP traitors and throw them behind bars, so they will not default on the national debt. The doj only has a month and a half to do it and they better put every person they have on it! 24/7
I was deeply concerned about Moore v Harper and they surprised me. Social security is the 3rd rail for a reason. And we PAID for it out of our paychecks. They would have to refund it all.
I say we call all GOP legislators and threaten extreme punishment at the polls if they don’t control this rogue court. Might work...
I just wrote to Senator Durbin. I elaborated a touch on the theme of your message, I asked for a response.
What exactly do these "liberalists" want?
When the people are reduced to slaves the wealthy will start fighting amongst themselves...medieval times. Seems like there is NO clear agenda or foresight.
Dear Jenny; Start your Journey by reading this. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America Paperback – 8 January 2008
by Chris Hedges (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 688 ratings
A Christian Fascist State is what "they" have been working towards since Ronald Reagan.
I do understand this....Evangelical nonsense..
I have lived in both the UK and France (now) we know our History.
Thank you for the suggestion .aaarggghgh I will read more.
I am presently focusing on getting more Europeans on to substack.
Last idea: We have been through this in Europe "Christian Facist State.
We had the crusades.
I live in a small Town in Occitanie. Right on the Rhone.
When we were looking for a house we had a Realtor who said: Don't live on west side of the Rhone because they are all Protestants and they don't like fun.
The reverse is true.
We chose our Town Beaucaire because it was beautiful and had many nationalities. We are still happy here although we have a FN Mayor who is reprehensible.
Dear Jenny. I am in EU now, and it has returned: Hungary, Poland, Italy, Finnland, Austria, Slovakia. Parts of: France FN, Germany AFD, and others. The Christian Fascist state is returning to Europe and I am concerned. Yes you should get more Euro's on, but their public debates are in public, not hidden away in the stacks. So I've found it difficult.
Spain is fighting and we are fighting in France.
THE BASICS: It's all about immigration just like in the US
The FN are racist.
Macon has sold France out by spinelessly doing the will of the USA.
NATO should be abandoned ...NOW
Not many people here in Europe really listen to Italy..they are mad and will probably have a new election soon.
IF one considers just ONE thing: As the climate warms we will have more immigrants and there is not one damned thing anyone can do about it.
Same in the US.
I like the idea of BRICS
Jenny, please read Chris's 2008 book. They are all racist! The Christian Nationals are fascists and therefore require a scapegoat. Whether it's Blacks, Women, Jews, Roma, Migrants, Uighur, Palestinians or Indigenous Peoples, Inuit, Aztecs, Maori, First Nations. Fascists have their pick of scape goats on 7 Continents.
I do believe I said I would?
Chris Hedges lost his credibility when he obliquely backed the neo Soviet Union under Putin in his criminal aggression against Ukraine. Whining about colonialism and imperialism is an oblique way of arguing for Putin.
How could you possibly say this?
"Criminal aggression against Ukraine?"
The fact is: Americans do not know Geography. It is not taught in schools!
I wrote deliberately about SL and not one person in the US could say where SL is!
Unfortunately, you are misinformed. Those who stuck with his writings and those who followed...did so because some of us understand when Niels Boer said: " I'm not so good at projections, especially about the future". We make mistakes, we learn from them and we go back to what we are good at. In my opinion Chris Hughes had/has deep insight into this topic. I'm sure your rather casual "blow off" was not helpful to Jenny. Espaecially as you offer no alternative to her question.
Just because I agree with a person, 9 times out of ten, does not mean that I should eat all of his shit with a smile.
I reserve the right to call him, Noam Chomsky and others out.
Only a dense fool, will accept all of the mutterings of a person
An example from the other side. You've heard of the broken clock... yes?
Well Trump is right like a broken clock.
1.
The media is the enemy of the people, it is responsible for him, by giving him free publicity, constantly.
2. The FBI, the same. It has for it's entire history, persecuted leftists, gays, people of color, and before and during the Jan 6th insurrection,, it was targeting BLM, and other left organizations, not the Republican party, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Bugaloo Bois.
So Trump is not calling for defunding the FBI, because it has turned on him.
And in irrational cases of reverse psychology, we have people who should be critiquing the media and demanding a reform of the FBI, now defending them because Trump attacked them. A great way to manipulate the public, that and swallow hook line and sinker, every utterance of an ideological guru.
As regards Jenny's question.
Do you mean this?
What exactly do these "liberalists" want?
What does she mean. What is a liberalist, and whose she talking about?
Call me stupid, but I am not a mind reader.
Thank you Bruce.
I have always thought it wise to ask questions. My point is that if we don't ask questions we learn nothing.
We all have a 'warped' idea of History.
In comments everyone has their own POV I want to learn.
I do this on WAPO comments all the time...I don't get many answers but it causes people to think.
I have not been on Chris Hughes site but I will do it.
Thank you in advance.
And who did the fighting and dying, when royals and nobles did the fighting? The freemen and the serfs.
You are not making sense William.
Nobles did NOT do the fighting...........yes the serfs did!
Ok. I am now even more upset and terrified.
I like the idea of expanding the the number of justices on the SCOTUS to match the number of federal appellate courts, 13.
Also term limits, term limits, term limits. Period.
The best defense is a good offence. I will be publishing a piece shortly that will explain how we can save social security for those that have paid into it and replace it with something better for future generations. A system that will avoid the Supreme Court pitfalls that are so well articulated in this post.
I would be i nterested in the mechanics, if it involves turning the funds and responsiblity over to private firms;. I am against it.
My wife worked 20 years for municipalities as a building inspector, plans examiner and retired as a building official. The state of Washington, elected to allow municipalities, the option of opting out of social security and medicare, and invest in a private retirement firm, she also invested a large part of her paycheck in deferred compensation program, first managed by a retirement management company, but it sold out to another company (Mission Square), she is 70 and hasn't drawn from it yet, as my retirement income and social security, and her PERS are more than enough to get by.
But I worry, because there are no federal laws protecting these retirement accounts, and lesson learned from ENRON. back in 2001, I was selling my house and a potential buyer had to back out because her entire retirement was invested in the company she worked for ..ENRON, which went belly up
I certainly don't trust Goldman Sachs, investment bankers, Peter Thiel, Pete Peterson .
There is only one guarantor that can be trusted to deliver. The government
Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks recipients would continue to receive their Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits. However, about 15% of the Social Security Administration’s staff would be furloughed, which could mean the delay or suspension of benefit verifications, replacement of Medicare cards and determinations on disability claims.
https://dankildee.house.gov/governmentshutdown#:~:text=Will%20I%20continue%20to%20receive,and%20Supplemental%20Security%20Income%20benefits.
Agree with your statements. The Singular System plan does not include privatization of Social Security, rather refundable tax credits that can be accumulated and that appreciate tax free at the rate of inflation to maintain their value. People would then have the option of saving their tax credits for retirement, or cashing them in and investing them as they see fit.
either way, this is an oblique way of privatizing social security, and it is actually the plan of those who want to privatize SS.
The government invests the insurance premiums called FICA in US Treasury bonds, private investor turn to the stock market or rather private investment corporations.
The social security privatization plans I am aware of do not tax credits or the ability of accumulating them until retirement, but rather forcing individuals to invest in private retirement accounts. That's a big difference. The tax credit is part of a much larger system of taxation, benefit distribution and healthcare payments, whose overarching goal is economic justice for workers and the restoration of the American Dream. I hope you'll give my piece a read and let me know what you think. Thanks.
Sorry to have to say it, but you are way off.... Social Security is social insurance, covers more than retirement, widow(ers), orphans and the disabled. It works like insurance, those who are "fully" and "currently" covered, usually about 10 years, may be entitled to benefits. Must meet strict tems of coverage. Can cover the wage earner and dependents, not just the taxpayer. Every wage earner has, on average, coverage of about a $million in benefits.
You may call it what you like. Insurance or a pension. It really is and always has been a social welfare program. One that has become antiquated and unsustainable and frankly unfair to younger generations. We can do better. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on an alternative that much better addresses the needs of a 21st century America.
Mark
The Social security "Singular" System is gigantic with many interacting nodes and vectors, especially when attacked. The dynamics and outcomes are governed by a mixture of algebraic and differential equations. When one tries to control any singular system construct, the complex nature of singular systems causes many difficulties in the analytical and numerical treatment. This is so, especially when there is much "noise". I trust that your treatment will cover such things as to the underlying math and the treatment of noise and the effect of filtering on the validity of your model. I always found that things got very complicated and messy exponentially. Maybe you have deep learning algorithms to substitute for stochastic modeling, and quantum computing to crunch through, past saddle points in the search for optimization. As I said looking forward to learn what you have. I hope it is not Multivariat Regression...that's been tried.
bruce, apparently you are not aware that you are talking to "civilians" and that your whole rant goes over their heads and is obuscatory.You have wasted your time with a barrage of snowballs, that are not comprehendable.
Very interesting that you are so intent on attacking me no matter the issue. I think you meant, incorrectly: OBFUSCATORY. I have reported you. Let's see who you really are. For the colleagues on this sub-stack. Let me reassure you that I know exactly what I am talking about and have the appropriate background. I just wanted Mar de Lotte to know that he has a knowledgeable listener colleague as he tells us his "everything changes" economic theory.
Don't personalize it. I am not attacking you, and there is no malice in my questions or comments. I seriously don't understand what you are saying, and I doubt that others do.
This is constructive criticism, don't assume that everyone has the same level of knowledge that you do. I don't. I have a deep background in history, econ and finance, but I try not to talk over the heads of others, and go out of the way to explain myself in plain words.
Who is Mar de Lotte. Not a commenter that I can recall, certainly not on this thread, so why talk to an absent reader or commenter.
And FYI I doubt that anyone other than some math enthusiast understands what you are saying
He also doesn't know intergral calculus. It's simple, every wage earner has a primary income amount, generated by the amount of FICA taxes paid, usually over 35 years if retirement benefits. The PIA is the benefit (before rounding down to next lower whole dollar) a person would receive if he/she elects to begin receiving retirement benefits at his/her normal retirement age. At this age, the benefit is neither reduced for early retirement nor increased for delayed retirement. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/retirebenefit2.html
As I set forth above, a person has to be fully and currently covered and meet coverage rules to begin receipt of benefits.
Can't wait to read your Post
Thanks, it will post next Friday the 13th. In the meantime you can read about the Singular System here: https://thesingularmovement.substack.com/p/the-singular-movement.
no need, I know the subject. But thanks
Is it likely the court will apply this reasoning to the Pentagon and America's farflung military operations? I doubt it.
In the book Woman Behind the New Deal, there is a story about Labor Sec. Perkins and another Cabinet member seeing old women digging through the trash for food; that broke her heart. Still can happen on a small scale, but if she had not worked-out the New Deal, very few Americans could ever retire and afford to EAT. FDR gets the credit, but Frances figured it out, and she along with Eleanor pushed him.
I too believe we are in peril of losing everything we gained that makes life liveable for people that have had to work hard and serve all their lives. The Republican members of the Court want to ignore "promote the General Welfare" despite the fact that they are the 26th-29th words of the Constitution.
What they say isn't in the Constitution is in those four words. They and the rich bastards funding them simply don't like it. Who can eat, who dies early, and who is miserable is not their concern. They don't give a damn for the people that do all the work. Meanwhile, they are refusing to do THEIR JOB to uphold the Constitution, because it doesn't add to their bottom line.
alis-In addition, Frances Perkins was a witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and that was what motivated her to develop the concept of safety laws for workers (including exit signs), minimum wage, and the 40 hour work week. She was an amazing woman! (and Eleanor was as well!)
We cannot allow this to happen under ANY circumstances!! Rather let all us auld grey heads take up whatever weapon we can grab and use and MARCH with intent to STOP such evil!!!
“Now, with two cases that the six corrupt Republicans on the Court will be hearing this fall, David could be getting his wish.”
I point out that there is evidence that Thomas, Alito, and Roberts have been compromised.
I am unaware of evidence that the other 3 right wingers have taken bribes. So to lump all six of them together as “corrupt” is a stretch.
Never imagined our 3rd branch of government would touch the 3rd rail of politics - much less put it in an absolute chokehold. But I never imagined DJ T-Rump would be spinning the record of the free world either.
It doesn't matter how we thought things were going to be, they are as they are. And right now we must acknowledge this truth, as inconvenient and uncomfortable as it surely is.
In the spirit of acknowledgment it would be prudent (for anyone concerned with the legitimacy of the openly corrupt Republican majority squatting in the Supreme Court) to understand that Congress holds domain over SCOTUS (per the Constitution, Article III).
We need to tell our representatives that this is still a republican democracy, bound by the very thing at stake - the Constitution - and ultimately, democracy.
...and isn't it "curious" that SCOTUS members are saying that Congress doesn't have the ability to constrain them...
Not surprised
Yes. It seems that understanding the Constitution would be in the job description of one tasked with interpreting and ruling on said document.
Correction to my comment:
"republican democracy" should read "democratic republic".
Not a good oversight on my part...