After all, doesn’t their wealth prove their brilliance? And doesn’t brilliance at busting unions and destroying competitors translate into the right stuff for guiding the fate of nations?
I remember a conversation where a group of senior employees were basically worshipping a CEO getting $50 million compensation one year. I pointed out that while he was a good CEO, he would have done the same job for $5 million. Or, if he went elsewhere, there were a couple people in the room who were just as talented.
In my opinion. seriously overpaying a CEO is just wasting money, while worshiping him risks supporting stupid CEOs.
Stop and think about it, and all of us can name CEOs who were kept purely because they were overpaid.
jack Welch, Elon Musk, the CEOs of ENRON and AG, and every executive in the GM building for the last 40 years come immediately to mind.
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”
This is actually my main issue with the Democratic Party. It's not the party of division and hate, it's more the party of confusion and uncertainty, but the NaziRepublican Party and the Goebbels-Murdock Pravda network is SELLING it as the party of division and hate.
The Dems don't seem to care about the fact that it doesn't matter if you are the kindest person on earth as long as I'm convinced you are evil.
If they did care, they would do something other than sit in the corner shaking with fear and crying while pointing at the evil NaziRepublican Party and saying "they aren't being FAIR".
Of course they aren't, it's politics. The DNC needs to pull their heads out of their donkeys and begin acting like a political party. They are NOT a charity, and they are NOT supposed to ignore their sworn duty to uphold the US constitution and LOCK UP THE NAZIREPUBLICAN SEDITIONIST TERRORISTS.
I would if I could, they can and they don't. Unacceptable and the reason people like Musk are giving up on the Dems. Me too, I've about had it. If they want my vote, don't tell me how bad the NaziRepublican Party is, how they oppose free market economies and democracy. I ALREADY KNOW THAT BECAUSE THEY BRAG ABOUT IT. They need to tell me, no SHOW ME, what they are doing to meet their constitutional sworn duty to police the congress and the corrupt SCOTUS.
For example, why aren't there OPEN PUBLIC impeachment proceedings against the corrupt SCOTUS judges who perjured themselves during their confirmation hearings? That should have happened in January 2021.
The crypto-fascists (Thiel, Musk, etc) are in control of far too much capital and they know the GOP is the only party that's going to let them (try) to realize their insane dreams of government-free autonomous zones floating offshore or carved into NZ mountainsides.
They're only connection to the world is via social media; they're spending most of their time pumping money from the FOMO crypto-suckers and NFT morons.
The GOP's "plan" is to let Peter Thiel's Palantir company and its Gotham software basically come up with an AI-based government to keep the rest of us pushing money up the inverted funnel while remaining relatively docile. Most of the people involved on the political side are morons: Josh Mandel, Cynthia Lummis, Ron Paul etc...
I don't think the Democratic party is currently powerful enough to take on this burning dumpster-fire that is the whole conservative anti-government movement. You're right, there is too much division and focus on things other than saving democracy from these very dangerous people who have no love for workers, rights, freedom, the planet, and society as a whole as anything but a source of capital and power.
Lew, (et al) I am actually moved to see the growing number of decent Americans who along w/ Hartmann really understand and can see where this Fascist movement is going.
I’m quite sure at this point that these Nazis really took off in their love for the Hitler version, and that they (Allen Dulles and his minions) killed JFK, MLK and RFK as being Commies or for being too weak on them.
Keep using the term fascist to describe every facet of Republicans - for that is what they are!
I will look. To me, the root cause is education. As an example of the value of education, I'll hold up Europe, where the worst fascists of modern centuries THRIVED for centuries.
One "simple history of Europe" over the last thousand years would be "the land of oppressed white people". Europe was destroyed over and over by fascists opposing individual freedom, from nobility and serfs to Hitler making unions illegal, fascists always controlled society primarily by keeping the people dumb. It continued into the 20th century, with Spain, Germany, and Italy being prime examples, but much of the rest of Europe was only more free by comparison.
After WWII, fascism began arising from the ashes yet one more time, and European leaders realized they simply had to do something about fascism. Someone FINALLY spotted the solution. No matter what they did to counter fascist lies, lies are free, they would simply make up more lies, eg Karl Rove.
By 1960, most European leaders realized that rather than respond to fascist lies, they needed to "immunize" their citizens against lies, INCLUDING political lies, but it will also help avoid consumer and financial fraud.
They solved fascism by improving education.
Duh, seems simple, the solution to citizens being fooled is teach them how to avid being fooled, who wouldathunk?
Maybe if Americans could reason, we'd ban guns that are only designed to explode human beings from the inside, and become more like China, where they have just as many nutcases attacking schools, but almost nobody dies because they have to use a knife.
So, rather than participating with the dems, you will simply dump them. Will you also cease voting? Will you throw away your vote on a “clever” or angry write in? Its so easy being an armchair politician!! Get involved. Stop being enraged and volunteer with your city or state Dem party. Raise money for a good candidate or run for office.
What Biden and his team are accomplishing is wondrous to behold. From Covid to Ukraine to NATO, to Asia. Appreciate what is being done, and how very difficult their jobs are.
Also, we can ask Thom, but Im pretty sure that NO ONE has a “sworn duty to police the SCOTUS”, least of all the CIC.
DeeDee, thank you for your thoughtful comment, truly, it's excellent.
Dump the Dems, no way, nor would I dump the Republican Party if there was still a Republican Party, but they ceased to exist before I could drive.
However, I have dumped the people who are grifters lining their pockets from my wallet while pretending to be D or R - several are so identical they could change parties and it wouldn't change how they "serve us" one iota, THEY ONLY SERVE THEMSELVES.
We delude ourselves if we think accepting corrupt thieves is somehow acceptable because the alternative is worse corrupt thieves. Doubt me - try to explain that logic to a 7 year old. The argument that "the other side is evil" doesn't hold up. We cannot tolerate known high level nearly total corruption - remember last year AOC in a speech told her constituents that the amount of money being offered was astonishing, and she needed them to keep pounding on her so she stays ethical - they did - she has.
I only send money to progressives, and I check that those progressives do not hand any to the corrupt part of the party.
Every member of the Democracy Party wakes up every morning and makes the same decision, will I act like a civilized human being and work hard to improve the lives of the people I represent, or will I let the lizard drive, and spend my day looking for more legal bribes.
Sorry, there is absolutely no way I can support corruption. No way.
Of course, however, we must be strategic. I'll vote for a corrupt D politician if they have any chance at all, but if they cannot win, I write in a non corrupt candidate, guaranteed the parties analyze votes and if they see high voting for 3rd parties where it won't change results, it's a clear indicator to the analysts that they are losing many votes across the nation and maybe they should allow politicians to represent voters, at least a little.
As for policing the corrupt SCOTUS, it is ABSOLUTELY a sworn duty of the Congress, and in fact, it is the ONLY power mentioned in Art 1, Sec 2. I would argue that was intentional, and the most sacred of the duties of congress is Impeaching and removing corrupt politicians - since ONLY CONGRESS CAN.
Please remember why this is their most sacred duty - if the people see their government not representing them at all, the old folks will complain and that will inspire the young men to "fix the problem". That's how revolutions start. Though Jan 6th was CAUSED by media-spread lies, the attackers came from a tiny lunatic fringe, and the Executive Branch aided the attack, there were STILL enough to seditionists to succeed - it was pure luck that we didn't see our congress murdered. A very good reason to charge congress with policing government is because they are too numerous to protect from a pissed off mob, well not unless that mob is a bunch of halfwits.
Here are the exact words from Article 1, Section 2.
"The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."
Thank you for that detailed response. I understand your frustration. We are all exhausted fighting and losing to the extreme right wing. And good people have a very difficult time winning any race, so we are stuck with power seekers rather than servants of the people. That said, the only hope this nation has at this moment in time, is that people like Bernie or even Chris Murphy et al won't become exhausted too. Peace to you, within and without. ✌🏽
I would argue simply that Thomas Jefferson was right, we have the government we elected.
We need to elect different people, and we are the only hope of that happening. We cannot give up and we cannot give in to accepting "lesser corruption" BECAUSE IT GROWS OVER TIME.
I kinda like the William Brandeis quote “ "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
BTW - there are so many spurious quotes attributed to Jefferson that it is a right wing cottage industry.
Great quote, who cares who said it, maybe Jefferson heard some French noble say it and Brandeis heard Jefferson said it. FDR said it too, if memory serves.
Right now, I'm thanking YOU for saying it. You have some distinguished company, but none of them would know where Everglades City is or that the area is famous for square grouper. :)
I agree... but will stress here that the reason the greedy monsters keep getting elected is because the right wing base consumes only fox propaganda. THAT is one of our greatest hurdles! Bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and overturn Citizens United... those are the twin viruses killing our Democracy. They make the right wing insane with endless lies and conspiracy theories... The red electorate BELIEVES the lies being played in their brains on an endless loop. Return the Fairness Doctrine to our mass comms, and get money the hell out of politics. Citizen's United just proves the worthlessness of the SCOTUS.
I disagree. Nobody has or can force me to watch ANY media, particularly anything from the Goebbels-Murdock empire. The only people I know who watch Fox Propaganda are NaziRepublican Party worshippers. Nobody else that I know watches it.
The fairness doctrine was pointless anyway, and IS not a good idea. ReaganBush was right to dump it. It ONLY applied to the station owner. Station owners could order the employees to read a script of total lies and conspiracy fantasies - it would not apply to Fox Fake News unless Murdock himself grabbed the microphone.
It's not a good idea anyway, because it's subjective. Laws must be objective or tyrants LOVE them.
A far better law is to pass a law that allows citizens to sue networks for intentionally putting them or their children in danger. Imagine a class action lawsuit against the RNC and Fox and Murdock with 200 million class members. Who needs the fairness doctrine, I just want to be able to sue them for intentionally harming people.
Truth is widely available, albeit not from mainstream media, but let's be honest, the ONLY change in mainstream media in 50 years is that in 1972 they used to push soap, drugs, and cars, while today they push soap, drugs, and SUVs. Yawn.
Shortly after reading Harlan Ellison's excellent "The Glass Teat" in 1972, I threw out my TV and quit mainstream media forever. My only regret is not getting smarter sooner.
Now, I get all the news I need without any mainstream media. There are many sources of news, just make sure that the news you consume is NOT about the country where you get the news, for example, don't trust Al Jazeera about news that affects Qatar's leaders, and don't trust US news from US media companies, don't trust French news from French media companies, etc, you get the idea.
I can get all the world news I need by watching two widely disparate countries such as Singapore and Norway, just ignore the Singaporean news on Singaporean media, and the Norwegian news on Norwegian media.
What we need to do is simple, follow the Constitution. First, congress needs to pass a code of qualification and conduct for the SCOTUS, which MUST include a requirement to not commit perjury during review and MUST prohibit participation in any case where personal interest is even slightly suspect.
Then we Impeach and imprison the criminals who committed perjury to get onto the SCOTUS, plus anyone who has committed crimes. Before someone says it, these aren't criminals being prosecuted, we can change the rules and enforce them and fire the criminals. It's "fair" to fire criminals, though perhaps not prosecute them.
Next, the SCOTUS was expanded to 9 judges when the USA was expanded to 9 federal circuits. There are 13 federal circuits, but also the workload has expanded. To make sure every federal circuit is well served, we need to make the SCOTUS 13 judges. I'd like to see a requirement for 100% agreement to issue ANY decision, we really only want them doing anything when it's been done wrong, not creating laws out of thin air. We should also eliminate them modifying laws - restrict them to simply sending a law back to Congress with notes. Nothing more.
We need to act, which requires a congress, which we don't have so we MUST elect 100% progressives.
History is on our side. The last time we elected only progressives, from 1932-1980, the Republican Party was forced to become progressive as well, and America got to choose their preferred method to fix THE SAME PROBLEMS.
I couldn’t agree more about the provable anti-general welfareness of so many of our public sector decision-makers in the Democratic Party. Thom has done a masterful job of researching and sharing countless examples of the symptoms and consequences of the horrible and crazy things you’ve addressed, and I would suggest that the Democrats that you know to be not part of the solution are not likely to change. Or you could say that since they are complicit in being part of the problem, and considering what they were willing to do to get elected (and reelected), it tells you all you need to know about who’s side they’re on. The corporatist kakistocrats that make our government's choices are not going away until our citizens choose to make them go away. (I almost miss Madison Cawthorn now but he is a social media herpes that I don't think will be going away anytime soon.)
Many if not all of the mega-church and televangelist pastors and con artists who have been operating in the religion and MLM sphere for the last few decades have been selling the prosperity gospel to their audiences. It is essentially the same rotten fish wrapped in shiny giftwrap paper and validated by the wealth and conspicuous consumption of the pastors. Why do Americans in particular eat it up? There are a variety of reasons peculiar to our cultures and history, but mostly because Americans are gullible and prefer a fantasy world to the real world. Hope and an image of specialness are in our DNA. And, that religious influence has been fed to us with our Wheaties for centuries.
Why do Americans (and other nations) allow the wealthy to exercise such power over the governments they elect? It's an excellent question you raise Thom.
You talk about the super-smart, and I'm assuming you're referring to being "intellectually" smart, which I'd agree is of very little value. But all knowledge isn't bad; if it were, I wouldn't be reading your newsletter, but it's your knowledge of our societies you've acquired over years of service that keeps me reading. You're a little hard on religion, and rightly so; religion has been used to control people. But having knowledge of Jesus' teachings is helpful. Jesus spoke about who should be the greatest among us, and it isn't the wealthy; rather, it's the innocent souls such as little children have, and the greatest are also the ones who serve others. Why the emphasis on service? Because seeing in others our brothers and sisters is a prerequisite for understanding the God who created ourselves. And we don't understand anything if we don't understand ourselves. When we get politicians who want to be of service to humanity, then I'll begin to take an interest in our nation. Until then, my "tribe" is with those who do understand service (even if they're involved in a religion), and also with those who are as innocent (and inquisitive) as children.
I love the kindness that radiates through what you said. Politics affect everything, every day of our lives; this is the message I impart to young people. We participate to protect one another.
Yes, Lew, the Fairness Doctrine can't literally return anyway... (and I disagree it's bad idea, but that's moot now anyway). But I like your idea of class action suits. Against the Fox corp and the Murdochs (pere et fils), and individual anchors and hosts. Good idea!
It's also apparent that SCOTUS now cannot be trusted to do anything but try to foist their dangerous religious views on everyone else; they need to be reigned in somehow. Thomas should be Impeached AND removed asap.
That said, I spent twenty years in TV; and disagree completely, that MSM is tainted or awful. I know those people. I worked with those people. I grew up with a father in the business who was a respected television journalist for decades. I'm happy to report, you are very wrong in your assessment. The vast majority of MSM journalists (and I include cable here as well) are hardworking, honest, earnest, and are simply trying to present facts and information and the simple truth.
Speaking of “Davos Man” the book (which certainly credits Samuel Huntington for the term) by Peter S. Goodman is a must read. Warning: it is really hard to read without retching over the excesses of greed, hubris and sociopathic behavior that literally is taking us into not just Fascism, but into Feudalism 2.0. All these insane billionaires are going to make their world on our bones.
How do we really raise our children to be leaders who respect both the Common Welfare of our community, and still have an instinct for making difficult choices?
In the past 50 years most of the West have adored the concept of 'letting our children raise themselves' while being busy with ourselves. Our schools and our school boards have stood up against retention and summer schools for children who have failed, year after year, to meet grade level standards, and we have refused to imprison any of the 'nice' people who have failed to uphold basic community standards. Instead we have allowed ourselves to be more concerned about gender issues and vaccinating all our children for an increasing array of illnesses that have not seemed to materialize. We have underfunded our schools and refused to discuss most of our difficult challenges: Where have all the fathers gone? Where have all the male teachers gone? Why are more of our boys showing up in the autism spectrum? Why are women, mothers, grandmothers and teachers, allowing their boys, husbands and absent spouses to make so many poor choices?
Indeed, why have voters been so lazy that they have allowed the rich to 'buy up' and monopolize the entire fabric of our lives? By default, we are left with a lot of men who have never grown up, but now has all the toys, all the guns, all the money and no sense of morals, ethics or respect for anybody that want to do a few common sense things, or help stabilize our communities across time and ages, much as Senator Sanders have advocated.
How come we have allowed discourse, civics and common courtesies to be replaced by rudeness and name calling? How come we have failed to recognize that neither the US, nor the EU can absorb the displaced populations from our wars, trade regimes and energy policies?
It is, perhaps, overdue time for a return to a sense of service and discipline in all areas of our self-governance. Do we we not need to simply stop all our career politicians, and send them home to reflect and share? Do we not simply need to require our young people to serve, again, as we did with the Peace Corps, before we give them a new GI Bill of education? Do we not simply need to decide that Greed corrupts everything and everyone, and that tax rates need to reflect that Biblical wisdom?
Unfortunately, in the US, the Democratic Party and its cadre of well-meaning, well-educated and very righteous leaders have not produced many local or national leaders that a broad voter spectrum can trust. Bill Clinton? Hillary Clinton? Mr. Biden? Maybe that is why Elon is disgusted. But, historically speaking, Mr. Hartman is absolutely correct: Our country was doing a bit better before Reagan and the Bush and the Clintons were allowed to decide for us.
Mr. Hartman's citations:
For governing our nation, I’ll take a Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders over a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk any day of the week, as the old saying goes.
Wisdom, insight, experience, understanding of the consequences of policy, a deep grounding in the history of the United States and of democratic institutions around the world: I see almost none of these things in most of our nation’s morbidly rich who aspire to public office.
For governing our nation, I’ll take a Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders over a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk any day of the week, as the old saying goes.
Wisdom, insight, experience, understanding of the consequences of policy, a deep grounding in the history of the United States and of democratic institutions around the world: I see almost none of these things in most of our nation’s morbidly rich who aspire to public office.
Bezos, Jobs, Gates, and a whole host of others learned to dominate the market and their employees. They were not known for being "kind", they were known for being driven. They hired some brilliant teams, then rode herd on them. Is that a talent or just being ambitious?
I've seen Gates interviewed about education, and he acted like what the hell are you asking me for. There are so many experts in that field and others, why WOULD they ask the rich guy? I also question if he would ever have turned to philanthropy without Melinda.
Musk is, well he has told us he is on the spectrum. He is obviously many things, but mature is not one of them. This is the real-life Sheldon Cooper, but without the friends to steer him from time to time. We are watching his mid-life crisis.
I hope people will listen to the audio-book, The Ministry Of The Future. It's about the climate crisis and Geo-politics. It's by Kim Stanley Robinson, a master at sci-fi. The very first part is devastating, but hang in there. He goes to Davos and has his way with them. Just a treat to listen to this book with all the accents and where he takes you.
I remember a conversation where a group of senior employees were basically worshipping a CEO getting $50 million compensation one year. I pointed out that while he was a good CEO, he would have done the same job for $5 million. Or, if he went elsewhere, there were a couple people in the room who were just as talented.
In my opinion. seriously overpaying a CEO is just wasting money, while worshiping him risks supporting stupid CEOs.
Stop and think about it, and all of us can name CEOs who were kept purely because they were overpaid.
jack Welch, Elon Musk, the CEOs of ENRON and AG, and every executive in the GM building for the last 40 years come immediately to mind.
Elon Musk said:
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”
This is actually my main issue with the Democratic Party. It's not the party of division and hate, it's more the party of confusion and uncertainty, but the NaziRepublican Party and the Goebbels-Murdock Pravda network is SELLING it as the party of division and hate.
The Dems don't seem to care about the fact that it doesn't matter if you are the kindest person on earth as long as I'm convinced you are evil.
If they did care, they would do something other than sit in the corner shaking with fear and crying while pointing at the evil NaziRepublican Party and saying "they aren't being FAIR".
Of course they aren't, it's politics. The DNC needs to pull their heads out of their donkeys and begin acting like a political party. They are NOT a charity, and they are NOT supposed to ignore their sworn duty to uphold the US constitution and LOCK UP THE NAZIREPUBLICAN SEDITIONIST TERRORISTS.
I would if I could, they can and they don't. Unacceptable and the reason people like Musk are giving up on the Dems. Me too, I've about had it. If they want my vote, don't tell me how bad the NaziRepublican Party is, how they oppose free market economies and democracy. I ALREADY KNOW THAT BECAUSE THEY BRAG ABOUT IT. They need to tell me, no SHOW ME, what they are doing to meet their constitutional sworn duty to police the congress and the corrupt SCOTUS.
For example, why aren't there OPEN PUBLIC impeachment proceedings against the corrupt SCOTUS judges who perjured themselves during their confirmation hearings? That should have happened in January 2021.
The crypto-fascists (Thiel, Musk, etc) are in control of far too much capital and they know the GOP is the only party that's going to let them (try) to realize their insane dreams of government-free autonomous zones floating offshore or carved into NZ mountainsides.
They're only connection to the world is via social media; they're spending most of their time pumping money from the FOMO crypto-suckers and NFT morons.
The GOP's "plan" is to let Peter Thiel's Palantir company and its Gotham software basically come up with an AI-based government to keep the rest of us pushing money up the inverted funnel while remaining relatively docile. Most of the people involved on the political side are morons: Josh Mandel, Cynthia Lummis, Ron Paul etc...
I don't think the Democratic party is currently powerful enough to take on this burning dumpster-fire that is the whole conservative anti-government movement. You're right, there is too much division and focus on things other than saving democracy from these very dangerous people who have no love for workers, rights, freedom, the planet, and society as a whole as anything but a source of capital and power.
Lew, (et al) I am actually moved to see the growing number of decent Americans who along w/ Hartmann really understand and can see where this Fascist movement is going.
You may want to take a gander at my substack:
https://olflawriduhcracker.substack.com/p/it-wont-be-a-lot-like-camelot?r=38b45&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I’m quite sure at this point that these Nazis really took off in their love for the Hitler version, and that they (Allen Dulles and his minions) killed JFK, MLK and RFK as being Commies or for being too weak on them.
Keep using the term fascist to describe every facet of Republicans - for that is what they are!
I will look. To me, the root cause is education. As an example of the value of education, I'll hold up Europe, where the worst fascists of modern centuries THRIVED for centuries.
One "simple history of Europe" over the last thousand years would be "the land of oppressed white people". Europe was destroyed over and over by fascists opposing individual freedom, from nobility and serfs to Hitler making unions illegal, fascists always controlled society primarily by keeping the people dumb. It continued into the 20th century, with Spain, Germany, and Italy being prime examples, but much of the rest of Europe was only more free by comparison.
After WWII, fascism began arising from the ashes yet one more time, and European leaders realized they simply had to do something about fascism. Someone FINALLY spotted the solution. No matter what they did to counter fascist lies, lies are free, they would simply make up more lies, eg Karl Rove.
By 1960, most European leaders realized that rather than respond to fascist lies, they needed to "immunize" their citizens against lies, INCLUDING political lies, but it will also help avoid consumer and financial fraud.
They solved fascism by improving education.
Duh, seems simple, the solution to citizens being fooled is teach them how to avid being fooled, who wouldathunk?
Maybe if Americans could reason, we'd ban guns that are only designed to explode human beings from the inside, and become more like China, where they have just as many nutcases attacking schools, but almost nobody dies because they have to use a knife.
So, rather than participating with the dems, you will simply dump them. Will you also cease voting? Will you throw away your vote on a “clever” or angry write in? Its so easy being an armchair politician!! Get involved. Stop being enraged and volunteer with your city or state Dem party. Raise money for a good candidate or run for office.
What Biden and his team are accomplishing is wondrous to behold. From Covid to Ukraine to NATO, to Asia. Appreciate what is being done, and how very difficult their jobs are.
Also, we can ask Thom, but Im pretty sure that NO ONE has a “sworn duty to police the SCOTUS”, least of all the CIC.
DeeDee, thank you for your thoughtful comment, truly, it's excellent.
Dump the Dems, no way, nor would I dump the Republican Party if there was still a Republican Party, but they ceased to exist before I could drive.
However, I have dumped the people who are grifters lining their pockets from my wallet while pretending to be D or R - several are so identical they could change parties and it wouldn't change how they "serve us" one iota, THEY ONLY SERVE THEMSELVES.
We delude ourselves if we think accepting corrupt thieves is somehow acceptable because the alternative is worse corrupt thieves. Doubt me - try to explain that logic to a 7 year old. The argument that "the other side is evil" doesn't hold up. We cannot tolerate known high level nearly total corruption - remember last year AOC in a speech told her constituents that the amount of money being offered was astonishing, and she needed them to keep pounding on her so she stays ethical - they did - she has.
I only send money to progressives, and I check that those progressives do not hand any to the corrupt part of the party.
Every member of the Democracy Party wakes up every morning and makes the same decision, will I act like a civilized human being and work hard to improve the lives of the people I represent, or will I let the lizard drive, and spend my day looking for more legal bribes.
Sorry, there is absolutely no way I can support corruption. No way.
Of course, however, we must be strategic. I'll vote for a corrupt D politician if they have any chance at all, but if they cannot win, I write in a non corrupt candidate, guaranteed the parties analyze votes and if they see high voting for 3rd parties where it won't change results, it's a clear indicator to the analysts that they are losing many votes across the nation and maybe they should allow politicians to represent voters, at least a little.
As for policing the corrupt SCOTUS, it is ABSOLUTELY a sworn duty of the Congress, and in fact, it is the ONLY power mentioned in Art 1, Sec 2. I would argue that was intentional, and the most sacred of the duties of congress is Impeaching and removing corrupt politicians - since ONLY CONGRESS CAN.
Please remember why this is their most sacred duty - if the people see their government not representing them at all, the old folks will complain and that will inspire the young men to "fix the problem". That's how revolutions start. Though Jan 6th was CAUSED by media-spread lies, the attackers came from a tiny lunatic fringe, and the Executive Branch aided the attack, there were STILL enough to seditionists to succeed - it was pure luck that we didn't see our congress murdered. A very good reason to charge congress with policing government is because they are too numerous to protect from a pissed off mob, well not unless that mob is a bunch of halfwits.
Here are the exact words from Article 1, Section 2.
"The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment."
Thank you for that detailed response. I understand your frustration. We are all exhausted fighting and losing to the extreme right wing. And good people have a very difficult time winning any race, so we are stuck with power seekers rather than servants of the people. That said, the only hope this nation has at this moment in time, is that people like Bernie or even Chris Murphy et al won't become exhausted too. Peace to you, within and without. ✌🏽
I would argue simply that Thomas Jefferson was right, we have the government we elected.
We need to elect different people, and we are the only hope of that happening. We cannot give up and we cannot give in to accepting "lesser corruption" BECAUSE IT GROWS OVER TIME.
My frustration is with VOTERS, not government.
There is no THEM, only US.
I kinda like the William Brandeis quote “ "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
BTW - there are so many spurious quotes attributed to Jefferson that it is a right wing cottage industry.
Great quote, who cares who said it, maybe Jefferson heard some French noble say it and Brandeis heard Jefferson said it. FDR said it too, if memory serves.
Right now, I'm thanking YOU for saying it. You have some distinguished company, but none of them would know where Everglades City is or that the area is famous for square grouper. :)
I agree... but will stress here that the reason the greedy monsters keep getting elected is because the right wing base consumes only fox propaganda. THAT is one of our greatest hurdles! Bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and overturn Citizens United... those are the twin viruses killing our Democracy. They make the right wing insane with endless lies and conspiracy theories... The red electorate BELIEVES the lies being played in their brains on an endless loop. Return the Fairness Doctrine to our mass comms, and get money the hell out of politics. Citizen's United just proves the worthlessness of the SCOTUS.
I disagree. Nobody has or can force me to watch ANY media, particularly anything from the Goebbels-Murdock empire. The only people I know who watch Fox Propaganda are NaziRepublican Party worshippers. Nobody else that I know watches it.
The fairness doctrine was pointless anyway, and IS not a good idea. ReaganBush was right to dump it. It ONLY applied to the station owner. Station owners could order the employees to read a script of total lies and conspiracy fantasies - it would not apply to Fox Fake News unless Murdock himself grabbed the microphone.
It's not a good idea anyway, because it's subjective. Laws must be objective or tyrants LOVE them.
A far better law is to pass a law that allows citizens to sue networks for intentionally putting them or their children in danger. Imagine a class action lawsuit against the RNC and Fox and Murdock with 200 million class members. Who needs the fairness doctrine, I just want to be able to sue them for intentionally harming people.
Truth is widely available, albeit not from mainstream media, but let's be honest, the ONLY change in mainstream media in 50 years is that in 1972 they used to push soap, drugs, and cars, while today they push soap, drugs, and SUVs. Yawn.
Shortly after reading Harlan Ellison's excellent "The Glass Teat" in 1972, I threw out my TV and quit mainstream media forever. My only regret is not getting smarter sooner.
Now, I get all the news I need without any mainstream media. There are many sources of news, just make sure that the news you consume is NOT about the country where you get the news, for example, don't trust Al Jazeera about news that affects Qatar's leaders, and don't trust US news from US media companies, don't trust French news from French media companies, etc, you get the idea.
I can get all the world news I need by watching two widely disparate countries such as Singapore and Norway, just ignore the Singaporean news on Singaporean media, and the Norwegian news on Norwegian media.
What we need to do is simple, follow the Constitution. First, congress needs to pass a code of qualification and conduct for the SCOTUS, which MUST include a requirement to not commit perjury during review and MUST prohibit participation in any case where personal interest is even slightly suspect.
Then we Impeach and imprison the criminals who committed perjury to get onto the SCOTUS, plus anyone who has committed crimes. Before someone says it, these aren't criminals being prosecuted, we can change the rules and enforce them and fire the criminals. It's "fair" to fire criminals, though perhaps not prosecute them.
Next, the SCOTUS was expanded to 9 judges when the USA was expanded to 9 federal circuits. There are 13 federal circuits, but also the workload has expanded. To make sure every federal circuit is well served, we need to make the SCOTUS 13 judges. I'd like to see a requirement for 100% agreement to issue ANY decision, we really only want them doing anything when it's been done wrong, not creating laws out of thin air. We should also eliminate them modifying laws - restrict them to simply sending a law back to Congress with notes. Nothing more.
We need to act, which requires a congress, which we don't have so we MUST elect 100% progressives.
History is on our side. The last time we elected only progressives, from 1932-1980, the Republican Party was forced to become progressive as well, and America got to choose their preferred method to fix THE SAME PROBLEMS.
I couldn’t agree more about the provable anti-general welfareness of so many of our public sector decision-makers in the Democratic Party. Thom has done a masterful job of researching and sharing countless examples of the symptoms and consequences of the horrible and crazy things you’ve addressed, and I would suggest that the Democrats that you know to be not part of the solution are not likely to change. Or you could say that since they are complicit in being part of the problem, and considering what they were willing to do to get elected (and reelected), it tells you all you need to know about who’s side they’re on. The corporatist kakistocrats that make our government's choices are not going away until our citizens choose to make them go away. (I almost miss Madison Cawthorn now but he is a social media herpes that I don't think will be going away anytime soon.)
Thanks Thom. I cant help wondering if there's any way out of the mess this world is in.
Many if not all of the mega-church and televangelist pastors and con artists who have been operating in the religion and MLM sphere for the last few decades have been selling the prosperity gospel to their audiences. It is essentially the same rotten fish wrapped in shiny giftwrap paper and validated by the wealth and conspicuous consumption of the pastors. Why do Americans in particular eat it up? There are a variety of reasons peculiar to our cultures and history, but mostly because Americans are gullible and prefer a fantasy world to the real world. Hope and an image of specialness are in our DNA. And, that religious influence has been fed to us with our Wheaties for centuries.
Why do Americans (and other nations) allow the wealthy to exercise such power over the governments they elect? It's an excellent question you raise Thom.
You talk about the super-smart, and I'm assuming you're referring to being "intellectually" smart, which I'd agree is of very little value. But all knowledge isn't bad; if it were, I wouldn't be reading your newsletter, but it's your knowledge of our societies you've acquired over years of service that keeps me reading. You're a little hard on religion, and rightly so; religion has been used to control people. But having knowledge of Jesus' teachings is helpful. Jesus spoke about who should be the greatest among us, and it isn't the wealthy; rather, it's the innocent souls such as little children have, and the greatest are also the ones who serve others. Why the emphasis on service? Because seeing in others our brothers and sisters is a prerequisite for understanding the God who created ourselves. And we don't understand anything if we don't understand ourselves. When we get politicians who want to be of service to humanity, then I'll begin to take an interest in our nation. Until then, my "tribe" is with those who do understand service (even if they're involved in a religion), and also with those who are as innocent (and inquisitive) as children.
I love the kindness that radiates through what you said. Politics affect everything, every day of our lives; this is the message I impart to young people. We participate to protect one another.
Yes, Lew, the Fairness Doctrine can't literally return anyway... (and I disagree it's bad idea, but that's moot now anyway). But I like your idea of class action suits. Against the Fox corp and the Murdochs (pere et fils), and individual anchors and hosts. Good idea!
It's also apparent that SCOTUS now cannot be trusted to do anything but try to foist their dangerous religious views on everyone else; they need to be reigned in somehow. Thomas should be Impeached AND removed asap.
That said, I spent twenty years in TV; and disagree completely, that MSM is tainted or awful. I know those people. I worked with those people. I grew up with a father in the business who was a respected television journalist for decades. I'm happy to report, you are very wrong in your assessment. The vast majority of MSM journalists (and I include cable here as well) are hardworking, honest, earnest, and are simply trying to present facts and information and the simple truth.
Speaking of “Davos Man” the book (which certainly credits Samuel Huntington for the term) by Peter S. Goodman is a must read. Warning: it is really hard to read without retching over the excesses of greed, hubris and sociopathic behavior that literally is taking us into not just Fascism, but into Feudalism 2.0. All these insane billionaires are going to make their world on our bones.
How do we really raise our children to be leaders who respect both the Common Welfare of our community, and still have an instinct for making difficult choices?
In the past 50 years most of the West have adored the concept of 'letting our children raise themselves' while being busy with ourselves. Our schools and our school boards have stood up against retention and summer schools for children who have failed, year after year, to meet grade level standards, and we have refused to imprison any of the 'nice' people who have failed to uphold basic community standards. Instead we have allowed ourselves to be more concerned about gender issues and vaccinating all our children for an increasing array of illnesses that have not seemed to materialize. We have underfunded our schools and refused to discuss most of our difficult challenges: Where have all the fathers gone? Where have all the male teachers gone? Why are more of our boys showing up in the autism spectrum? Why are women, mothers, grandmothers and teachers, allowing their boys, husbands and absent spouses to make so many poor choices?
Indeed, why have voters been so lazy that they have allowed the rich to 'buy up' and monopolize the entire fabric of our lives? By default, we are left with a lot of men who have never grown up, but now has all the toys, all the guns, all the money and no sense of morals, ethics or respect for anybody that want to do a few common sense things, or help stabilize our communities across time and ages, much as Senator Sanders have advocated.
How come we have allowed discourse, civics and common courtesies to be replaced by rudeness and name calling? How come we have failed to recognize that neither the US, nor the EU can absorb the displaced populations from our wars, trade regimes and energy policies?
It is, perhaps, overdue time for a return to a sense of service and discipline in all areas of our self-governance. Do we we not need to simply stop all our career politicians, and send them home to reflect and share? Do we not simply need to require our young people to serve, again, as we did with the Peace Corps, before we give them a new GI Bill of education? Do we not simply need to decide that Greed corrupts everything and everyone, and that tax rates need to reflect that Biblical wisdom?
Unfortunately, in the US, the Democratic Party and its cadre of well-meaning, well-educated and very righteous leaders have not produced many local or national leaders that a broad voter spectrum can trust. Bill Clinton? Hillary Clinton? Mr. Biden? Maybe that is why Elon is disgusted. But, historically speaking, Mr. Hartman is absolutely correct: Our country was doing a bit better before Reagan and the Bush and the Clintons were allowed to decide for us.
Mr. Hartman's citations:
For governing our nation, I’ll take a Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders over a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk any day of the week, as the old saying goes.
Wisdom, insight, experience, understanding of the consequences of policy, a deep grounding in the history of the United States and of democratic institutions around the world: I see almost none of these things in most of our nation’s morbidly rich who aspire to public office.
For governing our nation, I’ll take a Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders over a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk any day of the week, as the old saying goes.
Wisdom, insight, experience, understanding of the consequences of policy, a deep grounding in the history of the United States and of democratic institutions around the world: I see almost none of these things in most of our nation’s morbidly rich who aspire to public office.
I like that last sentence; a new way for me to see it.
Bezos, Jobs, Gates, and a whole host of others learned to dominate the market and their employees. They were not known for being "kind", they were known for being driven. They hired some brilliant teams, then rode herd on them. Is that a talent or just being ambitious?
I've seen Gates interviewed about education, and he acted like what the hell are you asking me for. There are so many experts in that field and others, why WOULD they ask the rich guy? I also question if he would ever have turned to philanthropy without Melinda.
Musk is, well he has told us he is on the spectrum. He is obviously many things, but mature is not one of them. This is the real-life Sheldon Cooper, but without the friends to steer him from time to time. We are watching his mid-life crisis.
I hope people will listen to the audio-book, The Ministry Of The Future. It's about the climate crisis and Geo-politics. It's by Kim Stanley Robinson, a master at sci-fi. The very first part is devastating, but hang in there. He goes to Davos and has his way with them. Just a treat to listen to this book with all the accents and where he takes you.
You really nailed this subject, Thom!