For those of you interested in why some of us are so reluctant to jump on the Joe Biden bandwagon, please take the time to listen to this podcast.
http://pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/how-neoliberalism-captured-democrats-with-james-kwak/
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This is a short article, a small point, but ideology and attitudes are made up of countless small points, repeatedly pounded home that go into constructing people’s opinions.
This is an article that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today.
Niesse, Mark (5/15/20) “Amid budget cuts, Georgia pays to keep old voting machines in storage.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
First, there is the headline. The headline opposes the budget cuts from the state of Georgia and the money being spent to house voting machines used in the 2016 (and I think 2018) elections. The obvious message is that we are wasting tax payer money to house unneeded voting machines when we are in the middle of deep budget cuts.
Here is the first sentence of the article:
“As Georgia is preparing for deep budget cuts, the state government is paying $432,000 a year to store 30,000 voting machines that will never be used again.”
First, as a reader pointed out, why should it cost almost half a million dollars to store some voting machines for a year?
Second, the reporter is asserting something he has no knowledge of, that is whether the machines will be “used” again. The voting machines will certainly be used again if they are evidence in a lawsuit to see whether there were election improprieties. And, that impropriety will certainly not be uncovered if the voting machines are destroyed.
So, the argument that the reporter is just reporting the facts is clearly absurd. It is not a fact that these machines will “never be used again.” This is an assumption on the part of the reporter, clearly the assumption that the state of Georgia wants people to believe.
So, why does the reporter take on as fact an assumption that supports the state’s side in this dispute over the voting machines?
An attorney for the secretary of state’s office, Bryan Tyson, in a letter on May 9, asserts:
“Continuing to preserve the DREs (the voting machines) at a significant cost to Georgia taxpayers in times of national crisis for state budgets across the country is wasteful and unnecessary.” This was a letter directed toward the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the citizens of Georgia who want to know whether or not these voting machines were compromised in some way.
The citizens involved want to preserve the machines, to find out whether “viruses or malware” which might have infected the machines might have spread to the state’s replacement voting system.
There has been a proposal to destroy two-thirds of the machines but no agreement on which machines to dispose of. This makes perfect sense. If the machines were infected, why destroy any of the evidence that might demonstrate that fact?
“We’ve tried to work with them,” said David Cross, an attorney for a group of plaintiffs suing the state. “If we could at least do an analysis of a reliable statistical sample, we could see if the old system was compromised.”
This seems to be a reasonable position. But, the reporter after noting that statement, then repeats the scare statistics of budget cuts as if this had anything to do with the voting machines.
“All state agencies, including the secretary of state’s office, are planning for 14% budget cuts in the upcoming fiscal year — more than $3.5 billion. The secretary of state’s office is preparing to slice $3.2 million from its $24 million budget through a hiring freeze, licensing board changes and leaving some positions unfilled, Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said.”
“There are so many ways we could spend money outside storage costs,” Fuchs said. “We could use that for fighting real security threats rather than activist’s lawsuits.”
That’s how the reporter chooses to end the article, with a statement by the Deputy Secretary of State calling the people on the other side of the lawsuit “activists” (which I presume is in his mind a negative thing) and maintaining that this fight is not about “real security threats.”
The AJC reporter should be ashamed of this stenographic reporting.
I am a resident of Georgia. I am tired of the graft, corruption, hubris and collusion that goes into making the state government part of the Republican for-profit free-for-all con game.
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Video of protest about the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.This is a letter to the editor that appeared in the Brunswick News (5/14/20). It needs to be pointed out, however, that the Brunswick News is consistently filled with right-wing material and right-wing political commentary from syndicated columnists. The editorial page regularly includes an article by the now deceased Billy Graham. The newspaper also frequently publishes what are essentially campaign ads for the current Representative, (Not your) Buddy Carter.
Letter to the Editor, Brunswick News. 5/14/20.
I never thought that I would be a protester. My mom and dad raised me to respect the law and to submit to authority.
Then a young man was murdered.
I initially called for peace and trust. I worked with law enforcement officials during my career in child protection. In my day, we all dedicated our lives to being moral and ethical servants of our community.
Somehow, Jackie Johnson was elected to work with us, as our chief law enforcement officer. Things changed.
A police officer stalked his wife and subsequently killed her. He was shielded by the DAs office.
A former employee, armed and angry, kills a young man. We now know that she instructed that her former employee not be arrested before recusing herself and hand-picking her successor, who likewise refused to make an arrest. We then learn that he was also conflicted and indebted to DA Johnson through his son’s employment.
The governor needs to suspend DA Johnson until such time as she can be investigated. We need to be able to have faith that “equal protection under the law” are not hollow words.
DA Johnson, step down. We have no faith in you.
Mark Newman
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In February 2020, when police were called to the scene of a shooting, they found a colleague of theirs, Gregory McMichaels and his son Travis at the scene. As a later released video showed, McMichaels and his son had hunted down Ahmaud Arbery and shot him in the street. According to reporting by the New York Times (5/8/20) Gregory McMichaels had Ahmaud Arbery’s blood on his hands when police arrived.
But, officers at the scene took down the version of the killing told them by the assailants, their former colleague and his son, and sent them home.
Later somebody in the department phoned Ahmaud Arbery’s mother and told her that Aubery had been involved in a burglary and was shot by the home owner. This was a lie. We still do not know who phoned Arbery’s mother.
Peter Murphy, a Glynn County Commissioner, defended the Police Department’s decision not to make an arrest in the shooting.
Bob Coleman, also on the Gynn County Commission, only recently escaped being prosecuted for insurance fraud by letting his wife cop a plea to the charges which involved Coleman’s business.
When I phoned Michael Browning, the head of the Glynn County Commission, to express my opinion that it was inappropriate for a member of the Glynn County Commission to have escaped insurance fraud charges by making an agreement with the prosecutor to let his wife plead to the charges, I was laughed at, insulted and told: “Get your head out of your ass.”
Everyone on the Glynn County Commission needs to be replaced. Please, don’t put campaign signs in your yard for these men. Please don’t vote for these men. The community deserves better than this.
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Charges have been dropped against Michael Flynn.
Paul Manafort is released from prison.
Lawyers for the President argued before the Supreme Court yesterday that the President (if he’s a Republican) should not ever be investigated or prosecuted while in office – no subpoenas, no testimony, no indictments. “Criminal process targeting the President” violates the Constitution, Jay Sekulow said.
Right-wing justices whined that making a Republican president abide by the law was harassment. Holding a Republican President accountable to the law is trying to “torment” the president.
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Well, it seems that advisors around the White House were not able to keep Trump from having the disgusting and embarrassing pressers every day. He was out there again reading meaningless statistics, not wearing a mask, and becoming incensed when reporters asked him innocuous questions.
I have come to despise that sing-song voice he uses when he reads aloud. And, he read aloud today. I am sure his staff tried to get him to confine himself to reading aloud, but of course he couldn’t do that. And, like usual, he made an ass out of himself attacking a female reporter.
The female reporters in these White House briefings could provoke a total melt down from Trump if they just persisted in asking relevant questions and refused to back down. Or if one of them, just one of them, asked Trump if he realized that their job was to ask questions and his was to answer them. But, as it stands now, none of them are prepared to do this.
When I complained once about the servility of the White House press on Twitter, I received multiple replies explaining to me that reporters couldn’t ask pointed questions because they might lose the positions they had worked so hard to attain. This line of reasoning drives me crazy.
We have evidently become a society in which people simply assume that it is normal to abase themselves in order to keep a job. I cannot count the number of times I have heard political pundits state in a matter-of-fact manner that members of Congress can’t do this or that because they might then have an opponent in a primary, or God-forbid lose an election.
When did we become a country in which it was assumed that everybody would just do what they were told, sacrifice any standard, abandoned any integrity, kiss any ass just to hold a job? When did this become normal?
I’m sorry, but what ever happened to doing what is right? I know, it went out of fashion. I miss it.
Other notes from the News:
AFP.com (5/10/20)
- The Supreme Court will tomorrow take up whether Trump is going to be forced (like every other person) to turn over his tax returns. He is the first president since Nixon to refuse to do so. Trump’s lawyers have argued that this request for the tax returns is designed to “torment the president.”
- Trump’s attorneys are arguing that he enjoys total immunity as long as he is in the White House.
- In a friend of the court brief, lawyers argued that if the Supreme court rules for Trump and his lawyers “it will fundamentally alter the basic principles of accountability on which our democracy depends.”’
- There are a lot of people who are still maintaining that our “institutions are holding.” I am not one of them.
Trudo, Hanna and Hunter Woodall (5/11/20) Daily Beast
In an interview on April 30, Joe Biden revealed that “…there’s some major Republicans who are already forming ‘Republicans for Biden.” He then specified that they were “major officeholders.”
- “You don’t want something like this out on the street before it needs to be,” a GOP source said. “It just makes it much harder to do.”
- Names that are being bandied about apparently include Jeff Flake, Bill Kristol, Michael Steele, Steve Schmidt, David Jolly and Mona Charen and John Kasich. .
- Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign said, in part, “Vice President Biden is running for president to unite our country and rebuild the soul of the nation, and to accomplish that we need to bring together Americans from across the political spectrum to build the broadest possible coalition to defeat Donald Trump.”
- At one point in late 2019, Biden even floated the prospect of selecting a Republican running mate.
- In late April, Biden stated that he would consider naming Republicans to his Cabinet.
Derysh, Igor (Salon, 6/19/19).
- In June of 2019, Biden assured rich donors at a New York fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he is elected.
- He promised not to “demonize” the rich and that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”
- This was just after Biden appeared at the Poor People’s Campaign Presidential Forum where he said that poverty “was the one thing that can bring this country down.” “We have,” he stated “all the money we need to do it.”
- Biden went on to say that the rich should not be blamed for income inequality, pleading to the donors, “I need you very badly.”
- For the rich donors in New York: “I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you,” he added.
- Biden also complained that some Democrats criticized his eagerness to work with Republicans after Republicans spent years blocking President Obama’s agenda and moving further right.
- Biden pointed out that his ability to work with segregationists like former Mississippi Sen. James O. Eastland and Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge showed that he could “bring people together,”
- “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’”
- “At least there was some civility,” he said. “We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition — the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
I hate to tell Joe Biden, but the problem here is not that we don’t talk to Republicans. The problem is that we have listened to Republicans. They want to establish a one-party Christian Nationalist state that has no room for democracy.
You cannot compromise, bring together, be civil to people who are trying to destroy democracy. You either fight them or you let them win. Joe Biden will let them win. He has done it his entire career.
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This is a video of the cars parked along HWY 17 in Brunswick , Georgia. These brave people gathered to protest the government inaction in the case of the killing of Ahmaud Aubrey. These people gathered in front of the house of Gregory McMichael who along with his son armed himself and pursued Aubrey through their neighborhood, finally shooting and killing him.
When a team from CNN was later filming at the same location, automatic weapon fire was heard in the background.
The two men were finally arrested after two months of inaction and shifting the responsibility for the case around rural Georgia.
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Morning Musings:
- The Trump pressers and the now daily appearances are humiliation sessions. Trump regularly demeans and silences the voices of reporters and this morning, a nurse who has first hand experience working with the Coronavirus. This is what authoritarian governments do, normalize the silencing of dissent. Every time Trump silences, demeans, and both demands and receives acquiescence in this silencing, people are taught what’s expected, that submission is a normal way to behave. We need to admit that we live in a culture of cowardice, compliance, and willing submission. We need to stop obsessing about Trump’s behavior and look at ourselves.
- This is a culture that deludes itself into thinking that it is characterized by independent thought and action when in fact, what characterizes most individuals is compliance.
- Every time Trump is allowed to bully and demean others without reaction, Americans become a little bit more compliant with authority.
- It is being reported this morning that guidelines from the CDC about reopening society were ignored by the Trump administration. The CDC, evidently, has been gutted of professionals who will stand up for fact and independent thought. The man in charge of the CDC has been investigated for misrepresenting his own research data.
- It is time to ask what the benefits are to the administration from the virus becoming worse. They include 1) massive profits from the wild west profiteering off medical supplies, 2) reinforcing people’s notion that government can’t work for their benefit, 3) reinforcing the Republican theory of government that we should have no government, 4) driving wages down, 5) providing an excuse for cutting and eliminating social programs, 6) encouraging the free-for-all economy the Republicans have worked to bring about for decades, 7) exacerbating a crisis that will cover other authoritarian moves which will go unnoticed, 8) killing off a large proportion of vulnerable people, 9) justifying closing the borders. These are just a few advantages of the crisis getting worse.
- The corporate media has ceased to be any kind of check on power. They are worse than useless. They don’t even have to be censored, they censor themselves. The feckless questions asked in the presidential pressers is an example of this. The county is in the middle of an economic and health crisis, and reporters ask questions like: Thank you Mr. President. Do you think, Mr. President, that citizens should congregate on the mall?
- The Biden apologia articles arguing that 1) Tara Reade is not credible that her charges are somehow different from those of Blassy Ford, or that 2) the charges are believable, but we should vote for Biden anyway are just astounding. It is astonishing how many women are willing to publicly argue that a presidential candidate with multiple women accusers should be given a pass.
- I am disappointed that a number of women I know who are pleading with me to silence myself about Biden’s obvious failures as a candidate. Please, they ask, don’t speak or write the truth. We have to remain silent and protect our candidate, the candidate the Democratic Party and the corporate media cheated to install as the candidate.
- Equally disheartening is the number of people engaging in a gigantic act of delusion by relying on voting in 2020 to solve our problems. The Republicans have done and will do everything in their power to subvert a democratic vote. They have and will also enable interference in the election on their behalf. There is too much at stake for Republicans to allow a loss. We must move beyond this Cinderella-fiction that we can just vote Trump out in 2020. The Republicans are being so brazen and craven, not even pretending to believe in democracy, because they know they will win. And, the Democrats will blame Bernie Sanders and his supporters and cower in place just as the Democratic Party is doing at the moment.
- Democrats are remaining silent, hoping that Trump will destroy himself over the Corona virus pandemic. Instead of fighting every day, pointing out to the American people every day that what is happening is a textbook example of what happens in a culture where you put people in charge of government who are trying to destroy government. It is a textbook case of what a pandemic looks like managed by people who value profits over everything else. This is unfettered capitalism, no regulations, no rules except that everyone is free to profit off untold misery to their heart’s content.
- Instead of going on television every day to point out what a giant class rip off the bailout bill was, the Democrats went on television trying to make political points for compromising with (caving to) the Republicans in a windfall (yet another one) for the 1%.
- Bernie Sanders has gone silent at a time when every day is an illustration of why the changes he proposed for the country are essential to the survival of working people and democracy.
- Barak Obama seems to stay above the fray unless he has to step in to prevent fundamental social change for working people. Obama refused, refused to prosecute those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. He helped enable lack of accountability for the wealthy and powerful.
- We have to face the facts. Hiding our heads in the sand will accomplish nothing.
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Deep State Radio Podcast
5/5/20
Interview with Sarah Kenzior about her new book “Hiding in Plain Sight.”
Notes from the interview:
- The Mueller investigation was deeply problematic in that Mueller completely avoided investigating Trump’s finances and the close connection with the Russian Mafia. Mueller also refused to indict or even interview key people like Jared Kushner.
- Mueller made useless deals with people like Michael Flint that yielded nothing.
- Mueller was lionized by the corporate media and assumed to be doing a real investigation. But, he virtually defined out of the investigation certain crucial areas like Trump’s finances.
- The Republicans have no illusions that this will be a free and fair election in 2020. They have no intentions of trying to ensure it is. This should have been investigated from the very beginning. It was not.
- The Trump administration is a continuation of “streamlined corruption.” It is a continuation of a philosophy of government – began decades ago – to make government so small and powerless you could “drown it in a bathtub.”
- Crises make it easier to push authoritarian policies.
- 911 made it easy to carry out extra-legal surveillance activities.
- The economic downturn helped solidify income rampant inequality.
- There is a grave danger that the Coronavirus pandemic will help justify the use of advanced tracking technology that will further invade individual privacy.
- Kenzior discusses the problems already in China with technology that such as facial recognition and social crediting which records purchases and activities. For some people it is a branding system. If you don’t have the right authorization, you can’t get a job, for example. (Note: There is a documentary about this on the Wiegers.)
- Kenzior also is concerned about health data being weaponized, there being classes of people who can and can’t get tested or classes of people identified as “infectious groups.”
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I have to admit that it’s difficult to even get up the energy to write a blog anymore. I know that’s what the Christian nationalist Republican party coup leaders want, but I am still not above admitting I’m having a really hard time.
Normally, I would be glued to CSPAN watching the confirmation hearings for Ratcliff as DNI. But, I just cannot watch another hearing filled with feckless and useless Democrats asking questions like they are at a garden party. There’s no point engaging when you have no dog in the fight.
I hate to say it, but I don’t think normal, ordinary people have a dog in the fight anymore. The Democrats represent their corporate donors, Bernie has dropped out and disappeared, the corporate media covers nothing but coronavirus minutiae and little hero personal interest stories. (Right now Katy Tur is on MSNBC interviewing somebody about some music venue on the beach that is not functioning.) 24-hours a day of coronavirus coverage on two major networks and we’re looking at a freaking music venue disappearing.
Nicolle Wallace last night, when I tried to watch a few minutes, was asking ONCE AGAIN (for what must certainly be the 1K time) if there wasn’t anybody in the White House who could talk sense into Trump.
Now, first of all, I don’t remember her ass talking sense to Bush when he was lying to us and starting a war for profit in Iraq. Nor do I remember her ass standing up against using the OLC as a vehicle for legitimating torture. Nor did she stand up against torture during or after the administration. In fact, she has said that Bush was so proper and moral he wouldn’t even allow her to wear blue jeans to the office on weekends. Isn’t that precious? They make me gag.
Second, this question (like so many others distributed over the corporate media) assumes that the problem is Trump. Like Joe Biden, and others Wallace assumes that as soon as we get rid of Trump, everything will return to “normal.” (They always forget that “normal” is what got us here.)
Perhaps this is true for them. Perhaps they will return to “normal” since they want to see no essential reform, no change, just a return to the trough without having to think badly of themselves.
But, for the rest of us, the corporate media and the Democratic party have become enablers of this presidency.
Joe Biden, Barak Obama and the Democratic Party (after getting all the other corporate candidates to leave the race) have disappeared from public view. They are hiding in their basements. Biden is hiding to keep from making himself look like an ass in public which he (like Trump) is sure to do if they allow him to speak before a camera. The Democrats have made a political decision that they are going to lay low and hope Trump destroys himself over the pandemic. Barak Obama evidently never speaks up unless it is to prevent fundamental change in the country that might help regular people.
This is a perfect opportunity for the Democratic Party to stand up every day before a camera and explain to the American people that what we are seeing (a refusal to organize a response to the virus, profiteering over essential health resources, forcing working class people to go back to work while corporate executives hide in their basements, leaving the states and cities and counties to fend for themselves in the pandemic, using government resources to reward friends and punish political enemies, throwing away massive amounts of food rather than feeding the needy) are all part of Republican government.
This is not an anomaly; this is where the Republican party has been going for decades. This is what they have been working towards for decades. This is government by people who don’t believe in government. This is government by people who believe in health care for the highest bidder. This is government by people who will throw away food before they will give it to somebody for free.
If you ever vote Republican again, this is what you are voting for.
And, Joe Biden wants to bring these Republicans back into his cabinet and administration.
