ANS -- a tidbit

And in an interesting turn of events, Republican congressman Glenn Thompson attended his gay son's wedding last week, three days after opposing the bill in the US House that would protect same-sex marriage. 

--kim

Fw: July 23, 2022

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>

To: "kimc0240@yahoo.com" <kimc0240@yahoo.com>

Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 09:22:26 PM PDT

Subject: July 23, 2022

Thursday's public hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol brought to its logical conclusion the story of Trump's attempt to overturn our democracy. After four years of destroying democratic norms and gathering power into his own hands, the former president tried to overturn the will of the voters. Trump was attacking the fundamental concept on which this nation rests: that we have a right to consent to the government under which we live.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

	Open in browser July 23, 2022 Heather Cox Richardson Jul 24 Thursday's public hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol brought to its logical conclusion the story of Trump's attempt to overturn our democracy. After four years of destroying democratic norms and gathering power into his own hands, the former president tried to overturn the will of the voters. Trump was attacking the fundamental concept on which this nation rests: that we have a right to consent to the government under which we live. Far from rejecting the idea of minority rule after seeing where it led, Republican Party lawmakers have doubled down. They have embraced the idea that state legislatures should dominate our political system, and so in 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws to restrict access to voting. On June 24, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision, the Supreme Court said that the federal government did not have the power, under the Fourteenth Amendment, to protect the constitutional right to abortion, bringing the other rights that amendment protects into question. When Democrats set out to protect some of those rights through federal legislation, Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly voted to oppose such laws. In the House, Republicans voted against federal protection of an individual's right to choose whether to continue or end a pregnancy and to protect a health care provider's ability to provide abortion services: 209 Republicans voted no; 2 didn't vote. That's 99% of House Republicans. They voted against the right to use contraception: 195 out of 209 Republicans voted no; 2 didn't vote. That's 96% of House Republicans. They voted against marriage equality: 157 out of 204 Republicans voted no; 7 didn't vote. That's 77% of House Republicans. They voted against a bill guaranteeing a woman's right to travel across state lines to obtain abortion services: 205 out of 208 Republicans voted no; 3 didn't vote. That's 97% of House Republicans. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal. Seventy percent support gay marriage. More than 90% of Americans believe birth control should be legal. I can't find polling on whether Americans support the idea of women being able to cross state lines without restrictions, but one would hope that concept is also popular. And yet, Republican lawmakers are comfortable standing firmly against the firm will of the people. The laws protecting these rights passed through the House thanks to overwhelming Democratic support but will have trouble getting past a Republican filibuster in the Senate. When he took office, Democratic president Joe Biden recognized that his role in this moment was to prove that democracy is still a viable form of government. Rising autocrats have declared democracy obsolete. They argue that popular government is too slow to respond to the rapid pace of the modern world, or that liberal democracy's focus on individual rights undermines the traditional values that hold societies together, values like religion and ethnic or racial similarities. Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, whom the radical right supports so enthusiastically that he is speaking on August 4 in Texas at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has called for replacing liberal democracy with "illiberal democracy" or "Christian democracy," which will explicitly not treat everyone equally and will rest power in a single political party. Biden has defended democracy across the globe, accomplishing more in foreign diplomacy than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Less than a year after the former president threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken pulled together the NATO countries, as well as allies around the world, to stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The new strength of NATO prompted Sweden and Finland to join the organization, and earlier this month, NATO ambassadors signed protocols for their admission. This is the most significant expansion of NATO in 30 years. That strength helped to hammer out a deal between Russia and Ukraine with Turkey and the United Nations yesterday to enable Ukraine to export 22 million tons of grain and Russia to export grain and fertilizer to developing countries that were facing famine because of Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports. An advisor to the Ukrainian government called the agreement "a major win for Ukraine." When a Russian attack on the Ukrainian port of Odesa today put that agreement under threat, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget A. Brink called the attack "outrageous." Biden has also defended democracy at home, using the power of the federal government to strengthen the ability of working Americans to support their families. As soon as Biden took office, Democrats passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to rebuild the economy. It worked. The U.S. has added 10 million new jobs since Biden took office, and unemployment has fallen to 3.6%. That strong economy has meant higher tax revenues that, combined with the end of pandemic spending, have resulted in the budget deficit (the amount by which the government is operating in the red each year and thus adding to the national debt) dropping considerably during his term. The strong economy has also led to roaring inflation, fed in part by supply chain issues and high gas prices. During the pandemic, as Americans turned to ordering online at the same time that factories closed down, shipping prices went through the roof. In the past year or so, outdated infrastructure at U.S. ports has slowed down turnaround while a shortage of truckers has slowed domestic supply chains. Biden's administration worked to untangle the mess at ports by getting commitments from businesses and labor to extend hours, and launched new programs to increase the number of truckers in the country. While oil companies are privately held and thus have no obligation to lower their prices rather than pocket the record profits they have enjoyed over the past year, Biden has nonetheless tried to ease gas prices by releasing oil from the strategic reserve and by urging allies to produce more oil for release onto the world market. Gas prices have declined for the past month and now average $4.41 a gallon, down from a high of more than $5 last month. Last month, on June 25, Biden signed into law the first major gun safety bill in almost 30 years, having pulled together the necessary votes despite the opposition of the National Rifle Association. On July 21, he signed the bipartisan FORMULA (which stands for "Fixing Our Regulatory Mayhem Upsetting Little Americans"—I'm not kidding) Act to drop tariffs on baby formula for the rest of the year to make it easier to get that vital product in the wake of the closure of the Sturgis, Michigan, Abbott Nutrition plant for contamination, which created a national shortage. The Biden administration has also organized 53 flights of formula into the country, amounting to more than 61 million 8-ounce bottles. While we have heard a lot about Biden's inability to pass the Build Back Better part of his infrastructure plan because of the refusal of Republicans and Democratic senator Joe Manchin (WV) to get on board, Biden nonetheless shepherded a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill through this partisan Congress, investing in roads, bridges, public transportation, clean energy, and broadband. Last Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that 1 million households have signed up for credits to enable them to get broadband internet, a program financed by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Love or hate what Biden has done, he has managed to pull a wide range of countries together to stand against Russian president Vladimir Putin's authoritarian attack in Ukraine, and he has managed get through a terribly divided Congress laws to make the lives of the majority better, even while Republicans are rejecting the idea that the government should reflect the will of the majority. That is no small feat. Whether it will be enough to prove that democracy is still a viable form of government is up to us. — Notes: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker/#:~:text=The%20federal%20government%20ran%20a%20deficit%20of%20%242.8%20trillion%20in,revenue%20increases%20outpacing%20expenditure%20growth. https://www.lee.senate.gov/2022/5/sen-lee-to-introduce-formula-act ​​ Chris Murphy @ChrisMurphyCT What if two years ago, I told you that by the end of Biden's first two years: - 10 million new jobs - 3.6% unemployment - 86% drop in COVID death rate - biggest ever infrastructure bill PASSED - first gun safety bill in 30 yrs PASSED (wait, just getting started...keep reading) July 21st 2022 13,209 Retweets47,445 Likes KD @Fly_Sistah Only President Biden could create 9 million jobs, get unemployment to 3.6%, end a 20 year war in Afghanistan, sign a $1.9T American Rescue Plan, sign a $1.2T infrastructure law, sign the 1st major gun law in 30 years, confirm 69 federal judges & be told he's failing as president. July 11th 2022 7,925 Retweets21,344 Likes https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8373/all-actions Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney AUSA VAUGHN: "He thinks his authroity as one man is greater than our government's, the one that we have all consented to. THat's not the way this works. He doens't get to dtell the committee that it's beneath his compliance and they need to appeal to another power or person." July 22nd 2022 92 Retweets564 Likes https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2022360 https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2022362 https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-public-disapproves-of-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/abortion-birth-control-poll/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/abortion-state-lines/ David Rothschild 🇺🇦 @DavMicRot 77% of Republicans in House voted to not protect LGBTQ marriage 96% of Republicans in House voted to not protect access to birth control Republican agenda is super dangerous & unpopular, it is extremist July 21st 2022 197 Retweets554 Likes https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/politics/white-house-affordable-connectivity-program-broadband/index.html https://www.npr.org/2022/06/25/1107626030/biden-signs-gun-safety-law https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-comes-next-after-bidens-foreign-policy-marathon https://www.scmr.com/article/overcoming_the_obstacles_at_u.s._ports https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/16/fact-sheet-the-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administration-trucking-action-plan-to-strengthen-americas-trucking-workforce/ https://www.vox.com/2022/7/22/23271456/gas-prices-falling-inflation https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_197763.htm https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-sweden-sign-protocol-join-nato-still-need-ratification-2022-07-05/ https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1112880942/ukraine-grain-exports-deal https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/3571452-russia-attacks-ukrainian-port-of-odessa-following-deal-to-export-grain-officials/ Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov So, ukraine has not made any political, territorial, military or other concessions. The UN is the party to the initiative. … July 22nd 2022 29 Retweets225 Likes https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/07/18/five-operation-fly-formula-flights-scheduled-week-of-july-18.html https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105488061/baby-formula-plant-abbott-closed-flooding Share Like Comment Share You're a free subscriber to Letters from an American. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. Subscribe © 2022 Heather Cox Richardson 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

ANS -- From Heather Cox Richardson today (7/21/22).

This is another summary from Heather Cox Richardson.  There's some stuff I hadn't heard about papers showing that Trump and company were definitely trying to skew the vote when he tried to add a question about citizenship to the census form.  And other stuff about what they are finding out in the current investigation.  Then what Biden has been saying about climate -- which is heartening, so read it.  

--Kim

From Heather Cox Richardson today (7/21/22).

Today, documents released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee confirmed that the Trump administration's attempt to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census was a strategy to skew population data to benefit Republicans. Trump had refused to turn over the documents, but the Biden administration agreed to allow the House committee to see them.

U.S. censuses, which are required every 10 years under our Constitution, have always counted "persons," and both voting and public monies are proportioned according to those numbers. Under Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the Trump administration wanted to include a question about citizenship, and administration officials first suggested that they would count citizens, rather than legal residents and undocumented immigrants, for purposes of representation, and then said they needed citizenship information to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Opponents claimed the proposed new question was designed to scare immigrants, who tend to vote Democratic, away from being counted, which would have shifted representation and government monies toward Republicans.

A district court said Secretary Ross's action was "arbitrary and capricious, based on a pretextual rationale, and violated certain provisions of the Census Act," and the Supreme Court added that the administration's claim to need citizenship information to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act was "contrived." It blocked the administration from including that question on the census.

Now, we have documents showing that Ross and other Trump administration officials actively sought to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census in the hope that their erasure would also make legal immigrants avoid being counted, and thus cut representation for and funding to Democratic districts. One handwritten note suggests using the Voting Rights Act as cover.

This is a stark example of the dangers of turning our government over to an authoritarian leader who will use our fundamental governmental systems to draw power to himself. This census question had the potential to affect our governmental system profoundly. Even without the census question, the U.S. Census Bureau in March 2022 said a quality check revealed that Black Americans, Indigenous Americans, and Hispanic or Latino Americans were undercounted in 2020, while white inhabitants and Asian inhabitants were overcounted.

This is just the latest example of Trump and his allies trying to use our government to cement their power, among others that reached from Trump's attempt to weaponize funds approved by Congress for Ukraine to fight off Russian incursions so as to damage likely Democratic opponent Joe Biden, to the January 6 attempt to stop Biden's certification as president-elect.

These attempts appear to have reached deep into the Secret Service as well, and today we learned that the Department of Homeland Security itself might have played along. Carol D. Leonnig and Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post today reported that whistleblowers have revealed that DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari, a Trump appointee, learned in February that nearly all text messages from around the time of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had been deleted from Secret Service agents' cell phones but elected to keep that information from Congress. The inspector general's office also declined to tell Congress that the Secret Service was refusing to turn over records from that period.

And yet, for all the efforts of officials in the Trump administration to seize power by compromising our national systems, a Trump-era White House aide who testified before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol claimed that it is he and his colleagues who are victims of a strong state. In a webcast after his testimony, Garrett Ziegler, an aide to trade advisor Peter Navarro who appears to have been the person who admitted Trump allies to the White House for the shocking meeting of December 18 where they discussed martial law, continued to claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

As for the January 6 committee: "They're Bolsheviks," he said, in an echo of Republican rhetoric calling all opponents communists, "so, they probably do hate the American Founders and most White people in general. This is a Bolshevistic anti-White campaign. If you can't see that, your eyes are freaking closed. And so, they see me as a young Christian who they can try to basically scare, right?" He attacked the women who have cooperated with the committee with offensive language.

Meanwhile, the January 6 committee continues to bear down on the Trump administration. Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey, and Paul Kane of the Washington Post reported tonight that at tomorrow night's public hearing, the committee is planning to show outtakes from Trump's reluctant video of January 7, when there was talk of removing him from office.

While the struggle between the Trump team and those trying to bring them to justice continues, President Biden is trying to move the country forward to address the existential crisis of climate change. Europe is suffering under a terrible heat wave; Britain has declared a climate emergency and, with airstrips softened by extreme heat, grounded the Royal Air Force; and 100 million Americans are under emergency heat warnings.

On Monday, the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, warned world leaders gathered at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, where they are gathered to advance multilateral climate negotiations: "Half of humanity is in the danger zone from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction…. What troubles me most is that, in facing this global crisis, we are failing to work together as a multilateral community. Nations continue to play the blame game instead of taking responsibility for our collective future. We cannot continue this way," he said. "We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands."

In the U.S., the recent West Virginia v. EPA decision of the Supreme Court, weakening the ability of the government to shift the country toward clean energy by regulating carbon dioxide emissions, has limited the government's ability to address climate change. So, too, has the insistence of Republican senators, as well as Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, that short-term economic interests outweigh the imperatives of climate change. Days ago, Manchin said he would not support new investment in clean energy out of concern over inflation. Without him, the Democrats' plans for addressing climate change through legislation can't move forward, since no Republicans are on board.

So President Biden is working around them. Today, he traveled to Somerset, Massachusetts, to reiterate that climate change is an emergency and to illustrate that combating it offers us a new, innovative economy. As National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy explained to reporters, until 2017, Somerset was the site of one of the biggest and oldest coal-fired power plants in New England. Now that plant will be making cable to anchor offshore wind turbines.

Hoping to bring that innovation to the nation more widely, Biden noted that extreme weather events—wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and floods—cost the U.S. $145 billion last year alone. They damage our economy and our national security. "As President, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger," he said today. "And that's what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger."

Biden is planning to invest more than $2 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $385 million from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to help people cool their homes. In early June, Biden used the Defense Production Act to speed up the domestic manufacture of solar equipment. The bipartisan infrastructure law has added $3.1 billion to the mix to weatherize homes and make them more energy efficient, and the American Rescue Plan provided $16 billion to clean up methane leaking from capped oil wells, abandoned when they stopped making money.

Biden vowed that addressing the climate crisis would provide good manufacturing jobs, repair supply chains, and clean up the environment. He promised to use the power of the presidency to do what Congress currently is not. "[I]n the coming weeks, I'm going to use the power I have as President to turn these words into formal, official government actions through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders, and regulatory power that a President possesses," he said.

"[W]hen it comes to fighting…climate change, I will not take no for an answer. I will do everything in my power to clean our air and water, protect our people's health, to win the clean energy future," he said. "We have an opportunity here."

ANS -- How America’s Ruling Elite Plans to Destroy Capitalism

this is a bit of  -- well, it's not exactly satire, but something on that order.  It's kindof half joking and half serious. What's the right word? Sarcasm?  Irony?  Enjoy.  

Find it here: https://medium.com/lists-of-doom/how-americas-ruling-elite-plans-to-destroy-capitalism-8a3ad2bae8e5 

--Kim

Daniel G. Jennings

Jun 14

·

2 min read

·

How America's Ruling Elite Plans to Destroy Capitalism

America's ruling elite plans to destroy and discredit capitalism. Hence, America's rulers hope to succeed where Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Mao Zedong failed.

Evidence of the American elite's plans to destroy capitalism are all around us. Dead malls, main streets full of empty stores, homelessness, $10 a gallon gas, and baby formula shortages are among the many signs that plan is working.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/american-flag-with-rolled-dollar-bills-4386346/

To help our corporate masters achieve their goals and hasten the Chinese takeover of the world we want to encourage American capitalism's destruction. Here, are some of the ways America's elite plans to destroy capitalism.

How America's Elite will destroy Capitalism

1. By devaluing and discrediting the world's reserve currency the US dollar.
2. By making it impossible for ordinary people to buy housing anywhere in America.
3. By exporting all of America's industry to China.
4. By sabotaging and blocking any effort to replace fossil fuels with better energy sources.
5. Making cities unlivable so no companies will want to do business in them. See San Francisco for your community's future.
6. Demonizing Elon Musk and sabotaging his efforts to rebuild American industry.
7. Making it more profitable for big companies to spend their money buying stock rather than modernizing. They call this scam stock buy backs. It's great for stockholders and bad for everybody else. See Abbott Laboratories (ABBT) and the Baby Formula shortage to see how stock buybacks help American industry.
8. Destroying all high-paying jobs and unions so ordinary people do not have any money to buy anything with.
9. Wasting a large proportion of the federal budget on obsolete weapons the military does not need.
10. Making sure that the government does nothing for anybody besides the rich to make revolution inevitable.
11. Creating an economy that absolutely nothing for ordinary people.
12. Ensuring that all college graduates have enormous student loan debts so they will never join the middle class.
13. Destroying public education so that ordinary people will be too ignorant to take any job that pays a real salary.
14. Destroying America's transportation system to make it impossible for companies to do business.
15. Making sure that only incompetent, stupid, and crazy people get elected to public office so that government is incapable of doing anything.
16. Keeping our private jets fueled up so that we can fly off to countries where they still have capitalism and democracy with all the money we've looted from America when the Revolution comes. For example, Peter Thiel wants to build a luxury lodge in New Zealand.



Setback for billionaire Peter Thiel's plan to build luxury lodge in remo... Council planners recommend sprawling development proposed for Wanaka, near Queenstown, be rejected

So yes, America's ruling class wants to destroy capitalism. Unfortunately, they seem to be close to achieving that project.

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The comments on the site are pretty interesting because of the variety of reactions.