Stephan: It is my opinion that we need to revise the government by getting rid of the Electoral College, restructuring the Senate, creating an ethics code for the Supreme Court, limiting the term of the Justices to 20 years, canceling Citizens United, and making elections publicly funded. Also radically changing the tax code so that the tax of the wealthy reverts to what it was in the 1950s.
CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon Musk speaks to a crowd of people who had gathered to participate in Tesla Motors test drives outside the Texas Capitol building in Austin. Credit: Robert Daemmrich / Photography Inc/Corbis / Getty
For nearly two centuries, literature from Marx and Dickens to Thomas Picketty and Barbara Ehrenreich has dissected and denounced the machinations of the greedy rich. Turn their pockets inside out, make them pay their fair share, and a more just society might be possible.
No one is strapped to a chair and forced to watch drivel like Fox News. Perhaps the most insidious propaganda is voluntarily self-administered.
That sentiment is not wrong. If someone like Elon Musk has a higher net worth than the gross domestic product of a country like Ukraine, with over 40 million people, something is out of whack. But what if the analysis is incomplete? Suppose there is more collusion with the rich and the powerful, and not just from their public relations people, lawyers, and financial advisers, but from tens of millions of people who derive no […]
Stephan: I have been following the trend of christofascists joining the military, which is desperate for enlistment, and various law enforcement organizations, and becoming increasingly concerned about this because it presages violence, and civil disorder.
An insurrectionist at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Credit: Twitter
In the years since the civil rights movement, open white supremacists have largely been stigmatized, marginalized, condemned and all but banished from mainstream American society. That’s especially true for neo-Nazis, who have existed mostly on the extreme outer boundaries of American public life.
That has changed. The Age of Trump has given permission for the worst of human behavior, and those kinds of norms have been twisted, bent or broken. Donald Trump’s regime, the current Republican Party and the larger white right have been willing to amplify such voices, bringing them into the highest levels of government and power and, through “narrative laundering,” into the mainstream of American society and politics. Trumpism and American neofascism are at once a reflection, a cause and a symptom of growing racial authoritarianism and outright white supremacy, both in the United States and around the world.
Note this most recent example: Last week, all 208 Republican members of the House voted against investigating white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the military and exploring […]
Casey Tolan, Matthew Reynard, Will Simon and Ed Lavandera, , - CNN
Stephan: By any social wellbeing measure you like, material mortality, healthcare, education, and on and on, Texas under Abbott is now a failed state ruled by an oligarchy. Very profitable for corporations and oligarchs. Similar in a way to Russia under Putin. This is what America will look like if Republicans take control as a result of the November election. How it goes is up to you me, and everyone we know.
Bob Deuell speaks to CNN’s Ed Lavandera in Greenville, Texas on February 23, 2022.Credit: CNN
Gun owners allowed to carry handguns without permits or training. Parents of transgender children facing investigation by state officials. Women forced to drive hours out-of-state to access abortion.
This is Texas now: While the Lone Star State has long been a bastion of Republican politics, new laws and policies have taken Texas further to the right in recent years than it has been in decades.
Elected officials and political observers in the state say a major factor in the transformation can be traced back to West Texas. Two billionaire oil and fracking magnates from the region, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, have quietly bankrolled some of Texas’ most far-right political candidates — helping reshape the state’s Republican Party in their worldview.
Over the last decade, Dunn and his wife, Terri, have contributed more than $18 million to state candidates and political action committees, while Wilks and his wife, Jo Ann, have given more than $11 million, putting them among the top donors in […]
Stephan: I think this is a very accurate description of what Trump and MAGAt world have in mind for America's future. November's election is either going to heal what has gone so badly awry in America, and democracy will be reinvigorated, or it is going to confirm the success of the MAGAt world scheme. It would be a cataclysmic disaster and will happen unless every non-MAGAt voter, a much larger population, votes Democratic. Yes, yes, I know all the Democrats' failings, but they support democracy, climate remediation, better healthcare in a better system, lower drug prices, women's rights, and racial and gender equality. Do anything you can to assure every non-MAGAt person you know votes.
Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Seth Herald, Michael B. Thomas / Getty
Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.
The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.
During his presidency, Trump often complained about what he called “the deep state.”
The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.
The reporting for this series draws on extensive interviews over a period of more than three months with more […]
Stephan: Further evidence of what the MAGAts have planned. Jim Jordan is one of the corrupt incompetents the oligarchs moved into office, because he would say the right things, and vote the way they wanted. I just am not sure that enough Americans understand what is at stake to do what needs to be done.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) Credit: Saul Loeb / AFP
According to an Axios deep dive into Donald Trump’s plans to enact a massive purge of federal workers and fill their positions with loyalists should he win re-election in 2024, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is reportedly cheering him on.
On Friday, Jonathan Swan reported that a Trump executive order signed in October 2020 before he lost the election in November to Joe Biden that would have allowed him to reclassify up to 50,000 federal workers and deny them job protections they currently enjoy. While President Biden has rescinded the order, Axios reports that close advisors to Trump –with the help of the former president — would make it happen if he should be re-elected.
According to Swan, “Even if Schedule F is not reimposed — or if it comes back but is then limited by Congress or the courts — experts say there are already so many existing exemptions across the federal bureaucracy that a future president determined to pursue mass firings would have […]
