Month: June 2019

 

 

U.S. Senator and candidate for President of the United States, Elizabeth Warren, said at the June 26, 2019 Democratic debate that “The insurance companies last year alone sucked $23 billion in profits out of the health care system.  $23 billion.  And that doesn’t count the money that was paid to executives, the money that was spent lobbying Washington.”  This statement was declared “Accurate” by PolitiFact.  The cost of healthcare has skyrocketed.  When I signed my first contract as a Public School Special Education Teacher back in 1999, healthcare was included as a covered benefit.  The yearly contracts included a small increase each year which is fair as teachers become more proficient with each year of experience and the fact the cost of living increases each year.  About five years ago, teachers became responsible for a portion of the healthcare costs because the cost to the district became overwhelming.  Each year since, the portion has increased which has resulted in pay stagnation or even pay reduction.  It is one thing to make a sacrifice if it helps my community, but to enrich executives, stockholders and lobbyists is totally unacceptable.  Healthcare is just one example of how the top one percent is pillaging our economy for personal gain.  Big pharma, for profit prisons and detention centers, tax loopholes for the wealthy, offshore accounts….

Corporate socialism and free market for everyone else?  Really?  What will it take to make the system fair for everyone?  Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren? Or are they too far to the left to win a general election?  Is there a more moderate candidate that can make the necessary changes?  Maybe Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg or Joe Biden?  The one thing I do know is that if the Democrats don’t win the majority in the senate, change will be impossible for whoever is elected.  So get out and VOTE!!!

Livable wages including healthcare and benefits will solve many of our problems.  Hoarding at the top benefits the very few.  Anyone working full-time should be able to afford a modest home, a car, food, clothes, access to the internet, and the ability to save a portion of their income for a vacation, college for their children, or a home improvement project.  If small businesses cannot afford to pay their employees a livable wage, then employee pay should be supplemented.  Also, anyone willing to work full-time at an entry-level job should have the opportunity to increase their skill level through community college or tech school certificate programs for a minimal cost.  We must rise from the bottom as trickle down from the top has proven not to work.  The top tends to keep most of the wealth produced by the bottom for themselves.  Gainful employment for all should be a national goal along with stopping the robbers at the top!

Vitriolic is a new word that I’ve learned since I began following politics more closely.  Maybe politics have always been vitriolic and I just never noticed.  Vitriolic means caustic or severe, corrosive, cutting or sharp.  Has politics become more vitriolic with the growing popularity and proliferation of conservative and right-wing media?  I remember hearing about the John Birch Society 30 or 40 years ago, but it was kind of a fringe thing promoted basically by word of mouth, person to person.  But now we have many conservative and right-wing TV and radio shows with Fox News leading the way.  According to Wikipedia, Fox News has been described as practicing biased reporting in favor of the Republican Party, the Trump administration and conservative causes, while slandering the the Democratic Party and spreading harmful propaganda intended to negatively affect its members’ (Democratic Party) electoral performance.

Fox News was launched on October 7, 1996 by media mogul Rupert Murdoch who installed Roger Ailes as the founding CEO.  Roger Ailes is the creator and designer of Fox News.  A book about the life of Roger Ailes called The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman was made into a Showtime mini-series called “The Loudest Voice.”  The Washington Post published a critique of this mini-series called “The Loudest Voice ‘really sticks it to Roger Ailes” by Hank Stuever which was then published in the June 16, 2019 edition of the Burlington County Times.

According to Stuever, the mini-series describes Ailes as a political operative, right-wing paranoid, manipulative network producer, who has carried within him a rueful, seething rage and bitterness since childhood, and who was a failure as a decent human being.  He counter-programmed to the forgotten American conservative with a sneer at the liberal tech-topians who just launched MSNBC.  He purposely appealed to a simplified patriotism using belligerent commentary, leggy blondes and a jingoistic fealty to the flag.

It has been reported that information provided by Fox News is 85% false.  It is an assault on decency wrapped in false patriotism.  It is the magnification of the rage and bitterness stemming from one person’s unhappy childhood.  Ailes needed a therapist, not a platform.  The demonization of democrats and liberals in general by the right interferes with the ability for discussion and compromise which is necessary for good government. I don’t know if there is any hope of healing for the 40% of voters who have bought into the vitriolic Ailes worldview.  Conservatives and liberals must work together for the survival of our democracy.  I have tried to meet halfway, but the other was unwillingly to move just a little to the center.

According to 52 United States Constitution Section 30121(a)(2), it shall be unlawful for a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value from a foreign national.  Opposition research information of a political opponent is considered a “thing of value.”

The Trump Tower meeting involved Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rob Goldstone and at least five other people who gathered to receive “dirt” on Hillary Clinton from Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya who was a self-described informant to the office of the Russian Prosecutor General.  Members of the Trump campaign met directly with a foreign national with ties to the Russian government to receive a “thing a value” which is an obvious violation of the law.  They did not report this contact to the F.B.I. and when asked lied that the meeting was about Americans adopting Russian children.

Christopher Steele and the Clinton campaign had no direct contact.  Ironically, Fusion GPS, a private investigation company headquartered in Washington D.C., was originally hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative political website, to do opposition research on Trump and the other Republican presidential candidates.  When it became clear that Trump would be the probable Republican nominee, they stopped funding the investigation.

Then the law firm Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC , retained Fusion GPS to continue the investigation.  Fusion GPS hired retired British Intelligence (MI6) Russia Desk officer, Christopher Steele to investigate.  He complied his findings in a dossier of raw intelligence memos.  He was so concerned with these findings that he reported them to both British Intelligence and the F.B.I..  Then the dossier was made public by BuzzFeed digital media.

Conservative commentators express no difference between these two events.  One said that the Clinton contact was “laundered” through the law firm and Fusion GPS before it reached the Clinton campaign.  To me these two events are not the same.  Even though the Trump campaign was found to have over one hundred contacts with Russia, the Mueller report was not able to prove conspiracy beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Was the road that led to the Steele Dossier legal?  I think so, but I’m not a lawyer.  The main difference, for me, is one was immediately reported to the F.B.I. and the other was not.  I am finding that searching for the truth and what is right in the field of politics is an daunting and overwhelming task.  I listen to opposing arguments from both sides and hear them use the same claims against each other often in highly hypocritical fashion.  Opposition research is legal.  What happens when the research leads to numerous contacts with a hostile foreign government?  You notify the F.B.I. which is exactly what Christopher Steele did.  So, finally, there is my answer!  Trump Tower illegal, Steele Dossier legal.

I found a complex answer to this question in a washingtonmonthly.com article in the July/August 2018 issue by David A. Walsh titled How the Right Wing Convinces Itself That Liberals Are Evil.

To my surprise this hatred has its roots in McCarthyism and the fear of communism from the 1950s.  In the right-wing worldview, liberals are socialists, communists, secularists, perverts, leftists and traitors who hate America and are part of a secret international communists conspiracy.  Civil rights, gay rights and feminism are part of this liberal agenda.

Walsh writes that conservatives “…believe the liberals are evil and will do anything, legal or not, to further their anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-feminsits, pro civil and gay rights agenda.  And in their minds justifies any means necessary to stop this communist, now socialist threat…” including, “…putting forth conspiracy theories and out right lies.”

“…conservative leaders have long depicted liberals as enemies of the the state.”

They believe, “The mainstream media and academia cannot be trusted because of the pervasive, totalitarian nature of the liberal culture.”  The civil right movement was considered a “…communist liberal front group” that drew “…conservative scorn.”

In the 70s and 80s the religious right “…conflated liberalism, socialism, and communism under the broader umbrella of ‘secularism’ and built alliances with one another [Evangelicals, Catholics and some Mormons] to combat this scourge …united in the oppositions to abortion, gay rights and feminism.”

In Ann Coulter’s Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, she defends Joseph McCarthy’s view that accuse “liberals of being… traitors who hated America.”

“…that a vast left-liberal conspiracy was both undermining the country and using dirty, underhanded tactics to do so rhetorically justified an anything-goes strategy on the part of the right.”

The free enterprise system must be rescued “…from the clutches of liberalism, which would otherwise inevitably lead to communism.”

“The idea that the left is depraved, corrupt and ruthless has been an important strain of American conservatism since the movement began.”

Fox News was created in 1996 and was considered “…necessary, the argument went, because conservative journalist and conservative perspectives were shut out of main stream board-casters.  Fox News present an unchallenged right-wing worldview to millions of viewers, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.”

Liberals have been villainized by the right.  Somehow people who support civil rights for cultural and religious minorities and the LGBTQ community, and who support helping the poor and disabled, and support livable wages that include healthcare and pension are evil.  Somehow holding the corporations and wealthy accountable (product safety, environmental protection and financial honesty, e.g.) is evil. How can human rights and honesty be villainized by the religious right?  Somehow people who would benefit from Democratic policies have been convinced by the right that these policies are unAmerican.  This is mind-boggling and is going to require greater thought.  Unsubstantiated conspiracy theories have created a destructive movement in America and must be left behind.

Below is an excerpt from my January 5, 2018 blog entry titled “Party Principles.”  This is where the right and the left must begin to talk.  The answer is to return to our principles and begin a discussion that will lead to balanced compromise.

Republican Principles.

1. Smaller government to preserve the sanctity of the individual.
2. Support the federalist system of government meaning less federal government and more state control.  Against centralized government.
3. Fiscal conservatism, limited taxation and government spending to ensure greater individual liberty.
4. Strong national defence.
5. Individual liberties, responsibilities and duties.
6. Tolerance, inclusiveness and responsibilities.

Following this list of enumerated principles was an additional paragraph that added free enterprise, and equal rights, justice and opportunity for all including persons with disabilities, and human rights.

Democratic Principles.

1. More regulation, universal healthcare.
2. Provide services for the poor.  High earners pay higher percentage of taxes.
3. Equal rights for LGTB persons.  Support for Roe vs. Wade.  Embryonic stem cell research.  Regulate right to bear arms.
4. Government should protect the people.  Protecting every individual for an equal society sometimes at the expense of economic freedom.

Following this list of enumerated principles was additional qualifying paragraph.  Democrats believe that parties motivated by self-interest are willing to behave in ways harmful to society unless government is prepared and empowered to constrain them.  Regulation is necessary when individuals, corporations and industries pursue financial gain at an intolerable cost to society and become too powerful to be constrained by other social institutions.  Democrats value educators and trust science.

 

Russia influenced the 2016 election through cyber attacks and is looking to do the same in 2020.  Their intention is to undermine our democracy.  Russia will greatly benefit by undermining the alliance of the democratic nations of the world.  By weakening democracy around the world, Russia will be undeterred from violating human rights and  will engage in diminishing the freedom and economic opportunity of its citizens while using torture and murder to silence its detractors.  This will clear the way for Putin and his Russian Oligarch friends to steal the wealth of their nation and then the world.  And, now we have a President who refuses to hold Putin accountable for his crimes against the United States allowing him to rob us of our freedom and our ability to earn a living.

Why is the Trump administration and the Republican party allowing this to happen unchecked?  Is it because they hate liberals so much that they are willing to allow our democracy to be destroyed?   Tune in next week for more information.