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SEPT 24, 2021
Real News Today
*ARKANSAS ED DEPARTMENT USED COVID FUNDS TO BUY BOOKS FROM A COMPANY FOUNDED BY MIKE HUCKABEE(Education)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
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White House to tell U.S. agencies to prepare for first government shutdown of pandemic
The White House budget office will tell federal agencies on Thursday to begin preparations for the first shutdown of the U.S. government since the pandemic began, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill struggle to reach a funding agreement. Administration offi ... (Washington Post)
comment/tweet of the day
COVID-19 has killed 675,000 Americans — about the same amount who died from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic
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Will Rogers ring truer than ever. In 1938 he said, “You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
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White House analysis says wealthy Americans pay far less in taxes than others
reuters-msn.com
6/23/2021
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday published a new economic analysis that showed how the wealthiest Americans pay far less in taxes than others - an effort to bolster President Joe Biden's push to increase taxes on the rich to fund his economic agenda.
"I'm sick and tired of the super-wealthy and giant corporations not paying their fair share in taxes," Biden wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. He is pushing a $3.5 trillion bill that would expand federal efforts to fight climate change, reduce the cost of child care and decrease poverty by getting the super rich and corporations to pay more taxes.
The White House analysis from two economists suggests that the wealthiest 400 households in the country — those with net worth ranging between $2.1 billion and $160 billion — pay an effective federal income tax rate of just over 8 percent per year on average.
It finds that between 2010 and 2018, those top 400 households, when including the rising value of their wealth, earned a combined $1.8 trillion and paid an estimated $149 billion in federal individual income taxes.
The White House's analysis of what the super wealthy and billionaires pay in this country is well below what other analyses have found.
Its tax rate calculation uses data on income from high earners, wealth and taxes paid from the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances.
The analysis was first reported by the New York Times.
"I'm sick and tired of the super-wealthy and giant corporations not paying their fair share in taxes," Biden wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. He is pushing a $3.5 trillion bill that would expand federal efforts to fight climate change, reduce the cost of child care and decrease poverty by getting the super rich and corporations to pay more taxes.
The White House analysis from two economists suggests that the wealthiest 400 households in the country — those with net worth ranging between $2.1 billion and $160 billion — pay an effective federal income tax rate of just over 8 percent per year on average.
It finds that between 2010 and 2018, those top 400 households, when including the rising value of their wealth, earned a combined $1.8 trillion and paid an estimated $149 billion in federal individual income taxes.
The White House's analysis of what the super wealthy and billionaires pay in this country is well below what other analyses have found.
Its tax rate calculation uses data on income from high earners, wealth and taxes paid from the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances.
The analysis was first reported by the New York Times.
Progressives Unite as Conservative Democrats Continue to Sabotage Biden Agenda
BY Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
PUBLISHED September 22, 2021
The Democratic Party’s sweeping domestic policy agenda — from sizable climate investments to drug-pricing reforms to Medicare expansion — is under growing threat from the inside as right-wing members backed by corporate cash aim to tank or pare back central components of a multitrillion-dollar reconciliation plan.
Conservative Democrats’ increasingly coordinated effort to gut their own party’s legislation — and a top priority of President Joe Biden — has led to an increasingly tense confrontation with progressive lawmakers, one that has major implications for the United States’ tattered social safety net and the nation’s response to the existential climate emergency.
Increasingly concerned that the reconciliation package is on the verge of collapse, progressives are working to salvage the legislation by promising to vote down a priority of conservative Democrats: a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W-Va.) helped negotiate with their Republican counterparts in the Senate.
In an interview on Tuesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that “more than half” of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ 96 members are committed to voting against the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure package unless the not-yet-complete reconciliation bill moves simultaneously. Whether 48 progressive “no” votes are enough to tank the legislation will depend on how many House Republicans are willing to support it.
Asked by reporters to respond to conservative Democrats who believe progressives are bluffing, Jayapal said, “Try us.”
“The Biden agenda — our Democratic agenda — is at stake,” Jayapal, the chair of the CPC, tweeted Tuesday night. “It’s progressives who are fighting to pass it in its entirety and deliver long-overdue investments in child care, paid leave, healthcare, climate action, and more. Let’s get this done.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the CPC whip, echoed Jayapal’s message, warning that corporate interests are pulling out all the stops to undercut the Democratic Party’s legislative aims.
“Big Pharma, Big Oil, Wall Street, and their foot soldiers in Congress are doing everything in their power to kill President Biden’s agenda,” Omar said. “We are trying to save it.”
“Simply put: If we don’t pass the Build Back Better agenda, Dems will have broken their promise to the American people,” she added. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we have to meet the moment.”
Last month, in an attempt to thwart a brewing revolt by right-wing Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed to bring the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the floor for a vote on September 27 in exchange for conservative members’ support for a budget resolution that set the stage for the reconciliation package.
But it appears increasingly likely that the reconciliation package — portions of which have been mired in lengthy and contentious mark-up sessions — won’t be finished on September 27, raising questions as to whether Pelosi will follow through on her promise to bring the bipartisan bill to the floor by that date. Some conservative Democrats have vowed to kill the reconciliation package if a House vote on the bipartisan bill fails or is delayed.
“I don’t think the speaker is going to bring a bill up that is going to fail,” Jayapal told reporters after meeting with Pelosi on Tuesday. “Our position has not changed.”
The reconciliation package represents Democrats’ effort to pass significant investments in green energy, child care, education, paid family leave, housing, and other areas without needing any Republican support. But the majority party’s narrow margins in both the House and Senate mean corporate-friendly Democrats have leverage over the size and scope of the package.
While progressives have secured impactful victories in committee fights over the reconciliation bill — including a universal child care subsidy that some conservatives wanted to means test — right-wing Democrats have imperiled their party’s drug-pricing plan, specifically a proposal to let Medicare negotiate prescription medicine costs directly with pharmaceutical companies.
After a dark money group bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry ran ads on her behalf, Sinema threatened to join conservative House Democrats in opposing the Medicare negotiation measure, which progressives are still working to include in the final package.
Meanwhile, Manchin — a major ally of Big Oil and a coal profiteer — is “preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry,” the New York Times reported over the weekend, noting the West Virginia Democrat’s role as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Sara Sirota argued earlier this week that Sinema and Manchin’s “maneuvers risk — or are intended to cause — a complete sabotage of the Democrats’ once-in-a-generation chance to address pressing climate, healthcare, and immigration issues.”
“Because the bicameral, multicommittee process is one of the party’s only shots to enact its agenda without grappling with the filibuster, everything is getting thrown into it — including immigration and labor reform,” Grim and Sirota wrote. “That structure is now reaching a breaking point. Over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian, a staffer who serves in an advisory role that Democrats treat like a magistrate, warned that their version of immigration reform ran afoul of reconciliation rules. Democrats are able to move forward against her guidance if they wish but would again need buy-in from Manchin and Sinema to do so. Something’s gotta give.”
On Wednesday, Biden is expected to hold a series of meetings with Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to discuss the state of the reconciliation package and the Senate-passed bipartisan bill, which the president has also endorsed.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a CPC member, stressed late Tuesday that progressives’ stance has “been clear all along: the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal and the Build Back Better bill must move in tandem.”
“I’m looking forward to voting for the Senate deal if, and only if, we also pass a reconciliation bill that meets this moment,” Jones said.
RELATED: Activists Prepare for Sit-Ins If Manchin Won’t Budge on Filibuster The Poor People’s Campaign is currently urging activists to flood Manchin’s office with phone calls.
by Mike Ludwig, Truthout
Conservative Democrats’ increasingly coordinated effort to gut their own party’s legislation — and a top priority of President Joe Biden — has led to an increasingly tense confrontation with progressive lawmakers, one that has major implications for the United States’ tattered social safety net and the nation’s response to the existential climate emergency.
Increasingly concerned that the reconciliation package is on the verge of collapse, progressives are working to salvage the legislation by promising to vote down a priority of conservative Democrats: a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W-Va.) helped negotiate with their Republican counterparts in the Senate.
In an interview on Tuesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that “more than half” of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ 96 members are committed to voting against the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure package unless the not-yet-complete reconciliation bill moves simultaneously. Whether 48 progressive “no” votes are enough to tank the legislation will depend on how many House Republicans are willing to support it.
Asked by reporters to respond to conservative Democrats who believe progressives are bluffing, Jayapal said, “Try us.”
“The Biden agenda — our Democratic agenda — is at stake,” Jayapal, the chair of the CPC, tweeted Tuesday night. “It’s progressives who are fighting to pass it in its entirety and deliver long-overdue investments in child care, paid leave, healthcare, climate action, and more. Let’s get this done.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the CPC whip, echoed Jayapal’s message, warning that corporate interests are pulling out all the stops to undercut the Democratic Party’s legislative aims.
“Big Pharma, Big Oil, Wall Street, and their foot soldiers in Congress are doing everything in their power to kill President Biden’s agenda,” Omar said. “We are trying to save it.”
“Simply put: If we don’t pass the Build Back Better agenda, Dems will have broken their promise to the American people,” she added. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we have to meet the moment.”
Last month, in an attempt to thwart a brewing revolt by right-wing Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed to bring the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the floor for a vote on September 27 in exchange for conservative members’ support for a budget resolution that set the stage for the reconciliation package.
But it appears increasingly likely that the reconciliation package — portions of which have been mired in lengthy and contentious mark-up sessions — won’t be finished on September 27, raising questions as to whether Pelosi will follow through on her promise to bring the bipartisan bill to the floor by that date. Some conservative Democrats have vowed to kill the reconciliation package if a House vote on the bipartisan bill fails or is delayed.
“I don’t think the speaker is going to bring a bill up that is going to fail,” Jayapal told reporters after meeting with Pelosi on Tuesday. “Our position has not changed.”
The reconciliation package represents Democrats’ effort to pass significant investments in green energy, child care, education, paid family leave, housing, and other areas without needing any Republican support. But the majority party’s narrow margins in both the House and Senate mean corporate-friendly Democrats have leverage over the size and scope of the package.
While progressives have secured impactful victories in committee fights over the reconciliation bill — including a universal child care subsidy that some conservatives wanted to means test — right-wing Democrats have imperiled their party’s drug-pricing plan, specifically a proposal to let Medicare negotiate prescription medicine costs directly with pharmaceutical companies.
After a dark money group bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry ran ads on her behalf, Sinema threatened to join conservative House Democrats in opposing the Medicare negotiation measure, which progressives are still working to include in the final package.
Meanwhile, Manchin — a major ally of Big Oil and a coal profiteer — is “preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry,” the New York Times reported over the weekend, noting the West Virginia Democrat’s role as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Sara Sirota argued earlier this week that Sinema and Manchin’s “maneuvers risk — or are intended to cause — a complete sabotage of the Democrats’ once-in-a-generation chance to address pressing climate, healthcare, and immigration issues.”
“Because the bicameral, multicommittee process is one of the party’s only shots to enact its agenda without grappling with the filibuster, everything is getting thrown into it — including immigration and labor reform,” Grim and Sirota wrote. “That structure is now reaching a breaking point. Over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian, a staffer who serves in an advisory role that Democrats treat like a magistrate, warned that their version of immigration reform ran afoul of reconciliation rules. Democrats are able to move forward against her guidance if they wish but would again need buy-in from Manchin and Sinema to do so. Something’s gotta give.”
On Wednesday, Biden is expected to hold a series of meetings with Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to discuss the state of the reconciliation package and the Senate-passed bipartisan bill, which the president has also endorsed.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a CPC member, stressed late Tuesday that progressives’ stance has “been clear all along: the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal and the Build Back Better bill must move in tandem.”
“I’m looking forward to voting for the Senate deal if, and only if, we also pass a reconciliation bill that meets this moment,” Jones said.
RELATED: Activists Prepare for Sit-Ins If Manchin Won’t Budge on Filibuster The Poor People’s Campaign is currently urging activists to flood Manchin’s office with phone calls.
by Mike Ludwig, Truthout
op-ed: McConnell, Manchin, Sinema and Pharma Dems Are Preparing to Torpedo Everything
BY William Rivers Pitt, Truthout
PUBLISHED September 20, 2021
Portrait of a fiend in the wild: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it abundantly clear that there will be no Republican votes to avert the looming debt ceiling crisis. McConnell’s feckless rationale? “Let me make it perfectly clear,” he declared last week. “The country must never default. The debt ceiling will need to be raised. But who does that depends on who the American people elect.”
Translation: Because Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House, they alone are responsible for raising the debt ceiling. Simply put, no such rule exists, nor has it ever existed. It was certainly not in play back in 2019, when then-Majority Leader McConnell sought — and received — bipartisan support on the very same issue. “The people in Kentucky who know him,” notes long-time Democratic foe Rep. John Yarmuth, “understand that he can’t be shamed into changing.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made the stakes clear in a Sunday Wall Street Journal editorial. “The U.S. has never defaulted. Not once,” she wrote. “Doing so would likely precipitate a historic financial crisis that would compound the damage of the continuing public health emergency.” In 2011, even the (McConnell-driven) threat of a default sent the economy reeling. Combine the impact of default with what looks to be another COVID winter gnawing into the economy, and a tidy little recipe for disaster awaits.
McConnell seemingly could not care less. His interest appears entirely political and utterly without shame: He wants his people to go into the 2022 midterms with “tax-and-spend liberals” on every tongue. The same Republicans who aided the Trump administration’s wild financial giveaways to corporations and the wealthy now intend to use the economy itself against President Biden’s legislative attempt to address climate change and expand the social safety net, and all as a means of regaining the majority.
McConnell has plenty of help in this particularly nefarious endeavor; shamelessness, like gold, seems to have its own gravitational pull. “The Democrats have added enormous amounts of debt,” echoed GOP Sen. Susan Collins, “including the $1.9 trillion package, now $3.5 trillion on top of that, so they bear the responsibility for increasing the debt limit.” Never mind the stimulus package probably saved the economy during the most dire portion of the pandemic, or that Collins herself voted to explode the debt multiple times during the Trump years.
One disaster of this magnitude would usually suffice, but at present there are multiple meteors hurtling toward us. Congressional Democrats, seeking to use whatever leverage is available, are tying the debt vote to the also-looming vote to fund the federal government. If McConnell holds the line, there will be insufficient votes to pass either (assuming the inevitable GOP filibuster), and we could be looking at a double-barreled fiscal calamity at midnight on September 30.
With less than 11 days to go before that whole fiasco hits the zero hour, Democrats are also facing the threat of collapse within their own caucus. Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator from West Virginia, has used his swing-vote muscle to position himself and the Energy Committee he chairs as the authors of the climate provisions in Biden’s massive budget bill. He is widely expected to throw a number of lifelines to the energy interests that pour campaign cash into his own pockets, and it is entirely possible the Progressive Caucus could bolt rather than vote for a polluted compromise.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has joined a trio of pharmaceutical industry-bought House members in refusing to support the Medicare/prescription drug reforms that are crucial to funding the overall legislation. “The Arizona Democrat is opposed to the current prescription drug pricing proposals in both the House and Senate bills,” reports Politico. “They added that, at this point, she also doesn’t support a pared-back alternative being pitched by House Democratic centrists that would limit the drugs subject to Medicare negotiation.”
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing a perilous September 27 deadline that could potentially sink both the budget bill and the infrastructure bill. Conservative Democrats, at the frantic urging of an army of corporate and business lobbyists, want the two bills voted on separately. That way, they can pass the watered-down infrastructure bill and then kill the budget bill. The Progressive Caucus has vowed — if somewhat vaguely — to defeat the infrastructure bill if both are not combined into a single package for passage, and they have more than enough votes to do it. Whether they will follow through on the threat is the question of the hour, and that hour is up on the 27th unless they bump the deadline.
Finally, the Senate parliamentarian has scotched the immigration provisions within the budget bill, ruling they do not fit the requirements for reconciliation — a tactic that allows a bill to pass by simple majority if it affects the budget. The parliamentarian last ruled “No” on the attempt to include a minimum wage hike in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package back in February.
Progressive Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among those demanding that Majority Leader Schumer ignore or replace the parliamentarian, as the GOP did the last time such a decision went against them. “An unelected person isn’t a real barrier to the much-needed investments we were elected to make,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter. “Ignore this ruling or get a new one. The GOP didn’t hesitate when they pushed their corporate agenda.”
A number of prominent Democrats made the TV rounds on Sunday, trying to put a happy face on the roiled circumstances. “We’re going to have to work it out, as we did with the American Rescue Plan,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told CBS News. “Now is the time to stand up to powerful special interests. Now is the time to start representing working families.” Ultimately, he predicted that, “because of the pressure of the American people we’re going to come together again and do what has to be done.”
Let’s hope he’s right. The axis of McConnell, Manchin, Sinema and the House Pharma Dems are hard at work even at this moment, and it is going to be a wild week in Washington. Halloween could be a genuinely terrifying holiday, when the people learn to their sorrow that vampires are not just real, but are pulling down government paychecks.
Translation: Because Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House, they alone are responsible for raising the debt ceiling. Simply put, no such rule exists, nor has it ever existed. It was certainly not in play back in 2019, when then-Majority Leader McConnell sought — and received — bipartisan support on the very same issue. “The people in Kentucky who know him,” notes long-time Democratic foe Rep. John Yarmuth, “understand that he can’t be shamed into changing.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made the stakes clear in a Sunday Wall Street Journal editorial. “The U.S. has never defaulted. Not once,” she wrote. “Doing so would likely precipitate a historic financial crisis that would compound the damage of the continuing public health emergency.” In 2011, even the (McConnell-driven) threat of a default sent the economy reeling. Combine the impact of default with what looks to be another COVID winter gnawing into the economy, and a tidy little recipe for disaster awaits.
McConnell seemingly could not care less. His interest appears entirely political and utterly without shame: He wants his people to go into the 2022 midterms with “tax-and-spend liberals” on every tongue. The same Republicans who aided the Trump administration’s wild financial giveaways to corporations and the wealthy now intend to use the economy itself against President Biden’s legislative attempt to address climate change and expand the social safety net, and all as a means of regaining the majority.
McConnell has plenty of help in this particularly nefarious endeavor; shamelessness, like gold, seems to have its own gravitational pull. “The Democrats have added enormous amounts of debt,” echoed GOP Sen. Susan Collins, “including the $1.9 trillion package, now $3.5 trillion on top of that, so they bear the responsibility for increasing the debt limit.” Never mind the stimulus package probably saved the economy during the most dire portion of the pandemic, or that Collins herself voted to explode the debt multiple times during the Trump years.
One disaster of this magnitude would usually suffice, but at present there are multiple meteors hurtling toward us. Congressional Democrats, seeking to use whatever leverage is available, are tying the debt vote to the also-looming vote to fund the federal government. If McConnell holds the line, there will be insufficient votes to pass either (assuming the inevitable GOP filibuster), and we could be looking at a double-barreled fiscal calamity at midnight on September 30.
With less than 11 days to go before that whole fiasco hits the zero hour, Democrats are also facing the threat of collapse within their own caucus. Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator from West Virginia, has used his swing-vote muscle to position himself and the Energy Committee he chairs as the authors of the climate provisions in Biden’s massive budget bill. He is widely expected to throw a number of lifelines to the energy interests that pour campaign cash into his own pockets, and it is entirely possible the Progressive Caucus could bolt rather than vote for a polluted compromise.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has joined a trio of pharmaceutical industry-bought House members in refusing to support the Medicare/prescription drug reforms that are crucial to funding the overall legislation. “The Arizona Democrat is opposed to the current prescription drug pricing proposals in both the House and Senate bills,” reports Politico. “They added that, at this point, she also doesn’t support a pared-back alternative being pitched by House Democratic centrists that would limit the drugs subject to Medicare negotiation.”
In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing a perilous September 27 deadline that could potentially sink both the budget bill and the infrastructure bill. Conservative Democrats, at the frantic urging of an army of corporate and business lobbyists, want the two bills voted on separately. That way, they can pass the watered-down infrastructure bill and then kill the budget bill. The Progressive Caucus has vowed — if somewhat vaguely — to defeat the infrastructure bill if both are not combined into a single package for passage, and they have more than enough votes to do it. Whether they will follow through on the threat is the question of the hour, and that hour is up on the 27th unless they bump the deadline.
Finally, the Senate parliamentarian has scotched the immigration provisions within the budget bill, ruling they do not fit the requirements for reconciliation — a tactic that allows a bill to pass by simple majority if it affects the budget. The parliamentarian last ruled “No” on the attempt to include a minimum wage hike in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package back in February.
Progressive Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among those demanding that Majority Leader Schumer ignore or replace the parliamentarian, as the GOP did the last time such a decision went against them. “An unelected person isn’t a real barrier to the much-needed investments we were elected to make,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter. “Ignore this ruling or get a new one. The GOP didn’t hesitate when they pushed their corporate agenda.”
A number of prominent Democrats made the TV rounds on Sunday, trying to put a happy face on the roiled circumstances. “We’re going to have to work it out, as we did with the American Rescue Plan,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told CBS News. “Now is the time to stand up to powerful special interests. Now is the time to start representing working families.” Ultimately, he predicted that, “because of the pressure of the American people we’re going to come together again and do what has to be done.”
Let’s hope he’s right. The axis of McConnell, Manchin, Sinema and the House Pharma Dems are hard at work even at this moment, and it is going to be a wild week in Washington. Halloween could be a genuinely terrifying holiday, when the people learn to their sorrow that vampires are not just real, but are pulling down government paychecks.
the enemy within!!!!
Sinema Opposes Drug Bills After Receiving $750K in Donations From Big Pharma
BY Igor Derysh, Salon
PUBLISHED September 23, 2021
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the controversial Arizona Democrat who threatens to derail President Biden’s legislative agenda, received more than $750,000 in donations from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. After that, she announced her opposition to a Democratic plan to lower prescription drug costs.
Sinema told White House officials that she opposes House and Senate bills that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs, sources told Politico this week. Democrats estimate these bills would save $450 billion over the next decade and thereby pay for a large portion of President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan. The budget bill would expand child care, health care and paid family leave and would fund programs to combat climate change, among other measures. Three House Democrats have also balked at the plan, although they have offered a “centrist” alternative that would drastically limit which drugs are subject to Medicare negotiation. Sinema reportedly opposes that proposal as well. During her successful 2018 Senate campaign, Sinema repeatedly vowed to lower prescription drug prices and drug costs for seniors.
Sinema is a longtime favorite of the pharmaceutical industry and now appears ready to undermine Biden’s entire agenda as Big Pharma wages a lobbying blitz in hopes of torpedoing the bill, which nearly 90% of voters support. Sinema and several House Democrats who oppose the drug pricing plan have received major financial support from the industry. Given a 50-50 Senate and a narrow House majority of 220 to 212 (with three seats currently vacant), their opposition could sink the proposal or even the entire budget bill.
Sinema has received $519,988 from PACs and individuals in the pharmaceutical industry throughout her political career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. She brought in more than $120,000 in pharma contributions between 2019 and 2020 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Sinema has also received $190,161 from donors in the pharmaceutical manufacturing space and $62,797 from the medical supplies industry.
Sinema’s office is led by a former lobbyist whose firm worked on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. The senator’s chief of staff, Meg Joseph, was a registered lobbyist and principal at Clark & Weinstock, where her clients included the health insurer Health Net. During her tenure, the company also lobbied on behalf of numerous pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, drug distributor AmerisourceBergen Corp., and the biotech firm Genzyme Corp. It also lobbied on behalf of Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and AdvaMed, two major industry trade groups.
Sinema did not respond to questions from Salon. Her spokesman Josh LaBombard told Politico that she is committed to “working directly in good faith with her colleagues and President Biden on the proposed budget reconciliation package.”
He continued, “Given the size and scope of the proposal, while those discussions are ongoing we are not offering detailed comment on any one proposed piece of the package.”
Sinema got major backing from the industry before her threat to derail the Democrats’ drug bill. Center Forward, a Washington nonprofit that has received at least $4.5 million from PhRMA, has run TV and digital ads praising Sinema for the past two weeks, according to The Daily Poster, and sent out pro-Sinema mailers urging recipients to thank the senator for “fighting as an independent voice.” The group’s board includes at least two PhRMA lobbyists who work on drug pricing issues and represent numerous pharmaceutical companies.
Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called out Big Pharma’s campaign to defeat the drug pricing legislation during a speech on Tuesday in front of PhRMA’s headquarters in Washington.
“The overriding motivation of the pharmaceutical industry is greed,” he said. “Their overriding goal is to make as much money as they can by squeezing as much as they possibly can out of the sick, out of the elderly and out of the desperate.”
Sinema isn’t the only Democrat who vowed to fight for lower drug costs before rejecting a plan that would do just that. Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., in 2019 praised the drug pricing plan but after receiving nearly $230,000 in the 2020 election cycle from the industry, as Salon’s Jon Skolnik reported, had an otherwise-unexplained change of heart. Earlier this year, he led a group of 10 House Democrats in opposing the bill in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “If you institute it, you won’t have cures because you’ll dry up all the private investment that does that research,” he told Roll Call after the reversal.
“That’s absolutely not true,” David Mitchell, founder of the independent nonprofit Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, said in an interview with Salon.
The claim that the bill would hinder development is a Big Pharma “lie” and “scare tactic,” said Mitchell, who suffers from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer treated with a combination of drugs that he said carry a price tag of more than $900,000 per year. “For me, as a patient with incurable cancer, it sounds very much like extortion, like the gun is at your head, ‘pay whatever we tell you, Mr. Mitchell, or you are going to die,'” he said. “It’s bullshit.”
Large pharmaceutical companies see profit margins that are much higher than other industries. A recent analysis by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that Big Pharma firms could lose $1 trillion in sales over the next decade and still maintain their current research investments. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Democrats’ bill would reduce the number of new drugs developed by about two per year over the next two decades.
“You’re talking about a tiny impact on new drug development,” Mitchell said. “We can compensate for that by sending more money” to the National Institutes of Health, he continued, “because NIH is the engine of innovative new drug development. It’s the single largest biomedical research agency in the world. All 356 drugs approved by the FDA from 2010 to 2019 are based on research, basic science from the NIH.”
Peters was one of three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to vote against the Democrats’ drug pricing bill, along with Reps. Kurt Schrader of Oregon and Kathleen Rice of New York. A different committee later advanced the bill but the opposition appears to have enough votes to sink the measure — and the entire spending plan with it.
“I get that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican Party and that no Republican voted for this bill,” Sanders tweeted after the vote, “but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it.”
Peters has received $860,465 from pharmaceutical PACs and employees, according to CRP data, the second most of any industry. He has already received $88,550 from the industry this election cycle, the most of any House member. On the day he sent the letter to Pelosi, Peters received big donations from the CEOs of Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb, as well as from lobbyists at PhRMA.
Schrader, who also signed Peters’ letter, has also received extensive financial backing from the industry. He has received $24,500 from pharma PACs and employees this cycle, the second most of any industry, and got $144,252 in 2020, the most of any industry. Throughout his career, Schrader, whose grandfather was an executive at Pfizer, has received $614,830 from the industry, according to CRP data. His former aide left earlier this year and quickly began lobbying for PhRMA, according to The Daily Poster.
Peters and Schrader did not respond to questions from Salon but they have introduced a supposed centrist alternative that would drastically limit the number of drugs whose prices Medicare could negotiate.
“It’s masquerading as a Medicare negotiation” bill,” Mitchell said, noting that it would exclude Medicare Part D drugs, which make up 83% of Medicare drug spending. The bill would only allow the agency to negotiate a “tiny, tiny sliver” of drugs covered under Part B that are administered by doctors and hospitals, he said, but would exclude drugs that are still in their period of exclusivity, which can last up to 12 years. “To call it Medicare negotiation is a fraud,” Mitchell said.
Kathleen Rice’s opposition to the bill is less easily explained, since she has not been one of the industry’s biggest recipients, collecting a relatively modest $84,000 in campaign contributions from Big Pharma sources, according to CRP data. Furthermore, Rice had twice previously voted for earlier versions of the plan and campaigned on lowering drug prices. In a letter to a constituent who expressed disappointment with her vote, Rice said that she supports “the goals” of the bill and “allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices” but that she opposed the bill because it is being used “as a tool to offset the cost of a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.”
Rice cited opposition from Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., over the bill’s price tag to justify her vote.
“That bill has no chance to become law, as Democrats in the Senate have stated that a bill with such a price tag will not have the votes to pass in their chamber,” she said in the letter, which was obtained by the American Prospect. That’s a strange and striking argument, considering that Rice voted for many other pieces of legislation that will go into a bill she says “has no chance to become law.”
“Rep. Rice believes the House should produce a reconciliation bill that can realistically become law,” Rice spokesman Stuart Malec said in a statement to Salon. “She supports Medicare negotiation, but the H.R. 3 drug pricing language in its current form does not have the support to pass the Senate. And Rep. Rice does not support advancing provisions that will jeopardize the bill’s final passage in the Senate.”
These large donations are only a portion of the pharmaceutical industry’s political spending aimed at defeating drug pricing legislation. Pharmaceutical companies have spent more than any industry on federal lobbying this year, shelling out $171 million so far in 2021, according to CRP, more than twice as much as the next biggest spending industry. Pharmaceutical companies spent $309 million on lobbying last year, the most ever. PhRMA alone has spent more than $15 million on lobbying and last week launched a seven-figure ad campaign to oppose the drug pricing plan.
“They’re pulling out all the stops to block this,” Mitchell said. “What they’re fighting to maintain is unilateral power to dictate the prices of brand name drugs to the people of the United States. They have the power to tell us what we’re going to pay and we just have to say yes. For them, it’s the ability to dictate the prices of drugs to patients like me.”
Patient advocates like Mitchell and advocacy groups like the AARP, Protect Our Care and Social Security Works are pushing back through lobbying and ad campaigns of their own.
“Pharma thinks this is just like every other time they have bent D.C. to their will with money, but it isn’t,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said in a statement to Salon, noting that grassroots groups have spent years building a broad coalition of support among voters of all political persuasions. “And as for the Dems carrying water for Big Pharma, we are showing them the consequences of that. Their phones are ringing off the hook, there’s daily protests at their offices, and their local media is full of stories about their cozy relationships with Big Pharma.”
Lawson expressed optimism that Biden and Pelosi can get the legislation passed, given the widespread public support for this issue.
“Big Pharma is used to winning,” he said. “They’ve never gone up against a movement this powerful.”
Patients for Affordable Drugs Now has also launched an ad campaign targeting Peters’ and Rice’s districts, highlighting members of Congress for “choosing Big Pharma over patients.”
“We have the best opportunity that we’ve had in two decades to actually enact reforms that will meaningfully lower the prices of prescription drugs to the American people and stop subjecting us to the power of multinational corporations,” Mitchell said. “It’s an uphill fight all the way because we know who we’re up against. I think we have a really good shot of getting it done.”
Sinema told White House officials that she opposes House and Senate bills that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs, sources told Politico this week. Democrats estimate these bills would save $450 billion over the next decade and thereby pay for a large portion of President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan. The budget bill would expand child care, health care and paid family leave and would fund programs to combat climate change, among other measures. Three House Democrats have also balked at the plan, although they have offered a “centrist” alternative that would drastically limit which drugs are subject to Medicare negotiation. Sinema reportedly opposes that proposal as well. During her successful 2018 Senate campaign, Sinema repeatedly vowed to lower prescription drug prices and drug costs for seniors.
Sinema is a longtime favorite of the pharmaceutical industry and now appears ready to undermine Biden’s entire agenda as Big Pharma wages a lobbying blitz in hopes of torpedoing the bill, which nearly 90% of voters support. Sinema and several House Democrats who oppose the drug pricing plan have received major financial support from the industry. Given a 50-50 Senate and a narrow House majority of 220 to 212 (with three seats currently vacant), their opposition could sink the proposal or even the entire budget bill.
Sinema has received $519,988 from PACs and individuals in the pharmaceutical industry throughout her political career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. She brought in more than $120,000 in pharma contributions between 2019 and 2020 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Sinema has also received $190,161 from donors in the pharmaceutical manufacturing space and $62,797 from the medical supplies industry.
Sinema’s office is led by a former lobbyist whose firm worked on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. The senator’s chief of staff, Meg Joseph, was a registered lobbyist and principal at Clark & Weinstock, where her clients included the health insurer Health Net. During her tenure, the company also lobbied on behalf of numerous pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, drug distributor AmerisourceBergen Corp., and the biotech firm Genzyme Corp. It also lobbied on behalf of Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and AdvaMed, two major industry trade groups.
Sinema did not respond to questions from Salon. Her spokesman Josh LaBombard told Politico that she is committed to “working directly in good faith with her colleagues and President Biden on the proposed budget reconciliation package.”
He continued, “Given the size and scope of the proposal, while those discussions are ongoing we are not offering detailed comment on any one proposed piece of the package.”
Sinema got major backing from the industry before her threat to derail the Democrats’ drug bill. Center Forward, a Washington nonprofit that has received at least $4.5 million from PhRMA, has run TV and digital ads praising Sinema for the past two weeks, according to The Daily Poster, and sent out pro-Sinema mailers urging recipients to thank the senator for “fighting as an independent voice.” The group’s board includes at least two PhRMA lobbyists who work on drug pricing issues and represent numerous pharmaceutical companies.
Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called out Big Pharma’s campaign to defeat the drug pricing legislation during a speech on Tuesday in front of PhRMA’s headquarters in Washington.
“The overriding motivation of the pharmaceutical industry is greed,” he said. “Their overriding goal is to make as much money as they can by squeezing as much as they possibly can out of the sick, out of the elderly and out of the desperate.”
Sinema isn’t the only Democrat who vowed to fight for lower drug costs before rejecting a plan that would do just that. Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., in 2019 praised the drug pricing plan but after receiving nearly $230,000 in the 2020 election cycle from the industry, as Salon’s Jon Skolnik reported, had an otherwise-unexplained change of heart. Earlier this year, he led a group of 10 House Democrats in opposing the bill in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “If you institute it, you won’t have cures because you’ll dry up all the private investment that does that research,” he told Roll Call after the reversal.
“That’s absolutely not true,” David Mitchell, founder of the independent nonprofit Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, said in an interview with Salon.
The claim that the bill would hinder development is a Big Pharma “lie” and “scare tactic,” said Mitchell, who suffers from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer treated with a combination of drugs that he said carry a price tag of more than $900,000 per year. “For me, as a patient with incurable cancer, it sounds very much like extortion, like the gun is at your head, ‘pay whatever we tell you, Mr. Mitchell, or you are going to die,'” he said. “It’s bullshit.”
Large pharmaceutical companies see profit margins that are much higher than other industries. A recent analysis by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that Big Pharma firms could lose $1 trillion in sales over the next decade and still maintain their current research investments. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Democrats’ bill would reduce the number of new drugs developed by about two per year over the next two decades.
“You’re talking about a tiny impact on new drug development,” Mitchell said. “We can compensate for that by sending more money” to the National Institutes of Health, he continued, “because NIH is the engine of innovative new drug development. It’s the single largest biomedical research agency in the world. All 356 drugs approved by the FDA from 2010 to 2019 are based on research, basic science from the NIH.”
Peters was one of three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to vote against the Democrats’ drug pricing bill, along with Reps. Kurt Schrader of Oregon and Kathleen Rice of New York. A different committee later advanced the bill but the opposition appears to have enough votes to sink the measure — and the entire spending plan with it.
“I get that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican Party and that no Republican voted for this bill,” Sanders tweeted after the vote, “but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it.”
Peters has received $860,465 from pharmaceutical PACs and employees, according to CRP data, the second most of any industry. He has already received $88,550 from the industry this election cycle, the most of any House member. On the day he sent the letter to Pelosi, Peters received big donations from the CEOs of Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb, as well as from lobbyists at PhRMA.
Schrader, who also signed Peters’ letter, has also received extensive financial backing from the industry. He has received $24,500 from pharma PACs and employees this cycle, the second most of any industry, and got $144,252 in 2020, the most of any industry. Throughout his career, Schrader, whose grandfather was an executive at Pfizer, has received $614,830 from the industry, according to CRP data. His former aide left earlier this year and quickly began lobbying for PhRMA, according to The Daily Poster.
Peters and Schrader did not respond to questions from Salon but they have introduced a supposed centrist alternative that would drastically limit the number of drugs whose prices Medicare could negotiate.
“It’s masquerading as a Medicare negotiation” bill,” Mitchell said, noting that it would exclude Medicare Part D drugs, which make up 83% of Medicare drug spending. The bill would only allow the agency to negotiate a “tiny, tiny sliver” of drugs covered under Part B that are administered by doctors and hospitals, he said, but would exclude drugs that are still in their period of exclusivity, which can last up to 12 years. “To call it Medicare negotiation is a fraud,” Mitchell said.
Kathleen Rice’s opposition to the bill is less easily explained, since she has not been one of the industry’s biggest recipients, collecting a relatively modest $84,000 in campaign contributions from Big Pharma sources, according to CRP data. Furthermore, Rice had twice previously voted for earlier versions of the plan and campaigned on lowering drug prices. In a letter to a constituent who expressed disappointment with her vote, Rice said that she supports “the goals” of the bill and “allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices” but that she opposed the bill because it is being used “as a tool to offset the cost of a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.”
Rice cited opposition from Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., over the bill’s price tag to justify her vote.
“That bill has no chance to become law, as Democrats in the Senate have stated that a bill with such a price tag will not have the votes to pass in their chamber,” she said in the letter, which was obtained by the American Prospect. That’s a strange and striking argument, considering that Rice voted for many other pieces of legislation that will go into a bill she says “has no chance to become law.”
“Rep. Rice believes the House should produce a reconciliation bill that can realistically become law,” Rice spokesman Stuart Malec said in a statement to Salon. “She supports Medicare negotiation, but the H.R. 3 drug pricing language in its current form does not have the support to pass the Senate. And Rep. Rice does not support advancing provisions that will jeopardize the bill’s final passage in the Senate.”
These large donations are only a portion of the pharmaceutical industry’s political spending aimed at defeating drug pricing legislation. Pharmaceutical companies have spent more than any industry on federal lobbying this year, shelling out $171 million so far in 2021, according to CRP, more than twice as much as the next biggest spending industry. Pharmaceutical companies spent $309 million on lobbying last year, the most ever. PhRMA alone has spent more than $15 million on lobbying and last week launched a seven-figure ad campaign to oppose the drug pricing plan.
“They’re pulling out all the stops to block this,” Mitchell said. “What they’re fighting to maintain is unilateral power to dictate the prices of brand name drugs to the people of the United States. They have the power to tell us what we’re going to pay and we just have to say yes. For them, it’s the ability to dictate the prices of drugs to patients like me.”
Patient advocates like Mitchell and advocacy groups like the AARP, Protect Our Care and Social Security Works are pushing back through lobbying and ad campaigns of their own.
“Pharma thinks this is just like every other time they have bent D.C. to their will with money, but it isn’t,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said in a statement to Salon, noting that grassroots groups have spent years building a broad coalition of support among voters of all political persuasions. “And as for the Dems carrying water for Big Pharma, we are showing them the consequences of that. Their phones are ringing off the hook, there’s daily protests at their offices, and their local media is full of stories about their cozy relationships with Big Pharma.”
Lawson expressed optimism that Biden and Pelosi can get the legislation passed, given the widespread public support for this issue.
“Big Pharma is used to winning,” he said. “They’ve never gone up against a movement this powerful.”
Patients for Affordable Drugs Now has also launched an ad campaign targeting Peters’ and Rice’s districts, highlighting members of Congress for “choosing Big Pharma over patients.”
“We have the best opportunity that we’ve had in two decades to actually enact reforms that will meaningfully lower the prices of prescription drugs to the American people and stop subjecting us to the power of multinational corporations,” Mitchell said. “It’s an uphill fight all the way because we know who we’re up against. I think we have a really good shot of getting it done.”
YOU CAN'T SAVE THE STUPID!!!
from under a rock
THE DAILY TRASH REPORT featuring today's despicables
WILL ROGERS RING TRUER THAN EVER. IN 1938 HE SAID, “YOU’LL NEVER GO BROKE UNDERESTIMATING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.”
TRUMP ABRUPTLY DELETES MESSAGE PRAISING ‘HIGHLY RESPECTED’ ARIZONA ‘AUDITORS’ AFTER THEY CONFIRM BIDEN'S WIN
Far-right 'Moms for Liberty' group demands schools stop exposing kids to 'sexy' pictures of seahorses
‘He’s a scumbag’: GOP operative with sketchy past transformed local party into money-making ‘Trumplican cult’
Travis Gettys - raw story
September 24, 2021
A Republican political operative with a sketchy past is transforming a local GOP chapter in Ohio into a nationalized money-making operation -- and it could offer a glimpse of the party's future.
Shannon Burns has legally transformed the Strongsville Republican Party into the Better Ohio PAC, which he formed nine days after Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) voted to impeach Donald Trump, and he helped chase the area's congressman out of politics and keeping local conservatives at a constant state of agitation over masks, critical race theory and "defund the police," reported Politico.
"There's this group that put together this fake report about our police, and this fake report is trying to use some statistics that say that our police are racist," Burns said at one recent event that resembled a much smaller Trump rally, with the crowd booing on cue. "And then they also want the 'Thin Blue Line' flag in headquarters to be taken down because they think that's a racist symbol. Know what we said? We said, 'Hell no.'"
Burns has drawn national conservative figures to events that raise money for his political action committee, which Plain Dealer editorial cartoonist Jeff Darcy dubbed a "de facto Trumplican cult," and his past turns up a lengthy record of evictions, bankruptcies, overdue taxes and dozens of lawsuits against him and his companies.
"He's a scumbag, and anybody associated with him needs to hang their head in shame," said former employee Elva Heuschkel, who sued him in 2013 for $3,384.61 -- which Burns actually paid. "I think I'm one of the few that got money from him. I was one of the lucky ones."
Others who've done business with the 46-year-old Burns called him "a shyster," "a flimflam artist" and "Scammin' Shannon."
"You got the red and you got the blue, but Shannon's 'conservatism' is green," said Ralph King, a longtime conservative activist in the area. "Who can put it in his scamming little pocket?"
Martin Schutte, who received a 2017 judgment for more than $53,000 in his lawsuit against Burns but never received his money, warned the Strongsville GOP that its leader was a "fake Republican and a fraud."
"He runs everybody through the mud," Schutte said. "He still has not paid me, and no one makes him — like, there's no consequences at all, and I think he knows that, so he doesn't care. He's, like, 'If there's no consequences, why should I have to do anything?'"
Burns has run the Strongsville GOP since early 2015, and he quickly nationalized two unsuccessful city council races by putting Trump and Hillary Clinton on mailers, but he was elected in 2020 to the state central committee by aligning himself closely with Trump -- and has only embraced the twice-impeached one-term president tighter since his re-election loss.
"All I've done," Burns told Politico, "is figured out how to catch the wave."
Shannon Burns has legally transformed the Strongsville Republican Party into the Better Ohio PAC, which he formed nine days after Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) voted to impeach Donald Trump, and he helped chase the area's congressman out of politics and keeping local conservatives at a constant state of agitation over masks, critical race theory and "defund the police," reported Politico.
"There's this group that put together this fake report about our police, and this fake report is trying to use some statistics that say that our police are racist," Burns said at one recent event that resembled a much smaller Trump rally, with the crowd booing on cue. "And then they also want the 'Thin Blue Line' flag in headquarters to be taken down because they think that's a racist symbol. Know what we said? We said, 'Hell no.'"
Burns has drawn national conservative figures to events that raise money for his political action committee, which Plain Dealer editorial cartoonist Jeff Darcy dubbed a "de facto Trumplican cult," and his past turns up a lengthy record of evictions, bankruptcies, overdue taxes and dozens of lawsuits against him and his companies.
"He's a scumbag, and anybody associated with him needs to hang their head in shame," said former employee Elva Heuschkel, who sued him in 2013 for $3,384.61 -- which Burns actually paid. "I think I'm one of the few that got money from him. I was one of the lucky ones."
Others who've done business with the 46-year-old Burns called him "a shyster," "a flimflam artist" and "Scammin' Shannon."
"You got the red and you got the blue, but Shannon's 'conservatism' is green," said Ralph King, a longtime conservative activist in the area. "Who can put it in his scamming little pocket?"
Martin Schutte, who received a 2017 judgment for more than $53,000 in his lawsuit against Burns but never received his money, warned the Strongsville GOP that its leader was a "fake Republican and a fraud."
"He runs everybody through the mud," Schutte said. "He still has not paid me, and no one makes him — like, there's no consequences at all, and I think he knows that, so he doesn't care. He's, like, 'If there's no consequences, why should I have to do anything?'"
Burns has run the Strongsville GOP since early 2015, and he quickly nationalized two unsuccessful city council races by putting Trump and Hillary Clinton on mailers, but he was elected in 2020 to the state central committee by aligning himself closely with Trump -- and has only embraced the twice-impeached one-term president tighter since his re-election loss.
"All I've done," Burns told Politico, "is figured out how to catch the wave."
Bites from Real News
*9/24/2021*
*Inside the Private Facebook Groups Where Anti-Vaxxers Plot to Get Religious Exemptions
“Find verses of the Bible that talk about our body being the temple of God.”
*“They Saw Me and Thought the Worst”
For years, Black residents of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, have voiced complaints about abuses and a lack of accountability within its Sheriff’s Office. Unlike in neighboring New Orleans, no one has stepped in to help.
*Indigenous communities Families of missing and murdered Native women ask: ‘Where’s the attention for ours?'
Gabby Petito’s case highlights the power of media attention but for Indigenous communities it also emphasizes the lack of attention given to missing and murdered Native people
*Scammers on Facebook Marketplace Target Users From Around the World
*The Government Gave Free PPP Money to Public Companies Despite Warning Them Not to Apply
At least 120 publicly traded companies that received large PPP loans grew their revenues last year and have been allowed to keep the money anyway, according to a ProPublica analysis. The program was built to help small businesses.
*Report: McConnell’s Refusal to Raise Debt Ceiling Could Cost 6 Million Jobs
A new analysis by Moody’s Analytics found that if Republicans shoot down an attempt to raise the debt ceiling and lawmakers enter an extended period in which they can’t agree on how to avert a government shutdown, it could trigger economic conditions similar to the Great Recession in 2008.
*TYPICAL: Entergy Resisted Upgrading New Orleans’ Power Grid. When Ida Hit, Residents Paid the Price.
The company failed to build a stronger system after hurricanes repeatedly pummeled Louisiana. Then Ida knocked out power for more than a week.
When Will America Break Free from the Clutches of the Grifters?
Perhaps the 2022 election will bring Democrats a large enough progressive majority that they can work around their own grifters -- or maybe it’ll signal the death knell of the republic
Thom Hartmann
9/24/2021
Trump just unleashed an unhinged, barely coherent rant about the possibility President Biden might reveal what was going on in the White House on January 6th, the day Trump tried to finally end, once and for all, any possibility of governmental oversight of his ongoing criminal career. He believed he could follow in the footsteps of grifters before him who’ve taken control of and then drained dry countries from Hungary to Russia, Brazil to Turkey and The Philippines.
Thus it surprises nobody to discover that when Donald Trump and the people around him learned, in mid-November of 2020, that there was absolutely no meaningful voter fraud in that month’s election, they chose, instead of acknowledging the truth, to go ahead with a plan to raise over $200 million dollars (and counting). That even today “President Trump” is sending out one or two fundraising emails a day, each one with the tiny “make this a recurring donation” box pre-checked.
Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court cracked open the door for professional grifters in 1976 when, for the first time in American history, the Court redefined politicians taking money from billionaires away from being “political corruption” and “bribery” — what such behavior had been called since the beginning of the republic — to instead say it was a mere “exercise of free speech” on the part of the morbidly rich.
Two years after the Buckley decision, in 1978, Justice Lewis Powell (author of the infamous 1971 Powell Memo) pushed the door even farther open when he wrote for the Republican majority a decision granting giant corporations the same “free speech right” to own politicians in Boston v Bellotti.
And in 2010, with Citizens United, Republican appointees on the Court didn’t just blow the doors open; they tore down the entire building of “good government” in America, reaffirming that any billionaire or corporation that wanted to own their very own pet politician — or, if rich enough, own an entire political party — was totally legal and not at all corrupt.
Which is why Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974, was one of the last Republican politicians who actually believed that politics in America had something to do with governing the nation (even if he did it poorly). Ever since then, the GOP has been composed almost exclusively of professional grifters (which is a somewhat different type of cat from an ordinary criminal like Nixon who just took bribes, blackmailed people and lied about it all).
Grifters occupy a unique niche in the world of criminals: they avoid direct violence, but live and act only to enrich themselves, whether it’s with money, sex, power or all three. They’re typically high-functioning sociopaths who sneer at the rules of civilized society the rest of us take seriously. They combine the not-uncommon skill set of being charming and great salesmen and storytellers, but have no conscience or respect for the truth.
Grifters believe they’re the only “real” people in the world and all the rest of us are here for their entertainment, satisfaction or to pluck clean of whatever we have that they want. They view us as cardboard cutouts; their pains and loves and desires are real while ours are merely background noise.
And the entire Republican Party has become one giant in-crowd of professional grifters, most all of them getting rich, getting famous and/or getting laid in the process.
Ronald Reagan grew up during the Great Depression, became a Democrat who loved FDR, and once believed in government and that hard work and talent would get him ahead. Then Nancy Davis introduced him to her wealthy father, who let Ronnie in on the grift. Shill for General Electric and the GOP and he could marry Nancy, get rich, and might even have a bright political future. He was the first professional grifter president of the modern era.
Newt Gingrich was primed for the grift, screaming about Bill Clinton having an affair with Monica while porking Calista down the hall and fending off calls from his then-second wife. He got into the grift in a big way when he rolled out his “Contract With America” that was almost entirely tax cuts for giant corporations and the morbidly rich. Hell, he’s still in on it; I’m getting an email almost every week from Trump with Gingrich’s picture and signature asking for money.
Paul Ryan pimped tax cuts for the obscenely rich his entire career, knowing when he left office there’s be massive paychecks waiting for him the rest of his life.
Dick Cheney knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein not only had nothing to do with 9/11 but actively hated and hunted down Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda operatives so he could imprison or kill them. But Cheney had run Halliburton into trouble, betting that if he picked up Dresser Industries on the cheap that the Clinton administration would cover their asbestos liability. When he lost that bet and Halliburton was in trouble, a nice war with billions in no-bid contracts for the oil-company-turned-defense-contractor was just the grift he needed to both bail him out and make him fabulously rich.
Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia both knew that if any other federal judge were to go quail hunting with a defendant before the Court three weeks before trial or allow his spouse to take hundreds of thousands a year from a think tank with business before the Court, there would be hell to pay. But they were in on the grift and simply exempted themselves from the Federal Code of Judicial Conduct. Hell, they helped write the grift with Citizens United.
Since Citizens United the Republican grift has fully gone party-wide and even picked up a few Democrats along the way.
Some members of Congress get rich with money from Big Pharma, others choose to make their money with Big Oil or Big Coal, others are deeply in the pockets of airlines, telcom companies, the tobacco industry, banks, insurance companies or the food and hospitality monopolies.
Some Republicans even ran day-trading operations on insider information out of their offices until then-Democratic Congressman Brian Baird tipped off the world on my show and Air America’s Majority Report 14 years ago.
They all believe, as Bob Dylan famously sang, “You’ve gotta serve somebody.” And the “somebody” they all choose to serve are always the ones who pay the most.
Which is why it only makes sense that the Republican Party would put up a lifelong grifter as their nominee for president in 2016. And that he’d surround himself with grifters like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who Forbes magazine said would, by any measure, “rank among the biggest grifters in American history,” having scammed business partners out of at least $120 million.
Everybody in the GOP is either stuffing their “Leadership PACs” with money they can dip into after they leave office, living high on the hog, using their position to become famous or get into the pants of underage girls, or preparing for their well-feathered-nest after leaving politics.
I’ve been running a contest on my radio show since it started in 2003 offering a prize to anybody who can identify even one single piece of legislation that was originally sponsored by a Republican, passed Congress with a Republican majority, and was signed into law by a Republican president that primarily helped average working people or poor people instead of the rich or giant corporations.
Nobody has ever won the prize, and I’m betting nobody ever will.
This is not to say the Democratic Party doesn’t have its share of grifters (two publicity-hungry senators come to mind). After all, when the Supreme Court legalized political grifting they didn’t limit it to one party or the other.
But the single largest caucus in the Democratic Party is the Congressional Progressive Caucus (co-founded by Bernie Sanders) and its members generally refuse corporate PAC money and don’t usually hang out with lobbyists. Former co-chair of the Caucus, Representative Mark Pocan, has joked on my show that “they say there are three Big Pharma lobbyists for every member of Congress, but I have no idea who mine are.”
While Democrats are trying to legislate around the corrupting landmines laid by conservatives on the Supreme Court, Republicans are expanding on Donald Trump’s “voter fraud” and “antifa” grifts to raise money and consolidate their own power in the face of an American electorate that’s starting to figure out their game.
Trump and a handful of his grifter buddies who were up for full-out treason thought they could pull off the ultimate grift and seize the trillions in assets of the entire country. They only failed, we’re learning, by a whisker.
Next time we may not be so lucky. Congress must grift-proof our politics by getting billionaire and corporate money out of politics, as Democrats tried to do when the House of Representatives passed the For The People Act that Democratic grifters Manchin and Sinema are blocking in the Senate.
Perhaps the 2022 election will bring Democrats a large enough progressive majority that they can work around their own grifters. Or maybe it’ll signal the death knell of the republic.
To an extent largely unprecedented in American history, that decision will be in the hands of activists and voters like you and me. We have a big job ahead of us.
Thus it surprises nobody to discover that when Donald Trump and the people around him learned, in mid-November of 2020, that there was absolutely no meaningful voter fraud in that month’s election, they chose, instead of acknowledging the truth, to go ahead with a plan to raise over $200 million dollars (and counting). That even today “President Trump” is sending out one or two fundraising emails a day, each one with the tiny “make this a recurring donation” box pre-checked.
Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court cracked open the door for professional grifters in 1976 when, for the first time in American history, the Court redefined politicians taking money from billionaires away from being “political corruption” and “bribery” — what such behavior had been called since the beginning of the republic — to instead say it was a mere “exercise of free speech” on the part of the morbidly rich.
Two years after the Buckley decision, in 1978, Justice Lewis Powell (author of the infamous 1971 Powell Memo) pushed the door even farther open when he wrote for the Republican majority a decision granting giant corporations the same “free speech right” to own politicians in Boston v Bellotti.
And in 2010, with Citizens United, Republican appointees on the Court didn’t just blow the doors open; they tore down the entire building of “good government” in America, reaffirming that any billionaire or corporation that wanted to own their very own pet politician — or, if rich enough, own an entire political party — was totally legal and not at all corrupt.
Which is why Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974, was one of the last Republican politicians who actually believed that politics in America had something to do with governing the nation (even if he did it poorly). Ever since then, the GOP has been composed almost exclusively of professional grifters (which is a somewhat different type of cat from an ordinary criminal like Nixon who just took bribes, blackmailed people and lied about it all).
Grifters occupy a unique niche in the world of criminals: they avoid direct violence, but live and act only to enrich themselves, whether it’s with money, sex, power or all three. They’re typically high-functioning sociopaths who sneer at the rules of civilized society the rest of us take seriously. They combine the not-uncommon skill set of being charming and great salesmen and storytellers, but have no conscience or respect for the truth.
Grifters believe they’re the only “real” people in the world and all the rest of us are here for their entertainment, satisfaction or to pluck clean of whatever we have that they want. They view us as cardboard cutouts; their pains and loves and desires are real while ours are merely background noise.
And the entire Republican Party has become one giant in-crowd of professional grifters, most all of them getting rich, getting famous and/or getting laid in the process.
Ronald Reagan grew up during the Great Depression, became a Democrat who loved FDR, and once believed in government and that hard work and talent would get him ahead. Then Nancy Davis introduced him to her wealthy father, who let Ronnie in on the grift. Shill for General Electric and the GOP and he could marry Nancy, get rich, and might even have a bright political future. He was the first professional grifter president of the modern era.
Newt Gingrich was primed for the grift, screaming about Bill Clinton having an affair with Monica while porking Calista down the hall and fending off calls from his then-second wife. He got into the grift in a big way when he rolled out his “Contract With America” that was almost entirely tax cuts for giant corporations and the morbidly rich. Hell, he’s still in on it; I’m getting an email almost every week from Trump with Gingrich’s picture and signature asking for money.
Paul Ryan pimped tax cuts for the obscenely rich his entire career, knowing when he left office there’s be massive paychecks waiting for him the rest of his life.
Dick Cheney knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein not only had nothing to do with 9/11 but actively hated and hunted down Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda operatives so he could imprison or kill them. But Cheney had run Halliburton into trouble, betting that if he picked up Dresser Industries on the cheap that the Clinton administration would cover their asbestos liability. When he lost that bet and Halliburton was in trouble, a nice war with billions in no-bid contracts for the oil-company-turned-defense-contractor was just the grift he needed to both bail him out and make him fabulously rich.
Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia both knew that if any other federal judge were to go quail hunting with a defendant before the Court three weeks before trial or allow his spouse to take hundreds of thousands a year from a think tank with business before the Court, there would be hell to pay. But they were in on the grift and simply exempted themselves from the Federal Code of Judicial Conduct. Hell, they helped write the grift with Citizens United.
Since Citizens United the Republican grift has fully gone party-wide and even picked up a few Democrats along the way.
Some members of Congress get rich with money from Big Pharma, others choose to make their money with Big Oil or Big Coal, others are deeply in the pockets of airlines, telcom companies, the tobacco industry, banks, insurance companies or the food and hospitality monopolies.
Some Republicans even ran day-trading operations on insider information out of their offices until then-Democratic Congressman Brian Baird tipped off the world on my show and Air America’s Majority Report 14 years ago.
They all believe, as Bob Dylan famously sang, “You’ve gotta serve somebody.” And the “somebody” they all choose to serve are always the ones who pay the most.
Which is why it only makes sense that the Republican Party would put up a lifelong grifter as their nominee for president in 2016. And that he’d surround himself with grifters like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who Forbes magazine said would, by any measure, “rank among the biggest grifters in American history,” having scammed business partners out of at least $120 million.
Everybody in the GOP is either stuffing their “Leadership PACs” with money they can dip into after they leave office, living high on the hog, using their position to become famous or get into the pants of underage girls, or preparing for their well-feathered-nest after leaving politics.
I’ve been running a contest on my radio show since it started in 2003 offering a prize to anybody who can identify even one single piece of legislation that was originally sponsored by a Republican, passed Congress with a Republican majority, and was signed into law by a Republican president that primarily helped average working people or poor people instead of the rich or giant corporations.
Nobody has ever won the prize, and I’m betting nobody ever will.
This is not to say the Democratic Party doesn’t have its share of grifters (two publicity-hungry senators come to mind). After all, when the Supreme Court legalized political grifting they didn’t limit it to one party or the other.
But the single largest caucus in the Democratic Party is the Congressional Progressive Caucus (co-founded by Bernie Sanders) and its members generally refuse corporate PAC money and don’t usually hang out with lobbyists. Former co-chair of the Caucus, Representative Mark Pocan, has joked on my show that “they say there are three Big Pharma lobbyists for every member of Congress, but I have no idea who mine are.”
While Democrats are trying to legislate around the corrupting landmines laid by conservatives on the Supreme Court, Republicans are expanding on Donald Trump’s “voter fraud” and “antifa” grifts to raise money and consolidate their own power in the face of an American electorate that’s starting to figure out their game.
Trump and a handful of his grifter buddies who were up for full-out treason thought they could pull off the ultimate grift and seize the trillions in assets of the entire country. They only failed, we’re learning, by a whisker.
Next time we may not be so lucky. Congress must grift-proof our politics by getting billionaire and corporate money out of politics, as Democrats tried to do when the House of Representatives passed the For The People Act that Democratic grifters Manchin and Sinema are blocking in the Senate.
Perhaps the 2022 election will bring Democrats a large enough progressive majority that they can work around their own grifters. Or maybe it’ll signal the death knell of the republic.
To an extent largely unprecedented in American history, that decision will be in the hands of activists and voters like you and me. We have a big job ahead of us.
Texas Father of 12 Dies of COVID After Desperate Scramble for Last-Ditch Treatment
DEVASTATING
AJ McDougall
Breaking News Intern
Published Sep. 23, 2021 12:32PM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
Reed Hickson, a father of 12 in Texas, has died of COVID-19 just one day after his wife issued a desperate plea on Facebook for a hospital bed with special ECMO capabilities. “We are running out of time and options,” Gina Robnett Hickson wrote. She and Hickson were married for 29 years. Before Hickson died on Monday, his family scrambled to find an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which provides a type of life support and would have allowed for a last-resort procedure that “was his only chance to stay alive,” according to Gina. Machines are scarce, as they require specially trained teams of medical workers to operate. Hickson tested positive for the virus last month; within 20 days, he had made multiple overnight trips to the hospital, and was admitted to the ICU twice. “He stayed stable for a couple of days and then he was starting to steadily decline,” his wife told a local outlet. It’s unclear if Hickson was vaccinated.
Over 1,600 Fake Vax Cards Seized by Cincinnati Customs Agents
OH-MY-O, OHIO
AJ McDougall
Breaking News Intern
Published Sep. 22, 2021 12:27PM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
Despite the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is free and safe, some are still so desperate to avoid getting jabbed that an alarming industry has sprouted up around counterfeit vaccination cards. Federal agents in Ohio have intercepted a number of shipments of fake vax cards and Pfizer inoculation stickers over the last month, according to a recent agency news release. The seized bundles totaled 1,683 cards and 2,034 stickers.
Fraudulent vaccination cards are used by individuals seeking to gain entry to restaurants, schools, and public spaces with vaccine requirements. Officers realized that the Cincinnati shipments were fakes when they spotted poor printing quality and misspellings of “COVD-19” and “COVLID-19.” They were being imported by “non-medical entities,” out of homes and apartments in Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New York, and Texas. Making or buying a counterfeit card is a federal crime, and can result in up to five years in prison.
Fraudulent vaccination cards are used by individuals seeking to gain entry to restaurants, schools, and public spaces with vaccine requirements. Officers realized that the Cincinnati shipments were fakes when they spotted poor printing quality and misspellings of “COVD-19” and “COVLID-19.” They were being imported by “non-medical entities,” out of homes and apartments in Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New York, and Texas. Making or buying a counterfeit card is a federal crime, and can result in up to five years in prison.
Native American Tribes Sue to Stop Wisconsin’s Fall Wolf Hunt
WOOF
AJ McDougall
Breaking News Intern
Published Sep. 22, 2021 11:19AM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
Just weeks after wildlife activist groups sued to halt Wisconsin’s annual fall wolf hunt, six Native American tribes have served the state another suit. The Ojibwe tribes filed against the Department of Natural Resources and Natural Resources Board, arguing that the hunt violates treaty rights that entitle them to half of the wolf quota in territory they were forced to give the U.S. government in the nineteenth century. The DNR estimates Wisconsin’s wolf population hovers around 1,000. About 218 wolves were killed in four days during the annual hunting and trapping season in February—99 above the state quota. Last month, the DNR set future kill limits at 300. The Ojibwe are asking a judge to nullify a state law mandating annual hunts, using the logic that the statutes don’t allow population estimates to be properly made and adjusted.
Wolves are considered sacred by the Ojibwe, who see them as their “brothers,” according to Marvin Defoe, an elder of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. “The legends and stories tell us as brothers we walk hand in hand together. What happens to the Ma’iingan [wolves] happens to humanity.”
Wolves are considered sacred by the Ojibwe, who see them as their “brothers,” according to Marvin Defoe, an elder of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. “The legends and stories tell us as brothers we walk hand in hand together. What happens to the Ma’iingan [wolves] happens to humanity.”
*What's Inside*
*REPUBLICANS CAN SUCK SWOLLEN DEMOCRATIC BALLS IN CALIFORNIA BY THE RUDE PUNDIT
(COMMENTARY)
*ANTI-MASKER ABUSE, SUBPAR HEALTHCARE, AND A 5 CENT RAISE: CVS WORKERS SAY ENOUGH IS ENOUGH(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
*‘CONSCIOUS AND DELIBERATE’: BLACK WORKERS SAY MISSISSIPPI FARM IMPORTED WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS TO REPLACE THEM AT HIGHER WAGES FOR THE SAME WORK(RACE MATTERS)
*CALIFORNIA MAN WITH KNIVES, RACIST SYMBOLS ARRESTED IN D.C.
(AMERIKKKANS)
*COMPANIES LOBBYING AGAINST INFRASTRUCTURE TAX INCREASES HAVE AVOIDED PAYING BILLIONS IN TAXES(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*THE 'JOB CREATORS' FANTASY IS A MALIGNANT MYTH THAT RICH USE TO SQUEEZE THE WORKING CLASS(REALITY)
*NO MORE FUCKING AROUND. WE ELECTED YOU. START ACTING LIKE IT (WHAT I WANT TO SEE TODAY FROM DEMS(DEMO POLITICS)
*HURRICANE IDA MAKES A MOCKERY OF BIG OIL’S PHILANTHROPY
(OIL)
*2020 HATE CRIMES SURGE TO 12 YEAR HIGH
(AMERICA)
*BOEBERT'S HUSBAND: A COLORFUL PAST
(AMERIKKKANS)
*TALIBAN’S RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY – DEOBANDI ISLAM – HAS ROOTS IN COLONIAL INDIA
(TIMELESS)
*WHITENESS AS A COVENANT
(WHITE SUPREMACY)
*NO LABELS OFFERED CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS TO SPURN NANCY PELOSI FUNDRAISER(SELLOUTS)
*late news of interest*
Let's Cut the Crap
nancegreggs - du
8/8/2021
Republican voters - especially the Trump-humpers among them -- are not where they are because they're poorly-educated, misled, easily-manipulated dupes.
Those excuses for their behaviour - despite all of it being true - is no longer a viable explanation for their actions.
The truth is they're are just downright stupid.
No one with enough common sense to come in out of the rain would ignore the expertise of Dr. Fauci (world renowned physician, scientist, immunologist), and instead take their medical advice from the same lunatic who told them the pandemic was a hoax.
No one with enough functioning brain cells to enable them to tie their own shoelaces would look at the real-time footage of January 6th and ever believe that it was a 'regular tourist event' - or, even more amazingly, buy the line that the events of January 6th actually never happened.
No one with sufficient brain-power to successfully microwave a hotdog would see deaths among the unvaccinated surge - and not understand that the vaccines are working, and being unvaccinated is the problem.
No one with an IQ above that of the average house plant would believe that the 2020 election was 'stolen' when there hasn't been a modicum of proof produced to support that idea, would believe that a man obsessed with keeping his income tax returns hidden has 'nothing to hide', would believe that TFG (the self-proclaimed billionaire) needs their donations to cover his personal expenses.
These people are actually supporting Republican whack-jobs who believe that Jewish Space Lasers cause forest fires, and the so-called 'Christians' among them have no problem taking selfies with a golden Trump statue.
Once upon a time, the Trump-humpers could be excused as ill-informed idiots who bought the snake oil that would, as promised, cure all ills.
We're well past that now. Anyone still supporting TFG - and the party he still holds sway over - is, quite simply, a fucking moron, devoid of the common sense required to distinguish between shit and Shinola.
So let's stop pretending that those still clinging to TFG's blatant bullshit are citizens who simply don't know any better - because if they don't know better by now, they are too stupid to ever know anything.
Those excuses for their behaviour - despite all of it being true - is no longer a viable explanation for their actions.
The truth is they're are just downright stupid.
No one with enough common sense to come in out of the rain would ignore the expertise of Dr. Fauci (world renowned physician, scientist, immunologist), and instead take their medical advice from the same lunatic who told them the pandemic was a hoax.
No one with enough functioning brain cells to enable them to tie their own shoelaces would look at the real-time footage of January 6th and ever believe that it was a 'regular tourist event' - or, even more amazingly, buy the line that the events of January 6th actually never happened.
No one with sufficient brain-power to successfully microwave a hotdog would see deaths among the unvaccinated surge - and not understand that the vaccines are working, and being unvaccinated is the problem.
No one with an IQ above that of the average house plant would believe that the 2020 election was 'stolen' when there hasn't been a modicum of proof produced to support that idea, would believe that a man obsessed with keeping his income tax returns hidden has 'nothing to hide', would believe that TFG (the self-proclaimed billionaire) needs their donations to cover his personal expenses.
These people are actually supporting Republican whack-jobs who believe that Jewish Space Lasers cause forest fires, and the so-called 'Christians' among them have no problem taking selfies with a golden Trump statue.
Once upon a time, the Trump-humpers could be excused as ill-informed idiots who bought the snake oil that would, as promised, cure all ills.
We're well past that now. Anyone still supporting TFG - and the party he still holds sway over - is, quite simply, a fucking moron, devoid of the common sense required to distinguish between shit and Shinola.
So let's stop pretending that those still clinging to TFG's blatant bullshit are citizens who simply don't know any better - because if they don't know better by now, they are too stupid to ever know anything.
A Meditation On Practical Applications Of Stupidity
The Mystery of Anti-Vax & Anti-Mask
Kat Ignatz - DAILY KOS
Sunday August 01, 2021 · 5:00 AM PDT
...“The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” seems as good a way as any to explain the insane situation we’re in. It’s speculative, but in my opinion, guessing is all we’ve really got right now.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
And he presents his theory as five laws:
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
- Intelligent People whose actions benefit others and themselves
- Helpless People whose actions harm them but benefit others
- Bandits whose actions harm others but benefit them
- Stupid People whose actions harm others but don’t benefit them and may, in fact, harm them, too
And he presents his theory as five laws:
- Everyone always underestimates how many stupid people there are.
- Stupidity is unrelated to any other human trait.
- Stupid people cause losses to others without gain and, possibly, with losses to themselves.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate how harmful stupid people are.
- Stupid people are the most dangerous type of person.
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
- How many: 30% of the US population is hesitating, resisting, or outright refusing to get a coronavirus vaccine.
- Unrelated to other traits: Health care workers are protesting against getting vaccinated.
- No gain and possible losses: Not even the threat of death is changing anti-vax/mask behavior.
- How harmful: Who would have predicted that Missouri would end up in such terrible condition?
- Most dangerous: Anti-vax/maskers are bringing the systems we rely on for our safety and health to the brink of crashing.
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
