The GOP and their wealthy benefactor's orchestration of a partisan capture of the judiciary were always meant to be a means to control the government and get their way by doing an end-run around democracy.

"The Court has become a handmaiden to the corporate elites trying to increase their dominance over us."

Opinion | It's Time to Admit This Right-Wing U.S. Supreme Court Is a Corrupt, Autocratic Tribune | Common Dreams -- JIM HIGHTOWER https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/supreme-court-is-corrupt

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#SupremePartisans
#JudicialEndRunAroundDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy

Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four — calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a "supreme" court doesn't make it one. There's nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people's ideals of justice by proclaiming their own antidemocratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women's rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on America that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate.

Indeed, the imperiousness of the six ruling judges has already caused the court's public approval rating to plummet, to a mere 38%, an historic low that ranks down there with former President Donald Trump, and threatens to go as low as Congress.

This has led to a flurry of officials attesting to the honesty and political impartiality of the reigning supremes. Unfortunately for the court, these ardent defenders were the six culprits themselves.

The "integrity of the judiciary is in my bones," pontificated Neil Gorsuch, who now stands accused of having lied to senators to win his lifetime appointment.

We don't have to accept rule by an illegitimate court.

"(We are not) a bunch of partisan hacks," wailed Amy Coney Barrett, a partisan extremist jammed onto the court in a partisan ploy by Trump in the last few hours of his presidency.

"Judges are not politicians," protested John Roberts, who became Chief Justice because he was a rabid political lawyer who pushed the Supreme Court in 2000 to reject the rights of voters and install George W. Bush as president.

As many of its own members privately admit, Congress has become a pay-to-play lawmaking casino — closed to commoners but offering full-service access to corporate powers.

But the Supreme Court is another government entity that's even more aloof from workaday people — and it has become a handmaiden to the corporate elites trying to increase their dominance over us. The six-member, right-wing majority on this secretive powerhouse now routinely vetoes efforts by workers, environmentalist, students, local officials, voters and all others who try to rein in corporate greed and abuses.

Appointed for lifetime terms, this autocratic tribune takes pride in being sealed off from democracy, even bragging that they make rulings without being influenced by special interests. But wait — in makeup and ideology, today's court majority is a special interest, for it consists of corporate and right-wing lawyers who've obtained their wealth and position by loyally serving corporate power. And far from now being isolated from moneyed elites, the judges regularly socialize with them and attend their closed-door political meetings.

There's even a special little club, called The Supreme Court Historical Society, that frequently reveals the cozy, symbiotic relationship that exists between today's judicial and corporate cliques. Such giants as Chevron, Goldman Sachs, AT&T and Home Depot pay millions of dollars to this clubby society, gaining notice by and the appreciation of the supremes. And, yes, these special interest gifts to the court are gratefully accepted, even when the corporations have active cases before the court, seeking favorable rulings from the very judges they're glad-handing at Society soirees.

Of course, the judges insist there's no conflict of interest, because this access to them is "open to all." Sure — all who can pay $25,000 and up to get inside! Yet the clueless judges wonder why their credibility is in the ditch. Remember, in America, The People are supreme! We don't have to accept rule by an illegitimate court. For reform, go to FixTheCourt.com.""

Part 3
The GOP, as the tool of the wealthiest, has decimated education and the middle class, gutted regulations and civil rights, undermined democracy and packed the courts with partisans who ignore their oaths of office, all in order to gain more power and be ever more wealthy.

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#NeoliberalismIsAboutGreed
#CorporateGreed
#ReaganKilledMiddleClass
#GreedKills

"Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world. At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.

Now a small group of often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as you can imagine, are generally absent.

Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve and which they’d reject. They said this will “lower costs and increase choice.”

In all of the entire developed world — all the OECD countries on 4 continents — there are only 500,000 medical bankruptcies a year. Every single one of them is here in America.

Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.

As everybody can see, they lied. And are working as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment.

Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.

There was an explosion; lots of them, in fact, as over 60,000 American factories were torn down or left vacant because their products were moved to China or elsewhere. Over 10 million good-paying jobs went overseas along with those 60,000 factories.

Republicans told us global warming was a hoax: they’re still telling us that, in fact. And therefore, they say, we shouldn’t do anything to interfere with the profits of their friends in the American fossil fuel industry and the Middle East.

The hoax, it turns out, was the lie that there was no global warming — a lie that the industry spent hundreds of millions over decades to pull off. They succeeded in delaying action on global warming by at least three decades and maybe as many as five. That lie produced trillions in profits and brought us the climate crisis that is today killing millions and threatens all life on Earth.

And then, of course, there’s the biggest GOP lie of them all: “Money is the same thing as Free Speech.”

Five Republicans on the Supreme Court told us that if we threw out around 1000 anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws at both the state and federal level so politicians and political PACs could take unaccountable billions, even from foreign powers, it would “strengthen and diversify” the range of voices heard in America.

It’s diversified it, for sure. We’re now regularly hearing from racists and open Nazis, many of them elected Republican officials, who would have been driven out of decent society before the Reagan Revolution. American political discourse hasn’t been this filled with conflict and violence since the Civil War, and much of it can be traced straight back to the power and influence of dark money unleashed by five Republicans on the Supreme Court.

The bottom line is that we — as a nation, voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full Republican experience.

And now that we know what it is, we’re no longer listening to the Republican politicians who are continuing to try to sell us this bullshit.

We don’t want to hear Republicans sermonizing about deficits (that they themselves caused).

Or welfare (that they damaged and then exploited).

Or even whatever they’re calling “faith” these days, be it the death penalty, forcing raped women to give birth at the barrel of a gun, or burning books.

We’re over it, Republicans. A new America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and you can’t stop it much longer."""

Part 2
The GOP, as the tool of the wealthiest, has decimated education and the middle class, gutted regulations and civil rights, undermined democracy and packed the courts with partisans who ignore their oaths of office, all in order to gain more power and be ever more wealthy.

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#NeoliberalismIsAboutGreed
#CorporateGreed
#ReaganKilledMiddleClass
#GreedKills

"Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted wherever they wanted it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.

“An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill politicians. Five Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about history to make guns more widely available.

Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world.

Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.

Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.

Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus instead on science and math.

Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans that can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.”

Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80% of a student’s tuition — so that students would have what they told us was “skin in the game,” we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.

Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by student’s tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses, or beginning families. While students are underwater, banksters who donate to Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable loans .

Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and better.

Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s impossible to start or find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs. It’s all giant chains, many now owed by hedge funds or private equity. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants.

Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.

Instead, nearly every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, millions and often billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives — while workers, the company, and society suffer the loss."

Part 1
The GOP, as the tool of the wealthiest, has decimated education and the middle class, gutted regulations and civil rights, undermined democracy and packed the courts with partisans who ignore their oaths of office, all in order to gain more power and be ever more wealthy.

Their "Reaganism" sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution: It’s time to say out loud that it hasn’t worked

Dear Republicans: We Tried Your Way and It Does Not Work https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-republicans-we-tried-your-way

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPIsTheRichsTool
#NeoliberalismIsAboutGreed
#CorporateGreed
#ReaganKilledMiddleClass
#GreedKills

"The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.

Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation; nearly free college, trade school, and research support; healthy small and family businesses; unions protecting a third of America’s workers so two-thirds had a living wage and benefits; and an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports that transformed the nation’s commerce.

When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class.

The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.” It became a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then America.

They then moved on to infiltrate our universities, seize our media, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to add millions of votes, and turn upside down our tax, labor, and gun laws.

That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.

By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented GOP was putting forward. They included radical tax cuts, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered people (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them dependent).

Their sales pitch was effective, and we’ve now had 42 years of the so-called Reagan Revolution.

It’s time to simply say out loud that it hasn’t worked:

Republicans told us if we just cut the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74% it was at in 1980 down to 27% it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else as, they said, the “job creators” would be unleashed on our economy.

Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over 40 years from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, where it remains to this day. The middle class has gone from over 60% of us to fewer than half of us. It now takes 2 full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980."

Kevin McCarthy Will Take Us Back to the 1920s. Is That Good? https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42419121/kevin-mccarthy-french-hill-house/

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#NeoLiberalism
#GOPInBedWithRich

"...Making the case for McCarthy, Hill drew on the history of Republican political economics, and what he said probably had the history department at Vanderbilt University, his alma mater, falling into what my mother used to call "HIGH-sterics." He decided to enlighten his colleagues with the story of the last time Republican infighting screwed up the election of a speaker (his comments begin at about the 6:25 mark).
...
OK so far: The election of Frederick Gillett was held up for nine ballots because of intra-party feuding dating back to a split between Roosevelt and Taft supporters from 11 years earlier. But then we move into the realms of Republican mythology from a dusty volume I never expected to hear quoted again.

When Fred Gillett was elected speaker on the ninth ballot in 1923, [he had a] more unified Republican conference, one that would go to work with President Calvin Coolidge, cut government spending, balance the budget, and cut taxes while paying down the debt. House Republicans 100 years ago unleashed a pro-growth agenda. House Republicans under Speaker Kevin McCarthy will unleash a pro-growth agenda to get this economy moving. That pro-growth agenda benefited families in the ‘20s. The McCarthy pro-growth agenda will benefit families across this country today. A century later, under Speaker Kevin McCarthy—mark my words—this party will come together to unleash American energy, make the Trump tax cuts permanent, rein run-away government spending and fight for a balanced budget. I stand before you today with unqualified support to nominate my friend, the next speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy.
I admire loyalty, I truly do. But making a case for McCarthy by saying that he would return the country to the economic policies that led directly to the Great Depression is like hearing a Democrat make the case for Hakeem Jeffries through the politics of Stephen A. Douglas. And calling Coolidge's policies "pro-growth" and a benefit to "families"— unless you mean the Astors and the Rockefellers—is flatly bizarre.
...
Between the two of them, the country got a preview of what would happen in the years after 1980, when the Republicans succumbed to the voodoo of supply-side economics. Coolidge's tax cuts increased wealth inequality and provided easy credit that was a landmine under millions of personal economies. Farmers suffered tremendously, and when the first tremors of the economic earthquake began to be felt, he fell back on his stiff-necked New England morality. He vetoed several farm relief bills and even shut down an early version of what would become the Tennessee Valley Authority. As Walter Lippman famously said of him, Coolidge's real political skill was his ability to do nothing:
...
Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is on the contrary a steady application to the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity wherever there are signs of life.
Which brings us back to French Hill, who brought Silent Cal back into the discussion Thursday afternoon with his promise that McCarthy would bring back the Roaring Twenties. (No, I don't want to think about Lauren Boebert as a flapper.) The Republicans—and more than a few nervous Democrats—followed Reagan into the past of laissez-faire and they've never really returned. Which has resulted in the boom-and-bust economic cycle of the past 30 years and in the establishment of fraud as the basic business plan for American corporations, just as it was in the 1920s.

In the aftermath of this (in the pages of this very magazine!), Ernest Hemingway threw an elbow at F. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1936 story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”:

The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how some one had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott. He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him.
The rich can also buy better politicians."

Up is down, black is white. These GOP nutjobs are aggressively disinforming voters to enable their attempts to destroy our democracy and our government that works for and protects Americans.

What the heck does ‘weaponizing the federal government’ even mean?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/05/republicans-weaponization-government-jordan-roy/

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPOligarchPuppets

"Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), in his failed attempt to help House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) secure the speakership on Tuesday, hollered that the government “has been weaponized against ‘we the people,’ the very people we represent.” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) later insisted that he wants his party’s leadership to stop the “swamp” in D.C. from “running over” and “stepping” on average Americans.

What the heck are they talking about?

Unsurprisingly, Republicans rarely explain just how they think the federal government is tormenting people. The overwhelming number of Americans, for example, don’t think it’s tyrannical for the government to secure $35 per month insulin for seniors, give them green energy credits or expand access to health care to veterans exposed to burn pits during war.

Perhaps Republicans are referring to the mythical 87,000 new IRS agents who they claim are about to knock down the doors of ordinary taxpayers. But as the New York Times explained, “The 87,000 figure refers to a May 2021 estimate from the Treasury Department of the total number of employees — not just auditors — the I.R.S. proposes to hire over the next 10 years with funding requested by Mr. Biden. And while the I.R.S. plans to conduct more audits, wealthy Americans and businesses will bear the brunt of that scrutiny, not, as Republicans have suggested, working families.”

If “weaponizing” government amounts to forcing rich Americans to pay taxes owed under existing law, then Republicans should come out and say that.

Then again, maybe Republicans object to prosecuting Jan. 6 insurrectionists who attacked and injured police officers, destroyed public property, and attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power. In the eyes of a number of MAGA types, the insurrectionists are the innocent victims, while the police, FBI and National Guard are the enemies.

So much for “back the blue.” As Aquilino Gonell, one of the Capitol Police officers injured while defending members of Congress, wrote in an op-ed for the Times condemning former president Donald Trump for his role in the insurrection, “Even more galling are the Republicans who still refuse to provide testimony under oath and instead dangerously downplay how close we came to losing our democracy.” In fact, 21 House Republicans voted against giving Congressional Gold Medals to the heroic police.

Maybe Republican are still harping on the federal government’s efforts to prevent Americans from dying of covid-19. Requirements for masks, vaccines, social distancing — the horror!

MAGA extremists seem to have sympathy for the Republican governors who resisted lifesaving measures, resulting in disproportionate deaths in red locales. As Scientific American found, “Republican-leaning ‘red’ states were much more resistant to health measures. The consequences of those differences emerged by the end of 2020, when rates of hospitalization and death from COVID rose in conservative counties and dropped in liberal ones.” (Oddly, these same Republicans favor using the government to force women to remain pregnant and give birth, a practice straight from Communist China’s playbook.)

Indeed, right-wing authoritarians seem to be engaged in a giant exercise in projection. You want examples of abusive government? Take a look at red-state governors who seek to use the power of the state to target LGBTQ youths, deny the right of assembly, silence dissent and suppress voting rights.

So if you are confused about what in the world Jordan, Roy and the other MAGA radicals are hollering about, you are not alone. Their party of nihilists insists that legitimate functions of government amount to tyranny, while their own abuse of power represents the will of “real Americans.” Whether they believe this nonsense is irrelevant; what we know is that the same delusional thinking that triggered the 2021 coup attempt is alive and well, fanned by right-wing hucksters who can dupe Americans into sending a few more bucks to fight “socialists” — or something."

Part 3
While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology. It’s about the future of “big government” and the American middle class

The Real Reason the Freedom Caucus Hates Kevin McCarthy Is Larger Than You Think https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-real-reason-the-freedom-caucus?

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithRich

"The world is made up of “makers” and “takers,” they’ll tell you. The billionaire “job creators” shouldn’t be taxed to support the “moochers” who demand everything from union rights to a living wage to free college.

Why, these Freedom Caucus members ask, should their billionaire patrons be forced — at the barrel of an IRS agent’s gun! — to pay taxes to support the ungrateful masses through “big government” programs? Isn’t it up to each of us to make our own fortunes? Wasn’t Darwin right?

These Republicans believe our government should really only have a few simple mandates: maintain a strong military, tough cops, and a court system to protect their economic empires.

That’s why they’ll support massive prison expansions and nosebleed levels of pentagon spending but (metaphorically) fight to the death to prevent an expansion of Social Security or food stamps.

And that’s why they hate Kevin McCarthy.

In the past, McCarthy has shown a willingness to compromise and negotiate with Democrats. Most recently, as Congressman Chip Roy pointed out on the House floor yesterday when nominating Byron Donalds to replace McCarthy, he failed to block the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill through Congress that was loaded with what rightwing billionaires consider “freebies” for “taker” and “moocher” Americans.

It appears all or nearly all of the Freedom Caucus members, dancing to the tune first played by David Koch, don’t believe in our current form of American government. They want us to go back to the pre-1930s America, before FDR’s New Deal.

Those were the halcyon days when workers cowered before their employers, women and minorities knew their places, and government didn’t interfere with the business of dynasty-building even when it meant poisoning entire communities and crushing small businesses.

They appear to agree with the majority of the Supreme Court Republicans who recently began dismantling the “big government” administrative state by ending the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gasses.

They’ve already succeeded, over the past 40 years of the Reagan Revolution, at whittling the middle class down from 65 percent of us to around 45 percent of us: NPR commemorated it in 2015 with the headline: “The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class.”

Now they want even more poverty for workers and more riches for their morbidly rich funders, and don’t believe that “moderate” Republicans will get them there. As Ginni Thomas and a pantheon of “conservative” luminaries wrote yesterday in an open letter opposing McCarthy’s speakership:

“[H]e has failed to answer for, or commit to halting, his coordinated efforts in the 2022 elections to promote moderate Republican candidates over conservatives.”

The “conservative” Republicans have already announced that once they get their act together in Congress with a new speaker, their first order of business is going to be to cut more taxes on billionaires.

While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology and policy. It’s about the future of “big government” and whether or not we will continue to have an American middle class.

And as long as Libertarian-leaning billionaires continue pouring cash into the campaigns and lifestyles of Republican members of Congress, this battle that’s been going on for over 40 years to tear apart the American middle-class is not going to end or go away any day soon."

Part 2
While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology. It’s about the future of “big government” and the American middle class

The Real Reason the Freedom Caucus Hates Kevin McCarthy Is Larger Than You Think https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-real-reason-the-freedom-caucus?

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithRich

"In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president with the Libertarian Party, an organization created by the real estate lobby to give an air of legitimacy to their efforts to outlaw rent control and end government regulation of their industry.

His platform included a whole series of positions that were specifically designed to roll back and gut FDR’s “big government” programs (along with those added on by both Nixon and LBJ’s Great Society) that had created and then sustained America’s 20th century middle class:

— “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.
— “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.
— “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.
— “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.
— “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.
— “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service.
— “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.
— “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.
— “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.
— “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.
— “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.
— “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.
— “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.
— “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
— “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.
— “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.
— “We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.
— “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called ‘self-protection’ equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.
— “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.
— “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.
— “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.
— “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.
— “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.
— “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
— “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
— “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

Today’s challenges to Kevin McCarthy are mostly coming from members of the Republican House Freedom Caucus, pretty much a reinvention of the Tea Party Caucus, funded in substantial part by rightwing billionaires and CEOs who share the late David Koch’s worldview."

Part 1
While the battle for House Speaker appears to be about personality, it’s really about ideology. It’s about the future of “big government” and the American middle class

The Real Reason the Freedom Caucus Hates Kevin McCarthy Is Larger Than You Think https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-real-reason-the-freedom-caucus?

#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPInBedWithRich

"While Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to become Speaker of the House of Representatives appears to be about personality and struggles within the House Republican caucus, it’s really about something much larger: the fate and future of American “big government” and the middle class it created.

Ever since the Reagan Revolution, the phrase “big government” has been on the lips of Republican politicians. They utter it like a curse at every opportunity.

It seems paradoxical: Republicans complain about “big government,” but then go on to support more and more government money for expanding prisons and a bloated Pentagon budget. Once you understand their worldview, however, it all makes perfect sense.

First, some background.

From the founding of our republic through the early 1930s the American middle class was relatively small. It was almost entirely made up of the professional and mercantile class: doctors, lawyers, shop-owners and the like. Only a tiny percentage of Americans were what we would today call middle class.

Factory workers, farmers, carpenters, plumbers, and pretty much all manner of “unskilled laborers” were the working poor rather than the middle class. Most neighborhoods across America had a quality of life even lower than what today we would call “ghettos.”

As recently as 1900, for example, women couldn’t vote, senators were appointed by the wealthiest power brokers in the states, and poverty stalked America.

There was no minimum wage; when workers tried to organize unions, police would help employers beat or even murder their ringleaders; and social safety net programs like unemployment insurance, Social Security, public schools, Medicare, food and housing supports, and Medicaid didn’t exist.

There was no income tax to pay for such programs, and federal receipts were a mere 3 percent of GDP (today its around 20 percent). As the President’s Council of Economic Advisors noted in their 2000 Annual Report:

“To appreciate how far we have come, it is instructive to look back on what American life was like in 1900. At the turn of the century, fewer than 10 percent of homes had electricity, and fewer than 2 percent of people had telephones. An automobile was a luxury that only the very wealthy could afford.

“Many women still sewed their own clothes and gave birth at home. Because chlorination had not yet been introduced and water filtration was rare, typhoid fever, spread by contaminated water, was a common affliction. One in 10 children died in infancy. Average life expectancy in the United States was a mere 47 years.

“Fewer than 14 percent of Americans graduated from high school. ... Widowhood was far more common than divorce. The average household had close to five members, and a fifth of all households had seven or more. …

“Average income per capita, in 1999 dollars, was about $4,200. … The typical workweek in manufacturing was about 50 hours, 20 percent longer than the average today.”

The Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, though, was a huge wake-up call for American voters, answered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

His New Deal programs brought us, for the first time, “big government” and the people loved it. They elected him President of the United States four times!

FDR created Social Security, unemployment insurance, guaranteed the right to unionize, outlawed child labor, regulated big business by creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other agencies, and funded infrastructure across the country from roads to bridges to dams and power stations.

He raised taxes on the morbidly rich all the way up to 90% and used that money to build schools and hospitals across the nation. He brought electricity to rural parts of the country, and put literally millions to work in various “big government” programs.

“Big government,” in other words, created the modern American middle-class.

By the 1950s a strong middle class representing almost half of Americans had emerged for the first time in American history.

By the late 1970s it was around 65 percent of us.

And that’s when the billionaires (then merely multimillionaires) decided enough was enough and got to work."

The treasonous members of the Freedom Caucus are puppets of the Koch's and Peter Theil, among other oligarchs, who want to neuter the government so they face no regulations and have total power, control and even more money.

"With Trump running for President and the Freedom Caucus running the House"

How not to mark the 2nd anniversary of the day American democracy almost died https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-not-to-mark-the-2nd-anniversary

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#FreedomCaucusTreason
#GOPTreason
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPOligarchPuppets
#WantTheirSerfsBack

"Two years ago today the United States Capitol was attacked by a mob determined to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as President.

Members of Congress most involved in that insurrection — those subpoenaed by the January 6 committee yet who ignored the subpoenas (Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama), and others who have been linked to the insurrection (Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, and Louie Gohmert of Texas) — are members of the far-right Freedom Caucus.

They are on the verge of hijacking the Speakership, which means hijacking the House, hijacking Congress, and hijacking the American people.

In their pending deal with Kevin McCarthy, they will have the power to recall him at any time if he doesn’t hew to their demands. They’ll also get approval power over some plum committee assignments, including a third of the members on the influential Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form. And spending bills would have to be considered under so-called open rules, allowing any member to put to a vote an unlimited number of changes that could gut or scuttle the legislation altogether.

Two years have passed, yet the top lawmakers in the US government who were most directly involved in the insurrection — Trump and his co-conspirators in Congress — have not been held accountable.

To the contrary, Trump is so far unopposed in seeking the Republican nomination for President, and his co-conspirators are wielding more influence over the U.S. government than ever before.

This is not the way to mark the second anniversary of the day American democracy almost died."