Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by Robert Reich
In light of A.G. Garland’s exemplary appearance Thursday afternoon, I am starting to believe that Republicans who have latched themselves to Trump will have so much to answer for in the coming weeks that no amount of money, likely, will save them. If I’m right, we’ll have a real shot, in 23, of resurrecting H.R.1 For the People, that aggressively tackles getting money out of politics. I should note this legislation passed in the House back in 2021. We just need to hold the House and pick up, I imagine, at least 4 seats in the Senate.
Before you vote me off the island for being a cockeyed optimist, please, again, heed the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who once wrote, “Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.” As I posted recently, I simply would add that only in retrospect is the true value of persistence in the face of difficulty revealed.
Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by Robert Reich
the past 24 hours have been, literally, the stuff of nightmares for me. i am beyond words when i think about DJT and his theft of nuclear secrets when he vacated the white house. i am beyond words when i think about what he planned to do with these nuclear secrets. but in the light of these revelations, so much makes sense now, including that mysterious payment of $2billion to jared & ivanka by MBS, and who knows how many billions more to kushner and mnuchin. the saudis aren't running a charity for elite spoilt white brats, which raises the question: why? were these nuclear documents meant to be transferred to the saudis? the early evidence certainly points in that direction ( https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/Trump%20Saudi%20Nuclear%20Report%20July%202019.pdf ) especially knowing that DJT tried to sell nuclear secrets to the Saudis once already.
i cannot fathom the intense hatred that the wealthy elites have for anything and everything that they cannot break down into small pieces and sell to the highest bidder, whether it is companies or entire nations. there is just no other way to think about this: the rich are the enemy of the people and the GQP are their closest and most devoted acolytes, their jostling mob of joseph goebbels.
The one notorious name conspicuously absent from your partial listing of dark money big donors is the "grandfather" of extreme economic libertarian special interest giving, Charles Koch, who's been organizing oligarchic cabals to funnel hundreds of millions into politics at all levels for far-right objectives, literally ever since the distribution of that infamous Powell Memo you wrote about just yesterday. As the brilliant investigative journalist Jane Meyer exposes over and over, Koch-orchestrated money flows like tsunamis through 501(c)(4) entities like Americans for Prosperity Action, ALEX, the Federalist Society, and dozens of other byzantine shell corporation interrelationships constructed intentionally to launder massive campaign giving, primarily to advance GOP candidates. As far as I'm concerned, Charles Koch is America's Public Enemy #1, and has been for decades!
I think we needed to abolish Citizens United like yesterday! Nothing has caused more harm to Democracy & the USA than this SCOTUS law! It’s time to overturn it somehow.
Every time I read your words I feel dread for the future. I feel amazed at the gullibility of the American people. I feel astonished that every single woman in the USA doesn’t stand up , protest and vote Democrat, I feel that the gap between the very rich and everyone else is not shrinking as it should , as it must , but it is increasing , I feel that children will receive an increasingly narrow and whitewashed education. I feel despair.
Dr. Reich has laid out a pretty depressing set of info about political donations. No human being in a democracy should be able to donate more than a couple of thousand dollars to any candidate or political organization. The only hope I see is that if enough Democratic small donors are interested enough in putting their limited cash on the line, maybe they will be sufficiently invested in the Democratic candidate and message that they will go out and work to get their friends, relatives, co-workers, church members and other acquaintances to vote for the Democratic candidates who actually care about this nation and its people and our rights while the Republicans clearly care about only money and power to control others. If Dems can get that message out to their donors instead of just constantly begging for more money from them, it could be inspiring and earthshaking in November.
The egoic "god" of the Republicans is G for GREED, O for OPPORTUNISM, and D for DESTRUCTIVENESS. Spiritual illiteracy and ethical poverty are the hallmarks of the republican extreme right wing under Trump and DeSantis. Haven't these extremists ever been exposed to "wholeness" and interconnectedness? Are they "victims" of Amerikkkan education system which is top down and authoritarian and supposedly liberal but is anything but? We need a spiritual revolution which enriches the population's level of ConscioUSness so they can rise above fragmented thought process. Left wing intellectual posturing will never solve the collective mess we are now in. Meanwhile, the ultimate showdown between "democracy" & authoritarianism is at hand. Time for meaningful change is running out. Climate crisis, nuclear war, and serial pandemics are real possibilities. If it's always darkest before the dawn we must be near a new sunrise! It's time to wake up!
It’s really very simple, limit the amount any given corporation (or person within said corporation) can donate. Make donations have to be grassroots, small donors. Unlikely to happen, but I believe it’s necessary.
As always, l look to John Kenneth Galbraith who famously said: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness"
Well, Eirik, I guess we will just have to disagree on this one. There are a lot of poor folks who work at least as hard as the middle class and could be there if unions hadn't been undermined and states hadn't passed so many "right to work" laws (My union dad used to call them "right to wreck" laws. In any case, The rich are far too rich and rich corporations are far too rich too. A little leveling out would help a lot. Yes, the middle class health is suffering but it is because the upper class have decided they like it that way. A middle class that is absorbed with just surviving will not challenge the upper class folks, and the rich really like it that way.
Politicians=Oligarchs. If you want to stop the purchasing power of Oligarchs to Politicians, which in turn creates the next layer of Oligarchs... simply offer government supplied campaigns! Duh! Offer a certain amount of commercials, mailings, whatever... to the candidate of each party. All of which can point you to a government channel/streaming venue which can offer hours and hours of content.
Republicans are calling for civil war because of Trump's house being searched for missing TOP SECRET papers from the white house.
Apparently, Republicans don't care if they or their family and friends (parents, children) get killed in a civil war.
SAD.
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion ... People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love ... For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
And when one brings this subject up you tend to feel as though screaming it out to the ocean on an empty beach . The most common response is a hapless," It'll never change. You'll never get money out of politics." I'm with Barb Krieger . Things are impossible til there done ! ANY politician touting a cleaning up of the filthy lucre dragging any meaningful governance away from the work of WE THE PEOPLE has my support ! Fat chance with lil donnie and co. and the CRIMINAL ELEMENT they bring to the nation's capital ! And the list of carreer politicians, their donors and amounts of money given really should be more regularly posted in BIG BRIGHT LETTERS ACROSS THE SKY ! ! "Money and power corrupt absolutely."What don't we as a nation and people get about this age old fact ! ?
Apparently, there is no answer to that question for the “have’s”, as we, the “have not’s” further struggle to simply survive.
It occurred to me some time ago that we could simply solve all of the worlds problems if not for one single obstacle…MONEY.
I am not suggesting that the world should embrace a fully socialistic society. But the world’s current financial system is out of control.
Yesterday’s piece, “The Worst Memo In American History”, highlights how, when and where the war against humanity began, which, of course, was all about MONEY.
In light of A.G. Garland’s exemplary appearance Thursday afternoon, I am starting to believe that Republicans who have latched themselves to Trump will have so much to answer for in the coming weeks that no amount of money, likely, will save them. If I’m right, we’ll have a real shot, in 23, of resurrecting H.R.1 For the People, that aggressively tackles getting money out of politics. I should note this legislation passed in the House back in 2021. We just need to hold the House and pick up, I imagine, at least 4 seats in the Senate.
Before you vote me off the island for being a cockeyed optimist, please, again, heed the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who once wrote, “Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.” As I posted recently, I simply would add that only in retrospect is the true value of persistence in the face of difficulty revealed.
the past 24 hours have been, literally, the stuff of nightmares for me. i am beyond words when i think about DJT and his theft of nuclear secrets when he vacated the white house. i am beyond words when i think about what he planned to do with these nuclear secrets. but in the light of these revelations, so much makes sense now, including that mysterious payment of $2billion to jared & ivanka by MBS, and who knows how many billions more to kushner and mnuchin. the saudis aren't running a charity for elite spoilt white brats, which raises the question: why? were these nuclear documents meant to be transferred to the saudis? the early evidence certainly points in that direction ( https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/Trump%20Saudi%20Nuclear%20Report%20July%202019.pdf ) especially knowing that DJT tried to sell nuclear secrets to the Saudis once already.
i cannot fathom the intense hatred that the wealthy elites have for anything and everything that they cannot break down into small pieces and sell to the highest bidder, whether it is companies or entire nations. there is just no other way to think about this: the rich are the enemy of the people and the GQP are their closest and most devoted acolytes, their jostling mob of joseph goebbels.
The one notorious name conspicuously absent from your partial listing of dark money big donors is the "grandfather" of extreme economic libertarian special interest giving, Charles Koch, who's been organizing oligarchic cabals to funnel hundreds of millions into politics at all levels for far-right objectives, literally ever since the distribution of that infamous Powell Memo you wrote about just yesterday. As the brilliant investigative journalist Jane Meyer exposes over and over, Koch-orchestrated money flows like tsunamis through 501(c)(4) entities like Americans for Prosperity Action, ALEX, the Federalist Society, and dozens of other byzantine shell corporation interrelationships constructed intentionally to launder massive campaign giving, primarily to advance GOP candidates. As far as I'm concerned, Charles Koch is America's Public Enemy #1, and has been for decades!
I think we needed to abolish Citizens United like yesterday! Nothing has caused more harm to Democracy & the USA than this SCOTUS law! It’s time to overturn it somehow.
Every time I read your words I feel dread for the future. I feel amazed at the gullibility of the American people. I feel astonished that every single woman in the USA doesn’t stand up , protest and vote Democrat, I feel that the gap between the very rich and everyone else is not shrinking as it should , as it must , but it is increasing , I feel that children will receive an increasingly narrow and whitewashed education. I feel despair.
Dr. Reich has laid out a pretty depressing set of info about political donations. No human being in a democracy should be able to donate more than a couple of thousand dollars to any candidate or political organization. The only hope I see is that if enough Democratic small donors are interested enough in putting their limited cash on the line, maybe they will be sufficiently invested in the Democratic candidate and message that they will go out and work to get their friends, relatives, co-workers, church members and other acquaintances to vote for the Democratic candidates who actually care about this nation and its people and our rights while the Republicans clearly care about only money and power to control others. If Dems can get that message out to their donors instead of just constantly begging for more money from them, it could be inspiring and earthshaking in November.
The egoic "god" of the Republicans is G for GREED, O for OPPORTUNISM, and D for DESTRUCTIVENESS. Spiritual illiteracy and ethical poverty are the hallmarks of the republican extreme right wing under Trump and DeSantis. Haven't these extremists ever been exposed to "wholeness" and interconnectedness? Are they "victims" of Amerikkkan education system which is top down and authoritarian and supposedly liberal but is anything but? We need a spiritual revolution which enriches the population's level of ConscioUSness so they can rise above fragmented thought process. Left wing intellectual posturing will never solve the collective mess we are now in. Meanwhile, the ultimate showdown between "democracy" & authoritarianism is at hand. Time for meaningful change is running out. Climate crisis, nuclear war, and serial pandemics are real possibilities. If it's always darkest before the dawn we must be near a new sunrise! It's time to wake up!
It’s really very simple, limit the amount any given corporation (or person within said corporation) can donate. Make donations have to be grassroots, small donors. Unlikely to happen, but I believe it’s necessary.
As always, l look to John Kenneth Galbraith who famously said: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness"
Well, Eirik, I guess we will just have to disagree on this one. There are a lot of poor folks who work at least as hard as the middle class and could be there if unions hadn't been undermined and states hadn't passed so many "right to work" laws (My union dad used to call them "right to wreck" laws. In any case, The rich are far too rich and rich corporations are far too rich too. A little leveling out would help a lot. Yes, the middle class health is suffering but it is because the upper class have decided they like it that way. A middle class that is absorbed with just surviving will not challenge the upper class folks, and the rich really like it that way.
Politicians=Oligarchs. If you want to stop the purchasing power of Oligarchs to Politicians, which in turn creates the next layer of Oligarchs... simply offer government supplied campaigns! Duh! Offer a certain amount of commercials, mailings, whatever... to the candidate of each party. All of which can point you to a government channel/streaming venue which can offer hours and hours of content.
These big dollar donors should all be publicly shamed.
Perhaps it's yet another reminder that public financing of campaigns would obviate some of the distortions identified...?
Republicans are calling for civil war because of Trump's house being searched for missing TOP SECRET papers from the white house.
Apparently, Republicans don't care if they or their family and friends (parents, children) get killed in a civil war.
SAD.
"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion ... People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love ... For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite."
And when one brings this subject up you tend to feel as though screaming it out to the ocean on an empty beach . The most common response is a hapless," It'll never change. You'll never get money out of politics." I'm with Barb Krieger . Things are impossible til there done ! ANY politician touting a cleaning up of the filthy lucre dragging any meaningful governance away from the work of WE THE PEOPLE has my support ! Fat chance with lil donnie and co. and the CRIMINAL ELEMENT they bring to the nation's capital ! And the list of carreer politicians, their donors and amounts of money given really should be more regularly posted in BIG BRIGHT LETTERS ACROSS THE SKY ! ! "Money and power corrupt absolutely."What don't we as a nation and people get about this age old fact ! ?
Follow the Money. EXACTLY!
How much money is too much money?
Apparently, there is no answer to that question for the “have’s”, as we, the “have not’s” further struggle to simply survive.
It occurred to me some time ago that we could simply solve all of the worlds problems if not for one single obstacle…MONEY.
I am not suggesting that the world should embrace a fully socialistic society. But the world’s current financial system is out of control.
Yesterday’s piece, “The Worst Memo In American History”, highlights how, when and where the war against humanity began, which, of course, was all about MONEY.
We know the problem. How do we solve it?