Trump views money in the same way the rest of us value the blood that flows through our veins. The moral standard by which the Trump mind's function would leave most clergy members blushing on the steps of their respective churches as they greet their parishioners arriving for Sunday morning mass. Robert has been kind enough to point out specific members of a certain wealthy family who elevate the dollar sign above the level reserved for our constitution. Like Richie Rich who loves the color of money, "No not that Greene," I'm referring to the one that has value. It appears the Mellon family has been dabbling in the political arena and sadly their social vision of how they see our future leaves most of us with a bad case of skin-cancer, a festering "Mellon-oma." These rich benefactors are supplying the Republican's movement with the money needed to feed and continue Trump's big lie. Donnie Boy has designs on being labeled the richest man in the world, a position most likely held currently by none other than Mr. Putin himself. As long as we allow money to speak for our people, the needs of the many will give way to the lifestyles of the few. Trump will smile as he reenters the Lincoln bedroom muttering, "It took the efforts of so many to build it, let's see how fast one man can tear it down." With a hideous sickening grin, he closes the door behind him.
That’s why we all need to take our country back from the rich while we still can. If Trump can find a way to rig the election in his favor he damn sure will
Donald, what you said, SO REMINDS me of, along with the pictures of the 4 generations of the Mellon inheritors Professor Reich has provided = Mr. Potter, the banker in
"It's A Wonderful Life' ,George Bailey's arch nemisis to the Bailey Savings and Loan, who at one point in the film also sported a 'hideous sickening grin' ~ ~ ~
I've also come up with partial lyrics to the old Irish ballad 'Danny Boy' =
" " " Oh Donnie Boy,
The greens, the greens,
are calling YOU,
from trap to trap
and by the water s(l)ide ~ ~ ~ * * *
{{{ just remembering that - the greens - is where 'Donnie Boy' buried his 1st wifey Ivana }}}
Anyone feel like coming up with additional lyrics ? ? ?
He and his partners in crime were grifting the American people from day one Remember that picture of Steve Mnuchin and his new bride checking out all the newly printed money?
He's already got a very large start, on many, many fronts. (And let's not forget the $2 BILLION given to the orange sadist's SIL, before O.S. was even out of office.)
Putin gets away with it, because he uses the police power of the state, and the police get testosterone orgasms, beating, arresting and repressing people.. Ready made fascists are cops.
Trump will do the same, and he has his own cadre of ready made fascists, at all levels from Federal to municipal. From the Secret Service and FBI to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
Has anyone heard any of news of the FBI investigating this subversive (CSPOA)?
Bipartisan, compromising Biden is paying for his weakness. (Appointing Garland) Once again I find myself voting against, not for. I shudder to think of what Trump will do to to the country.
WHY President Biden didn't dump Garland after two years, when Garland had yet to take action regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection, is WAY beyond me. I wish Biden had (gently, of course, knowing Biden) shown him the door in early 2022.
"The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is a political organization of local police officials in the United States who contend that federal and state government authorities are subordinate to the local authority of county sheriffs and police. Self-described constitutional sheriffs assert that they are the supreme legal authority with the power and duty to defy or disregard laws they regard as unconstitutional.[2][3] As a result, they may sometimes be referred to as sovereign sheriffs.[4] The movement is related to previous nullification and interposition notions,[1] and promotes such efforts.[5] It has been described as far-right by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[6] The CSPOA has claimed a membership of 400.[3]
According to the Associated Press, "details of its operations are closely held", and information on its finances, "where and how" it conducts its training, who its dues paying members are, have not been released to the public.[7] The group is now a private company according to indications of "internal records".[7]" (from Wiki)
I'd never even heard of this treasonous organization till now. I really appreciate your information. (Front page headlines, anyone? MSM, are you listening?)
Iknow it is easier to type MSM, and it is much used catch phrase but more accurate is Corporate media, save for a handful of Independent Media, all media in America is corporate owned and controlled.
That means that there is a CEO, COO, CFO, all hired by the board of directors for ideoloical and financial reasons.
There primary job is to produce the highest possible return on investment, and that includes forming public opinion.
The executives are hired by a board of directors, who themselves are sitting on other corporate boards and/or are CEO's of other corporate boards.
NBCUniversal, owns MSNBC, NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast. Comcast owns Xfinity and Frontier Communications
Comcast is notoriously right wing (pro business which is the chief financiers of the right wing)
Helene-My father would classify Trump as a "super thief." That's a man who steals another man's wife a little piece at a time. Seriously, Trump will copy Putin's world here in this country, right down to his liking for the Russian Golden Shower.
David--Whose idea was it to think the people wanted trickle down anything, look where it got MTG. The best part of her trickled down her mother's leg. The people want a "flow" down mentality to what they are missing in life. It isn't happening fast enough.
The pissed off Muslims, especially in Wayne Co, Michigan are going to have a rude awakening. If Trump wins he will start deporting them or rounding them up.
Watching Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC last night, he interviewed a prominet Muslim spokesperson,. Apparently the Muslms of Wayne county, are either going to sit out the election or vote against Biden for supporting Israel. (This is in itself proof that that conflict is a religious war, as the entire Muslim community has lined up on the side of HAMAS, using Gaza as an excuse)
This very easily could result in the election of Trump, and if so then the Muslims are too blame, but Ayman doesn't like that idea,he is trying to blame Biden.
Here is how the Muslims are to blame if Trump wins.
There are only five real swing states, AZ, NV, MI, PA, WI, Electoral votes for each are
AZ-11, NV-6, MI-15-PA-19, WI -10 a Total of 61 electoral votes will determine the presidency.
Republicans and Red leaning states control 235 electoral votes, Democrats - 226.
States that were swing states in 2020, like GA, Fl, NC are no longer swing states thanks to voter suppression and negation legislation .
The fate of the nation in Michigan depends on the Muslim and Black community, if they sit on their ass or vote third party, that means that Trump will have 250 electoral votes and only 20 more to go.
Remember the Democrats have 226 electoral votes in blue and blue leaning states. And need 44 more electoral votes to reach 270. With Michigan out of the equation, because of the Muslims and/or blacks. That leaves 51 votes, of which the Democrats need to get 44 and the Republicans
They are just as DELUSIONAL as SCUMp's MAGAt NAZIS if they fathom that they, being of the religion which they are, will have it any better here than those they are protesting against Biden and the Dems for in Gaza, once the SHITler is fully in power for LIFE! ;) :( :(
Helene, he will pick our pockets and if he can get banks to go along, he'll pick our bank accounts too. I don't think there is anything Trump won't do to get more money and power even though he is truly becoming seriously mentally inadequate. That jerk who can only spew ancient diatribes about his opponents, threaten hitlerism on us, and whine about how bad he is being treated is incapable of leading anything. Even his cult no longer listens to him beyond tuning in on specific words like Hillary, wall, immigrants, vermin, and a few others. They hear those words and cheer, knowing those words signal Trump's particular focus. Their brains don't have to notice anything else because there is almost nothing else.
Ruth, I think there is a very thin bulwark saving us from total computerized, AI theft from our banks and retirement accounts. The Dems are barely holding back the barbarians. if drumpf wins, all the safeguards will be abolished, and the oligarchs will take it all. we will have no recourse. the technology and ability, as well as the evil will, is there. if it can be done (evil actions) it will be done. that is human nature, apparently.
Just to note, America is not the greatest country on earth. EDIT: (to all the morons who can't follow a thread and seem to think I just decided to make a grand proclamation about the state of the USA, this is a direct response to the original comment in this thread. I dont know what half of you are getting your knickers in a twist over - end edit) Even before Citizens United, you treated your own citizens terribly. Get off the propaganda and all the chest thumping. That's part of the problem. Why do you think all the MAGA heads are so easily fooled, because of the same type of rhetoric that you are spouting
Ray, Decades, centuries ago, the influx of European people escaping their own religious rule and fascist, authoritarian countries, brought their brightest to us. The American ideal was admiral in many aspects. But today and for years we’ve not even been on the charts! That mantra is propaganda and many of us know it. Post WWI, and especially post WWII, we enjoyed a massive middle class, more comfort for more people. During that time we still had horrible mistreatment and exclusion of our black population. We had the Dulles Brothers and many other corporatists taking land in South & Central America and oil from Iran etc. Our CIA murdered to obtain THEIR resources. Any country that has been a major power, commits more atrocities than we’ll ever know. The British are another example of atrocious rule world-wide. Japan-ruthless!
These are the things education and media should teach us along with our good contributions. We can only change if we know the truth. Right now, the right wingers own our media and spew lies. That’s an incredible danger!
I agree 100%. 5th grade US History textbook (that I supplemened heavily with many and varied other sources when I taught in Ca public schools) was titled "America Will Be." It will be what every generation constructs and/or tolerates. Nothing real. Nothing tangible without the knowledge of from whence we came.
Another incredible danger is an improperly educated electorate who can’t tell the difference between the truth and lies. We can’t let the right wing control education or democracy will never work.
Life of the party Sol would be a thorn in the side of any government. But we need people like him to tell us the truth about ourselves, like Joseph Conrad.
Among some leaders it's not only fear but the desire for power. For wealth. For status among like fools that causes them to support evil.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Seeking reason - actually, the original influx of europeans were people of drumpf's ilk - grifters, get rich schemers' looking for gold or someone to steal it from. they "escaped" religious intolerance so they could practice their own brand of intolerance with amazing zeal. additionally, a significant number of criminals migrated here, escaping prison or the noose in their home countries. not that there hasn't been since then an amazing influx of talent, especially escaping the wars in europe 19th and 20th centuries.
I recommend Howard Zinn, A people's history of america
I'm sorry what point are you trying to respond to? It seems like I encapsulated 90%;of what you said in my own comment, so I'm not sure what it is you think I said, or what point you are trying to make.
Ray I point out that most of us are aware of this, and more. It’s an elaboration on what you said. If your name is printed on the front you should be able to figure out who it’s referencing. It got seems to have your panties in a knot! Jesus, calm down.
Did I say most people were ignorant of this? I was responding to a person who said that at some point America was the greatest country on earth. Now I understand, you wanted to belittle my point by 'expounding' and showing me the depth of your knowledge - as I read from your reply to Dawna (who also thought you were making some sort of argument, so I guess I wasn't the only one to query you there) your whole point was to say, "hey this isn't breaking news". Well it appears to be breaking news to the guy I was replying to and to a whole host of people in the USA who go round shouting We're number 1. So get your own panties out of a twist sister. If you were agreeing with me there was a simpler way to do it. If you wanted to say 'hey Ray, we all know that" " there was a more straightforward way to say it.
Are you a republican? Sounds like the only way to get your panties untwisted is to write as you dictate. Not going to happen. Your last name suits you well. Get over yourself.
I just finished reading Nina Burleigh’s book, “A Very Private Woman . . . “ and, yes, the Cold War rhetoric about the USA being the greatest in the world was hammered into propaganda by the recently formed CIA—and who were they? Entitled—wealthy—frat boys from Yale who became nosy, misogynistic, lawless, alcoholic Spooks spreading secrets, mostly amongst themselves and the press. They ruthlessly went after anyone they conjured up as “questionable,” including JFK, with the help of that OTHER right-wing, paranoid spy, J. Edgar Hoover. People and institutions like that guarantee that the US is NOT the greatest country on earth, and the proof is: from Bay of Pigs all the way up through validating tRump and his continuing position as the face of a right-wing conspiracy dedicated to overthrowing this democracy.
Remember Bush One proudly stating he was the "top SPOOK" when he was CIA head? Yep. Those "secret decoder ring, rich boys" basically were lawless rulers behind the scenes. One could successfully argue, they STILL are!
I brought one home once for dinner as a new LT; my father, a WWII vet, muttered something about not trusting him to sit in the livingroom🤣 I was once young and naive, too…
I think it's plain enough. I was replying to the person who said America was the greatest country in the world. That's the rhetoric and propaganda. Can you tell me how you misunderstood that?
“Communities working together made America the greatest country on earth.”
The sentence uses past tense and then blames “conservative “ policies for what we have become, Citizens United being the most egregious in the writer’s opinion. No need to rip this audience about your point.
Here! Let me arbitrate! Both sides are splitting hairs. I just finished reading Nina Burleigh’s book, “A Very Private Woman . . . “ and, yes, the Cold War rhetoric about the USA being the greatest in the world was hammered into propaganda by the recently formed CIA—and who were they? Entitled, frat boys from Yale who became nosy, misogynistic, lawless, alcoholic Spooks spreading secrets, mostly amongst themselves and the press. They ruthlessly went after anyone they conjured up as “questionable,” including JFK, with the help of that OTHER right-wing, paranoid spy, J. Edgar Hoover. People and institutions like that guarantee that the US is NOT the greatest country on earth, and the proof is: from Bay of Pigs all the way up through validating tRump and his continuing position as the face of a right-wing conspiracy dedicated to overthrowing this democracy.
Is trolling adding references and context to comments, now? Anyone choosing to turn a blind eye on wrongs of this nation is not doing due diligence in the cause of democracy. Do you think the CIA and FBI have perfectly served this nation and that this country is “the greatest” as a result of their involvement, foreign and domestic? No need to answer that if you can’t provide serious reference/context.
Laurie Blair seems to have a bee in her bonnet about people making honest criticisms. But doesn't seem to be able to establish any substantive point of her own. Yet she's calling other people 'trolls'..
💯 Ray. Among 1 million examples, life expectancy in the usa is shorter than in Cuba, in spite of Cuba’s 40% smoking rate. Cuba provides decent healthcare to all Cubans… and to all visitors.
Yes. Good example. The US is the largest economy but relative to its economic power and wealth, its health, education systems, support structures and even infrastructure is comparatively abysmal
Yup, it is WHY we hear that loud USA! USA! USA! chant at all of their SHITler's NAZI BUND MEETINGS!
The brown shirts would rather be screaming "Heil Trump", which I suspect will be coming along soon, given their putrid orange fuehrer's total embracing, voicing/admitting to, and 'owning of' his abject fascism.
Sadly, it's often supporters on both sides that chant the 'We're number one' BS. And politicians on both sides love it because they're halfway there in terms of stoking public opinion to go to war a steal some other countries resources..
The real problem is that the old money rich cannot admit that this country was built on entitlement and the redistribution of wealth. When a man came to this country 200 years ago saying, 'give me all the land I can farm, and kill whoever has it now so that you can give it to me; the first part is entitlement, 'give me all the land I can farm'; the second part is a redistribution of wealth, 'kill whoever now has it so that you can give it to me'. Without that entitlement and redistribution of wealth the Mellons would have never become the wealthy bankers they are today. Problems with the economy began when we ran out of land to steal. Franklin Roosevelt found a better way to redistribute wealth than rounding up the 1% and marching them 500 miles in the middle of winter to a reservation. Had he done that it would have been in the finest traditions of this county. Instead he just taxed them. Strange isn't it than the rich would complain so much? Would they rather be rounded up and put on a reservation, and all their possessions distributed among the rest of us? It seems to me that they are dealt with much more kindly that the original people who owned everything.
Actually, people can't begin to imagine such wealth. It is beyond what most would conceive. It is time tax rates reflect what people can pay. That hasn't been the case for MORE than 50 years. Middle class voters think they want their measly tax cut and it amounts to something. IT DOES NOT! If they understood taxation, they would DEMAND rich people pay what they should.
C.U. is an arrow in their quill . To divide and conquer . Now four VRBO's on my street. Where there used to be families and friends. Kids who went to school with mine. Now, strangers come and go. It dillutes a neighborhood, a community. All owned by faceless, nameless corps.
apparently Mellon was a Calvinist, along with Rockefeller, Carnegie and who knows who else.
Calvinism , rather the ideology of predestination is to blame for the woes of our time.
The idea that wealth is a sign of merit and poverty the sign or failure of character is the essence of Calvinism and Orthodox Judaism.. It is the rule of the elect, predestination, that
god deems one worthy at birth and proof of that is one's accumulation of wealth.
It is also the foundation of that scam, the Prosperity Doctrine, in which morons impoverish themselves to buy their pastors Rolex Watches, Mercedes and Private Airplanes.
First of all I was saying that we were the greatest country when our communities came together as one. Which country was greater than the USA back then? My point was that the oligarchs, i.e. Citizens United, are tearing the country apart with their lobbyists who control a lot of the government! We no longer have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Absolutely! I pray for a giant blue tsunami in November that will begin to wash away the 'Con'servative filth that has poisoned our supreme court and seriously eroded the world's trust in us.
SirK, my sister and I wrote complaints to GoFundMe about trump using it to obtain legal fees. In their service agreement, #9 states You may not use the GoFundMe services to obtain money to use in the legal defense of alleged financial and violent crimes. Our complaint pointed out that trump was violating that and his GoFundMe should be revoked. If enough people complained to GoFundMe, they would have to follow their own terms of service.
Thank you. I thought I read in their terms of service before. It should only take one person to point that out. Actually, they know it and should have stopped already.
Gloria, even if they allow it, they should receive a huge amount of complaints pointing out their terms of service and that trump is misusing it. I know my complaint will go nowhere, but it was something I could do so I did it!
Midwest, apparently they received enough complaints they came out with something over the weekend stating that trump would not receive a dime. I read it somewhere on this substack.
"They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
GoFundMe issued a statement over the weekend stating this policy and that "President Trump" won't get a penny. I just wished they had said "former president..."
Is there anything that he does that isn't in violation of something? Not that I'm defending the biggest traitor, shyster and fraud to ever sit in the Oval Office but since this case is over, the latest grift is supposedly for after the fact penalties and not for his defense? Just wondering and in the meantime, we get to see how many of his misled sheep will fork out $399.00 for a pair of his hideous sneakers.
More of the same hypocritical crap. I was thinking China as well especially with all of Ivanka's questionable trademarks but someone said yesterday that they're being made in Mexico. Go figure.
His 'sneaker attack' reminds me of my state Senator's (WA state's Patty Murray) yearly awards to do = "Golden Sneaker Awards", for public service to the state.
Wondering where tfg (the fat guy) got the idea to - market these ludicrous
excuses for athletic apparel and right at the time when he has been assessed
such justifiably humongous financial judgements against him (? ? ?)
Joe, the problem is that the RNC doesn't have to worry too much. Our many media platforms will make sure their candidates are covered far more than any Democratic ones.
Perhaps we should look at it as follows; tFfg's supporters give through GoFundMe and he spends the money on legal assistance. Since no self-respecting law firm will work for him, the money goes to the ragged edge of the legal profession. He gets the kind of counsel he deserves. The Public (capital P) doesn't have to support him with public defenders, who are most likely better lawyers and more civil minded than his team anyway. If he weren't collecting money from his acolytes, he'd be declaring bankruptcy and begging for public representation.
Good for you, Peggy! These giant funding collectives must be made to perform due diligence on their applicants. Otherwise they are no better than casinos who don't care about customers with gambling addictions as long as their bottom line remains thick and black.
They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
It’s funny that Trump needs a “go fund me” to pay his legal bills. He has been spouting out how rich he is forever! A multibillionaire and the greatest businessman in history!
Whether he is or ever has been rich is a question that those who have reported on his activities for years, e.g. David Cay Johnson and Tim O'Brien can answer, but he has always used other people and used other people's money. Whether it's the fraud called "Trump University" (successfully prosecuted and written about by lead attorney Tristan Snell) or "Trump Foundation" another phony money-grab, it's all a con-game to Trump. He notoriously has "stiffed" those who have worked for him and uses courts and lawyers like his personal circus acts. Being President and running to be President have been the most lucrative, beneficial con-game Trump has ever run. Even he seems astounded by the success of this con-game in which suckers and chumps will apparently give him all their money and worship him as a kind of god as well. "Go-fund-me" seems like a con that was designed specifically for Trump.
Annie Cross: I have noticed that the rich as much as possible use other people's money to get what they want. Like Nancy Reagan who "borrow" designer clothes and often refused to return them.
My guess? Bunkerboy has less in his wallet than ME, a disabled 36 year old who is unable to work! His morbidly obese ass is OWNED by his creditors. And his masters, vlad, kimmy, and netanyahoo of course. [sic]
MAGAts resent being called morons, idiots, dregs, deplorables but there are no other words to describe them, and no reason to stop labeling them as such, there is nothing that can be done to convert, deconvert, change the mind or the vote of these "people".
The Mellon family hasn't been on my mind for many years. Clearly, it should have been. As Bernie Sanders has said many times, the United States is as oligarchic as Russia. Huge fortunes, huge mega-corporations, massive campaign donations, all are out-of-control, and these American oligarchs are determined and convinced that they can buy the 2024 elections. Follow the money, always follow the money.
They have been buying elections for years. Since they own most politicians they can order any laws passed that they want. That is how they have become so powerful. This is true of both parties. It costs too much to run for office.
Their movement has been well funded, well organized, and willing to play the long game. They have the Supreme Court, a political party, the media, many laws, etc. Neoliberalism, Reaganomics, Trickle Down Theory or whatever you want to call it has funneled more money to them and people don't know that this is the cause of so many ills and so much anger.
YES! And today’s RNC has been co-opted by those “oligarchs” (fascist Billionaires) who use Citizen’s United to augment their influence and install puppets into office. The RNC operates as an organized crime syndicate. Read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein and “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer.
Over two thousand years ago both Plato and Aristotle noted that oligarchies don't last because a) they go to extremes (like Thomas Mellon), and b) because they quarrel among themselves. In Russia the oligarchs quarreled among themselves, as predicted, and Putin, together with his KGB thugs, was able to establish his tyranny. Should Trump get a second term, he will strive to repeat Putin's feat, and Mr Mellon may come to regret his foolishness.
One could argue that the obscenely rich should '“manfully rid the world of their presence, and society of the expense and trouble of their trial and punishment" (for their greed and destruction of the common good and the environment).
This is exactly why teaching the true history of America is so critical to democracy. We have never been the “Greatest Country on Earth”. Sadly we have always had the potential to be the greatest, just haven’t made it happen for any but the wealthiest among us.
Thank you, Professor Reich, Great column. This adulation of wealth is destroying America. Trickle down is fiction, under our present tax system wealth gushes up like an oil well. We need the House of REPRESENTATIVES to represent us - the 99% of Americans who actually contribute to the betterment of society. Frankly I'm tired of supporting great wealth.
No—that kind of money exponentially augments their vote. They install puppets with that kind of money, and it comes with strings attached. Case in point: Take a look at the maneuver that gave Pete Ricketts a senate seat, got a pig farmer, Jim Pillen, elected as governor and put Ben Sasse in charge of Florida State (part of the Koch agenda includes subverting educational institutions and grooming youth). This all happened with one, fell swoop with Joe Ricketts and Charles Koch in the background.
he has many faults but without his focus on the problems created by an open border the country would still be believing the propaganda put out by the current administration concerning our security..
Mellon is just following a family tradition. Until he died in 2014, Richard Mellon Scaife was the most prominent Mellon trickster and puppet master, majoring in character assassination., if not murder.
Scaife owed several newspapers, was a major backer of conservative causes; his political donations fueled the rise of the New Right and its moral crusade against Bill Clinton, making Scaife the central figure in Hillary Clinton’s “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In the 1990s, his gift of $1.8 million to The American Spectator funded investigations into Whitewater and Bill Clinton’s personal life, including “Troopergate” which led to Paula Jones’s sexual-harassment suit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
Definitely! There are a few, but the networks and largest newspapers are corporations and we know how corporations feel about Trump. They love that he gives them what they want.
I watched an interview of Michael Hudson, an economist, who said we need a 99 percent inheritance tax on the wealthy. Each generation of inherited wealth is less intelligent than the one before.
Michael Hudson frequently delivers very insightful analysis.
In my experience with wealthy families it appears that the first generation makes the fortune, the second generation manages it, and the third generation squanders it.
None other than Benjamin Franklin argued that society has the right to tax as much as it deems necessary all income and property beyond what is needed for existence. Alas, We the People seem to have become idolaters of wealth, the greater, the more to be admired.
Thank you! Real knowledge empowers all of us. Reminding us we the people if United are.not helpless. At a time when the world has lost a international courageous hero- Alexie Navalny- it is each one of us that carries the power united to defeat the injustices inflicted upon this world with the use of money, power & greed.
Thank you Gloria for, “…each one of us that carries the power united to defeat the injustices inflicted upon this world…”. A true message of hope and solidarity. We can do this because no one else will.
It appears that racism still applies even after Obama's eight years as President. We've so far witnessed Trump's first four years of spiteful Republican back-lash to the humane benefits delivered by the Democrats to the less fortunate. Republican intolerance, encouraged by the Mellon dynasty and of all people the Christian right, is spreading to the point where kindness and compassion are thoroughly demeaned, disparaged and daily overwhelmed by Trump's insatiable and visibly insane greed for wealth, power, and influence.
President Obama said himself that the media actually spread around the blurb that "racism was over" when he was elected. It infuriated him because it revealed how ignorant the media really was about the extent and insidiousness of racism.
I think Obama's election was the reason we got drumpf. An acquaintance, whom I knew from the horse world, said to me she was glad her dad hadn't lived to see a "nigger in the White House". We'd never had a political moment, so it was shocking. Of course that she could say such a thing was.
But I'm sure that's the core of the MAGgot phenomenon.
among many blacks I think there is the belief that a white backlash is the main reason Trump won. This is a different line of thinking than Reich's view which is centered on economic disparity as the prime cause. No doubt both were important causes along with the religious vector. But many many causes. CU too.
Nuance is always important! I think economic disparity is always and forever a main driver in human affairs ( follow the money always true) the Mellon story was perfect to this; add in Koch and Coors and Anschutz(all here in Colorado) and now Musk. The Guardsin reported this morning Yulia Navalnaya's X-Twitter account had been suspended.
It's the same old war, and inequality is at its root.
And racism is another side of its ugly face, think of the tea baggers, backed by these same evil wealthy, as the forerunners of MAGA And before them the Bircher, Klan and forever.
Think of drumpfs full page racist ad in the NYT re the black kids. And how he must boil to this day, thinking of the casual roast he got from Obama when he showed up at the correspondents dinner.
My own father, born very much poor white trash in Florida, uses the n word.
It's deep with some.
And who doesn't notice a persons last name and wonder "where they're from"? For me it's a lot of ancestry and honestly habit, but what is it for everyone?
Meanwhile, back in Missouri the debate going on in the house right now, it’s about a bill Republicans want to use to gut our initiative petition process, which is in our constitution. They want to raise the threshold so high the petitions will rarely ever get passed by the people.
Oligarchy and democracy cannot coexist. Thank you, Professor Reich, for your assiduous efforts to make this crucial point, of which this column is such a great example. Inequality has soared since Reagan’s election in 1980, and fitful efforts to narrow it have effectively failed. Inherited dynastic wealth will always support right-wing politicians and tax reduction, if not elimination. Biden has tried very hard to help stop the upward accumulation of wealth, and debt penury for those lower down on the economic ladder, but without a Congress and judiciary to help him he has had limited success. Plus *Rump will wipe what little has been accomplished away in a heartbeat if he gets back in. All those dumb racist MAGAS who send him their nickels and dimes so he can pay his legal bills are the manifestation of what propaganda and the culture wars can do to destroy a country. A wealth tax would help, but avoiding a French 1789 moment is becoming harder. In our case it would produce fascism not freedom or equality.
One hundred sixty odd years these uber rich fuckers and their ilk have been buying presidents and governors who think like them and who will do their bidding. Over 160 years and THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME TODAY, DOING EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS. IN THE CASE OF THE MELLONS, NOT EVEN THE NAME HAS CHANGED. 😡 #fucktherich
I too am becoming more and more aware of how the “playbook” so to speak, like your observation, has never changed over all this time…isn’t that the definition of mental illness! LOL We must work to obliterate their playbook!
Margaret, they don’t even need to rewrite it. I am ≤quite≥ far from being a biblical scholar, but it seems to me that there are so many things in the Bible that people can pick and choose things, take them out of context and interpret them to fit their position. It’s probably more than confirmation bias, and can be used either naively or with intent to deceive.
Affluence on steroids!
Communities working together made America the greatest country on earth.
Citizens United is tearing us apart!
It has to be repealed or our country will collapse!
Trump views money in the same way the rest of us value the blood that flows through our veins. The moral standard by which the Trump mind's function would leave most clergy members blushing on the steps of their respective churches as they greet their parishioners arriving for Sunday morning mass. Robert has been kind enough to point out specific members of a certain wealthy family who elevate the dollar sign above the level reserved for our constitution. Like Richie Rich who loves the color of money, "No not that Greene," I'm referring to the one that has value. It appears the Mellon family has been dabbling in the political arena and sadly their social vision of how they see our future leaves most of us with a bad case of skin-cancer, a festering "Mellon-oma." These rich benefactors are supplying the Republican's movement with the money needed to feed and continue Trump's big lie. Donnie Boy has designs on being labeled the richest man in the world, a position most likely held currently by none other than Mr. Putin himself. As long as we allow money to speak for our people, the needs of the many will give way to the lifestyles of the few. Trump will smile as he reenters the Lincoln bedroom muttering, "It took the efforts of so many to build it, let's see how fast one man can tear it down." With a hideous sickening grin, he closes the door behind him.
That’s why we all need to take our country back from the rich while we still can. If Trump can find a way to rig the election in his favor he damn sure will
It’s too late…
As long as patriotic Americans are still breathing it’s never too late!
The only moron here is you
Keith--If he hasn't done it by now, he surely will. The man makes a pretty good thief. I guess we all have our strong points.
The generationally rich know
T is a megalomaniac, but he
is a sincere megalomaniac
they think they can control to
keep their status quo . That mistake will cost us all .
Paul--It reminds me of the guy who created a black-hole in his garage and can't figure out where his wife went.
Well said, Mr. Hodgins. You created good visuals.
Gloria--I may have succeeded in the visuals but as for them being good that is a different matter.
Right!
Donald, what you said, SO REMINDS me of, along with the pictures of the 4 generations of the Mellon inheritors Professor Reich has provided = Mr. Potter, the banker in
"It's A Wonderful Life' ,George Bailey's arch nemisis to the Bailey Savings and Loan, who at one point in the film also sported a 'hideous sickening grin' ~ ~ ~
I've also come up with partial lyrics to the old Irish ballad 'Danny Boy' =
" " " Oh Donnie Boy,
The greens, the greens,
are calling YOU,
from trap to trap
and by the water s(l)ide ~ ~ ~ * * *
{{{ just remembering that - the greens - is where 'Donnie Boy' buried his 1st wifey Ivana }}}
Anyone feel like coming up with additional lyrics ? ? ?
I really wanna know what's buried in that coffin? Cash, classifed documents? someone else?
Dale--I'm still waiting to hear the bells. Do you really think she fell down her own stairs.
Donald,,, more like a 'clank, clank, clank' (if you are referencing Ivana's burial ?)
as all the 'bling' went into the - green's with her (Donnie would have kept the 'real bling' for himself I'm sure ~~~
Dale--From green to Greene. Trump just can't keep his putter where it belongs.
LOVE your quick wit Donald!!
"Mellon-oma", that's a GOOD one!! :)
David--I'm sorry, the older I get the sicker my mind becomes.
Donald, that being the case, keep getting older!
Stephanie--That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.
Chilling
He already has stolen in so many ways. But yes, it will get worse if he becomes ---I don't even want to say it.
Has done so far
He and his partners in crime were grifting the American people from day one Remember that picture of Steve Mnuchin and his new bride checking out all the newly printed money?
Remember the picture of Mnuchin and McConnell at Fort Knox. The fox watching the hen house.
SO disgusting.
He's already got a very large start, on many, many fronts. (And let's not forget the $2 BILLION given to the orange sadist's SIL, before O.S. was even out of office.)
Putin gets away with it, because he uses the police power of the state, and the police get testosterone orgasms, beating, arresting and repressing people.. Ready made fascists are cops.
Trump will do the same, and he has his own cadre of ready made fascists, at all levels from Federal to municipal. From the Secret Service and FBI to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.
Has anyone heard any of news of the FBI investigating this subversive (CSPOA)?
naw, garland quashed it. plus, how would one "investigate" one's brethren?
Yep, figures.
Bipartisan, compromising Biden is paying for his weakness. (Appointing Garland) Once again I find myself voting against, not for. I shudder to think of what Trump will do to to the country.
WHY President Biden didn't dump Garland after two years, when Garland had yet to take action regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection, is WAY beyond me. I wish Biden had (gently, of course, knowing Biden) shown him the door in early 2022.
Garland has proven to be a complete disaster. In retrospect, the pugs would probably be satisfied with him if he'd made it to SCOTUS.
"The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is a political organization of local police officials in the United States who contend that federal and state government authorities are subordinate to the local authority of county sheriffs and police. Self-described constitutional sheriffs assert that they are the supreme legal authority with the power and duty to defy or disregard laws they regard as unconstitutional.[2][3] As a result, they may sometimes be referred to as sovereign sheriffs.[4] The movement is related to previous nullification and interposition notions,[1] and promotes such efforts.[5] It has been described as far-right by the Southern Poverty Law Center.[6] The CSPOA has claimed a membership of 400.[3]
According to the Associated Press, "details of its operations are closely held", and information on its finances, "where and how" it conducts its training, who its dues paying members are, have not been released to the public.[7] The group is now a private company according to indications of "internal records".[7]" (from Wiki)
I'd never even heard of this treasonous organization till now. I really appreciate your information. (Front page headlines, anyone? MSM, are you listening?)
Iknow it is easier to type MSM, and it is much used catch phrase but more accurate is Corporate media, save for a handful of Independent Media, all media in America is corporate owned and controlled.
That means that there is a CEO, COO, CFO, all hired by the board of directors for ideoloical and financial reasons.
There primary job is to produce the highest possible return on investment, and that includes forming public opinion.
The executives are hired by a board of directors, who themselves are sitting on other corporate boards and/or are CEO's of other corporate boards.
NBCUniversal, owns MSNBC, NBCUniversal is owned by Comcast. Comcast owns Xfinity and Frontier Communications
Comcast is notoriously right wing (pro business which is the chief financiers of the right wing)
CNN is owned by Warner Bros, Discovery. Discovery is owned by Advance Corporation which is a Newhouse family enterprise owned by Donald Newhouse. Institutions hold 61% of Warner Brothers main among them is Vanguard Group, which also has holdings in other Media companies.https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-inc-nasdaq-130011682.html#:~:text=wield%20significant%20power.-,Warner%20Bros.,respectively%2C%20Advance%20Publications%2C%20Inc.
Suggest you do a Who owns (type in name of your choice)
Check out the biographies of the BoD of Comcast https://www.cmcsa.com/corporate-governance/board-of-directors
Helene--If we give him the chance.
Helene-My father would classify Trump as a "super thief." That's a man who steals another man's wife a little piece at a time. Seriously, Trump will copy Putin's world here in this country, right down to his liking for the Russian Golden Shower.
The SCUMpian version of 'trickle down'.
David--Whose idea was it to think the people wanted trickle down anything, look where it got MTG. The best part of her trickled down her mother's leg. The people want a "flow" down mentality to what they are missing in life. It isn't happening fast enough.
Helene--"Scream" that to the people in Dearborn Michigan. These people are willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces.
The pissed off Muslims, especially in Wayne Co, Michigan are going to have a rude awakening. If Trump wins he will start deporting them or rounding them up.
Watching Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC last night, he interviewed a prominet Muslim spokesperson,. Apparently the Muslms of Wayne county, are either going to sit out the election or vote against Biden for supporting Israel. (This is in itself proof that that conflict is a religious war, as the entire Muslim community has lined up on the side of HAMAS, using Gaza as an excuse)
This very easily could result in the election of Trump, and if so then the Muslims are too blame, but Ayman doesn't like that idea,he is trying to blame Biden.
Here is how the Muslims are to blame if Trump wins.
There are only five real swing states, AZ, NV, MI, PA, WI, Electoral votes for each are
AZ-11, NV-6, MI-15-PA-19, WI -10 a Total of 61 electoral votes will determine the presidency.
Republicans and Red leaning states control 235 electoral votes, Democrats - 226.
States that were swing states in 2020, like GA, Fl, NC are no longer swing states thanks to voter suppression and negation legislation .
The fate of the nation in Michigan depends on the Muslim and Black community, if they sit on their ass or vote third party, that means that Trump will have 250 electoral votes and only 20 more to go.
Remember the Democrats have 226 electoral votes in blue and blue leaning states. And need 44 more electoral votes to reach 270. With Michigan out of the equation, because of the Muslims and/or blacks. That leaves 51 votes, of which the Democrats need to get 44 and the Republicans
They are just as DELUSIONAL as SCUMp's MAGAt NAZIS if they fathom that they, being of the religion which they are, will have it any better here than those they are protesting against Biden and the Dems for in Gaza, once the SHITler is fully in power for LIFE! ;) :( :(
Helene, he will pick our pockets and if he can get banks to go along, he'll pick our bank accounts too. I don't think there is anything Trump won't do to get more money and power even though he is truly becoming seriously mentally inadequate. That jerk who can only spew ancient diatribes about his opponents, threaten hitlerism on us, and whine about how bad he is being treated is incapable of leading anything. Even his cult no longer listens to him beyond tuning in on specific words like Hillary, wall, immigrants, vermin, and a few others. They hear those words and cheer, knowing those words signal Trump's particular focus. Their brains don't have to notice anything else because there is almost nothing else.
Ruth, I think there is a very thin bulwark saving us from total computerized, AI theft from our banks and retirement accounts. The Dems are barely holding back the barbarians. if drumpf wins, all the safeguards will be abolished, and the oligarchs will take it all. we will have no recourse. the technology and ability, as well as the evil will, is there. if it can be done (evil actions) it will be done. that is human nature, apparently.
Just to note, America is not the greatest country on earth. EDIT: (to all the morons who can't follow a thread and seem to think I just decided to make a grand proclamation about the state of the USA, this is a direct response to the original comment in this thread. I dont know what half of you are getting your knickers in a twist over - end edit) Even before Citizens United, you treated your own citizens terribly. Get off the propaganda and all the chest thumping. That's part of the problem. Why do you think all the MAGA heads are so easily fooled, because of the same type of rhetoric that you are spouting
Ray, Decades, centuries ago, the influx of European people escaping their own religious rule and fascist, authoritarian countries, brought their brightest to us. The American ideal was admiral in many aspects. But today and for years we’ve not even been on the charts! That mantra is propaganda and many of us know it. Post WWI, and especially post WWII, we enjoyed a massive middle class, more comfort for more people. During that time we still had horrible mistreatment and exclusion of our black population. We had the Dulles Brothers and many other corporatists taking land in South & Central America and oil from Iran etc. Our CIA murdered to obtain THEIR resources. Any country that has been a major power, commits more atrocities than we’ll ever know. The British are another example of atrocious rule world-wide. Japan-ruthless!
These are the things education and media should teach us along with our good contributions. We can only change if we know the truth. Right now, the right wingers own our media and spew lies. That’s an incredible danger!
I agree 100%. 5th grade US History textbook (that I supplemened heavily with many and varied other sources when I taught in Ca public schools) was titled "America Will Be." It will be what every generation constructs and/or tolerates. Nothing real. Nothing tangible without the knowledge of from whence we came.
Another incredible danger is an improperly educated electorate who can’t tell the difference between the truth and lies. We can’t let the right wing control education or democracy will never work.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
Life of the party Sol would be a thorn in the side of any government. But we need people like him to tell us the truth about ourselves, like Joseph Conrad.
Among some leaders it's not only fear but the desire for power. For wealth. For status among like fools that causes them to support evil.
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Seeking reason - actually, the original influx of europeans were people of drumpf's ilk - grifters, get rich schemers' looking for gold or someone to steal it from. they "escaped" religious intolerance so they could practice their own brand of intolerance with amazing zeal. additionally, a significant number of criminals migrated here, escaping prison or the noose in their home countries. not that there hasn't been since then an amazing influx of talent, especially escaping the wars in europe 19th and 20th centuries.
I recommend Howard Zinn, A people's history of america
All that is true! Where is the argument, here?
Why the hell does it need to be an argument? I’m agreeing but I point out that many know this. Ray’s statement isn’t the news he thinks it is.
I'm sorry what point are you trying to respond to? It seems like I encapsulated 90%;of what you said in my own comment, so I'm not sure what it is you think I said, or what point you are trying to make.
Ray I point out that most of us are aware of this, and more. It’s an elaboration on what you said. If your name is printed on the front you should be able to figure out who it’s referencing. It got seems to have your panties in a knot! Jesus, calm down.
Did I say most people were ignorant of this? I was responding to a person who said that at some point America was the greatest country on earth. Now I understand, you wanted to belittle my point by 'expounding' and showing me the depth of your knowledge - as I read from your reply to Dawna (who also thought you were making some sort of argument, so I guess I wasn't the only one to query you there) your whole point was to say, "hey this isn't breaking news". Well it appears to be breaking news to the guy I was replying to and to a whole host of people in the USA who go round shouting We're number 1. So get your own panties out of a twist sister. If you were agreeing with me there was a simpler way to do it. If you wanted to say 'hey Ray, we all know that" " there was a more straightforward way to say it.
Are you a republican? Sounds like the only way to get your panties untwisted is to write as you dictate. Not going to happen. Your last name suits you well. Get over yourself.
I just finished reading Nina Burleigh’s book, “A Very Private Woman . . . “ and, yes, the Cold War rhetoric about the USA being the greatest in the world was hammered into propaganda by the recently formed CIA—and who were they? Entitled—wealthy—frat boys from Yale who became nosy, misogynistic, lawless, alcoholic Spooks spreading secrets, mostly amongst themselves and the press. They ruthlessly went after anyone they conjured up as “questionable,” including JFK, with the help of that OTHER right-wing, paranoid spy, J. Edgar Hoover. People and institutions like that guarantee that the US is NOT the greatest country on earth, and the proof is: from Bay of Pigs all the way up through validating tRump and his continuing position as the face of a right-wing conspiracy dedicated to overthrowing this democracy.
Remember Bush One proudly stating he was the "top SPOOK" when he was CIA head? Yep. Those "secret decoder ring, rich boys" basically were lawless rulers behind the scenes. One could successfully argue, they STILL are!
Yyyyup!
I brought one home once for dinner as a new LT; my father, a WWII vet, muttered something about not trusting him to sit in the livingroom🤣 I was once young and naive, too…
Go bash people some other place, like Russia!
I have a DD214 . What have you done for your country?
Whose rhetoric are you referring to?
Did you read my comment?
Ray Payne: Then stay in your own country. And mind your own business.
Where I come from or where I live has nothing to do with facts or EVEN my opinion. Try educate yourself before you embarrass yourself.
Troll! You just want to insult! Take your BS elsewhere
Yes. Asking for clarity. Are you referring to American propaganda?
I think it's plain enough. I was replying to the person who said America was the greatest country in the world. That's the rhetoric and propaganda. Can you tell me how you misunderstood that?
I think you misread the comment that irked you:
“Communities working together made America the greatest country on earth.”
The sentence uses past tense and then blames “conservative “ policies for what we have become, Citizens United being the most egregious in the writer’s opinion. No need to rip this audience about your point.
I didn't see the original comment, for starters. 🤨
Meanwhile, Mr Levitan considers another possibility.
How about turning down the hostility a bit?
Here! Let me arbitrate! Both sides are splitting hairs. I just finished reading Nina Burleigh’s book, “A Very Private Woman . . . “ and, yes, the Cold War rhetoric about the USA being the greatest in the world was hammered into propaganda by the recently formed CIA—and who were they? Entitled, frat boys from Yale who became nosy, misogynistic, lawless, alcoholic Spooks spreading secrets, mostly amongst themselves and the press. They ruthlessly went after anyone they conjured up as “questionable,” including JFK, with the help of that OTHER right-wing, paranoid spy, J. Edgar Hoover. People and institutions like that guarantee that the US is NOT the greatest country on earth, and the proof is: from Bay of Pigs all the way up through validating tRump and his continuing position as the face of a right-wing conspiracy dedicated to overthrowing this democracy.
Yyyyup. Just wanted to add context.
?
Ok 👍
Trolling together
Is trolling adding references and context to comments, now? Anyone choosing to turn a blind eye on wrongs of this nation is not doing due diligence in the cause of democracy. Do you think the CIA and FBI have perfectly served this nation and that this country is “the greatest” as a result of their involvement, foreign and domestic? No need to answer that if you can’t provide serious reference/context.
Laurie Blair seems to have a bee in her bonnet about people making honest criticisms. But doesn't seem to be able to establish any substantive point of her own. Yet she's calling other people 'trolls'..
💯 Ray. Among 1 million examples, life expectancy in the usa is shorter than in Cuba, in spite of Cuba’s 40% smoking rate. Cuba provides decent healthcare to all Cubans… and to all visitors.
Yes. Good example. The US is the largest economy but relative to its economic power and wealth, its health, education systems, support structures and even infrastructure is comparatively abysmal
Yup, it is WHY we hear that loud USA! USA! USA! chant at all of their SHITler's NAZI BUND MEETINGS!
The brown shirts would rather be screaming "Heil Trump", which I suspect will be coming along soon, given their putrid orange fuehrer's total embracing, voicing/admitting to, and 'owning of' his abject fascism.
Sadly, it's often supporters on both sides that chant the 'We're number one' BS. And politicians on both sides love it because they're halfway there in terms of stoking public opinion to go to war a steal some other countries resources..
The real problem is that the old money rich cannot admit that this country was built on entitlement and the redistribution of wealth. When a man came to this country 200 years ago saying, 'give me all the land I can farm, and kill whoever has it now so that you can give it to me; the first part is entitlement, 'give me all the land I can farm'; the second part is a redistribution of wealth, 'kill whoever now has it so that you can give it to me'. Without that entitlement and redistribution of wealth the Mellons would have never become the wealthy bankers they are today. Problems with the economy began when we ran out of land to steal. Franklin Roosevelt found a better way to redistribute wealth than rounding up the 1% and marching them 500 miles in the middle of winter to a reservation. Had he done that it would have been in the finest traditions of this county. Instead he just taxed them. Strange isn't it than the rich would complain so much? Would they rather be rounded up and put on a reservation, and all their possessions distributed among the rest of us? It seems to me that they are dealt with much more kindly that the original people who owned everything.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
Actually, people can't begin to imagine such wealth. It is beyond what most would conceive. It is time tax rates reflect what people can pay. That hasn't been the case for MORE than 50 years. Middle class voters think they want their measly tax cut and it amounts to something. IT DOES NOT! If they understood taxation, they would DEMAND rich people pay what they should.
Our country would look a lot like a Utopian nation if the wealthy would just share some of their wealth!
C.U. is an arrow in their quill . To divide and conquer . Now four VRBO's on my street. Where there used to be families and friends. Kids who went to school with mine. Now, strangers come and go. It dillutes a neighborhood, a community. All owned by faceless, nameless corps.
The right wingers have been executing their takeover plan for a while. Many Americans have been sleeping through it!
Or working harder and harder to survive in the US.
It BAFFLES AND CONFOUNDS me why President Biden, with all his historic wins FOR AMERICANS, REFUSES to even THINK of righting this deadly wrong!
Until Citizens United is KILLED, Americans will NEVER rule America.
apparently Mellon was a Calvinist, along with Rockefeller, Carnegie and who knows who else.
Calvinism , rather the ideology of predestination is to blame for the woes of our time.
The idea that wealth is a sign of merit and poverty the sign or failure of character is the essence of Calvinism and Orthodox Judaism.. It is the rule of the elect, predestination, that
god deems one worthy at birth and proof of that is one's accumulation of wealth.
It is also the foundation of that scam, the Prosperity Doctrine, in which morons impoverish themselves to buy their pastors Rolex Watches, Mercedes and Private Airplanes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
"Communities working together made America the greatest country on earth"
perhaps you mean this: IF Communities HAD BEEN working together IT MIGHT HAVE made America the greatest country on earth.
First of all I was saying that we were the greatest country when our communities came together as one. Which country was greater than the USA back then? My point was that the oligarchs, i.e. Citizens United, are tearing the country apart with their lobbyists who control a lot of the government! We no longer have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Of course you mean the Citizens United Supreme court decision is tearing us apart, correct?
Yes
Absolutely! I pray for a giant blue tsunami in November that will begin to wash away the 'Con'servative filth that has poisoned our supreme court and seriously eroded the world's trust in us.
Excellent work, thank you Janet
I will give The Con a look when I get some free time
SirK, my sister and I wrote complaints to GoFundMe about trump using it to obtain legal fees. In their service agreement, #9 states You may not use the GoFundMe services to obtain money to use in the legal defense of alleged financial and violent crimes. Our complaint pointed out that trump was violating that and his GoFundMe should be revoked. If enough people complained to GoFundMe, they would have to follow their own terms of service.
Thank you. I thought I read in their terms of service before. It should only take one person to point that out. Actually, they know it and should have stopped already.
Gloria, even if they allow it, they should receive a huge amount of complaints pointing out their terms of service and that trump is misusing it. I know my complaint will go nowhere, but it was something I could do so I did it!
Good for you. Maybe an attorney can note what you found out.
You should write to a newspaper journalist about this. Maybe they will publicly shame GoFundMe.
Midwest, apparently they received enough complaints they came out with something over the weekend stating that trump would not receive a dime. I read it somewhere on this substack.
They sure as hell SHOULD!
"They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
https://cnn.com/2021/11/10/politics/list-january-6-subpoenas/index.html
They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
https://cnn.com/2021/11/10/politics/list-january-6-subpoenas/index.html
They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
https://cnn.com/2021/11/10/politics/list-january-6-subpoenas/index.html
GoFundMe issued a statement over the weekend stating this policy and that "President Trump" won't get a penny. I just wished they had said "former president..."
Criminal in chief: election thief
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
Citizen trump or exPresident trump would also do nicely! I'm glad to hear they will stick by their policy.
Their "promise" to - 'stick by their policy' - is easy to say.
They MUST be made to follow through on this !
Agreed, Dale, but how?
So what happens to the money? Do they refund it?
I think they should donate it to women’s rights groups. It’s been women so far that cost him millions, lol.
Give it to either Planned Parenthood or reproductive rights group.
He owes women that and much more for all his misogynistic behavior for a great while!
the media, if not the state AG, could report on this GoFundMe allegation.
I heard they are allowing it! I suppose that is because they receive a percentage of the funds collected!! ITS GREED!!
Is there anything that he does that isn't in violation of something? Not that I'm defending the biggest traitor, shyster and fraud to ever sit in the Oval Office but since this case is over, the latest grift is supposedly for after the fact penalties and not for his defense? Just wondering and in the meantime, we get to see how many of his misled sheep will fork out $399.00 for a pair of his hideous sneakers.
I heard they are made in China. Ironic since his cult makes such a big deal about China taking jobs, etc
Let's not forget goldshoesgoldtoilet calling COVID ""China flu."
More of the same hypocritical crap. I was thinking China as well especially with all of Ivanka's questionable trademarks but someone said yesterday that they're being made in Mexico. Go figure.
His 'sneaker attack' reminds me of my state Senator's (WA state's Patty Murray) yearly awards to do = "Golden Sneaker Awards", for public service to the state.
Wondering where tfg (the fat guy) got the idea to - market these ludicrous
excuses for athletic apparel and right at the time when he has been assessed
such justifiably humongous financial judgements against him (? ? ?)
They don’t *have to* follow their own terms of service. They can if they feel like it, and they don’t feel like it.
The more money going to his legal fund is less money for Republican candidates. The last I heard, the RNC was almost broke.
Joe, the problem is that the RNC doesn't have to worry too much. Our many media platforms will make sure their candidates are covered far more than any Democratic ones.
Goldshoe likely will.remain #1 press getter even if he miraculously gets kicked to curb by more states.🙄
Perhaps we should look at it as follows; tFfg's supporters give through GoFundMe and he spends the money on legal assistance. Since no self-respecting law firm will work for him, the money goes to the ragged edge of the legal profession. He gets the kind of counsel he deserves. The Public (capital P) doesn't have to support him with public defenders, who are most likely better lawyers and more civil minded than his team anyway. If he weren't collecting money from his acolytes, he'd be declaring bankruptcy and begging for public representation.
It sure would be nice if they all went broke!!!
Good for you, Peggy! These giant funding collectives must be made to perform due diligence on their applicants. Otherwise they are no better than casinos who don't care about customers with gambling addictions as long as their bottom line remains thick and black.
Thanks, Ilene!! Somebody has to keep them on their toes!!
Thank you!
They refuse to stop it. This is almost certainly relevant: "Jalen Drummond, the director of Go Fund Me public affairs, is also THE Jalen Drummond who is the former White House assistant press secretary for President Trump. Very suspicious!" (Alicia Norman from her excellent substack,)
https://cnn.com/2021/11/10/politics/list-january-6-subpoenas/index.html
So true!
It’s funny that Trump needs a “go fund me” to pay his legal bills. He has been spouting out how rich he is forever! A multibillionaire and the greatest businessman in history!
Whether he is or ever has been rich is a question that those who have reported on his activities for years, e.g. David Cay Johnson and Tim O'Brien can answer, but he has always used other people and used other people's money. Whether it's the fraud called "Trump University" (successfully prosecuted and written about by lead attorney Tristan Snell) or "Trump Foundation" another phony money-grab, it's all a con-game to Trump. He notoriously has "stiffed" those who have worked for him and uses courts and lawyers like his personal circus acts. Being President and running to be President have been the most lucrative, beneficial con-game Trump has ever run. Even he seems astounded by the success of this con-game in which suckers and chumps will apparently give him all their money and worship him as a kind of god as well. "Go-fund-me" seems like a con that was designed specifically for Trump.
Annie Cross: I have noticed that the rich as much as possible use other people's money to get what they want. Like Nancy Reagan who "borrow" designer clothes and often refused to return them.
My guess? Bunkerboy has less in his wallet than ME, a disabled 36 year old who is unable to work! His morbidly obese ass is OWNED by his creditors. And his masters, vlad, kimmy, and netanyahoo of course. [sic]
Maybe he could sell some of his supporters “Conald Rump Roasts”
Except the meat would be putrid, and rancid, but maybe that's just how the MAGAt NAZI brown shirts LOVE it!
'Body of their savior' anyone?? LOFL and yeah EEEEEWWWW!!!
Just another grift. A con man and a mob boss rolled into one.
With an equal part of sadistic, megalomaniacal, evil fascist DESPOT thrown in for bad measure. ;)
Keith Olson ; The "step and fetch it" of the obscenely wealthy cult.
I am sure that is not what you mean Laurie, but the comment
"Keith Olson ; The "step and fetch it" of the obscenely wealthy cult."
Is such that it appears that you are calling Keith, the step and fetchit.
Keith Olson: False advertising , AKA fake news! He is a Mellon farmer. Mister Majestic! Raids the treasury and adds BS to make 'em grow fat!
He is also selling $400 gold Trump-branded sneakers.
That money goes to Big Macs EXCLUSIVELY! The numbing in his left side helps ease the pain of imminent bankruptcy and jail time.
Are those the FOOLS GOLD colored sneakers that have no soul! I heard someone has a pair on eBay going for 20 grand!
They are sold out of Trump sneakers
. Unbelievable, the well of stupidity has no bottom.
That figures🫤🤯
Yup, and of course, even GAUDIER YET than all of his other BS ostentatious, reverse Midas touch shit!!
Shame on anyone who gives him even a penny!
Anyone who believes him, contact me. There's a Big, Beautiful, Orange Bridge 45 miles south of my home that I like to sell you!
Soon the down ticket republicans will find that there is no money for them because the orange gorilla needed it for court fees.
I’m not sad about it one bit.
They helped to create and enable their fascist REGIME, now let them try and survive in it!
Awesome mug
MAGAts resent being called morons, idiots, dregs, deplorables but there are no other words to describe them, and no reason to stop labeling them as such, there is nothing that can be done to convert, deconvert, change the mind or the vote of these "people".
AND they’ll all pay the court judgements against him, ad infinitum
The Mellon family hasn't been on my mind for many years. Clearly, it should have been. As Bernie Sanders has said many times, the United States is as oligarchic as Russia. Huge fortunes, huge mega-corporations, massive campaign donations, all are out-of-control, and these American oligarchs are determined and convinced that they can buy the 2024 elections. Follow the money, always follow the money.
They have been buying elections for years. Since they own most politicians they can order any laws passed that they want. That is how they have become so powerful. This is true of both parties. It costs too much to run for office.
Their movement has been well funded, well organized, and willing to play the long game. They have the Supreme Court, a political party, the media, many laws, etc. Neoliberalism, Reaganomics, Trickle Down Theory or whatever you want to call it has funneled more money to them and people don't know that this is the cause of so many ills and so much anger.
Track bills, votes, and money https://www.mopag.net/track-bills
YES! And today’s RNC has been co-opted by those “oligarchs” (fascist Billionaires) who use Citizen’s United to augment their influence and install puppets into office. The RNC operates as an organized crime syndicate. Read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein and “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer.
But they CAN buy it Joe, THEY CAN!
Likely, yes. But those Traitors have luckily FAILED MISERABLY so far! As of this moment, Dark Brandon is still in OUR corner.
And all future moments. I can’t see Biden changing who he is: a decent man who truly wants to improve things for “regular” Americans.
Feels like he's hangin on by a thread
Ground troops in Gaza could close the coffin...
(btw: was a history teacher who attended Buff.St. - Hamburg neighbor)
Over two thousand years ago both Plato and Aristotle noted that oligarchies don't last because a) they go to extremes (like Thomas Mellon), and b) because they quarrel among themselves. In Russia the oligarchs quarreled among themselves, as predicted, and Putin, together with his KGB thugs, was able to establish his tyranny. Should Trump get a second term, he will strive to repeat Putin's feat, and Mr Mellon may come to regret his foolishness.
One could argue that the obscenely rich should '“manfully rid the world of their presence, and society of the expense and trouble of their trial and punishment" (for their greed and destruction of the common good and the environment).
Oh, that was good, Laurie!!
Glad you liked it, Peggy!
Shame you couldn't make a cogent argument when responding to me. But I agree with you here.
This is a very well done, well researched, timely article that makes an important point. Thank you.
This is exactly why teaching the true history of America is so critical to democracy. We have never been the “Greatest Country on Earth”. Sadly we have always had the potential to be the greatest, just haven’t made it happen for any but the wealthiest among us.
Thank you, Professor Reich, Great column. This adulation of wealth is destroying America. Trickle down is fiction, under our present tax system wealth gushes up like an oil well. We need the House of REPRESENTATIVES to represent us - the 99% of Americans who actually contribute to the betterment of society. Frankly I'm tired of supporting great wealth.
Great wealth breeds great evil, and deep racism, in this case. Disgusting.
The only reason they’re supporting Trump is to keep their wealth alive, through low (zero) tax rates, tax loopholes, and zero regulations.
This shit has been going on since Mellons and their ilk became uber wealthy.
Maybe the American public could start a "GO FUCK ME" page...
David, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I usually cry inside while trying to laugh...
It’s worse than that—they SPONSOR tRump. They install the puppets who protect their wealth, in return.
This is sickening beyond. How do ordinary Americans get these silver spoon folks out of our hair? and politics?
Greg Abbott is a disgrace to Texas!
The only way is to pass wealth taxes.
Fully one-third of the electorate DID NOT VOTE in the last presidential election.
Vote, and volunteer now to Get Out The Vote.
A billionaire still only has one vote. Get the rest of us-- that missing 33%-- to vote!
No—that kind of money exponentially augments their vote. They install puppets with that kind of money, and it comes with strings attached. Case in point: Take a look at the maneuver that gave Pete Ricketts a senate seat, got a pig farmer, Jim Pillen, elected as governor and put Ben Sasse in charge of Florida State (part of the Koch agenda includes subverting educational institutions and grooming youth). This all happened with one, fell swoop with Joe Ricketts and Charles Koch in the background.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/
First and foremost: REVOKE CITIZENS UNITED.
he has many faults but without his focus on the problems created by an open border the country would still be believing the propaganda put out by the current administration concerning our security..
The numbers of illegals crossing the border recently were down. We didn’t hear about that.
It is not a quick fix problem. It’s been decades without solutions. I don’t have an answer but Abbott doesn’t either.
Mellon is just following a family tradition. Until he died in 2014, Richard Mellon Scaife was the most prominent Mellon trickster and puppet master, majoring in character assassination., if not murder.
Scaife owed several newspapers, was a major backer of conservative causes; his political donations fueled the rise of the New Right and its moral crusade against Bill Clinton, making Scaife the central figure in Hillary Clinton’s “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In the 1990s, his gift of $1.8 million to The American Spectator funded investigations into Whitewater and Bill Clinton’s personal life, including “Troopergate” which led to Paula Jones’s sexual-harassment suit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife
Attached is a 1999 WAPO article that lays out some of Scaife's personal vendettas. In some circles, he was accused of involvement in the death of former Allegheny County DA Robert Duggan, who was married to Scaife's sister. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/05/03/an-enigmatic-heirs-paradoxical-world/0f097eb0-140d-4f4a-b81f-6da5a91038bb/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
Interesting WAPO article, but not surprising.
It is more important than we realize to know who is supporting what and whom. Wealth can be insidious.
The media has reduced the number of investigative reporters so it's more difficult to get the information.
Definitely! There are a few, but the networks and largest newspapers are corporations and we know how corporations feel about Trump. They love that he gives them what they want.
Corporate owned media has become a propaganda arm for the RNC, conglomerates owned and operated by members of Koch’s coterie of fascist billionaires.
I would like journalist investigations of Putin Trump money connection.
Very true.
I watched an interview of Michael Hudson, an economist, who said we need a 99 percent inheritance tax on the wealthy. Each generation of inherited wealth is less intelligent than the one before.
Michael Hudson frequently delivers very insightful analysis.
In my experience with wealthy families it appears that the first generation makes the fortune, the second generation manages it, and the third generation squanders it.
Not always. Sometimes the system protects their wealth while each generation gets dumber and dumber.
Haha! Inbreeding! FILTHY rich, rich white trash....inbreeding. Putrid.
Putrid is a good word defined as "decaying or rotting and emitting a fetid smell."
Yeah look at the photo of the current one
would it not be better to argue for things which have some chance of passage regardless of one's ideal ?
Inbreeding!
None other than Benjamin Franklin argued that society has the right to tax as much as it deems necessary all income and property beyond what is needed for existence. Alas, We the People seem to have become idolaters of wealth, the greater, the more to be admired.
Thank you! Real knowledge empowers all of us. Reminding us we the people if United are.not helpless. At a time when the world has lost a international courageous hero- Alexie Navalny- it is each one of us that carries the power united to defeat the injustices inflicted upon this world with the use of money, power & greed.
Thank you Gloria for, “…each one of us that carries the power united to defeat the injustices inflicted upon this world…”. A true message of hope and solidarity. We can do this because no one else will.
It appears that racism still applies even after Obama's eight years as President. We've so far witnessed Trump's first four years of spiteful Republican back-lash to the humane benefits delivered by the Democrats to the less fortunate. Republican intolerance, encouraged by the Mellon dynasty and of all people the Christian right, is spreading to the point where kindness and compassion are thoroughly demeaned, disparaged and daily overwhelmed by Trump's insatiable and visibly insane greed for wealth, power, and influence.
President Obama said himself that the media actually spread around the blurb that "racism was over" when he was elected. It infuriated him because it revealed how ignorant the media really was about the extent and insidiousness of racism.
I think Obama's election was the reason we got drumpf. An acquaintance, whom I knew from the horse world, said to me she was glad her dad hadn't lived to see a "nigger in the White House". We'd never had a political moment, so it was shocking. Of course that she could say such a thing was.
But I'm sure that's the core of the MAGgot phenomenon.
among many blacks I think there is the belief that a white backlash is the main reason Trump won. This is a different line of thinking than Reich's view which is centered on economic disparity as the prime cause. No doubt both were important causes along with the religious vector. But many many causes. CU too.
Nuance is always important! I think economic disparity is always and forever a main driver in human affairs ( follow the money always true) the Mellon story was perfect to this; add in Koch and Coors and Anschutz(all here in Colorado) and now Musk. The Guardsin reported this morning Yulia Navalnaya's X-Twitter account had been suspended.
It's the same old war, and inequality is at its root.
And racism is another side of its ugly face, think of the tea baggers, backed by these same evil wealthy, as the forerunners of MAGA And before them the Bircher, Klan and forever.
I agree. I think I have not given racism its due in the past though. More of a factor than I believed.
Also religious doctrinarian.
Libertarianism of the Koch variety is also dogmatic. When you combine libertarian dogma with racism and religious fundamentalism you get...MAGA.
Think of drumpfs full page racist ad in the NYT re the black kids. And how he must boil to this day, thinking of the casual roast he got from Obama when he showed up at the correspondents dinner.
My own father, born very much poor white trash in Florida, uses the n word.
It's deep with some.
And who doesn't notice a persons last name and wonder "where they're from"? For me it's a lot of ancestry and honestly habit, but what is it for everyone?
Meanwhile, back in Missouri the debate going on in the house right now, it’s about a bill Republicans want to use to gut our initiative petition process, which is in our constitution. They want to raise the threshold so high the petitions will rarely ever get passed by the people.
Demagoguery works for about a third of the population. Collective racist subconscious. https://www.buildingbridgesforamerica.com/
👍
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
Oligarchy and democracy cannot coexist. Thank you, Professor Reich, for your assiduous efforts to make this crucial point, of which this column is such a great example. Inequality has soared since Reagan’s election in 1980, and fitful efforts to narrow it have effectively failed. Inherited dynastic wealth will always support right-wing politicians and tax reduction, if not elimination. Biden has tried very hard to help stop the upward accumulation of wealth, and debt penury for those lower down on the economic ladder, but without a Congress and judiciary to help him he has had limited success. Plus *Rump will wipe what little has been accomplished away in a heartbeat if he gets back in. All those dumb racist MAGAS who send him their nickels and dimes so he can pay his legal bills are the manifestation of what propaganda and the culture wars can do to destroy a country. A wealth tax would help, but avoiding a French 1789 moment is becoming harder. In our case it would produce fascism not freedom or equality.
Democracy with capitalism leads to Oligarchy. Human greed, given a free rein, thrives!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/solzhenitsyns-warning-for-the-united-states/677508/
One hundred sixty odd years these uber rich fuckers and their ilk have been buying presidents and governors who think like them and who will do their bidding. Over 160 years and THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME TODAY, DOING EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS. IN THE CASE OF THE MELLONS, NOT EVEN THE NAME HAS CHANGED. 😡 #fucktherich
which is why the faux populists like Josh Hawley have to be called out for what they are.
Exactly!
I too am becoming more and more aware of how the “playbook” so to speak, like your observation, has never changed over all this time…isn’t that the definition of mental illness! LOL We must work to obliterate their playbook!
When asked about how to get to heaven, Jesus of Nazareth said, "Sell all you have and give to the poor." How many "Christians" follow that advice?
They have rewritten the Bible to say whatever they want it to say!
Margaret, they don’t even need to rewrite it. I am ≤quite≥ far from being a biblical scholar, but it seems to me that there are so many things in the Bible that people can pick and choose things, take them out of context and interpret them to fit their position. It’s probably more than confirmation bias, and can be used either naively or with intent to deceive.
Very true!
I am sure that republicans crossed that verse out of their bibles!
Jefferson was right.