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Sunday Dose of Democracy:
Algae in the Reflecting Pool started growing just days after Trump’s $14M renovation
Trump moaned that the old Reflecting Pool was "disgusting" and "filthy," which is why we need to spend $14 million in public funds to paint it blue. Well, guess what? It's full of algae already. Nice going, bozo!
Take Action: Denounce Trump's cruel new anti-immigrant green card policy!
VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump hit with bad news ahead of upcoming election
Brian Tyler Cohen sits down with Zach Donnini, a data scientist from VoteHub, to break down Trump's new conspiracy theories about election fraud in California and what that means for the November midterms.
Take Action: Demand Congress refund working families the money they lost on Trump's tariffs!
Trump gets nightmare news as his top impeachment witness launches run for Senate
Alexander Vindman for Senate: Alexander Vindman made history as one of the star witnesses in the first impeachment case against Trump — and now he’s running for Senate so he can hold the wannabe dictator accountable from the halls of Congress. Vindman has vowed to take on "a Republican Party that’s failing to deliver accountability and underwriting chaos and corruption," but to win in Florida, he’s going to need some help. Can you chip in to help kick-start his run?
What Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar payday is costing the rest of us
Elizabeth Spiers, The Nation: "With this week’s IPO for Elon Musk’s tech megafirm SpaceX, he is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire, thanks to generous government subsidies, years of government-funded research, and government contracts. All these public-sector boondoggles have made SpaceX successful enough to make the world’s richest man even richer. As Musk’s wealth multiplies, he continues to prosper on the public dime.
In 2018, Musk paid nothing in federal taxes, and because much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, it can continue to grow without being taxed until he chooses to sell it. What Musk has contributed to the public good is minimal compared to the scale of this pillaging. Years ago, I was a buy-side tech-equity analyst, and watched the net worth of many mediocre C-level officers balloon way out of proportion to their contributions. This was because the stock market often values companies based on things that have little to do with their fundamentals. And apart from these rampant market distortions, there’s simply no good explanation for why one person who runs multiple companies at the same time and cannot focus on any single one of them with his full attention should be rewarded with a potential pay package that’s the equivalent of around 5 percent of the country’s GDP. Under Musk’s chaotic and often immature leadership, his companies have grown primarily by selling a narrative that their successes have happened because of him, and not in spite of him. But even if he were an exemplary CEO (for whatever length of time he’s chief executive-ing and not cheating at video games, shitposting, fomenting racist pogroms in Ireland, or taking ungodly amounts of ketamine), his contributions as a single human could not possibly justify the level of wealth and power he has accumulated.
Musk’s cosmic-scale wealth-hoarding is particularly abhorrent when you place it against the backdrop of how much damage he’s done. It’s hard to quantify the scale of destruction and deprivation that he will never personally be held accountable for. How do you value the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died since Musk, in his words, gleefully 'fed [USAID] into the woodchipper'? Worse, Musk appears to have no regrets for any of this. Musk’s wealth is also obscene relative to what he’s given back.
He is one of the world’s stingiest billionaires in terms of philanthropic giving. What’s more, the bulk of the tiny fraction of his wealth that he has donated he gave to his own self-serving foundation. If Musk really wanted to give his money away to actually benefit to people, he could spend more time thinking about the real causes of human suffering and less time doing cringey and expensive stunts like shooting a Tesla roadster into space or buying an entire social network to stifle critics and amplify dumb memes. But the lives of others have no meaningful place in his consciousness. They exist primarily as obstacles or more productive inputs to be used—labor to exploit, women to impregnate, online trolls to weaponize. For an aspiring space conqueror like Musk, they are all equally expendable."
Take Action: Tell FIFA: Stop fueling the climate crisis!
The attacks on Graham Platner didn’t just fail – they may have backfired
Dustin Guastella, The Guardian: "Not long after governor Janet Mills had effectively dropped out of the primary race, a storm grew around Platner’s campaign. Rightwing operatives and liberal media mouthpieces started singing in unison that Platner was unfit for office, flimsy allegations poured in accusing the candidate of all sorts of alleged misconduct with former girlfriends. Chris Hayes, of the uber-liberal MS NOW network, questioned whether Platner was going after underage girls. Not to be outdone, Mika Brzezinski of the same network compared his behavior with that of Jeffery Epstein. All of this after an earlier campaign that claimed the former Marine’s tattoo was indicative of his secret affection for Nazis.
Despite it all, Platner won his primary with 72% of the vote. Now, without much of an opponent to run against, those numbers don’t mean that Platner will sail to victory in November, but they do suggest that many Democrats, true-blue liberal primary voters, in the Pine Tree state really hated the liberal smear campaign against him. They also resent those in the Democratic “shadow party” that conducted that campaign with a ruthlessness usually reserved for the Republican party. In other words, the attacks didn’t just fail, they may have even backfired. Elite Democrats have become accustomed to accusing their rivals of all sorts of evil sorcery: racism, sexism, Nazism, chauvinism, you name it. Anything to avoid a real debate about policy; about what’s wrong with the country and how to fix it.
Like the boy who cried wolf, elite Democrats are finding that their incessant moralizing isn’t working. Voters didn’t nod along and tsk-tsk Platner’s supposedly beyond-the-pale behavior; instead, they marched to the polls and pulled the lever for a candidate who built his campaign on the populist claim that he wasn’t a front-of-the-class liberal poster child. He’s admitted to a rocky past, to being a lost young man, to infidelity etc. The avalanche of accusations just confirmed who Platner said he was. Voters chose him despite these flaws and instead because they believed his political appeals: that a populist economic program is appropriate for dealing with the challenges the country faces; that the elite really are rigging the system against the little guy; and that fixing this requires a political and social gut renovation.
The plainly coordinated campaign against him stretched across social media, television, podcasts, magazines and newspapers and it signaled to voters that the gatekeepers of the Democratic party do not like this guy. To many voters, that means he’s just the man for the job. The populist revolts both within and against the party are fueled by these kinds of top-down attempts at managing the electorate and pre-approving their decisions. Consider, while Donald Trump’s approval rating has plummeted to about 40%, favorability for the Democratic party hovers around 36% – and that’s a slight improvement. Platner is running as a Democrat, but he’s not a party-stooge. Inspiring the hatred of the highest layers of the party’s political machinery is a sure way to demonstrate one’s political independence. And nothing generates populist sympathy more than watching an army of liberal talking heads clutching their pearls over old Reddit posts."
Christian right calls James Talarico “demonic” — for quoting Jesus
Andrew Daugherty, Salon: "James Talarico has been found guilty of quoting Jesus. The sentence he uttered, according to right-wing media, was 'demonic' and 'blasphemous,' exposing him as a 'fake Christian.' Talarico is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas on a platform The New Yorker recently described as basically the New Testament. One Newsmax host accused him of using fake Bible passages. The passages in question are familiar ones, found in Matthew 22 and Matthew 25. Love God and love your neighbor. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger. They are, in fact, in the Bible.
The right’s attacks on Talarico aren’t about him, or at least not entirely. They’re about a much older argument — one progressive Christianity has been losing in public for 50 years — about whose version of the faith gets to count as real. The answer to that question has consequences far beyond any Senate race. When Christianity becomes a tool of power rather than a challenge to it, it doesn’t just damage the church. It destabilizes democracy. We are watching that happen in real time. Talarico calls his approach a 'politics of love.' What does he mean by that, exactly? Well, it’s among the most demanding and disruptive political frameworks ever articulated. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the peacemakers. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.
That is drawn, of course, from the Sermon on the Mount. It is not ambiguous, and every empire that has ever heard that message has tried to kill the person saying it. I have spent the last decade of my ministry watching Christianity get used as a facade for fascism against immigrants, the poor and anyone else who doesn’t fit the preferred demographic of a particular political coalition. A politics of love is a democratic ideal in the deepest sense, rooted in the conviction that every person bears the image of God and is therefore owed dignity, justice and care. It asks what we owe, not what we can take.
It asks who our neighbor is, and then refuses to draw the boundary anywhere short of everyone. That is the most demanding thing anyone has ever said about politics. And some of us are finally saying it out loud, in Lubbock, in every town with a church on the corner and a food bank down the street, and in every faith community that has decided the Gospel is worth more than a hall pass to political power. The Christian right can call that demonic if they want. Jesus called it the kingdom of heaven."
Take Action: Investigate Kash Patel's flagrant misuse of taxpayer funds!
Pre-order Brian Tyler Cohen's new book today!
The Day After: Some exciting news from our friend, Brian Tyler Cohen. His new book, The Day After, is now available for pre-order! The book explores how Republicans have abused power, how Democrats have failed to effectively wield it, and finally, what Democrats must do when they get power back. It's a blueprint for progressives who are not satisfied with the status quo. Please support independent media by pre-ordering here — and grab tickets to his book tour in NYC, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, or LA.
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