Tuesday, December 6, 2022

I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology.....

 


I really don’t owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of Trump these last several years, but to be fair, Trump wasn’t that bad…………..other than when.
1. he incited an insurrection against the government,
2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans,
3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy,
4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,
5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,
6. got impeached,
7. got impeached again,
8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,
9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,
10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,
11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,
12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,
13. diverted military funding to build his wall,
14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history,
15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”
16. lied nearly 30,000 times,
17. banned transgender people from serving in the military,
18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,
19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,
20. refused to release his tax returns,
21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,
22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,
23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,
24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,
25. refused to concede the 2020 election,
26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,
27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,
28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”
29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,
30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,
31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,
32. incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,
33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,
34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,
35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,
36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,
37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,
38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,
39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,
40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”
41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,
42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,
43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,
45. suggested the US should buy Greenland,
46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,
47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”
48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,
49. violated the emoluments clause,
50. thought that Nambia was a country,
51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,
52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,
53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,
54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,
55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS,
56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,
57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,
58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,
59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,
60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,
61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,
62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,
63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”
64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,
65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,
66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,
67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,
68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”
69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,
70. pardoned several of his shady associates,
71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,
72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),
73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,
74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,
75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout,
76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,
77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,
78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,
79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,
80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”
81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,
82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,
83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,
84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,
85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,
86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,
87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,
88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”
89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,
90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,
91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,
92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,
93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President,
94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,
95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,
96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,
97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,
98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,
99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,
100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,
101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,
102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,
103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,
104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,
105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),
106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,
107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,
108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”
109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,
110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,
111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”
112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,
113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,
114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,
115. completely gutted the Voice of America,
116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,
117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,
118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,
119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,
120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,
121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,
122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,
123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,
124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,
125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,
126. used soldiers as campaign props,
127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,
128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,
129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists,
130. politicized the civil service,
131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,
132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,
133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,
134. insulted reporters of color,
135. insulted women reporters,
136. insulted women reporters of color,
137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,
138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,
139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,
140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,
141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,
142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,
143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,
144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,
145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault,
146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,
147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,
148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,
149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,
150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,
151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,
152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,
153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,
154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,
155. said that he had a special aptitude for science,
156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,
157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials,
158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,
159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,
160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller,
161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,
162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,
163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,
164. tried to get Russia back into the G7,
165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,
166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,
167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,
168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,
169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,
170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,
171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”
172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,
173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”
174. fucked up the Census,
175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,
176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”
177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,
178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,
179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,
180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,
181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,
182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,
183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,
184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,
185. created a commission to whitewash American history,
186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,
187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,
188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,
189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,
190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,
191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,
192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,
193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,
194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,
195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,
196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,
197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,
198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,
199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,
200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,
201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,
202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,
203. forced through security clearances for his family,
204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,
205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,
206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,
207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,
208. nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,
209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden
210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,
211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,
212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,
213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,
214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,
215. obsessed over low-flow toilets,
216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,
217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),
218. hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,
219. took advice from the MyPillow guy,
220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,
221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,
222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,
223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,
224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,
225. insulted the leader of Canada,
226. insulted the leader of France,
227. insulted the leader of Britain,
228. insulted the leader of Germany,
229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),
230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,
231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,
232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,
233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,
234. left a NATO summit early in a huff,
235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,
236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,
237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise.
238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised.
239. Claimed that to grab a woman by the genitals is a good thing, because when you are a celebrity, they let you do it.
I’m sure there are a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment. I'm sure none of the above comes close to whatever is on Hunter Biden's laptop.
But other than that. . . 🤷🏻‍♀️
Please copy and paste. Whoever wrote this deserves credit but I don't know who it is!
And much more. Now he wants to get rid of the Constitution.

JFK ASSASSINATION


The Plot Thickens -- On Tuesday, journalist and author Jefferson Morley will hold an important news conference at the Washington Press Club. Morley, who has battled with the CIA for many years over the agency's refusal to release JFK documents mandated for public release by federal law, will reveal what is contained in 44 of those suppressed pages. According to these documents, accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was acting under the supervision of the CIA when he handed out pro-Castro literature on the streets of New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
This is explosive information -- and no wonder the CIA hid it from the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the Assassination Review Board. At the very least, these hidden pages reveal that the spy agency lied when it claimed it had no prior knowledge of Oswald's suspicious activities before JFK's assassination. Potentially the documents reveal something even more disturbing -- what Oswald's mother and others claimed all along: he was a U.S. intelligence agent
I believe that Oswald was what he shouted out to the press after his arrest: he was a "patsy." A former espionage infiltrator in the Soviet Union, the young man was then set up by the CIA to take the fall for the Kennedy assassination.
The Trump administration was required by the JFK Records Act -- signed by President Bill Clinton -- to release all remaining government documents relating to President Kennedy in October 2017. But Trump caved to pressure from the CIA and kicked the can to President Biden, who is equally awed by the national security establishment.
The Tuesday press conference might be the last major effort to get President Biden to abide by the law and release the documents that belong to the American people.
Let's see how widely the media -- which has long been part of the coverup, as I've observed -- covers the event. And even more important, let's see if the Biden White House finally does the right thing.
By the way, Morley will be joined at the press conference by Judge John Tunheim, who presided over the Assassination Review Board, and former CIA agent Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who believes the JFK assassination was a "rogue" agency operation. There was nothing rogue about it, as many more intrepid researchers have demonstrated. This was a high-level national security job. Because President Kennedy was working to end their dangerous but lucrative racket -- the Cold War.
Oswald and the CIA... I watched the Jefferson Morley press conference this morning. And I strongly support the lawsuit that was filed by him and the Mary Ferrell Foundation. After nearly 60 years, the American people have a right to the documents that have been illegally blocked by the CIA and FBI, in blatant violation the 1992 JFK Records Act. President Biden can compel the security agencies to abde by the law and fully release the Kennedy documents. Will he?
According to a recent poll highlighted at today's press conference, a stunning 71% of the U.S. electorate wants full disclosure of the Kennedy documents. As the pollster pointed out, this is an overwhelming majority of people in a very divided nation. Will President Biden listen to the will of the people -- or to the CIA?
As Jefferson Morley observed at the news conference, many of the documents illegally locked away by the CIA relate to the spy agency's mysterious relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald. According to Morley, the CIA was running a covert operation against the pro-Castro movement in the U.S., using Oswald to disrupt the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, the leading group calling for a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Cuba, a flashpoint in the Cold War.
After Oswald was framed for the assassination of the president, the CIA succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, shutting down the once influential Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Morley pointed out that at least 44 documents withheld by the CIA relate to George Joannides, the CIA agent put in charge of the anti-Castro movement in the U.S. by Richard Helms, the number two man who later took over the agency. Joannides was later brought out of retirement by the CIA to serve as its coverup man with the House Select Committee on Assassinations. His covert role was to make sure the committee never got the full information about its agents and the Kennedy assassination. If he had known about Joannides's background, HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey later said, he would've prosecuted him.
What is the CIA still hiding, Morley asked -- the question on all of our minds? Probably that Lee Harvey Oswald was a low-level U.S. intelligence operative, inserted into the Soviet Union as a double agent -- and later brought back to the U.S. with remarkable ease after supposedly renouncing his citizenship, portrayed as a Communist agent, and framed for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Helms lied (again) to Congress when he testified that the CIA had "probably minimal" knowledge of "the lone gunman" who allegedly took the president's life. As Senator Richard Schweiker famously said, "the fingerprints of U.S. intelligence" were all over Oswald. The CIA even read his mail, as Morley pointed out.
Two small but important footnotes about the ongoing Kennedy coverup were also revealed at today's press conference:
-- The CIA is not alone -- NBC, which officially stands by the disgraced Warren Report, still locks away the papers of Walter Sheridan, the Robert F. Kennedy investigator who briefly worked for the TV network. This is part of the ongoing corporate media coverup of the crime.
-- The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, which is controlled by the National Archives NOT the Kennedy family, still locks away some of the RFK papers. As I've noted before, the Kennedy Library is the enemy of truth about the assassination. Library officials have tried to block me and other historians who have tried to get to the bottom of JFK's murder.

As a U.S. citizen, you have a right to your own history. Demand it! 





Trump's call to shred Constitution backfires bigly


OD Action:

It's Our Democracy!

Expel the GOP congressmen who won’t condemn Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution!

Today’s Action: Phone bank for Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock!

Today's Top Stories:

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Trump tries to backtrack after calling for the termination of the US Constitution

The disgraced ex-president trashed America's founding document in a preposterous call for the restoration of his powers and now wants us to believe that he would never ever do or demand such a thing, even though we can see that he in fact did since he posted it on the internet.

Take Action: Indict Ivanka Trump!


Herschel Walker's closing message: "I don't even know what the heck is a pronoun"
True to form, the bumbling GOP Senate candidate punctuated his impressively incoherent campaign with a head-scratcher of a closing — uh, okay, why not — "argument." Herschel Walker isn't qualified to operate an electric toothbrush, let alone take a seat in the US Senate. Dear gods above, let today be the last day we speak of this Republican puppet.

Take Action: Reject and disqualify Trump from running for President!


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Trump screws over GOP responding to Hunter Biden laptop saga

No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: Not a smart move.


9 million Americans were prematurely told they were approved for student debt forgiveness
In November, 16 million debt relief applicants were sent messages informing them that they had been approved to have up to $20,000 in student loans forgiven. Unfortunately, an additional nine million people also received emails saying they too had received loan forgiveness when in fact, the process had been shuttered entirely thanks to Donald Trump's planted minions in the federal judiciary, who will stop at nothing to obstruct the Biden administration and keep the American people from seeing any relief from a predatory and exploitative system.

Take Action: Don't let Republicans starve critical investments in children and healthcare!


Tampa police chief quits after trying to avoid golf cart ticket
The top cop in Tampa, Florida, went viral after body-cam footage showed her being stopped by a Pinellas County sheriff's deputy and trying to exploit her badge to wiggle out of trouble. Now, she's stepped down, proving that public pressure can get results and it IS possible to, ya know, occasionally hold law enforcement accountable.

Take Action: Protect renters from unfair evictions!


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Supreme Court Justice Alito jokes about Black Santa and kids in KKK costumes during arguments in same-sex weddings case

The frivolous, performative lawsuit brought by a "Christian" computer company seeking to deny gay people service that — and we cannot stress this enough — has not actually had any gay people request its services, was treated as an opportunity by far-right extremist Samuel Alito as a chance to work on his standup bits, which included a deeply offensive hypothetical about white children wearing KKK costumes during a visit with "Black Santa." Alito, who has recently come under scrutiny for his appalling lack of anything resembling judicical ethics, has made it clear that he sees the rights of LGBTQ Americans as a joke and is eager to use his position to disenfranchise and discriminate against them.

Take Action: Tell Congress to break up Big Tech's monopolies!


Elon Musk’s Neuralink faces federal probe, employee backlash over animal tests
The tech bozo billionaire is now responsible for killing at least 1,500 animals, including sheep, pigs, and monkeys, as part of his nightmarish mission to transform the Earth into a dystopia where the most annoying men in the world have a direct plug into your brain. Thankfully, the feds are taking a look.


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Right-wing billionaires are destroying America's newsrooms

Courier Newsroom: With our small-town newsrooms being turned into Trump's propaganda outlets by Sinclair Broadcasting, it's harder than ever to find factual, value-based news coverage at the local level. Courier Newsroom is leading the fight against right-wing misinformation and conspiracies by building the largest left-leaning local news network in the country. Can you chip in to help keep our democracy healthy and put a stop to Trump's dangerous conspiracies?


Michael Avenatti sentenced to 14 years in prison for stealing millions from clients
The crooked lawyer shot to fame for representing Stormy Daniels in her hush-money scandal involving serial cheater Donald Trump. At one point, Avenatti was even delusionally considering pursuing the Democratic nomination for president. In the end, it turns out he was just another white collar criminal scumbag. Maybe they should save the cell next to him for Donnie.


Florida deputy killed after officer roommate "jokingly" fires gun he thought was unloaded, officials say
It appears that cops cannot be trusted to not shoot each other, let alone other people.


Biden administration broadens immigration program for Haitian migrants, citing humanitarian crisis
The broadening program will allow certain Haitian immigrants to live and work in the country without fear of deportation due to the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the destitute Caribbean nation, which has been beset by an outbreak of violence in recent months. It's a welcome respite from the Biden administration, which had previously deported as many Haitians in one year (20,000+) as the US had in the past twenty years.


Arizona certifies 2022 election despite GOP complaints
Sore losers and conspiracy theorists in the Arizona Republican Party have five days to file frivolous lawsuits challenging their stinging losses to Democrats in the midterms, which they almost assuredly will now do.


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Today’s Action: Phone bank for Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock!

Today’s the day. The incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and the observably awful, scandal-plagued GOP nominee, Herschel Walker, are finally facing off in Georgia’s long-awaited runoff election. Even though Democrats have already secured control of the Senate, one more seat in the upper chamber could mean the difference between advancing and safeguarding our progressive agenda or watching Republicans — set to take control of the House in a few weeks — roll back our hard-fought wins over the next two years.

It’s the final stretch, and we still need all hands on deck to keep Georgia blue! We need as many progressives in office as possible to preserve the rights we’ve been fighting so hard for — reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, gun-safety initiatives, justice reform, etc. Today is the last day to help identify supporters of Sen. Warnock, talk to on-the-fence voters, and help get them to the polls!

Georgia Votes is still hosting phone-banking parties for Raphael Warnock all day today until the polls close! Don’t wake up tomorrow wishing you had done more — commit to a final shift today and help keep Georgia blue!

PS — Please don't forget to sign the petition to expel the GOP congressmen who won’t condemn Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution, and be sure to follow us on TwitterFacebook, and Instagram.

@advocacy | 1002 Hull St., Louisville, KY 40204   





December 5, 2022 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON


On Friday, December 2, President Joe Biden signed into law House Joint Resolution 100, “which provides for a resolution with respect to the unresolved disputes between certain railroads represented by the National Carriers’ Conference Committee of the National Railway Labor Conference and certain of their employees.” 

What that long title means is that the U.S. government has overridden the usual union ratification procedures of a tentative agreement to hammer out differences between employers and the 115,000 workers covered by the agreement. Eight of the 12 involved unions had agreed to the deal, which provides 24% wage increases but no sick days, and four had not. 

Their refusal to agree seemed almost certain to lead to a strike in which all the unions would participate, shutting down key supply chains and badly hurting the U.S. economy. Some estimated the costs of a strike would be about $2 billion a day, freezing almost 30% of freight shipments by weight, and causing a crisis in all economic sectors—including retail, just before the holidays. It would also disrupt travel for up to 7 million commuters a day and stop about 6300 carloads of food every day from moving. So the government stepped in.

Biden asked Congress on Monday, November 28, to act to prevent a rail strike, but there was a long history behind this particular measure, and an even longer one behind the government’s pressure on railroad workers.

The story behind today’s crisis started in 2017 when former president Trump’s trade war hammered agriculture and manufacturing, leading railroad companies to fire workers—more than 20,000 of them in 2019 alone, dropping the number of railroad workers in the U.S. below 200,000 for the first time since the Department of Labor began to keep track of such statistics in the 1940s. By December 2020, the industry had lost 40,000 jobs, most of them among the people who actually operated the trains.

Those jobs did not come back even after the economy did, though, as railroad companies implemented a system called precision scheduled railroading, or PSR. “We fundamentally changed the way we operate over the last 2½ years,” Bryan Tucker, vice president of communications at railroad corporation CSX told Heather Long of the Washington Post in January 2020. “It’s a different way of running a railroad.”

PSR made trains longer and operated them with a skeleton crew that was held to a strict schedule. This dramatically improved on-time delivery rates but sometimes left just two people in charge of a train two to three miles long, with no back-up and no option for sick days, family emergencies, or any of the normal interruptions that life brings, because the staffing was so lean it depended on everyone being in place. Any disruption in schedules brought disciplinary action and possible job loss. Workers got an average of 3 weeks’ vacation and holidays, but the rest of their time, including weekends, was tightly controlled, while smaller crews meant more dangerous working conditions.

PSR helped the railroad corporations make record profits. In 2021, revenue for the two largest railroad corporations in the U.S., the Union Pacific and BNSF (owned by Warren Buffett), jumped 12% to $21.8 billion and 11.6% to $22.5 billion, respectively.  

About three years ago, union leaders and railroad management began negotiating new contracts but had little luck. In July, Biden established a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to try to resolve the differences. The PEB’s August report called for significant wage increases but largely kicked down the road the problems associated with PSR. The National Carriers Conference Committee, which represents the railroads, called the report “fair and appropriate”; not all of the involved unions did. 

And here is the deeper historical background to this issue: the government has no final power to force railroad owners to meet workers’ demands. In 1952, in the midst of the Korean War, believing that steel companies were being unreasonable in their unwillingness to bargain with workers, President Harry S. Truman seized control of steel production facilities to prevent a strike that would stop the production of steel defense contractors needed. But, in the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer decision, the Supreme Court said that the president could not seize private property unless Congress explicitly authorized it to do so. This means that the government has very little leverage over corporations to force them to meet workers’ demands.

But, thanks to the 1926 Railway Labor Act, Congress can force railroad workers to stay on the job. The 1926 law was one of the first laws on the books to try to stop strikes by providing a mechanism for negotiations between workers and employers. But if the two sides cannot agree after a long pattern of negotiations and cooling off periods, Congress can impose a deal that both sides have to honor. 

The idea was to force both sides to bargain, but a key player in this policy was the American consumer, who had turned harshly against railroad workers when the two-month 1894 Pullman Strike, after drastic wage cuts, shut down the country. For the most part, Americans turned against the strikers as travel became diabolically difficult and goods stopped moving. Even reformer Jane Addams, who generally sympathized with workers, worried that the economic crisis had made forgiving the strikers “well-nigh impossible.”

While management generally likes the current system, workers point out that it removes their most effective leverage. Employers can always count on Congress to step in to avoid a railroad strike that would bring the country’s economy to its knees. On November 28, CNN Business reported that more than 400 business groups were asking Congress to enforce the tentative deal in order to prevent a strike. At the same time, the Supreme Court in 1952 took away the main leverage the government had against companies. 

And so the House passed the measure forcing the unions to accept the tentative deal on Wednesday, November 30, by a vote of 290 to 137. Two hundred and eleven (211) Democrats voted yes; 8 voted no. Seventy-nine (79) Republicans voted yes; 129 voted no.  

But then the House promptly took up a measure, House Concurrent Resolution 119, to correct the bill by providing a minimum of 7 paid sick days for the employees covered by the agreement. That, too, passed, by a vote of 221 to 207, with three Republicans joining all the Democrats to vote yes. Those three Republicans were Don Bacon (R-NE), who has gotten attention lately for trying to carve a space for himself away from the rest of the party as someone concerned about practical matters; Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA); and John Katko (R-NY). 

It was a neat way for Congress to impose its will on the companies under the terms of the Railway Labor Act.

The Senate approved the bill on Thursday by a vote of 80 to 15, with Rand Paul (R-KY) voting “present” and four others not voting. The 80 yes votes were bipartisan and so were the 15 no votes. Five Democrats—Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT)—joined ten Republicans to oppose the measure.

Then the Senate took up the concurrent resolution, which it rejected by a vote of 52 yes votes to 43 no votes, with five not voting. That is, the measure won a majority—52 votes—but because of the current understanding of the filibuster rule, the Senate cannot pass a measure without a supermajority of 60 votes. The yes votes for the sick leave addition were nearly all Democrats, along with six Republicans. The no votes were all Republicans, with the addition of one Democrat: Joe Manchin of West Virginia.  

Biden maintains he supports paid sick leave for all workers, not just railroad workers, and promises to continue to work for it.

But the railway struggle was about more than sick leave. It was about a system that has historically made it harder for workers than for employers to get what they want. And it is about consumers, who—in the past at any rate—have blamed strikers rather than management when the trains stopped running. 

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/legislation/2022/12/02/bills-signed-h-j-res-100-h-r-8454-s-3826-and-s-3884/

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00372.htm

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/119/text

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/119/actions

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00371.htm

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2022491

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2022490

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-expected-ask-congress-avert-rail-strike-source-2022-11-28/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/railroads-are-slashing-workers-cheered-on-by-wall-street-to-stay-profitable-amid-trumps-trade-war/2020/01/02/dc757ed4-1603-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html

https://www.bnsf.com/about-bnsf/financial-information/pdf/performance-update-4q-2021.pdf

https://www.progressiverailroading.com/bnsf_railway/news/BNSF-posts-record-earnings-for-2021--66004

https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/1647/Railway%20Labor%20Act%20Overview.pdf

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/2-unions-split-votes-on-rail-labor-agreement

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-expected-ask-congress-avert-rail-strike-source-2022-11-28/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/politics/congress-rail-vote-house/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/03/rail-workers-paid-sick-leave/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/business/railway-labor-act-freight-railroad-strike/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/business/rail-strike-business-groups/index.html

https://www.railwayage.com/freight/class-i/up-fritz-2021-most-profitable-year-ever/

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910; rpt. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), pp. 217-218. 




Sam Bankman-Fried: The Rigged Wall Street System that “Valued” His Company at $32 Billion

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Sam Bankman-Fried: The Rigged Wall Street System that “Valued” His Company at $32 Billion

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 5, 2022 ~

BubblesIf you have been following the Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX crypto exchange story since the company filed for bankruptcy on November 11, you have likely read the phrase “a valuation of $32 billion” dozens of times to describe the “valuation” of FTX as recently as February of this year. (We pulled up 47,600 results from a Google search.)

But here’s the funny thing. No media outlet has bothered to explain how FTX came by that $32 billion valuation or precisely how Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and CEO of FTX, became a billionaire overnight. FTX wasn’t publicly traded so its share price wasn’t determined by millions of investors buying and selling its stock on a public stock exchange five days a week.

And here’s another funny thing: mainstream media reported in late September that FTX was looking to raise $1 billion more from venture capitalists while keeping its valuation at $32 billion, the same value that it had in February. But between February 1 and September 30, Coinbase, a crypto exchange that actually did trade on a public exchange where millions of real people bought and sold its stock, had lost 67 percent of its value.

To understand how FTX came by that magical $32 billion valuation, let’s use the example of a chain of privately-owned lemonade stands. The owner says his lemonade is the best in the world because he uses only organic lemons. He puts together a slick pitch deck and shows it to a bunch of venture capitalists. He wants to keep 55 percent of his company so he is willing to sell investors 45 percent of the shares. To keep things simple, let’s say that there are 1,000 shares in total in the company. To get to a $32 billion valuation, each share must be valued at $32 million.

If the lemonade stand owner can get some well-known venture capital firms to pay that $32 million per share, then Wall Street and the business press is happy to say that the firm has a valuation of $32 billion – even though price discovery on a public stock exchange has never occurred and only a small amount of the shares are actually sold.

In the case of FTX, only $1.8 billion in shares were actually sold to outside investors. But the $32 billion valuation was thrown around as if market forces had genuinely determined what the company was worth. Likewise, Sam Bankman-Fried was said to be worth $16 billion based on the shares he retained in FTX and related companies.

It’s impossible to say that the outside investors in FTX did any real due diligence to determine what valuation to place on FTX. The company did not have a functioning Board of Directors or even a CFO. The related-party transactions were so outrageous that they made another huckster, WeWork’s Adam Neumann, look like a Boy Scout. FTX was using company funds to buy up to $300 million in real estate in the Bahamas, putting some of the properties in the names of executives and one $16.5 million “vacation home” property in the name of Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents.

FTX’s outside investors included some high-profile names on Wall Street: SoftBank (also a big investor in the WeWork fiasco); Sequoia Capital – which has written down its $214 million investment in FTX to zero; Third Point Ventures, Tiger Global, BlackRock, Thoma Bravo, and others.

Venture capital firms have a vested interest in grossly over-valuing a private firm that hopes to eventually go public on a stock exchange. The more over-valued the company is the more money the private investors make when they cash out their shares during or shortly after the IPO (Initial Public Offering). In the case of Coinbase, some of its private investors cashed out of their shares at more than $300 per share on its first day of trading on April 14, 2021. (Coinbase went public as a direct listing. In a traditional IPO, early private investors and company executives are not allowed to sell their shares for several months due to a so-called lockup period. There’s no such prohibition in a direct listing.) Coinbase closed last Friday at $47.67.

The big Wall Street mega banks that underwrite IPOs are also incentivized to keep their mouths shut about wildly inflated valuations, because they collect a fee based on the dollar amount of the offering. And Big Law firms that serve as legal counsel to the underwriters don’t want to rock the boat out of fear they’ll be cut out of future deals.

Just 14 years ago the United States experienced the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s because of fast-talking hucksters on Wall Street pushing unregulated derivatives backed, in many cases, by little more than air. Millions of innocent Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings in the crash.

Congress was supposed to write legislation that would make sure this kind of wholesale looting of the American people could never happen again. And yet, here we are today with millions of Americans’ life savings being looted by hucksters peddling cryptocurrencies backed by air – or stolen customers’ money in the case of FTX’s crypto token, FTT.

In his 1841 classic on market bubbles, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay wrote this about the Dutch Tulip bubble in the 17th century: “The rage among the Dutch to possess them was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected…”

The legitimate business of Wall Street is to allocate capital efficiently to solid companies that will grow the U.S. economy, create good-paying jobs, and keep America competitive on the world stage. But despite Wall Street’s willingness to bring crypto dogs public and venture capital’s willingness to fund crypto startups, there has been a preponderance of evidence that crypto has been a scam from the very beginning.

Investors who thought that investing in crypto mining companies that used massive amounts of energy to solve complex mathematical problems that served no socially-beneficial purpose whatsoever have seen their investment dollars evaporate this year. The chart below shows the share price performance of ten crypto miners over the past 12 months versus the S&P 500 Index (Ticker SPX): Argo Blockchain PLC (ARBK), Bitfarms Ltd. (BITF), BIT Mining Ltd. (BTCM), Hive Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (HIVE), Hut 8 Mining Corp. (HUT), Greenidge Generation Holdings (GREE), Iris Energy (IREN), Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. (MARA), Riot Blockchain Inc. (RIOT), and Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG).

Tulips anyone?

One Year Performance of Crypto Mining Stocks vs S&P 500


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