Election 2016
The Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump
and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack. Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“Hillary Clinton would almost certainly have won” the presidency in 2016 if not for Russian subversion, which sowed confusion and hardened negative opinions about her. He astutely tallies the degradation that Trump’s lawless, norm-busting presidency has already inflicted: stuffing the courts, assaulting the Justice Department, demonizing the free press and mainstreaming extremist ideas like mass deportations and the Muslim travel ban
— now shamefully validated by a Supreme Court majority.
From a review of Larry Diamond's book ILL WINDS
"The next president won’t be able to deliver
another era of good times unless he or she manages to tackle the
longer-term trends that underlie today’s economic
disappointment: a collapsing health care system and inexorably
rising inequality."
Paul Krugman
Let us please be real: whoever mumbles the oath of office up there on the
podium in 2017, whether it’s Clinton or the interchangeably Bozoesque
figures currently piling one by one out of the GOP’s clown car to
contend with her, we can count on more of the same: more futile wars,
more giveaways to the rich at everyone else’s expense, more erosion of
civil liberties, more of all the other things Obama’s cheerleaders
insisted back in 2008 he would stop as soon as he got into office. As
Arnold Toynbee pointed out a good many years ago, one of the hallmarks
of a nation in decline is that the dominant elite sinks into senility,
becoming so heavily invested in failed policies and so insulated from
the results of its own actions that nothing short of total disaster
will break its deathgrip on the body politic. John
Michael Greer
Most people didn't like either of the two Presidential candidates. Picking the least
worst assured that things will get worse.
Comparing agendas
though, it should be clear that Republicans are a disaster.
Failure to produce good candidates demonstrates that elections
are rigged: the two party duopoly, gerrymandering, voter
suppression, massive cash flow, flawed election mechanics, Electoral College, etc all
assure that there will be no disturbance of actual policy. Election
reform is not on the horizon, but should include universal voter
registration for adults over 18, range
voting so that third parties are not spoilers, roll back of Citizens
United, restoration of the Voting
Rights Act, and a national holiday for elections.
The billionaires who won the election will fight any reform.
HR1 could improve prospects, but the Senate may block it.
Studies show that
Congress responds to the funders not the people. The federal budget
is just about the opposite of what people, when polled, want. Either
party will take us in the wrong direction because policy is driven by
money, not by the people, and certainly not by science.
Republicans have, at least since Reagan,
made dog-whistle appeals to
racists, but they showed their true colors nominating Trump: He
rails against Mexicans, Muslims, appeals to white supremacists
and has propelled a resurgence of racism and alt-right. Remember
Bernie's warning about billionaires.
Wealth
inequality naturally tends to increase over time, slowly
destroying democracy.
It is at the root of many of our problems: Campaign finance,
lobbying, corruption, political gridlock, media
distortion, corporate predators, runaway costs in healthcare, pharma,
insurance, social pathology, and polarization. It has produced an
irresponsible elite.
In the 2016 election,
billionaires won. They rewarded themselves with very large tax cuts,
expanded the military,
and, to pay for the predictable deficit, they were open to cutting : Social Security, Healthcare, Medicare,
Medicaid, and all things public, whether schools, transit, head start, or other services for the
people. In history, Republicans have
consistently worked to roll back the New Deal.
By denying the threat of climate change, they
facilitate burning of fossil fuels, blind
regulatory agencies for polluters, and betray future generations...for profit.
Nordic
countries have kept it under some control. Universal voting rights.
strong unions,
worker representation in management, progressive taxation,
inheritance taxes, Social Security,
universal healthcare, public education, child care, paid leave, elder
support are are all helpful. Republicans
oppose them all.
As working people lose wages and benefits including pensions, health care, Republicans
continue to bust unions, downsize welfare, cut Social Security or
privatize it, and don't believe that health
care should be a right for everyone. Republican States
that would not accept Medicaid funding will have an estimated 17,000
preventable deaths. We should have a new social
contract, like FDR's Second Bill of Rights, his answer to the
threat of domestic fascism.
If Trump succeeds in
repealing the estate tax (aka the 'death tax'), he and other
billionaires could reap huge windfalls. The Walton family (Walmart
owners) alone stands to gain estimated $32 billions. How much will
Trump family gain ? The estate tax falls on few families. Republican
tax cuts or their flat-tax are consistently regressive, but there
is no evidence that prosperity follows.
Continuing the Bush-Cheney
path, Trump, declared his intention to be a war criminal, promising more
extreme torture.
Rebecca Gordon in her book “Mainstreaming Torture” recounts,
torture in reality has generated desired falsehoods to support wars,
created lots of enemies rather than eliminating them, encouraged and
directly trained more torturers, promoted cowardice rather than
courage, degraded our ability to think of others as fully human,
perverted our ideas of justice, and trained us all to pretend not to
know something is going on while silently supporting its continued
practice. None of that can help us much in any other ethical
pursuit. (from David
Swanson's review)
Republicans refuse to close the shameful prison at Guantanamo.
Trump and the
Republicans push to spend more on armaments and the military
because in many Congressional districts it is a jobs program. Our
economy depends on the ability to kill, maintain the world's largest
military for empire,
and fight the forever war.
It is not about the security
of the people. Neither party is for peace.
Trump asked “If we have nuclear weapons, why don't we use them ?” At
the insistence of Republicans, we are embarked on a trillion dollar project to renew
and deliver a new generation of nuclear
weapons. General Lee Butler, the last commander of the Strategic
Air Command, which was armed with nuclear weapons remarked we have so
far survived the nuclear age “by some combination of skill, luck,
and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest
proportion.” Further, he said: "It is my profound conviction
that nuclear weapons did not, and will not, of themselves prevent
major war. To the contrary, I am persuaded that the presence of these
hideous devices unnecessarily prolonged and intensified the Cold War.
In today's security environment, threats of their employment have
been fully exposed as neither credible nor of any military utility."
Trump, like
Republican leadership, is in denial of the science of climate
change. If we somehow manage to avoid a nuclear fire storm, the
planet will fry slowly. CO2 already exceeds safe levels at 400 ppm
(and increasing) and persists for centuries. Even now, glaciers and
ice caps are melting, forest fires expanding. Droughts, storms,
floods, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, fisheries collapse,
forest clearing, species extinction, all contribute to the
destruction of nature.
Republicans deny the problem. Trump says it is a hoax. There may not be time left to even slow it down.
Bibliography
Cyberwar, How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President - What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know: Kathleen Hall Jamieson
The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage,Jared Yates Sexton August 15, 2017
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