Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications II
I stand corrected:
Somewhere in the pages of this thread I commented that I didn't see how Trump could be left off the ballet without a conviction, basing that on the assumption of innocence until proven otherwise. I have since read that constitutional scholars from both sides have concluded that there need be no conviction to be found guilty of insurrection against the constitution ( which includes interference with the peaceful transfer of power ).
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/25/14th-amendment-insurrection-00112777
Somewhere in the pages of this thread I commented that I didn't see how Trump could be left off the ballet without a conviction, basing that on the assumption of innocence until proven otherwise. I have since read that constitutional scholars from both sides have concluded that there need be no conviction to be found guilty of insurrection against the constitution ( which includes interference with the peaceful transfer of power ).
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/25/14th-amendment-insurrection-00112777
Josh said:
This thread is about the rise of authoritarianism: Republican/Democrat, Left/Right, Blue/Red, Conservative/Labour, Marxist/Fascist, Theocratic/Royalist -- it doesn't matter what face is worn, the trajectory is always the same - a few extremists taking over and causing misery for the many - and using any means to get there.
For the greater good
Historically ends in mass genocide
This thread is about the rise of authoritarianism: Republican/Democrat, Left/Right, Blue/Red, Conservative/Labour, Marxist/Fascist, Theocratic/Royalist -- it doesn't matter what face is worn, the trajectory is always the same - a few extremists taking over and causing misery for the many - and using any means to get there.
For the greater good
Historically ends in mass genocide
Carpe_Noctem said:
For the greater good
Historically ends in mass genocide
Correct -- it's mind-boggling how many people have been killed whilst those doing the killing claim it's for "the greater good". They forget that the ends cannot justify the means because it's a logical impossibility: means and ends are 'one-thing' (a violent war begets a violent peace - Gandhi).
For the greater good
Historically ends in mass genocide
Correct -- it's mind-boggling how many people have been killed whilst those doing the killing claim it's for "the greater good". They forget that the ends cannot justify the means because it's a logical impossibility: means and ends are 'one-thing' (a violent war begets a violent peace - Gandhi).
Josh said:
Correct -- it's mind-boggling how many people have been killed whilst those doing the killing claim it's for "the greater good". They forget that the ends cannot justify the means because it's a logical impossibility: means and ends are 'one-thing' (a violent war begets a violent peace - Gandhi).
I would say the "greater [ Christian ] God" is the correct term for MAGA.
Correct -- it's mind-boggling how many people have been killed whilst those doing the killing claim it's for "the greater good". They forget that the ends cannot justify the means because it's a logical impossibility: means and ends are 'one-thing' (a violent war begets a violent peace - Gandhi).
I would say the "greater [ Christian ] God" is the correct term for MAGA.
November 5, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 5, 2023
The Biden administration's use of the Federal Trade Commission to break up monopolies— suing Amazon, for example, on September 26—resurrects the nation’s traditional antitrust vision. By trying to weaken the economic power of large entities in order to restore competition, innovation, and the rights of workers and consumers, Biden officials are echoing the principles articulated by politicians of all political stripes in the early twentieth century. Those principles were in full flood during the presidential election that took place on November 5, 1912.
The progressive impulse grew in response to the rise of the business trusts that grew to control the economy in the 1880s, gathered steam in the 1890s as muckrakers like those writing for McClure’s Magazine explained in detail how a few well-connected men ran business and government in their own interests, and grew stronger as at least 303 firms disappeared in mergers every year between 1898 and 1902. The idea of restoring competition gained a champion in the White House in 1901 when Republican Theodore Roosevelt stepped into the office of the slain big-business defender William McKinley.
But Roosevelt quickly found that progressives had little luck passing bills to regulate business and protect ordinary Americans. House speaker Joseph G. “Uncle Joe” Cannon, a key member of the so-called Republican Old Guard who supported big business and ran the House with an iron fist, stood in the way. Roosevelt turned to litigation and executive orders to break up trusts and protect lands from industrial development.
When Roosevelt stepped aside in 1908 for his hand-picked successor, Willam Howard Taft, he warned the nation in his last message that the new conditions of industry had enabled corporations to become a “menace” and required that government regulate them to protect economic competition in general and workers in particular.
Roosevelt tried to stay out of Taft’s way by traveling to Africa to hunt big game (prompting banker J. P. Morgan to cheer on Roosevelt’s demise with his famous quip, “Let every lion do his duty”), leaving Cannon free to go on the attack. In February 1910 he gave a widely reprinted speech that called anyone supporting government regulation of business and protection of workers a wild-eyed radical.
But momentum for economic reform was gathering speed. Back in the U.S. a few months later, Roosevelt countered that if this were the case, President Abraham Lincoln was “a great radical…. To-day,” Roosevelt said, “many well-meaning men who have permitted themselves to fossilize, to become mere ultra-conservative reactionaries, to reject and oppose all progress, but who still pay a conventional and perfunctory homage to Lincoln’s memory, will do well to remember exactly what it was for which this great conservative leader of radicalism actually stood.”
Lincoln, Roosevelt said later that year in Osawatomie, Kansas, had stood against the special interests that had perverted government to their own ends and robbed hard workers of what they had earned. In Lincoln’s day the threat came from the Slave Power; in 1910 it came from business interests. The nation was currently governed by “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”
Roosevelt demanded that the government restore an even economic playing field in the country, forcing businesses to operate transparently, submit to regulation, and stop funding political campaigns. He also called for graduated income taxes, inheritance taxes, the protection of national resources so industrialists could not strip them all from future generations, minimum wages, maximum hours of work, and better factory conditions.
Roosevelt was echoing the language that Democrats had embraced since 1884, when Grover Cleveland, whose base was in the urban areas of New York, won the White House. That message was not limited to politicians; indeed, it came from ordinary Americans of all stripes, including women, who could not vote but who had begun to exercise their power as consumers. They were more and more vocal, demanding an end to milk adulterated with chalk and formaldehyde, streets running with industrial pollution, and factories that overworked and maimed husbands and children.
Roosevelt added a Republican endorsement to that impulse, and momentum built. In 1910, voters gave control of the House to the Democrats, who backed an investigation into the power of bankers to direct the economy. In 1912 the House Committee on Banking and Currency under Arsčne Pujo (D-LA) began to investigate the growing concentration of wealth in the economy.
Four major parties fielded presidential candidates in the election of 1912; all were progressives. The Republicans renominated President Taft, who during his first term had broken up more trusts even than Roosevelt had. Taft’s nomination prompted Roosevelt to run on a third-party Progressive ticket, where he warned Americans that the government had sold out to business and that “[we] stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.”
The Democrats nominated former college president and New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson, whose advisor, the jurist Louis Brandeis, called for restoring competition to the economy to protect the welfare of all the people. The American Socialist Party also fielded a candidate, Eugene V. Debs, who called for an ultimate end to capitalism and for workers to seize control of the government.
On November 5, 1912, voters elected Democrat Woodrow Wilson to the White House and gave the Democrats control of both chambers of Congress. Although he won only 42% of the popular vote, Wilson garnered 409 electoral votes to Roosvelt’s 107 and Taft’s 15. In an even more pointed message, the split in the Republican Party also led to the ouster of Uncle Joe Cannon from Congress.
In February 1913, a month before Wilson took office, the report of the Pujo Committee—so called even though an illness in Pujo’s family made him cede the chair to Hubert Stephens (D-MS)—showed that overlapping directorates and corporate boards had enabled a handful of men to control more than $22 billion in 112 corporations, where they stifled competition.
Although banks refused to cooperate with the investigation, the committee had learned enough to be “satisfied from the proofs submitted, even in the absence of data from the banks, that there is an established and well-defined identity and community of interest between a few leaders of finance, created and held together through stock ownership, interlocking directorates, partnership and joint account transactions, and other forms of domination of banks, trust companies, railroads, and public-service and industrial corporations, which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money in the hands of these few men.”
Outraged, Americans got behind the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution establishing the power of the federal government to levy an income tax, which was ratified in February 1913. In December 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, providing federal oversight of the country’s banking system. The following year it passed the Clayton Antitrust Act, which prohibited anticompetitive economic practices. And it established the Federal Trade Commission to prevent unfair methods of competition.
November 5, 1912, turned out to be a crucial day in the history of our country. But when the day dawned, it was not clear what the evening would bring. For their part, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Kyler of Denison, Texas, were hedging their bets: when their newborn triplets arrived shortly before the election, they named the boys William Howard Taft Kyler, Theodore Roosevelt Kyler, and Woodrow Wilson Kyler.
cont below
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 5, 2023
The Biden administration's use of the Federal Trade Commission to break up monopolies— suing Amazon, for example, on September 26—resurrects the nation’s traditional antitrust vision. By trying to weaken the economic power of large entities in order to restore competition, innovation, and the rights of workers and consumers, Biden officials are echoing the principles articulated by politicians of all political stripes in the early twentieth century. Those principles were in full flood during the presidential election that took place on November 5, 1912.
The progressive impulse grew in response to the rise of the business trusts that grew to control the economy in the 1880s, gathered steam in the 1890s as muckrakers like those writing for McClure’s Magazine explained in detail how a few well-connected men ran business and government in their own interests, and grew stronger as at least 303 firms disappeared in mergers every year between 1898 and 1902. The idea of restoring competition gained a champion in the White House in 1901 when Republican Theodore Roosevelt stepped into the office of the slain big-business defender William McKinley.
But Roosevelt quickly found that progressives had little luck passing bills to regulate business and protect ordinary Americans. House speaker Joseph G. “Uncle Joe” Cannon, a key member of the so-called Republican Old Guard who supported big business and ran the House with an iron fist, stood in the way. Roosevelt turned to litigation and executive orders to break up trusts and protect lands from industrial development.
When Roosevelt stepped aside in 1908 for his hand-picked successor, Willam Howard Taft, he warned the nation in his last message that the new conditions of industry had enabled corporations to become a “menace” and required that government regulate them to protect economic competition in general and workers in particular.
Roosevelt tried to stay out of Taft’s way by traveling to Africa to hunt big game (prompting banker J. P. Morgan to cheer on Roosevelt’s demise with his famous quip, “Let every lion do his duty”), leaving Cannon free to go on the attack. In February 1910 he gave a widely reprinted speech that called anyone supporting government regulation of business and protection of workers a wild-eyed radical.
But momentum for economic reform was gathering speed. Back in the U.S. a few months later, Roosevelt countered that if this were the case, President Abraham Lincoln was “a great radical…. To-day,” Roosevelt said, “many well-meaning men who have permitted themselves to fossilize, to become mere ultra-conservative reactionaries, to reject and oppose all progress, but who still pay a conventional and perfunctory homage to Lincoln’s memory, will do well to remember exactly what it was for which this great conservative leader of radicalism actually stood.”
Lincoln, Roosevelt said later that year in Osawatomie, Kansas, had stood against the special interests that had perverted government to their own ends and robbed hard workers of what they had earned. In Lincoln’s day the threat came from the Slave Power; in 1910 it came from business interests. The nation was currently governed by “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”
Roosevelt demanded that the government restore an even economic playing field in the country, forcing businesses to operate transparently, submit to regulation, and stop funding political campaigns. He also called for graduated income taxes, inheritance taxes, the protection of national resources so industrialists could not strip them all from future generations, minimum wages, maximum hours of work, and better factory conditions.
Roosevelt was echoing the language that Democrats had embraced since 1884, when Grover Cleveland, whose base was in the urban areas of New York, won the White House. That message was not limited to politicians; indeed, it came from ordinary Americans of all stripes, including women, who could not vote but who had begun to exercise their power as consumers. They were more and more vocal, demanding an end to milk adulterated with chalk and formaldehyde, streets running with industrial pollution, and factories that overworked and maimed husbands and children.
Roosevelt added a Republican endorsement to that impulse, and momentum built. In 1910, voters gave control of the House to the Democrats, who backed an investigation into the power of bankers to direct the economy. In 1912 the House Committee on Banking and Currency under Arsčne Pujo (D-LA) began to investigate the growing concentration of wealth in the economy.
Four major parties fielded presidential candidates in the election of 1912; all were progressives. The Republicans renominated President Taft, who during his first term had broken up more trusts even than Roosevelt had. Taft’s nomination prompted Roosevelt to run on a third-party Progressive ticket, where he warned Americans that the government had sold out to business and that “[we] stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.”
The Democrats nominated former college president and New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson, whose advisor, the jurist Louis Brandeis, called for restoring competition to the economy to protect the welfare of all the people. The American Socialist Party also fielded a candidate, Eugene V. Debs, who called for an ultimate end to capitalism and for workers to seize control of the government.
On November 5, 1912, voters elected Democrat Woodrow Wilson to the White House and gave the Democrats control of both chambers of Congress. Although he won only 42% of the popular vote, Wilson garnered 409 electoral votes to Roosvelt’s 107 and Taft’s 15. In an even more pointed message, the split in the Republican Party also led to the ouster of Uncle Joe Cannon from Congress.
In February 1913, a month before Wilson took office, the report of the Pujo Committee—so called even though an illness in Pujo’s family made him cede the chair to Hubert Stephens (D-MS)—showed that overlapping directorates and corporate boards had enabled a handful of men to control more than $22 billion in 112 corporations, where they stifled competition.
Although banks refused to cooperate with the investigation, the committee had learned enough to be “satisfied from the proofs submitted, even in the absence of data from the banks, that there is an established and well-defined identity and community of interest between a few leaders of finance, created and held together through stock ownership, interlocking directorates, partnership and joint account transactions, and other forms of domination of banks, trust companies, railroads, and public-service and industrial corporations, which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money in the hands of these few men.”
Outraged, Americans got behind the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution establishing the power of the federal government to levy an income tax, which was ratified in February 1913. In December 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, providing federal oversight of the country’s banking system. The following year it passed the Clayton Antitrust Act, which prohibited anticompetitive economic practices. And it established the Federal Trade Commission to prevent unfair methods of competition.
November 5, 1912, turned out to be a crucial day in the history of our country. But when the day dawned, it was not clear what the evening would bring. For their part, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Kyler of Denison, Texas, were hedging their bets: when their newborn triplets arrived shortly before the election, they named the boys William Howard Taft Kyler, Theodore Roosevelt Kyler, and Woodrow Wilson Kyler.
cont below
The internet tells me that T.R. Kyler and W.H.T. Kyler both died at 7 months. W.W. Kyler lived to be 90.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-5-2023
^ Ironic twist at the end.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-5-2023
^ Ironic twist at the end.
November 6, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 7, 2023
Since taking office, the Biden administration has focused on using diplomacy in foreign affairs and has used it to solve global issues by strengthening regional partnerships.
On Friday, President Biden hosted the first leaders’ summit for the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP). Biden announced the creation of APEP in June 2022 to establish a forum positioned to improve the economies of countries in the western hemisphere, with the idea that stronger economies will be able to address economic inequality, bolster supply chains, and “restore faith in democracy by delivering for working people across the region.”
APEP is also designed to strengthen the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection that established a responsibility-sharing approach to addressing this era’s historic migration flows. Rather than working solely on getting Congress to pass legislation to fix the border—as Biden has urged since the beginning of his term—the administration has focused on the prosperity and security of the countries from which migrants come, so that they feel less pressure to leave.
The administration has worked hard to develop that strategy. Vice President Kamala Harris took the lead in “diplomatic efforts to address root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” and in July 2021 she released a report on strategies to slow migration from the region. In June 2022, at the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the administration helped to bring to reality a long-standing realization among many countries that migration must be addressed on a regional level rather than with patchwork attempts by individual nations. That’s when the U.S. got 21 governments to sign on to “a comprehensive response to irregular migration and forced displacement in the Western Hemisphere,” known as the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection.
The Biden administration has emphasized that it wants to work with the region, not dictate to it, and the leaders of APEP are working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to fund improvements to infrastructure and train skilled workers and entrepreneurs. The IDB is an international financial institution, owned by 48 member states and headquartered in Washington, D.C., that provides development financing for Latin American and Caribbean countries.
A senior administration official on a background call on Friday noted that “the APEP countries are collectively hosting the majority of refugees and migrants in the Western Hemisphere” and that “each has been significantly impacted by the historic flows in recent years.” The official said that President Biden deeply appreciates how regional partners have offered new legal status to millions of people displaced in the western hemisphere, and noted that APEP is part of stepping up to support those countries and create incentives for other countries to do the same.
“The bottom line is that President Biden believes that targeted economic investment in top refugee and migrant host countries is critical to stabilizing migration flows,” the official said.
Today the U.S. State Department announced nearly $485 million in additional humanitarian assistance to address the needs of refugees, migrants, and other vulnerable populations across the western hemisphere. It specified that the funding advanced the goals of the Los Angeles declaration and noted that the U.S. is “the largest single donor of humanitarian assistance for the Western Hemisphere,” providing more than $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid in the past two years.
“We are committed to working collaboratively with governments, civil society, international organizations, and other partners to help protect displaced persons and migrants in situations of vulnerability, to address the root causes of irregular migration and displacement, and to humanely manage migration in the Western Hemisphere,” the State Department said. “We urge other donors to help support the humanitarian response in the region.”
On November 11–17 the U.S. will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, where world leaders from 21 countries that border the Pacific Ocean, along with around 1,200 chief executive officers and about 20,000 other attendees, will meet to facilitate trade in the region. The APEC countries have almost 40% of the world’s population and support almost 50% of the world’s trade. They absorb more than 60% of U.S. exports, while the member states have invested an estimated $1.7 trillion in the U.S. and, as of 2020, employed 2.3 million U.S. workers.
The U.S. has hosted APEC this year, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is expected to attend this final event, where he will meet with Biden. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “Intense competition means intense diplomacy. That’s what you’re going to see.”
“[P]retty intensive negotiations with all sides relevant to this conflict” were what enabled 300 U.S. citizens, lawful residents, and their families to leave Gaza, according to Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. More remain as negotiations to gain the release of hostages continue.
The administration’s focus on diplomacy and regional partnerships contrasts dramatically these days with Pakistan’s expulsion of as many as 1.7 million Afghan, Uyghur, and Rohingya refugees because leaders blame members of the refugee community for terrorist attacks. Some of the Afghans have been in Pakistan since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Taliban, currently in control of Afghanistan though not the internationally recognized government of the country, is struggling to manage the influx of people who are being pushed back across the border.
In the U.S., in the face of House Republicans’ repeated votes on bills to slash funding far below the amounts Republican leadership agreed to in May as a condition for passing a bipartisan law to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government, the administration on October 30 issued a “statement of administration policy” insisting that the Republicans honor their agreement on funding for transportation, housing, and development.
On Friday the U.S. Department of Transportation announced an investment of more than $653 million to fund 41 port improvement projects across the nation. They are part of the work being done under the nearly $17 billion dedicated to ports and waterways in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, designed to strengthen supply chains, whose weaknesses we discovered the hard way during the pandemic.
This week the Republicans have before the House a bill to cut more than 64%—about a billion dollars—out of Amtrak, as well as other significant parts of the country’s passenger rail system. Most of the cuts would come from the heavily traveled northeast corridor, which carries about 800,000 people a day and serves the region that produces about 20% of the country’s gross domestic product.
cont below
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 7, 2023
Since taking office, the Biden administration has focused on using diplomacy in foreign affairs and has used it to solve global issues by strengthening regional partnerships.
On Friday, President Biden hosted the first leaders’ summit for the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP). Biden announced the creation of APEP in June 2022 to establish a forum positioned to improve the economies of countries in the western hemisphere, with the idea that stronger economies will be able to address economic inequality, bolster supply chains, and “restore faith in democracy by delivering for working people across the region.”
APEP is also designed to strengthen the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection that established a responsibility-sharing approach to addressing this era’s historic migration flows. Rather than working solely on getting Congress to pass legislation to fix the border—as Biden has urged since the beginning of his term—the administration has focused on the prosperity and security of the countries from which migrants come, so that they feel less pressure to leave.
The administration has worked hard to develop that strategy. Vice President Kamala Harris took the lead in “diplomatic efforts to address root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” and in July 2021 she released a report on strategies to slow migration from the region. In June 2022, at the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the administration helped to bring to reality a long-standing realization among many countries that migration must be addressed on a regional level rather than with patchwork attempts by individual nations. That’s when the U.S. got 21 governments to sign on to “a comprehensive response to irregular migration and forced displacement in the Western Hemisphere,” known as the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection.
The Biden administration has emphasized that it wants to work with the region, not dictate to it, and the leaders of APEP are working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to fund improvements to infrastructure and train skilled workers and entrepreneurs. The IDB is an international financial institution, owned by 48 member states and headquartered in Washington, D.C., that provides development financing for Latin American and Caribbean countries.
A senior administration official on a background call on Friday noted that “the APEP countries are collectively hosting the majority of refugees and migrants in the Western Hemisphere” and that “each has been significantly impacted by the historic flows in recent years.” The official said that President Biden deeply appreciates how regional partners have offered new legal status to millions of people displaced in the western hemisphere, and noted that APEP is part of stepping up to support those countries and create incentives for other countries to do the same.
“The bottom line is that President Biden believes that targeted economic investment in top refugee and migrant host countries is critical to stabilizing migration flows,” the official said.
Today the U.S. State Department announced nearly $485 million in additional humanitarian assistance to address the needs of refugees, migrants, and other vulnerable populations across the western hemisphere. It specified that the funding advanced the goals of the Los Angeles declaration and noted that the U.S. is “the largest single donor of humanitarian assistance for the Western Hemisphere,” providing more than $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid in the past two years.
“We are committed to working collaboratively with governments, civil society, international organizations, and other partners to help protect displaced persons and migrants in situations of vulnerability, to address the root causes of irregular migration and displacement, and to humanely manage migration in the Western Hemisphere,” the State Department said. “We urge other donors to help support the humanitarian response in the region.”
On November 11–17 the U.S. will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, where world leaders from 21 countries that border the Pacific Ocean, along with around 1,200 chief executive officers and about 20,000 other attendees, will meet to facilitate trade in the region. The APEC countries have almost 40% of the world’s population and support almost 50% of the world’s trade. They absorb more than 60% of U.S. exports, while the member states have invested an estimated $1.7 trillion in the U.S. and, as of 2020, employed 2.3 million U.S. workers.
The U.S. has hosted APEC this year, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is expected to attend this final event, where he will meet with Biden. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “Intense competition means intense diplomacy. That’s what you’re going to see.”
“[P]retty intensive negotiations with all sides relevant to this conflict” were what enabled 300 U.S. citizens, lawful residents, and their families to leave Gaza, according to Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. More remain as negotiations to gain the release of hostages continue.
The administration’s focus on diplomacy and regional partnerships contrasts dramatically these days with Pakistan’s expulsion of as many as 1.7 million Afghan, Uyghur, and Rohingya refugees because leaders blame members of the refugee community for terrorist attacks. Some of the Afghans have been in Pakistan since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Taliban, currently in control of Afghanistan though not the internationally recognized government of the country, is struggling to manage the influx of people who are being pushed back across the border.
In the U.S., in the face of House Republicans’ repeated votes on bills to slash funding far below the amounts Republican leadership agreed to in May as a condition for passing a bipartisan law to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government, the administration on October 30 issued a “statement of administration policy” insisting that the Republicans honor their agreement on funding for transportation, housing, and development.
On Friday the U.S. Department of Transportation announced an investment of more than $653 million to fund 41 port improvement projects across the nation. They are part of the work being done under the nearly $17 billion dedicated to ports and waterways in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, designed to strengthen supply chains, whose weaknesses we discovered the hard way during the pandemic.
This week the Republicans have before the House a bill to cut more than 64%—about a billion dollars—out of Amtrak, as well as other significant parts of the country’s passenger rail system. Most of the cuts would come from the heavily traveled northeast corridor, which carries about 800,000 people a day and serves the region that produces about 20% of the country’s gross domestic product.
cont below
In contrast, President Biden today announced $16.4 billion in railroad investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in the northeast corridor. It will rebuild century-old tunnels and bridges and upgrade tracks, power systems, signals, stations, and other infrastructure, enabling higher speeds on the route and cutting delays.
Overall, the administration will invest $66 billion in passenger rail, the largest such investment since Congress founded Amtrak in 1971 under the Nixon administration.
In contrast to the slow, steady work of governance, we had today the pyrotechnics of former president Trump in Manhattan, where he testified in the civil trial in which Judge Arthur Engoron has already found that the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, the two oldest Trump sons, and two organization employees committed fraud. The trial is to determine damages.
Trump used his time on the stand to shout, accuse the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James of engaging in a political persecution, and yell about how unfair the whole lawsuit is. Whether or not it will work—he hardly sounded like a strong man while he was complaining that the judge was being mean to him—he was playing to his political base.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-6-2023
Pla'yas gonna play play play play . . .
Overall, the administration will invest $66 billion in passenger rail, the largest such investment since Congress founded Amtrak in 1971 under the Nixon administration.
In contrast to the slow, steady work of governance, we had today the pyrotechnics of former president Trump in Manhattan, where he testified in the civil trial in which Judge Arthur Engoron has already found that the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, the two oldest Trump sons, and two organization employees committed fraud. The trial is to determine damages.
Trump used his time on the stand to shout, accuse the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James of engaging in a political persecution, and yell about how unfair the whole lawsuit is. Whether or not it will work—he hardly sounded like a strong man while he was complaining that the judge was being mean to him—he was playing to his political base.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-6-2023
Pla'yas gonna play play play play . . .
Rew said:If only newspapers, tv, and stuff like those, would ignore this creature then it would just fade away. It couldn't exist not even with its untruthful social site.
I agree, and yet not. I mean I want to know what he's up to because he's not out of the picture yet - but the sensationalism is off the charts. MAGA sources are painting him a persecuted "Christian" martyr. The next thing you know is that he's going to be the messiah returned. So, yeah in that respect.
I agree, and yet not. I mean I want to know what he's up to because he's not out of the picture yet - but the sensationalism is off the charts. MAGA sources are painting him a persecuted "Christian" martyr. The next thing you know is that he's going to be the messiah returned. So, yeah in that respect.
Rew said:If only newspapers, tv, and stuff like those, would ignore this creature then it would just fade away. It couldn't exist not even with its untruthful social site.
I agree, and yet not. I mean I want to know what he's up to because he's not out of the picture yet - but the sensationalism is off the charts. MAGA sources are painting him a persecuted "Christian" martyr. The next thing you know is that he's going to be the messiah returned. So, yeah in that respect.
DaisyGrace said:I might keep one eye closed while reading anything about politics, but I did exercise my right to vote today. My state’s governor election is pretty important. I’m crossing my fingers and praying!
My father would roll over in his grave if I didn't! It's what he served two tours in 'Nam and one in Korea for.
I agree, and yet not. I mean I want to know what he's up to because he's not out of the picture yet - but the sensationalism is off the charts. MAGA sources are painting him a persecuted "Christian" martyr. The next thing you know is that he's going to be the messiah returned. So, yeah in that respect.
DaisyGrace said:I might keep one eye closed while reading anything about politics, but I did exercise my right to vote today. My state’s governor election is pretty important. I’m crossing my fingers and praying!
My father would roll over in his grave if I didn't! It's what he served two tours in 'Nam and one in Korea for.
I for one will be voting for Trump. He helped us here in the USA much more than any others in the last how many years. I say this respectfully. Lets go Brandon has only brought to turmoil. I have relatives within the military. Its crazy whats going on. <3 If only you all knew....Sad times we live in. All I have to say about this is: have water. and lots of it
means for food
survival meals if you can afford
and plenty of ammo
Someone will always have less good and more ammo than you....and pray.
If I lose friends here, so be it. I was never a cool kid anyways so fuck it. LOL <3
means for food
survival meals if you can afford
and plenty of ammo
Someone will always have less good and more ammo than you....and pray.
If I lose friends here, so be it. I was never a cool kid anyways so fuck it. LOL <3
Looks like the country is getting sick of MAGA'S desire to return to white supremist control over women and minorities. I hope it holds through the '24 presidential election.
November 7, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 8, 2023
Today was Election Day across the country. In a number of key state elections, voters rejected the extremism of MAGA Republicans and backed Democrats and Democratic policies.
Four of the most closely watched races were in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
In Ohio, voters enshrined the right of individuals to make their own healthcare decisions, including the right to abortion, into the state constitution. Opponents of abortion rights have worked hard since the summer to stop the measure from passing, trying first to make it more difficult to amend the constitution—voters overwhelmingly rejected that measure in an August special election—then by blanketing the state with disinformation about the measure, including through official state websites and with ads by former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and finally by dropping 26,000 voters from the rolls.
None of it worked. Voters protected the right to abortion. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, voters in all seven state elections where the issue was on the ballot have fought back to protect abortion rights.
Today’s vote in Ohio, where the end of Roe v. Wade resurrected an extreme antiabortion bill, makes it eight.
Abortion was also on the ballot In Virginia, where the entire state legislature was up for grabs today. Republican governor Glenn Youngkin made it clear he wanted control of the legislature in order to push through a measure banning abortion after 15 weeks. This ploy was one Republicans were using to seem to soften their antiabortion stance, which has proven terribly unpopular. Youngkin was taking the idea out for a spin to see how it might play in a presidential election, perhaps with a hope of entering the Republican race for the presidential nomination as someone who could claim to have turned a blue state red.
It didn’t work. Voters recognized that it was disingenuous to call a 15-week limit a compromise on the abortion issue, since most serious birth defects are not detected until 20 weeks into a pregnancy.
Going into the election, Democrats held the state senate. But rather than giving Youngkin control over both houses of the state legislature, voters left Democrats in charge of the Senate and flipped the House of Delegates over to the Democrats. The Democrats are expected to elevate House minority leader Don Scott of Portsmouth to the speakership, making him the first Black House speaker in Virginia history.
Virginia voters also elevated Delegate Danica Roem, the first known transgender delegate, to the state senate. At the same time, voters in Loudoun County, which had become a hot spot in the culture wars with attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals and with activists insisting the schools must not teach critical race theory, rejected that extremism and turned control of the school board over to those who championed diversity and equity.
In Kentucky, voters reelected Democratic governor Andy Beshear, who was running against Republican state attorney general Daniel Cameron. A defender of Kentucky’s abortion ban, Cameron was also the attorney general who declined to bring charges against the law enforcement officers who killed Breonna Taylor in her bed in 2020 after breaking into her apartment in a mistaken search for drugs.
In Pennsylvania, Democrat Daniel McCaffery won a supreme court seat, enabling the Democrats to increase their majority there. McCaffery positioned himself as a defender of abortion rights.
There will be more news about election results and what they tell us in the coming days. Tonight, though, political analyst Tom Bonier wrote: “My biggest takeaway from tonight: in '22 abortion rights had the biggest impact where it was literally on the ballot, less so when trying to draw the connection in candidate races. That has changed. Voters clearly made the connection that voting for GOP candidates=abortion bans.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-7-2023
November 7, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 8, 2023
Today was Election Day across the country. In a number of key state elections, voters rejected the extremism of MAGA Republicans and backed Democrats and Democratic policies.
Four of the most closely watched races were in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
In Ohio, voters enshrined the right of individuals to make their own healthcare decisions, including the right to abortion, into the state constitution. Opponents of abortion rights have worked hard since the summer to stop the measure from passing, trying first to make it more difficult to amend the constitution—voters overwhelmingly rejected that measure in an August special election—then by blanketing the state with disinformation about the measure, including through official state websites and with ads by former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and finally by dropping 26,000 voters from the rolls.
None of it worked. Voters protected the right to abortion. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, voters in all seven state elections where the issue was on the ballot have fought back to protect abortion rights.
Today’s vote in Ohio, where the end of Roe v. Wade resurrected an extreme antiabortion bill, makes it eight.
Abortion was also on the ballot In Virginia, where the entire state legislature was up for grabs today. Republican governor Glenn Youngkin made it clear he wanted control of the legislature in order to push through a measure banning abortion after 15 weeks. This ploy was one Republicans were using to seem to soften their antiabortion stance, which has proven terribly unpopular. Youngkin was taking the idea out for a spin to see how it might play in a presidential election, perhaps with a hope of entering the Republican race for the presidential nomination as someone who could claim to have turned a blue state red.
It didn’t work. Voters recognized that it was disingenuous to call a 15-week limit a compromise on the abortion issue, since most serious birth defects are not detected until 20 weeks into a pregnancy.
Going into the election, Democrats held the state senate. But rather than giving Youngkin control over both houses of the state legislature, voters left Democrats in charge of the Senate and flipped the House of Delegates over to the Democrats. The Democrats are expected to elevate House minority leader Don Scott of Portsmouth to the speakership, making him the first Black House speaker in Virginia history.
Virginia voters also elevated Delegate Danica Roem, the first known transgender delegate, to the state senate. At the same time, voters in Loudoun County, which had become a hot spot in the culture wars with attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals and with activists insisting the schools must not teach critical race theory, rejected that extremism and turned control of the school board over to those who championed diversity and equity.
In Kentucky, voters reelected Democratic governor Andy Beshear, who was running against Republican state attorney general Daniel Cameron. A defender of Kentucky’s abortion ban, Cameron was also the attorney general who declined to bring charges against the law enforcement officers who killed Breonna Taylor in her bed in 2020 after breaking into her apartment in a mistaken search for drugs.
In Pennsylvania, Democrat Daniel McCaffery won a supreme court seat, enabling the Democrats to increase their majority there. McCaffery positioned himself as a defender of abortion rights.
There will be more news about election results and what they tell us in the coming days. Tonight, though, political analyst Tom Bonier wrote: “My biggest takeaway from tonight: in '22 abortion rights had the biggest impact where it was literally on the ballot, less so when trying to draw the connection in candidate races. That has changed. Voters clearly made the connection that voting for GOP candidates=abortion bans.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-7-2023
