Jonathan V. Last had a thoughtful essay that asked the question, “What if Democrats do everything right and still lose?” He’s speaking about the Dems’ poor mid-term polling. Last describes polls showing that people who benefited from the Child Tax Credit passed by Democrats nonetheless favor Republicans going into 2022:
“Inside the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan was the most substantively pro-family agenda item in a generation: A child tax credit that put real money into the pocket of just about every family….The child tax credit was the ultimate kitchen-table issue. Then Republicans killed it. They own…the act of taking this money away from working families.”
Last feels that the current political moment isn’t actually about kitchen-table issues. He points to the Ohio Senate race between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican Josh Mandel:
“The Ohio Democrat is running on jobs, healthcare, infrastructure, and national security. The Ohio Republican is running on Trump, abortion, Christian nationalist identity, guns, RINOS, the Bible, and bitcoin.”
If Tim Ryan loses this race, it won’t be because Dems are blowing off working-class voters by refusing to focus on the real, kitchen-table issues that affect their lives. It’s looking like the electorate has become entirely untethered to policy concerns and have reached a point of nihilism.
Despite this environment, let’s not impose arbitrary timelines on achieving success. Just ask newly minted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. On to cartoons.
Same as it ever was:
Palin runs again:
Ukraine gives Putin a few new stories:
The definition of Red State has changed:
Will the Russian Army really fit in the smaller dolls?
People in the Sun – 1963 painting by Edward Hopper. Notice that they are not dressed for summer.
(The Wrongologist will be taking a break for the July 4th weekend. Regular ranting will resume on Tuesday, July 6.)
As we head into the 4th of July weekend, let’s remember that in a remarkable coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on the same day, July 4, 1826. That was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. Four years later, James Monroe, also a president and founder of our country, but not a signatory of the Declaration, became the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.
For many, Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day seemed too coincidental. After all, the chances of two people dying on the same day is 1 in 365, but dying on a significant date that was the historic anniversary of an event for which they had intimate involvement? That seemed suspicious.
Some suggested a conspiracy among both physicians and family members to help the patients make it to the 4th. Margaret P. Battin observed in a 2005 Bulletin of the Historic Society article, that Adams’ granddaughter reported their doctor gave her grandfather an experimental medicine which he said could either prolong his life by as much as two weeks, or bring it to a close within 24 hours. Others wondered if something more sinister had been afoot. In a letter, John Randolph mused that Adams’ death was “Euthanasia”, adding “They have killed Mr. Jefferson, too, on the same day.”
Americans love conspiracy theories. Today, none more so than the ongoing belief that Trump won the 2020 election. Or that Democrats are Marxists, or pedophiles. Or that Obama was from Kenya.
In 2021 America, politicians always seek to amplify their differences with the other side, regularly accusing their rivals of deliberately trying to harm the country. And these conspiracies have trickled down to the rest of us, so much so that we’ve become a country at war with ourselves.
People speak with complete contempt about others. Some express contempt for the president, and the entire US government. What we hear routinely today is a level of contempt that in the past, we have reserved for enemies in a time of war. But now, we’re continually contemptuous of our fellow citizens. Contempt is particularly toxic because it implies that the attacker has a position of moral superiority, and through that, has the agency to attack another, possibly even physically.
So, on our most patriotic day, put down that hot dog, and ask the question: How do we unify a secure, wealthy country that is playing a zero-sum political game?
Our true patriots are those very few who are fighting to preserve our voting rights.
They’re the people who are adding new jobs in our jobs-short economy.
They’re the military who return time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They’re the families of those military personnel.
They’re people who serve on school boards, zoning boards and town councils, who get mostly only a psychic return for their efforts, compared to national politicians who are working hard to become millionairess – assuming they weren’t millionaires when they were elected.
They’re average Americans who see the decline of our institutions and infrastructure, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all of these bad trends.
Is anyone ever “High as a kite on the 4th of July” with patriotic feeling anymore?
Since it’s Saturday, and the start of our national summer holiday, let’s hit pause for a few days before jumping in to the second half of the year. Let’s spend these days enjoying the end of lockdowns, and the revving up of our economy. Here in northwest Connecticut, on the 4th, we’re looking forward to going to our first indoor performance, an afternoon concert by the Shanghai Quartet at the wonderful Music Mountain in Falls Village, CT.
But to start the weekend, we all should listen to Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful“. His version of the song is spiritual, emotional, soul stirring and amazingly timeless. Here, Ray is performing it live on the Dick Cavett Show in September 1972.
Slot Canyon, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, UT – photo by chipotle42
Today we turn our attention to the IRS. David Sirota wrote in the Daily Poster that new IRS figures compiled by Syracuse University show that in the past eight years, there was a 72% drop in the number of IRS audits of people making more than $1 million.
Last year, 98% of individuals making more than $1 million didn’t face an audit. At a time when Americans face growing economic inequality, the IRS is letting billions of dollars in tax revenue slip through its fingers because budget and staffing cuts have left the agency incapable of effectively auditing the 637,212 millionaires now living in the US. It’s worth noting that the number of American millionaires has increased by 88% since 2012.
What’s more, the IRS audit focus has shifted from the wealthy to the poor. A large group of progressive organizations sent a letter to the Biden administration saying: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“Since 2011, audit rates for millionaires, who are disproportionately white, have dropped more than twice as much as for taxpayers claiming the (Earned Income Tax Credit), who are disproportionately people of color. Audit coverage is now the heaviest in many low-income majority-Black counties.”
A recent Treasury Department report concluded that at the IRS:
“…high-income taxpayers are generally not a collection priority, nor is there a strategy in place to address nonpayment by high-income taxpayers.”
As evidence, the report showed that the agency failed to recover more than 60% of the $4 billion in back taxes owed by those making more than $1.5 million.
At the same time, overall enforcement has been hobbled by draconian budget reductions that have resulted in 43% fewer IRS revenue agents and 26% percent fewer IRS criminal investigators in the last decade:
There’s also been a 51% drop in the number of audits of America’s largest corporations. Sirota says that in 2012, almost all of our corporate behemoths were audited. However, in 2020, only about 38% were audited.
There are two separate problems here. First, the IRS budget has been cut dramatically by Republicans. Between 2010 and 2018, the IRS’s budget was slashed by more than 20%, and its enforcement budget has been cut by 24%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, leading to the substantial reduction in IRS agents shown above.
A July 2020 report from the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing funding for IRS enforcement by $40 billion would boost revenues by more than $100 billion over the next decade. From Sirota:
“To that end, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) — both Congressional Progressive Caucus members — have recently introduced separatebills that would boost the IRS’s enforcement budget and audit rates.”
Khanna’s legislation would increase IRS enforcement funding by $70 billion and require the agency to audit 95% of large corporations, 50% of individuals reporting more than $10 million of annual income, and 20% of individuals reporting more than $1 million of income. Sounds about right.
IRS referrals for criminal prosecution and Justice Department tax convictions have both hit an all-time low. The US is estimated to be losing roughly $600 billion/year in revenue from unpaid taxes, while wealthy taxpayers are evading or avoiding paying their fair share. Better enforcement will produce revenue and bring renewed respect for our legal system.
We must have more tax revenue, and while Rep. Khanna’s bill would go a long way toward making things right, we also must raise our corporate tax rates, and the IRS must reassess its audit priorities.
We can’t be auditing more poor people than millionaires.
Wake up America! It’s time to stop our largest corporations and our wealthiest individuals from skating out on their tax responsibilities. To help you wake up, listen to the Tedeschi Trucks Band performing “The Sky is Crying” at the Royal Albert Hall. Performing at the Royal Albert seems to bring the best out of American groups. Here’s another great example:
Some prefer the Stevie Ray Vaughn version, but this is at least as good.
Observation Deck, Niagara Falls – Feb 9, 2021 photo via Darcy Bowers
A quick thought about the death of Rush Limbaugh, and a few thoughts about the Texas power outage.
Many on the right are angry because others are happy about Limbaugh’s death. But we’re under no obligation to tolerate what we perceive as evil. Make no mistake, Rush Limbaugh promoted evil, and Wrongo celebrates the passing of that evil. As Bette Davis said:
“I was told only to speak good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good!”
On to Texas, and their electric grid disaster. Texas governor Abbott tried to blame the disaster on the “green new deal” and renewable energy sources. That’s a ludicrous argument. No part of the “green new deal” has been passed in Texas, and while Texas is the Saudi Arabia of wind power, only about 33% of its outage came from offline wind power.
A few facts: America is divided into three grids: one covers the eastern USA, another the western states and the third is the Texas grid, which covers most of the state. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, (ERCOT), manages about 90% of the state’s power for 26 million customers.
The real reason for the sustained outage is that Texas Republicans made sure that Texas had its own electric grid. That was because they wanted to be outside the regulatory reach of the federal government, to set their own rules. So Texas doesn’t follow the maintenance protocols of the other two grids. The other grids have protocols for all power generation equipment in winter weather, including for wind turbines. Of course, Texas doesn’t follow them.
“The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union…It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances.”
Texas mistakenly thought that by seceding from the power grid, they would provide the benefits of a market solution to delivering power to the state. What really happened is that a lack of capable governing allowed an important and life-sustaining system to rust.
In 2011, Texas faced a similar storm that froze natural gas wells and affected coal plants and wind turbines, leading to power outages across the state. And 10 years later, Texas power companies still have not made the necessary investments to keep plants online during extreme cold. From the Texas Tribune:
“Texas officials knew winter storms could leave the state’s power grid vulnerable, but they left the choice to prepare for harsh weather up to the power companies — many of which opted against the costly upgrades.”
Texas Republicans thought that squeezing more profits out of the power grid for wealthy energy interests was more important than protecting the grid. They were wrong, and Texas consumers are paying the price.
We’ve become the can’t do nation: Can’t stop the plague, even with great vaccines, can’t keep our Capitol safe, can’t keep the heat on in Texas. But once Ted Cruz gets back from his fact-finding mission in Cancun, Texas will fix this in no time.
Wrongo has been to Cancun. It’s good, but not destroy-your-reputation good.
Bradford Pear, Fields of Wrong, Litchfield County, CT – November 2020 iPhone photo by Wrongo. The Bradford Pear has white flowers very early in the spring, and red leaves in fall. It’s among the first to flower, and last to lose its leaves.
Wrongo is increasingly pessimistic that the majority of Republican voters will accept the result of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election. The Morning Consult has a survey that shows:
7 in 10 Republicans believe the 2020 election wasn’t free or fair: 48% of Republicans say it “definitely” was not free and fair, and another 22% say it “probably” was not. That’s twice the share of Republicans who said the race would not be free and fair just weeks before the election.
Republicans are most skeptical about the Pennsylvania results: Just 23% of Republican voters say they believe the results in PA are reliable, while 33% say the same about the results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.
This has incredibly dire consequences for the country, and possibly, for our democracy. The WaPo’s Greg Sargent writes:
“With Trump unlikely to formally concede, you can see a kind of Lost Cause of Trumpism mythology taking hold, in which many supporters continue believing the election was stolen from him and that squeamish Republicans betrayed him by not fighting hard enough against it.”
No one should be surprised by this. Trump told us four years ago while running against Hillary Clinton, that he would only respect the outcome of the election if he won. And he’s been saying the same thing for months about this election. As Rick Hasen suggests, Trump and the GOP are placing a cloud of illegitimacy over Biden’s presidency.
This is not tenable. You can’t move on to what should come next when 70% of Republicans think Trump should be sworn in on January 20. You can’t reconcile with a party whose voters overwhelmingly believe the election was stolen from them.
Now, America will wait on the courts, which are conveniently stocked with judges appointed by Trump, and handpicked by Mitch McConnell. Don’t expect that all of the cases will be dismissed. Eventually, one or more of them will reach a Supreme Court that has three Justices who Trump has already said he expects will pay him back for their seats on the High Court. Add to them Alito and Thomas, and boom, we might have the Court overturning the election.
Yesterday, Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to block the certification of the Pennsylvania election results. Variations of the word “fraud” appear in the lawsuit 33 times, mostly in the context of prosecutions related to other elections. The only suspected instances of voter fraud cited in the complaint occurred in two counties that voted for Trump: Fayette, where Trump is winning by a 34 point margin, and Luzerne, where his lead is 14 points. The case has been assigned to US District Judge Matthew Brann, a Barack Obama appointee.
More and more Republicans are throwing in with Trump’s stolen-election whine fest. Axios reported that more foreign leaders have called to congratulate Biden than have GOP Senators.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said perhaps jokingly? There “will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” On Monday, Trump ordered senior government leaders to block cooperation with Biden’s transition team, escalating the standoff. That prompted the Biden team to consider legal action.
AG William Barr waded in to President Trump’s unfounded accusations of election irregularities by telling federal prosecutors that they were free to investigate “specific allegations” of voter fraud before the results of the presidential race are certified. Barr ignored the Justice Department’s longstanding (for 40 years) policies intended to keep law enforcement from affecting the outcome of an election.
This could become a battle about whether we remain a democratic republic. Trump supporters have already indicated what side of that battle they are on. So has the feckless Republican leadership. What can the Democrats do to prevent us from becoming an “illiberal democracy“?
Are they even aware that this is what may happen? Wrongo fears that the Dems are fighting the 20 year-old battle of Bush vs. Gore, not the current high-stakes battle for the soul of the nation.
This could fester for weeks, until the Electoral College meets on December 14. The damage could be incalculable.
What have you heard about the storm that tore through Iowa? From the WaPo:
“The scope and breadth of the disaster is still being calculated, but by some estimates, more than 10 million acres, or 43 percent, of the state’s soybean and corn crops have been damaged. A quarter of a million Iowans are still without power.…So far, the only elected leader calling for a presidential disaster declaration is Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D)….Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) and Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley and Jodi Ernst have toured some disaster sites, focusing on crop damage, but have remained silent when it comes to demanding national help.”
It hasn’t gotten much coverage on the east coast, although there wasn’t a lot of coverage for Connecticut’s struggle with TS Isaias. The lack of media attention and a federal response are both troubling.
Wouldn’t it be a good idea for Biden-Harris to call for disaster aid, and arrange a visit this week?
On to cartoons. Trump takes personal control of mail-in voting:
No Post Office for you:
Mailbox bashing is usually done by young punks, not old thugs:
Essential weapon against Fascism:
Senate left town. You just have to hold on, because they have to rest:
Buying stamps at the post office, Siren, WI – July 1941 photo by John Vachon for the Farm Security Administration, via Shorpy.
The Senate has adjourned until after Labor Day, despite not coming to an agreement on the much-needed next Coronavirus stimulus package. From CNBC:
“Congress and the White House have spent the past few weeks debating what to include in the package, but have been unable to come to an agreement. One of the biggest sticking points: Jobless benefits. Democrats want a continuation of the enhanced unemployment payment of $600 per week, while Republicans say that amount is too high. Democrats are also pushing for more than $900 billion for state and municipal aid, and $60 billion in food assistance, far higher than what Republicans have proposed.”
This means any deal could be weeks away. Meanwhile, around 28 million Americans remain unemployed and many of the relief provisions from the first stimulus package have dried up.
And Postal Service funding is also broken and lying in the weeds by the side of the road.
McConnell offered a new COVID economic aid bill (the HEALS Act) 10 weeks after the House had approved its version, called the HEROES Act. Then, Mitch dismissed the Senate for a month rather than allow Senators to negotiate with the House Dems about adding USPS funding to the HEALS Act, which included no funding for the USPS. The House’s HEROES Act passed in mid-May contains $25 billion for USPS.
There is no accountability for any of these birds except at the ballot box, and the GOP is making it very hard to remove them by voting. Only a very few Republicans, notably House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, (R-CA) and Sen. Roy Blunt, (R-MO) have broken with Trump on the need for funding the Postal Service.
We mentioned mail sorting machines on Friday. We now know that in May, the USPS planned to remove a total of 969 sorting machines (about 20%) out of the 4,926 it had in operation as of February. Most (746) of the sorting machines scheduled for removal were delivery bar code sorters (DBCS), the type that sort vote-by-mail ballots and other similarly sized pieces. You can view the USPS equipment removal presentation here.
WaPo reported that the USPS sent letters in July to 46 states and Washington DC warning that they may be unable to deliver mail-in election ballots by the deadlines set by the states for them to be counted. About 186 million voters are subject to the Postal Service’s heightened warning. The states that were not warned about potential issues were Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico and Rhode Island. The USPS letter was only released on Friday.
This is a huge and serious escalation in concerns that even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.
There’s a big disconnect between the public and the government. They no longer really want to help you solve your problems. You can no longer rely on them to count your votes. You’re about to be kicked out of your apartment. You’ve got no money left in the bank, and after years of being told it’s your fault, you know nothing could be further from the truth.
Sorry, Republicans, this is what you have become. You’re now the Walrus: He is you and you are him.
Vote to flush the turds, November 3rd!
Sorry, no coffee for you this week, we’re already too jacked up by the prospect of losing our democracy. On the other hand, we still need a break from the steady beat of the Trumpian drums, so it’s time for our Saturday Soother.
We lost four large trees on the fields of Wrong last week during the half hour that TS Isaias was with us. The outcome was that we were without power for five days, and it took about a week to cut up and move all of the downed wood.
This week, we left our daily 14+ hours of summer sunlight behind. Today we have 13 hours and 53 minutes, and it, like our politics, will just get worse.
Time to settle back at an appropriate physical distance, and listen to two love themes composed by Dominic Frontiere that originally appeared in the TV series “The Outer Limits”. They are performed here on George Winston’s album “Summer”, recorded in 1991:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
“Health departments track the virus’s spread with a distinctly American patchwork: a reporting system in which some test results arrive via smooth data feeds but others come by phone, email, physical mail or fax, a technology retained because it complies with digital privacy standards for health information.”
The problems are compounded by human error:
“These reports often come in duplicate, go to the wrong health department, or are missing crucial information such as a patient’s phone number or address.”
Before the pandemic, nearly 90% of laboratory test results for diseases tracked by public health departments were transmitted digitally. But the need for substantially greater Coronavirus testing has brought many more players into the public health arena, including companies that usually run employment screening tests, and small clinics that usually test for diseases like the flu and strep throat.
This has increased the share of lab tests coming to public health departments via fax and phone.
The result is unreliable information. The Times quotes Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“Nationally, about 80% percent of coronavirus test results are missing demographic information, and half do not have addresses…”
Hard to trace an infected person without an address. America’s health system is a jumble of old and new technology that make it difficult to track what’s really going on with the COVID pandemic.
Also, the Trump administration’s guidelines on demographic data haven’t taken effect yet. In June, they required laboratories to report a patients’ age, race and ethnicity, so public health officials could better understand the demographics of the Coronavirus pandemic. But, those rules won’t take effect until August, and they only state that laboratories “should” provide patients’ addresses and phone numbers. They do not mandate it.
Dr. Frieden, former CDC director says:
“You’ve got hundreds of laboratories and thousands of tests. Nothing is interoperable because they haven’t been mandated to do that.”
Other countries have a unique number identifier for each patient, something that Congress refuses to provide in the US. Instead, data often come to public health authorities using only the information that laboratories need to track the record, not the details that public health officials need to help manage the disease.
Anyone who has healthcare knows that patients routinely fill out the same information on multiple forms in multiple offices. The need for doctors and testing services to use fax machines betrays the fundamental lack of modern technology in some health care settings.
And remember, it’s not for lack of money: There’s plenty of money in the US health care system.
The second item regarding COVID data is more troubling. The NYT reports that: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning on Wednesday, send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington — a move that has alarmed public health experts who fear the data will be distorted for political gain.”
From now on, HHS, and not the CDC, will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, how many beds and ventilators are available, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.
This is seen as an inherently political move by outside public health experts. The NYT quotes Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response under former President Obama:
“Centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust….It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like C.D.C. to do its basic job.”
This is more disturbing than finding out that the data are terrible. Alex Azar, who runs HHS, is a Trump crony and has clearly used his position to be helpful to Trump’s re-election campaign.
If there ever was any hope for a dispassionate, reasoned, and scientific FEDERAL response from Trump, it is certain that these two problems, one with the quality of the data, and the second with how it will be spun as it is reported, show we’re doomed.
How many health care workers will have to die? How many people living in states run by Trump’s personal bootlickers will get the treatment that they need?
(Blogging for the rest of the week will be light and variable, as Wrongo and Ms. Right embark on our first trip since COVID entered our lives)
Wrongo’s initial reaction to the smaller-than-expected crowd in Tulsa on Saturday was that quite a few Trump supporters actually had common sense, despite what they might have said to the press about COVID.
“TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank.”
And the NYT reports there’s a story behind the story:
“Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old from Fort Dodge, Iowa, said she had been watching black TikTok users express their frustration about Mr. Trump hosting his rally on Juneteenth. (The rally was later moved to June 20.) She “vented” her own anger in a late-night TikTok video on June 11 — and provided a call to action. ‘I recommend all of those of us that want to see this 19,000-seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty go reserve tickets now, and leave him standing there alone on the stage’….When she checked her phone the next morning…the video was starting to go viral. It has more than 700,000 likes, she added, and more than two million views.”
This will be spun many ways over the next few days, but a few days ago, the campaign claimed the equivalent of a quarter of Oklahoma’s population had requested a ticket. Today, they blamed invisible Antifa’s for both the cancellation of the planned overflow outdoor speech, and that the indoor venue was not even half full.
This shows how far the Trump campaign has to go in the next 132 days.
Today’s real topic is AG Barr’s firing of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Geoffrey Berman. First, Berman was asked to resign, and he refused to comply. Then Barr said that Trump had fired Berman, so Berman then agreed to leave.
Wrongo has no position on Berman’s worth as a federal prosecutor. He was the Assistant US Attorney for the SDNY while Rudy Giuliani was the US Attorney. He later became a partner at the law firm, Greenberg Traurig. Still later, Rudy Giuliani also joined Greenberg Traurig.
Berman’s dismissal seems to be either questionable judgment, or an effort to obstruct ongoing investigations. We’re way past the point of optics. Trump and Barr are in a scramble to do ANYTHING to get re-elected. Their hope is to keep the conspiracy going for four more years.
And their latest effort, to short-circuit the ongoing criminal investigations of Trump’s affiliates and associates, is only the most recent evidence. If Barr continues down this road, he will make John Mitchell, Nixon’s disgraced attorney general, who did time for his transgressions, look like a man of principle.
When Barr was up for Senate confirmation, he was the old Washington hand everyone respected and who, we were assured, had nothing but respect for the law. Now it’s clear that he’s someone who had a pedigree and the right connections, but no moral center.
Time to Wake up America! None of Trump’s people have a moral center. We have a few weeks remaining to register and turn out voters in such overwhelming numbers that these bastards are thrown out of office.
If you want to know where Trump is headed on civil disobedience in 2020, consider this about China’s Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Nicholas Kristof reminded NYTreaders what Trump had to say about it in 1989:
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it, Trump told Playboy Magazine….Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”
Overwhelming force is Trump’s plan, just like the Chinese. Here’s a list of the military, government police units and militia-like components of the US Government that are walking the streets in Washington DC:
That’s 14 discrete police and military groups patrolling DC. And it didn’t stop there. The Trump campaign just changed his MAGA hats from red to camouflage, and is calling supporters the “Trump Army“:
Yep, Trump wants an army to fight off the liberal mob.
The Daily Beast reported that Trump and Barr have come up with a possibly legal way to bring troops into America’s cities:
“The idea was to…rely on the FBI’s regional counterterrorism hubs to share information with local law enforcement about, in Barr’s own words, ‘extremists’.”
More from the Beast:
“That’s when Barr turned to an existing counterterrorism network—Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs)— led by the FBI that unite federal, state and local law enforcement to monitor and pursue suspected terrorists….The construction we are going to use is the JTTF. It’s a tried and true system. It worked for domestic homegrown terrorists. We’re going to apply that model….It already integrates your state and local people. It’s intelligence driven. We want to lean forward and charge… anyone who violates a federal law in connection with this rioting.
We need to have people in control of the streets so we can go out and work with law enforcement…identify these people in the crowd, pull them out and prosecute them…”
See any reason to be concerned?
According to multiple current and former Justice Department and law enforcement officials, Barr is misusing the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) in support of Trump’s insistence that antifascists are “terrorists” exploiting the nationwide protests. Using the JTTF against the protesters is a political ploy to make being anti-Trump look like terrorism.
Authoritarians world-wide call domestic demonstrators “terrorists”. Saddam did it in Iraq, so does al-Assad in Syria. Duterte does it in the Philippines, as does Erdogan in Turkey. Xi does it in China.
And now, it’s happening here.
On Wednesday, Trump again violated the First Amendment by authorizing federal police to block clergy’s access to St. John’s Episcopal Church (the one he used for his photo-op), effectively “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion.
That, from the holy defender of religious rights.
Monday wasn’t the worst day in American civilian-military relations. But the use of force to create a photo-op, including ordering military helicopters to fly low, scattering protesters with the rotor downwash, broke many established norms.
Trump followed that by deploying many different groups of uniformed “peace-keepers” to the streets of DC. So Monday became the worst day for American civilian-military relations since the military attacked the veterans march on Washington when Herbert Hoover was president.
If Trump insists on sending troops to states where governors don’t want them, will they go? On Monday, elements left their bases for operations in DC, which has a special status that Trump could legally exploit. That’s different from sending regular US forces into states without an invitation. That would cross a red line.
How will the public react? The US military is one of America’s most popular institutions. In part, because it is seen as non-partisan, whereas most other government institutions are viewed as partisan. If the US military enters American cities, public support of the armed forces will surely drop.
Trump’s rhetoric continues to support white supremacists and far-right militias, while encouraging violence by his followers.
His effort to label the demonstrators as outsiders is meant to justify an increasingly aggressive police/military response. In the past few days, we saw them attack regular people on the streets, along with the journalists reporting on what was happening.
Former high-ranking military officers are finally calling out Trump, but his authoritarian instincts combined with Barr’s right-leaning reflexes pose a clear and present danger to our democracy.
Let’s hope the republic is still here for us to defend by overwhelmingly voting him out on November 3d.
They’re already telegraphing how they might respond if they lose.
