“The nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain confirmed Thursday that it will not dispense abortion pills in several states where they remain legal — acting out of an abundance of caution amid a shifting policy landscape, threats from state officials and pressure from anti-abortion activists.”
It seems that Republican state attorneys general in about 24 states wrote to Walgreens in February, threatening legal action if the company continued distributing the drugs in their states.
These abortion pills are the nation’s most frequently used method for ending a pregnancy.
The company subsequently told the states that it will not dispense abortion pills either by mail or at their brick-and-mortar locations in those states.
This is where America is at: Large corporations are doing more to obstruct access to abortion than the law requires. On to cartoons.
Women’s history month at the Supreme Court:
Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the Oscar-nominated movie “Women Talking” last night. It’s message is that women should no longer accept things they cannot change; that it’s time to change the things they can’t accept. Like the Dobbs decision.
Tennessee outlaws drag. And they’re so pro-life that they want to execute any woman who gets an abortion.:
Poppy bloom, Picacho Peak SP, Picacho, AZ – February 2023 photo by Leila Shehab
Wrongologist blog commenter Terry McK had this to say responding to Wrongo’s post about Speaker McCarthy and his lieutenant Marjorie Taylor Green’s antics surrounding gifting Tucker Carlson with the J6 videos:
“We lie to ourselves about the nature of our government…..Nor have we a marketplace of ideas. We could have – but the marketplace is dominated by the intellectual equivalent of soda and snacks….Now most speeches are performance art delivered to an empty chamber. ”
He’s correct. Here are a few recent developments that track with Terry’s thinking. First, Joe Perticone in the Bulwark: (emphasis by Wrongo)
“A strange proposal is working its way through the Idaho state legislature that would have that state envelop more than a dozen of Oregon’s most conservative eastern counties—in effect, shifting the border between the states 200-plus miles to the west. While last Wednesday’s vote in the Idaho House approving this “Greater Idaho” idea is nonbinding, it does legitimize the movement that has long been promoting the plan.”
A Bluer Oregon and a Redder Idaho. This movement is by the far-Right members of Idaho’s government. And among the 15 Oregon counties targeted to become part of Idaho, 11 have so far formally expressed their support for the plan. So unlike Taylor Greene’s rantings about a national divorce, this idea has a lot of elected officials on board.
“Two Republican lawmakers in Idaho have introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for anyone in the state to administer mRNA-based vaccines—namely…COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.”
This probably won’t go anywhere. And state-level politicians everywhere also have tons of bad ideas.
“…there was a constant traffic of small jets and private aircraft, humming into and out of a town that has become a modern refuge for people with remote jobs…many of them driven to the Northern Rockies by a worry…that the rest of America is on its way toward environmental, political, or economic breakdown.”
Pogue speaks with Catharine O’Neill, great-great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller. She’s a Conservative who worked in Trump’s State Department and after the 2020 election moved to Wyoming:
“She…views the corporate elite as enemies of America and believes that we’re on the cusp of a populist uprising against the brand of transnational capitalism championed by Republicans for most of the last half-century.”
She lives on a 580-acre “vertically integrated cattle operation” she started. Today she’s anti both Parties but would happily vote for Tucker Carlson if he’d step forward. These are the thoughts of the “dissident right”. A few of the wealthy have created secretive groups to help people “exit’ from society and from what they see as a failing American system.
From Pogue:
“Who even needs a civil war,” one…texted me recently, “when the institutions are doing such a good job of delegitimizing themselves?”
This cohort sees the Northern Rockies as one of a few places in America that will be livable once life in much of America is fighting heat waves, floods, storms, and fires. They’re focused on how to live through “managed decline,” the wind-down period after the age of cheap fossil-fuels and rapid economic and technological progress wane.
They’re certain that will also bring about the erosion of America’s “state capacity”, the government’s ability to do things. Then our “real economy” will hollow out, and our political divisions will worsen, even more than currently.
But this movement isn’t only supported by the wealthy. Average American workers are increasingly priced out of housing and better educational opportunities for their kids. Many of these workers have service jobs that support the wealthy from Los Angeles to Jackson Hole, and from Cape Cod to Miami Beach. A Moody’s Analytics report says that for the first time in 20 years, the average American is “rent-burdened”, meaning they put at least 30% of their income towards housing.
This makes many middle class Americans very susceptible to arguments by the dissident right about how corporate elites and modern capitalism are hurting their chances to realize the American Dream. This was the basic thrust of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in 2011. Now, the right wing is trying to take up their cause.
Will there be a second civil war? It doesn’t need to be a war. People don’t understand how easy it would be to launch an insurgency in America. We should take a lesson from the way the Taliban defeated the American military using small arms, and there are plenty of small arms in America. Insurgencies are less a war than an extended political conflict, in which the insurgents try to get governments to overreact. And when they inevitably do, the insurgents build support. It doesn’t take all that much to create a plausible scenario for conflict.
This is Wrongo’s second wakeup call this week. We can’t do much about the wealthy who tell themselves that they’re better off without America.
But we can and must do a lot to persuade average Americans not to fall victim to their rhetoric.
Wrongo and Ms. Right will be heading back to the US on Monday morning, so this is the last post from London. The news from America was both typical and troubling again this week. But let’s start with a UK-based cartoon from the Financial Times that drives home the point about how long it’s taking to negotiate a Brexit deal:
Meanwhile, back in the USA, the GOP Congress Critters who broke into the hearing were simply following orders:
What happens when you have the best lawyers:
New White House Ukraine strategy:
Let’s send healing thoughts to Jimmy Carter, who broke his pelvis this week:
Nice message from London:
October 2019 iPhone photo by Wrongo
It occurred to Wrongo that the diversity in England is due at least in part to being the headquarters of the British Empire, followed by being a part of the EU for what is now 47 years. With Brexit, those who voted “Leave” wish for a country that is less diverse.
Today’s wake-up call is for the Republican Party.
Beginning with Barry Goldwater in 1964, the Republican Party began its deal with the Devil by starting their catering to those on the farthest Right edge of the political spectrum, inviting people who traffic in anger, hatred, religious zealotry, and fearmongering of those not like them, inside the GOP tent.
The election of Ronald Reagan helped bring these zealots some legitimacy, not because he was one of them, but because he had courted them in his first run for the White House.
We forget that in 1976, an evangelical Christian who taught Sunday school, and who endeavored to follow Christ in his daily life ran for President and won. But, despite Jimmy Carter’s strong Christian beliefs, Evangelicals went heavily for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Because they admired his Christian faith? No, his faith seemed situational. But he projected what they perceived as strength and leadership.
Evangelicals ignored one of their own in favor of a secular Republican who talked tough and affected an air of someone who could talk tough when events called for toughness. Turns out that for Evangelicals, like many groups, are primarily concerned with political power; their need for a theologically-sound candidate takes a back seat whenever it has to.
That’s the reality today, as it was back then. Trump is barely Christian, and Cruz is solidly Christian, but the politics of the Christian Right demands fealty to a political agenda that tolerates hatred, exclusion, and intolerance. Therefore, Trump and Cruz quality.
The contrast between the Democratic and Republican parties couldn’t be more sharply defined.
Since the late 1800s, when businesses were undertaking tremendous consolidation, leading to the formation of trusts, Republicans supported business, despite the fact that business was beginning to prey on people and overshadow the government.
After the brief Republican Progressive period from 1890-1917, in which Republicans were the force behind “trust-busting”, they have advanced an increasingly exclusionary and discriminatory agenda, denying a collective responsibility to care for our fellow human beings in favor of elevating corporate interests along with their view of individual liberties above all else. Government is an instrument designed to show strength, project American power, and enforce a neo-liberal, dog-eat-dog economic worldview, one that will take the social contract back to where it was in the early 1900’s.
Democrats understood that government needs to be more than a police and fire department. One of the most important roles assumed by government was ensuring that we create a level playing field for all citizens, that corporations were not first among equals in America. They also believed that we must look after those who are down on their luck by providing a social safety net.
Government was not to be primarily an instrument for projecting power and protecting the influential, but rather one of ensuring the American social contract, while protecting our citizens from the abuses of big business.
After years of courting the Radical Right, thinking that they could be kept under control, Establishment Republicans now understand that, not only do they no longer have control, the inmates are now running the asylum – poorly. Faced with the reality that the bill for their deal with the Devil has come due, Republicans trotted out Mitt Romney to make the case against The Donald, who responded with crude personal insults and inappropriate sexual innuendo:
Congratulations, Republicans, you have only yourselves to blame. Now, you desperately need a Wrongo Wake up Call. To help you wake up, let’s return to the “small hands” innuendo of the last GOP debate.
Here are the Talking Heads doing “Born Under Punches” live in Rome in 1980, from their great album, “Remain in Light”. This 8-minute live version is worth your time, since it includes spectacular guest guitar work by Adrian Belew, who played with Frank Zappa and King Crimson.
Some think the guitar that Belew is playing was originally jimmy Hendrix’s (the one he burned at the Monterey Pop festival). Frank Zappa repaired it, and loaned it to Adrian Belew, whose main influence was Hendrix.
The bassist in the white dress is Tina Weymouth who is (still) married to Chris Franz, the Talking Heads guitarist. Here are some sample lyrics:
Take a look at these hands Take a look at these hands The hand speaks, the hand of a government man Well I’m a tumbler born under punches, I’m so thin
Hmmm. Is Trump a government man?
Those who view the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Last year, Yale paid about $480 million to private equity fund managers as compensation — about $137 million in annual management fees, and another $343 million in performance fees, also known as carried interest — to manage about $8 billion, one-third of Yale’s endowment.
He tells us that, of the $1 billion the endowment contributed to the university’s operating budget, only $170 million was earmarked for tuition assistance, fellowships and prizes. He reported that private equity fund managers also received more than students at four other endowments; Harvard, the University of Texas, Stanford and Princeton.
He makes another great point, that university endowments are exempt from corporate income tax because universities support the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. The tax advantage also benefits the fund managers whose carried interest is taxed at lower capital gains rates rather than ordinary income rates. It isn’t a coincidence that hedge fund managers return the favor to their large university clients. Kenneth C. Griffin gave Harvard $150 million in 2014. This year, Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chairman of the private equity giant Blackstone, pledged $150 million to Yale toward a new student center. John A. Paulson, another hedge fund manager, topped both when he gave Harvard $400 million in June.
Maybe these university endowments need to do more to support students and faculty, and less to support fund managers, if they are to keep their tax-exempt status.
On to cartoons. With the email server and new polls, Hillary did not have a good week:
Maybe if the Obama years hadn’t decimated the Democratic bench for an entire generation, we wouldn’t have to rely on two senior citizens slugging it out for the chance to call the White House their retirement home.
Another senior, Mr. Biden, awaits the call, if Hillary falters:
