The wealthy are turning America into their personal possession. And they don’t care one bit if the 99 percent rot. But it would not be happening without the politicians who make the tax laws. Both parties have sold their souls to wealthy special interests so that they can keep power:
The wealthiest 400 American families paid an 8.2% average rate on their federal individual income taxes from 2010 to 2018, according to a White House analysis published Thursday.
Those richest 400 families represent the top 0.0002% of all taxpayers, according to the White House report.
Their estimated tax rate, paid on $1.8 trillion of income over the nine-year period, is "low" relative to other taxpayers, according to the report, which was authored by economists in the Council of Economic Advisers and Office of Management and Budget.
By comparison, Americans paid an average 13.3% tax rate on their income in 2018, according to a Tax Foundation analysis. (This figure includes all taxpayers, including the wealthiest.)
Increasingly Americans are beginning to realize that the Democratic Party won’t lift a finger to protect America from rising fascism of the GOP. Republicans are attacking the rule of law and our constitution with impunity. We are on our own:
The Republican Party is attacking American democracy in plain sight. The party of Trump is doing this without fear, with little need for guile or subterfuge and with unabashed, bold confidence.
In essence, the Republican Party and its followers and allies have declared that no American election is considered valid unless a Republican candidate wins. This is obviously the stuff of fascist, white supremacist and anti-democratic regimes where the endpoint is a form of “managed democracy” similar to Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, where elections still occur but one party rules indefinitely.
Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly Donald Trump’s national security adviser, even appeared to endorse a military coup during an appearance at an event Sunday in Dallas “that was attended by prominent peddlers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Big Lie,” as CNN reports. A member of the audience reportedly asked Flynn why an event similar to the recent military coup in Myanmar — which has been celebrated by many in the global far right — couldn’t happen in the United States. “No reason, I mean, it should happen here,” Flynn said.
Matt Gaetz and his MAGA buddies don’t seem to know who their history. They could tell that they were retweeting a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald in uniform. If they were true patriots they would know what JFK’s assassin looked like. And certainly shouldn’t be celebrating him as a proud veteran on Memorial Day.
You can’t make this up
On Memorial Day, Twitter blew up as several prominent right-wing figures were tricked into honoring Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
The ruse was pulled off by The Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein, who shared a picture of Oswald as a young private first class to several conservative accounts with the request, “My grandpa’s a big fan of yours and is a veteran, he would be thrilled if you could RT this photo of him for Memorial Day.” Right-wingers who fell for the prank included Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), American Conservative Union president and lobbyist Matt Schlapp, and revisionist history documentary filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza.
Right-wingers who fell for the prank included Rep. Matt Gaetz, American Conservative Union president and lobbyist Matt Schlapp, and revisionist history documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza. https://t.co/OnVKKkn83D
This is the same Trump who has mocked veterans and those who the supreme sacrifice for their country:
Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’
The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.
On Veteran’s Day in 2018 his excuse for not visiting Arlington Cemetery, which is standard for U.S. presidents, was that he was “busy:“
In a rare expression of a regret, President Donald Trump has admitted that he made a mistake by not visiting Arlington National Cemetery on the Monday after Veterans Day, a presidential tradition.
Why didn’t he go when he had the chance? According to a transcript of his conversation with Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace from an interview set to air Sunday, he was “extremely busy” on Veterans Day.
Speaking with Wallace about his decision not to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France on Saturday November 10 and Arlington Cemetery outside DC on Monday, Trump admitted “he wishes he had a rare do-over,” Wallace told Fox News’ Shepard Smith on Friday.
“I should have done that,” Trump said. “I was extremely busy on calls for the country, we did a lot of calling as you know.” (The president’s schedule for Monday November 12 was empty, at least of public events.)
It is shocking but not surprising. The Biden administration is siding with Trump and against those who peacefully protested outside the White House. The press and some Democratic politicians at the time denounced the goon tactics used by cops to clear the park. And it was all done so that Trump could get a photo op. The Biden administration believes that protecting power is more important than fighting for free speech. That is the mentality of those in power in Washington:
Lawyers for the Justice Department urged a federal judge on Friday to dismiss lawsuits against former president Donald Trump, former attorney general William P. Barr and other officials for last June’s violent clearing of demonstrators from Lafayette Square by U.S. military and police.
Trump and other U.S. officials are immune from civil lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president and to secure his movements, government lawyers said of the actions taken ahead of a photo op of Trump holding a Bible in front of the historic St. John’s Church. A crowd of more than 1,000 largely peaceful demonstrators were protesting the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis before the park was cleared.
A year to the week after Floyd’s death, Justice Department lawyers argued that the lawsuits should also be tossed because last November’s presidential election made future violations unlikely. The government said the square has been reopened, and President Biden’s administration does not share Trump’s stated hostility toward Floyd and the racial justice movement.
The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., Black Lives Matter, other civil liberties groups and individual protesters accuse Trump and senior officials of driving the June 1 events. Military, federal and local police forcibly cleared the square using batons, clubs, horses, pepper spray, smoke and fired projectiles 30 minutes before a citywide curfew began. Images of violence drew a national backlash against Trump’s calls for “overwhelming force” to put down those he called “THUGS” and domestic terrorists. The nation’s top military official later apologized for walking with Trump before television cameras that day.
Lawyers for the ACLU said that despite legal precedents, the government’s defense would “authorize brutality with impunity” in the heart of Washington at one of the most symbolic spaces within the seat of the federal government.
If their defense was upheld, U.S. authorities “could have used live ammunition to clear the park, and nobody would have a claim against that as an assault on their constitutional rights,” said Scott D. Michelman, legal director for ACLU-D.C.
It has come to this. We are not allowed exercise freedom of speech because of fear of neo-NAZIs. This outrageous and disgusting. How about you find these people and lock them if they are such a threat. How about you provide security. Basically the fascists have won if we are afraid to commemorate one of the worst acts of racist terror in America history. That means we have not progressed one damn bit since that tragic event 100 years ago. We cannot and must not accept this failure by the government to protect Americans from evil:
On Thursday, KFOR news reported that the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission has canceled the “Remember & Rise” event marking the 100th anniversary of the infamous race riot that destroyed “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma — following warnings from the Department of Homeland Security that the event could be a target for white supremacist terrorists.
It is illegal to ask help from a foreign country in political campaign. Democrats must investigate this:
President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton alleges in a new book that Mr. Trump pushed Chinese President Xi Jinping in trade negotiations to agree to purchase American agricultural products in order to boost Mr. Trump’s political standing with U.S. farmers and help him win reelection.
In an excerpt of Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” published by The Wall Street Journal, Bolton condemns what he calls the “incoherence” of the president’s trade policy and his focus on winning a second term. The excerpt was published minutes after stories about the memoir’s contents appeared in The New York Times and Washington Post, both of which said they had obtained copies of the book ahead of its scheduled June 23 release.
The latest insult directed at progressives by Joe Biden is a particular eye opener. Biden gave conservative, David Brooks, a NY Times contributor, an interview in where he basically mocks progressives. It’s one thing to snub those who seek a more just society. But why do it with an enemy of the left:
“The progressives don’t like me because I’m not prepared to take on what I would say and they would say is a socialist agenda.” He thinks the people who take the big risks to generate wealth should reap the big rewards.
He’s suspicious of the generous college debt forgiveness plans that have sprung up on the left. “The idea that you go to Penn and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree.”
Biden seemed unable to keep his own campaign pledges straight, muddling his student debt cancellation proposals. For the record, he campaigned on two distinct planks. One: “immediate” cancellation of $10,000 for every borrower as a form of Covid relief. Two: the cancellation of all undergraduate student loans for debt-holders who attended public universities and HBCUs and who earn up to $125,000 a year. Keeping these two promises is the absolute minimum the Biden administration needs to do to keep the public’s trust.
But the Biden administration should, and can, do much more. Biden should cancel all student debt using executive authority. It is the simplest way the new administration can help tens of millions of people who are being crushed by the double whammy of unpayable loans and an economy-destroying pandemic.
Yet, to date, all the Biden administration has done for this country’s 45 million student debtors is extend Trump and DeVos’s federal student loan payment suspension. Continuing a flawed Republican policy is hardly a progressive victory – especially not for the 8 million FFEL borrowers who are unconscionably left out of the moratorium.
Jobrny's Rant 