Billionaire KOCH - This Family Suffering Is On You

 

KOCH's - You can fix this, but you don't

For shame:

MILITARY FAMILIES

 

Military families go hungry as US defense spending soars

Washington gleefully pours money into endless weapons build-ups, but the rank and file can’t get help putting food on the table.

JANUARY 18, 2023,  Written by Andrea Mazzarino,

 

 link: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ Copied here without permission

 

By any standard, the money the United States government pours into its military is simply overwhelming. Take the $858-billion defense spending authorization that President Biden signed into law last month. Not only did that bill pass in an otherwise riven Senate by a bipartisan majority of 83-11, but this year’s budget increase of 4.3% is the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. Indeed, the Pentagon has been granted more money than the next 10 largest cabinet agencies combined. And that doesn’t even take into account funding for homeland security or the growing costs of caring for the veterans of this country’s post-9/11 wars. That legislation also includes the largest pay raise in 20 years for active-duty and reserve forces and an expansion of a supplemental “basic needs allowance” to support military families with incomes near the poverty line.

And yet, despite those changes and a Pentagon budget that’s gone through the roof, many U.S. troops and military families will continue to struggle to make ends meet. Take one basic indicator of welfare: whether or not you have enough to eat. Tens of thousands of service members remain “food insecure” or hungry. Put another way, during the past year, members of those families either worried that their food would run out or actually did run out of food.

As a military spouse myself and co-founder of the Costs of War Project, I recently interviewed Tech Sergeant Daniel Faust, a full-time Air Force reserve member responsible for training other airmen. He’s a married father of four who has found himself on the brink of homelessness four times between 2012 and 2019 because he had to choose between necessities like groceries and paying the rent. He managed to make ends meet by seeking assistance from local charities. And sadly enough, that airman has been in all-too-good company for a while now. In 2019, an estimated one in eight military families were considered food insecure. In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, that figure rose to nearly a quarter of them. More recently, one in six military families experienced food insecurity, according to the advocacy group Military Family Advisory Network.

The majority of members of the military largely come from middle-class neighborhoods and, not surprisingly perhaps, their struggles mirror those faced by so many other Americans. Spurred by a multitude of factors, including pandemic-related supply-chain problems and — you guessed it — war, inflation in the U.S. rose by more than 9% in 2022. On average, American wages grew by about 4.5% last year and so failed to keep up with the cost of living. This was no less true in the military.

An Indifferent Public

An abiding support for arming Ukraine suggests that many Americans are at least paying attention to that aspect of U.S. military policy. Yet here’s the strange thing (to me, at least): so many of us in this century seemed to care all too little about the deleterious domestic impacts of our prolonged, disastrous Global War on Terror. The U.S. military’s growing budget and a reach that, in terms of military bases and deployed troops abroad, encompasses dozens of countries, was at least partly responsible for an increasingly divided, ever more radicalized populace here at home, degraded protections for civil liberties and human rights, and ever less access to decent healthcare and food for so many Americans.

That hunger is an issue at all in a military so wildly well-funded by Congress should be a grim reminder of how little attention we pay to so many crucial issues, including how our troops are treated. Americans simply take too much for granted. This is especially sad, since government red tape is significantly responsible for creating the barriers to food security for military families.

When it comes to needless red tape, just consider how the government determines the eligibility of such families for food assistance. Advocacy groups like the National Military Family Association and MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger have highlighted the way in which the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH), a non-taxable stipend given to military families to help cover housing, is counted as part of military pay in determining the eligibility of families for food assistance. Because of that, all too many families who need such assistance are disqualified.

Debt-Funded Living, Debt-Funded Wars

The BAH issue is but one part of a larger picture of twenty-first-century military life with its torrent of expenses, many of which (like local housing markets) you can’t predict. I know because I’ve been a military spouse for 12 years. As an officer’s wife and a white, cisgender woman from an upper-middle-class background, I’m one of the most privileged military spouses out there. I have two graduate degrees, a job I can do from home, and children without major health issues. Our family has loved ones who, when our finances get tight, support us logistically and financially with everything from childcare to housing expenses to Christmas gifts for our children.

And yet even for us, affording the basics has sometimes proved challenging. During the first few months after any move to a new duty station, a typical uprooting experience for military families, we’ve had to wield our credit cards to get food and other necessities like gas. Add to that take-out and restaurant meals, hotel rooms, and Ubers as we wait weeks for private contractors to arrive with our kitchen supplies, furniture, and the like.

Tag on the cost of hiring babysitters while we wait for affordable childcare centers in the new area to accept our two young children, and then the high cost of childcare when we finally get spots. In 2018, during one of those moves, I discovered that the military had even begun putting relocated families like ours at the back of wait lists for childcare fee assistance — “to give others a chance,” one Pentagon representative told me when I called to complain. In each of the five years before both of our children entered public school, we spent nearly twice as much on childcare as the average junior enlisted military service member gets in total income for his or her family.

Our finances are still struggling to catch up with demands like these, which are the essence of military life.

But don’t worry, even if your spouse isn’t nearby, there are still plenty of social opportunities (often mandated by commanders) for family members to get together with one another, including annual balls for which you’re expected to purchase pricey tickets. In the post-9/11 era, such events have become more common and are frequently seen as obligatory. In this age of the gig economy and the rolling back of workplace benefits and protections, the military is, in its own fashion, leading the way when it comes to “bringing your whole self (money included) to work.”

Now, add the Covid-19 pandemic into this fun mix. The schedules of many military personnel only grew more complicated given pre- and post-deployment quarantine requirements and labor and supply-chain issues that made moving ever less efficient. Military spouse unemployment rates, which had hovered around 24% in the pre-pandemic years, shot up to more than 30% by early 2021. Spouses already used to single parenting during deployments could no longer rely on public schools and daycare centers to free them to go to work. Infection rates in military communities soared because of travel, as well as weak (or even nonexistent) Covid policies. All of this, of course, ensured that absenteeism from work and school would only grow among family members. And to make things worse, as the last Congress ended, the Republicans insisted that an authorization rescinding the requirement for military personnel to get Covid vaccines become part of the Pentagon budget bill. All I can say is that’s a bit more individual freedom than this military spouse can wrap her brain around right now.

Worse yet, this country’s seemingly eternal and disastrous twenty-first-century war on terror, financed almost entirely by national debt, also ensured that members of the military, shuttled all over the planet, would incur ever more of it themselves. It should be no surprise then that many more military families than civilian ones struggle with credit-card debt.

And now, as our country seems to be gearing up for possible confrontations not just with terror groups or local rebel outfits in places like Afghanistan or Iraq, but with other great powers, the problems of living in the U.S. military are hardly likely to get easier.

The Fire of War Is Spreading

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has at least publicly acknowledged hunger as a problem in the military and taken modest steps to alleviate the financial stresses on military families. Still, that problem is far larger than the Pentagon is willing to face. According to Abby Leibman, MAZON’s chief executive officer, Pentagon officials and military base commanders commonly deny that hunger exists among their subordinates. Sometimes they even discourage families in need of food assistance from seeking help. Daniel Faust, the sergeant I mentioned earlier, told me that his colleagues and trainees, concerned about seeming needy or not convinced that military services offering help will actually be useful, often won’t ask for assistance — even if their incomes barely support their families. Indeed, a recently released RAND Corporation investigation into military hunger found that some troops worried that seeking food assistance would jeopardize their careers.

I’m lucky that I haven’t had to seek food assistance from the government. However, I’ve heard dozens of officers, enlisted personnel, and family members shrug off such problems by attributing debt among the troops to lack of education, immaturity, or an inability to cope with stress in healthy ways. What you rarely hear is someone in this community complaining that military pay just doesn’t support the basic needs of families.

Ignoring food needs in the military is, in the end, about more than just food. Individual cooking and communal meals can help individuals and families cope in the absence of adequate mental healthcare or… well, so much else. The combat veteran who takes up baking as a tactile way of reminding himself that he’s here in the present and not back in Afghanistan or Iraq or Somalia or Syria is learning to conquer mental illness. The family that gathers for meals between deployments is seizing an opportunity to connect. In an age when military kids are suffering from widespread mental-health problems, eating together is one way parents can sometimes combat anxiety and depression.

Whatever is life-enhancing and doesn’t require a professional degree is vital in today’s stressed-out military. Heaven only knows, we’ve had enough excitement in the years of the war on terror. Perhaps in its wake you won’t be surprised to learn that military suicide rates have reached an all-time high, while mental healthcare is remarkably inaccessible (especially to families whose kids have disabilities or mental illnesses). And don’t let me get started on sexual assault or child abuse, or the poor school performance of so many military kids, or even the growth of divorce, not to speak of violent crime, in the services in these years.

Yes, problems like these certainly existed in the military before the post-9/11 war on terror began, but they grew as both the scale and scope of our disastrous military engagements and the Pentagon budget exploded. Now, with the war in Ukraine and growing tensions with China over Taiwan, we live in what could prove to be the aftermath from hell. In other words, to quote 1980s star Billy Joel’s famous record title, we did start this fire.

Believe me, what’s truly striking about this year’s Pentagon funding isn’t that modest military pay raise. It’s the way Congress is allowing the Department of Defense to make ever more stunning multi-year spending commitments to corporate arms contractors. For example, the Army has awarded Raytheon Technologies $2 billion in contracts to replace (or even expand) supplies of missile systems that have been sent to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia. So count on one thing: the CEOs of Raytheon and other similar companies will not go hungry (though some of their own workers just might).

Nor are those fat cats even consistently made to account for how they use our taxpayer dollars. To take but one example, between 2013 and 2017, the Pentagon entered into staggering numbers of contracts with corporations that had been indicted, fined, and/or convicted of fraud. The total value of those questionable contracts surpassed $334 billion. Think of how many military childcare centers could have been built with such sums.

Human Welfare, Not Corporate Welfare

Policymakers have grown accustomed to evaluating measures meant to benefit military families in terms of how “mission ready” such families will become. You would think that access to food was such a fundamental need that anyone would simply view it as a human right. The Pentagon, however, continues to frame food security as an instrument of national security, as if it were another weapon with which to arm expendable service members.

To my mind, here’s the bottom line when it comes to that staggering Pentagon budget: For the military and the rest of us, how could it be that corporate weapons makers are in funding heaven and all too many members of our military in a homegrown version of funding hell? Shouldn’t we be fighting, first and foremost, for a decent life for all of us here at home? Veteran unemployment, the pandemic, the Capitol insurrection — these crises have undermined the very reasons many joined the military in the first place.

If we can’t even feed the fighters (and their families) decently, then who or what exactly are we defending? And if we don’t change course now by investing in alternatives to what we so inaccurately call national defense, I’m afraid that there will indeed be a reckoning.

Those worried about looking soft on national defense by even considering curbing military spending ought to consider at least the security implications of military hunger. We all have daily needs which, if unmet, can lead to desperation. Hunger can and does fuel armed violence, and has helped lead the way to some of the most brutal regimes in history. In an era when uniformed personnel were distinctly overrepresented among the domestic extremists who attacked our Capitol on January 6, 2021, one of the fastest ways to undermine our quality of life may just be to let our troops and their families, hungry and in anguish, turn against their own people.

This piece has been republished with permission from TomDispatch.

Written by
Andrea Mazzarino

 

Billionaires Shame Congress - but We CAN Protect Democracy

It is an open shame for Democracy - 

Maybe, just maybe we can stop Congress from facilitating corruption with the Spanberger. “Our Easy to READ Act"

PASS THIS LAW:  

Johnson, Spanberger Introduce Bipartisan Bill Requiring Members of Congress to Electronically File Public Financial Disclosures

Basic Economics for Billionaires

 

Some of you billionaires and assorted hangers-on now are pushing your agents in Congress to 'defund' Social Security.

 

You may have one or both of two rationalizations for your idea:

 

First, it's a lot of money and you just want to take it away from old and sick people.

 

I'll call that Greed, plain and simple.

 

Or...

 

Second, you don't give a flying f--k about the money - you just want to hurt other people.

 

I'll call that Hatred.

 

Know this: If you are partly or wholly in the second group, KARMA WILL come for you. It is only a matter of time.

 

May God have mercy on your soul.

 

BUT, if you're in the greedy first Group and you just want all the money, perhaps you think you can get it by reducing payments to old and sick people. But, that’s wrong, plain and simple.

 

[BTW, I am staggered by your ignorance.]

 

Here’s how it really works:

 

Most of the money circulating in our economy goes directly to businesses.

 

As billionaires, you already own most businesses. Therefore, you already receive the money people spend.

 

Reducing Social Security will reduce the total amount of money all people receive.

 

Thus, reducing Social Security will reduce the amount of money you receive.

 

I repeat: IF you reduce Social Security payments, that reduction WILL reduce YOUR INCOME.

 

Here’s some Economics to sort it out:

 

Economists measure economic activity by counting ALL the payments that people and/or households spend. That’s called the Gross Domestic Product or GDP for short; the money value of the goods and services produced in a country in a year.

 

Look at the Circular Chart below.

GDP is the spending side or top of the circle, or Consumption/Purchases, Savings/Investment and Taxes/Government Purchases.

 

When businesses receive revenues from Consumers, expanding businesses’ investments and Government purchases, the businesses then hand it back to households in the forms of wages, rents, interests and profits.

 

Literally, what goes around, comes around.

 

What happens to you if you reduce Social Security by $ 1.0 Trillion?

 

Here are some numbers: a One Trillion Dollar cut in Social Security payments will reduce consumption spending and GDP by about $2 T in the first year and a total of $5T at the end of five years.

 

I repeat: Reducing SS payments by $1.0 T reduces YOUR INCOME BY $2.0 T in the first year.

 

That’s a bad deal for you and for the rest of us.

 

We are in this together, like it or not…………….

 

Reduce Political Violence with the Safety Net

Billionaires can lower tensions simply by directing their agents in Congress to allow better social programs. Billionaires' agents in Congress can simply let any such proposed legislation pass. 

Billionaires are on a path to ruin the United States. They take too much for themselves and leave too little for the rest of us. 

Seemingly their greed knows no limits while we seem to fear any actions in response. 

What can we do about our fear to act?

“This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!”  ― Maxim Gorky [Born: March 28, 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Died: June 18, 1936, Gorki-10, Russia- wikipedia]

Billionaires can lower tensions simply by directing their agents in Congress to allow better social programs. Billionaires' agents in Congress can simply let any such proposed legislation pass. 

Here's a successful roadmap to follow from Nordic countries:

Social policy and welfare

'The Nordic welfare model is often hailed as a model in international forums. Few other countries in the world provide such a good and well-developed financial safety net for their citizens. The idea of equal opportunities for all is all-pervasive in the Nordic countries. In practice, it has resulted in huge efforts to reduce economic inequality.

While the Reformation, people’s movements and the workers’ movement all brought about wide-ranging social change, it was only when the countries of the Region were rebuilding in the wake of World War II that the welfare state took shape and the Nordic model emerged. The aim of the model is to create space for high standards of living, combined with low levels of inequality – and all based on healthy national finances and spreading the benefits throughout the population.

The Nordic countries’ relatively small size and their pre-existing civil society associations and public bodies made it possible to establish flat hierarchies. Similarly, collective efforts to develop the welfare state were made possible by the Nordic principles of openness, transparency and freedom of expression. This openness has given rise to an unusually high level of trust in other people and in official agencies, which means people are willing to pay relatively high taxes in order to fund welfare provision. Nor is welfare provisions based on individual tax contributions. It is based on need and circumstances.

The Nordic model today

The modern Nordic model is characterised by a public sector that provides its citizens with welfare services and a social safety net. Specifically, this includes child benefits, parental leave, health services and hospitals, all of which are free at the point of delivery. The public sector also looks after sick and unemployed people and senior citizens. The basic values underpinning the model are compassion, tolerance and the conviction that all humans are of equal worth.

Nordic welfare is built on the idea of ​​good health for all. Universal initiatives have enabled the Nordic countries to combat infectious diseases through vaccination and to make significant progress in combating lifestyle diseases via alcohol policy and smoking bans.

Socio-economic equality is a key characteristic of the Nordic countries and helps create safe and secure societies. This is reflected in the statistics, e.g. for better health and longer life expectancy.   

Pressure on the model

The basic principle underpinning the welfare state is that citizens have the right to help. They are also expected to contribute to society. Popular participation in a wide range of different groups and associations enriches Nordic culture, strengthens democracy and contributes to higher quality of life. The Nordic countries top the international rankings for openness, trust and happiness. 

In a society where the majority are relatively comfortable, people are less likely to feel excluded. That does not mean, however, that there is no poverty, health inequality or exclusion in the Region, and these issues are still on the political agenda. The ability to continually adapt to new challenges is a prerequisite for preserving the Nordic model and for coming up with innovative new welfare solutions.'

https://www.norden.org/en/information/social-policy-and-welfare#:~:text=The%20Nordic%20model%20today,at%20the%20point%20of%20delivery

Billionaires Endanger the National Security of the United States

The National Security of the United States is at risk due to our extremes of income and wealth inequality.

Americans may resort to violence to change inequality. While it is not certain, it is possible that millions of armed American citizens may rise in an armed revolution. The MAGA cohort number about 35% of the population or upwards of 100 Million people.

Many Americans know the system does not work for them. Here's why:  The extremely rich among us or the billionaires, take so much money from the economy that hunger, hopelessness and homelessness abound. 

Billionaires corrupt our systems so that normal methods of addressing imbalances do not work.

Billionaires deflect concerns about their accumulations by addressing a variety of social issues instead of the inequality issue. Their sole motivation appears to be the unbounded greed for power and money among the super rich.

In the event of such an uprising, rioters will consider the super rich with revulsion and disgust at the incredible cruelty they inflict on Americans every day.

Billionaires have the power and influence to correct the systems. Here's how: Simply instruct their elected minions to allow in the United States the Nordic style social benefits and safety net as installed in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.  

Perhaps we can avoid an insurrection by installing these economic policies:

'The Nordic model today

The modern Nordic model is characterised by a public sector that provides its citizens with welfare services and a social safety net. Specifically, this includes child benefits, parental leave, health services and hospitals, all of which are free at the point of delivery. The public sector also looks after sick and unemployed people and senior citizens. The basic values underpinning the model are compassion, tolerance and the conviction that all humans are of equal worth.

Nordic welfare is built on the idea of ​​good health for all. Universal initiatives have enabled the Nordic countries to combat infectious diseases through vaccination and to make significant progress in combating lifestyle diseases via alcohol policy and smoking bans.

Socio-economic equality is a key characteristic of the Nordic countries and helps create safe and secure societies. This is reflected in the statistics, e.g. for better health and longer life expectancy.'

see more here: [https://www.norden.org/en/information/social-policy-and-welfare#:~:text=The%20Nordic%20model%20today,at%20the%20point%20of%20delivery]

'You break it, you own it.' Colin Powell

 

 

We have among us a few really rich and powerful people. I address them.

 

You amass wealth by finding loopholes in our system, which enable you to steal a little bit from everybody. You take  some small amounts so we do not notice the theft individually - we notice only that we are becoming even poorer.

 

You privileged few try to avoid responsibility for the whole of us while you reinforce the system flaws protecting you from loss or responsibility.

 

However, the Powell doctrine quoted above states the obvious: once you use the system for personal advantage, you assume responsibility for all of it. [https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/the-pottery-barn-rule-syria-edition/408193/]

 

In our society today, things go wrong because you have resources and ability but you fail to make it right for all our people.

 

I think that you have compromised our system so thoroughly that traditional methods of correcting flaws no longer work. [See THE SCHEME: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with Jennifer Mueller, The New Press, New York, 2022]

 

In response, you have recognized the frustration of all the people, but you have consciously directed that frustration and anger toward various inconsequential things. People feel frustrated because their living conditions are very hard. Many expect things to become even worse. Some have lost Hope.

 

 

Losing Hope creates a body of our people with nothing left to lose.

 

For the time being, you appear to dodge responsibility for many flaws. However, the people will identify you in due time as the author of their hardships.

 

Plus, you have created a real danger for yourself: You have created a group of disaffected people with weapons. You allow these people to use their weapons to perpetrate political violence.

 

When you allow people to commit political violence, eventually some will identify the real people behind their difficulties.

 This happened in Iraq: Hussein

 

 

 

 

This happened in Romania:  Ceausescu

 

 

In the 1930’s FDR recognized a similar situation; in the light of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, he made a compromise with rich people.

 

The deal was that rich people would accept higher taxes while the Government worked to ease burdens of all the people and rebuild our infrastructure. I plan to provide a list of specific actions to reduce political violence and improve living standards in a later post.

 

We are in a similar situation today. Perhaps you can allow us to create a better society for all by accepting several social programs to ease the burdens of everyday life for the people. In the past you have directed your politicians to stop any such programs.

 

If you accept some programs, then you will reduce the threat of political violence and, paradoxically, increase your wealth and incomes; that’s because the people will have greater purchasing power and your businesses will make more profits.

'Daddy I wanna go home'

Suzy: 'I don't wanna live in a car anymore. I wanna sleep in my own bed'

D: 'I'm sorry Sweetie, but we can't go back there anymore.'

S. 'Why? Did I do something wrong?'

D: 'Of course you didn't do anything wrong.'

S: 'Then why can't we go back?'

D: 'Because it isn't our apartment anymore; somebody else is there now.'

S: 'Maybe if I ask real nice they'll let us stay there?'

D. 'It doesn't work that way Sweetie.'

S: 'How come Daddy?'

D: 'It just is Sweetie. It just is.'

S: 'Can we fix it?'

D: 'I'm sorry Sweetie. It takes money to fix it and we just don't have enough.'

S: 'How come?'

D: 'When I was fired from my job, we used all our money to eat and pay rent. And there isn't any more.'

S: 'Can you get another job and get more money?'

D: 'I'm trying Sweetie, I'm trying but maybe I'm losing hope.'

S: 'Why Daddy? Why?'

D: 'There are a lot of jobs but right now those jobs don't pay enough to buy food and rent. Seems like companies want us to work for free.'

S: 'Are you mad about it Daddy?'

D: 'Maybe. Maybe I'm mad about it.'

S: 'What are you gonna do?'

D: 'I don't know Sweetie, I just don't know. Maybe we can find some other folks in the same fix and try to get the rich people to pay attention to us.'

S: 'Don't they have to pay attention to us? Isn't that their job?'

D: 'You're right Sweetie. It is their job but some of the rich folks out there write laws and stuff to keep them from doing their jobs.'

S: 'Why Daddy?'

D: 'I don't know Sweetie. I really don't know. Seems like they want to take everything we have. When we don't have money, then they take our hope and our peace of mind.'

S: 'Are they bad people Daddy?'

D: 'I really don't know Sweetie. Maybe they just don't even know we're here.'

Putin Will Poison, Torture and Kill You

 If you challenge Putin and lose, he will torture, poison and then kill you.

 click here for proof, link:    Putin Torturing Saakashvili  

INFLECTION and REVOLUTION in America: UPDATE

Now is a time when Americans have trouble. Livelihoods and hope are under threat and in danger.

In history, Revolutions have happened when the people live in fear and privation

The United States of America today has an armed population who feel frustrated about their conditions.

While they are restive now, the GOP has systematically directed their anger and fear toward a series of absurdities like immigration - whether or immigrants are here legally or illegally - Trans children, Critical Race Theory, Libtards, and so forth.

The armed malcontents have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate their collective will to commit violence.

At some point, the armed malcontents will target the groups, which actually create their privation and stoke their fears: some billionaires, some corporations and some policy makers who serve those billionaires and corporations. 

The resulting violence will hurt those people and others who may or may not be guilty. 

I think it is likely that violence in historical actions happened because the rich people refused to ameliorate conditions for the people.

The United States of America may be able to prevent violence by acting decisively.

However, that requires rich people to allow the people to have hope and sustenance, specifically in these areas:

Free medical care; INCLUDING A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE.

Free education at all levels, perhaps even a stipend to active students;

Forgiveness of all student loans;

Free childcare;

Guaranteed minimum income at a living wage level;

Free transportation;

High speed rail, repair bridges and roads;

Sufficient Social Security.

In addition, any other service or product which affects many citizens.

CRITICAL - ensure the Rule of Law continues.... 

This idea is already working successfully in several countries. 

Taxing rich people to pay for these services will take a small share of their wealth and incomes; and, surprisingly, they will make even more money when the people have enough money to buy things. 

It is a stark choice.

Indictment Text for Oath Keepers from DoJ

 

See the official indictment here:  

Oath Keeper Indictment DOJ

A Faction of the Republican Party Enables Political Violence

OPINION,  THE EDITORIAL BOARD, NEW YORK TIMES 

How a Faction of the Republican Party Enables Political Violence

Nov. 26, 2022, 9:00 a.m. ET

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

This editorial is the fourth in a series, The Danger Within, urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence — and offering possible solutions. Read more about the series in a note from Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times Opinion editor.

On Oct. 12, 2018, a crowd of Proud Boys arrived at the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan. They had come to the Upper East Side club from around the country for a speech by the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes. It was a high point for the Proud Boys — which until that point had been known best as an all-male right-wing street-fighting group — in their embrace by mainstream politics.

The Metropolitan Republican Club is an emblem of the Republican establishment. It was founded in 1902 by supporters of Theodore Roosevelt, and it’s where New York City Republicans such as Fiorello La Guardia and Rudy Giuliani announced their campaigns. But the presidency of Donald Trump whipped a faction of the Metropolitan Republican Club into “an ecstatic frenzy,” said John William Schiffbauer, a Republican consultant who used to work for the state G.O.P. on the second floor of the club.

The McInnes invitation was controversial, even before a group of Proud Boys left the building and violently confronted protesters who had gathered outside. Two of the Proud Boys were later convicted of attempted assault and riot and given four years in prison. The judge who sentenced them explained the relatively long prison term: “I know enough about history to know what happened in Europe in the ’30s when political street brawls were allowed to go ahead without any type of check from the criminal justice system,” he said. Seven others pleaded guilty in the episode.

And yet Republicans at the New York club have not distanced themselves from the Proud Boys. Soon after the incident, a candidate named Ian Reilly, who, former club members say, had a lead role in planning the speech, won the next club presidency. He did so in part by recruiting followers of far-right figures, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, to pack the club’s ranks at the last minute. A similar group of men repeated the strategy at the New York Young Republicans Club, filling it with far-right members, too.

Many moderate Republicans have quit the clubs in disgust. Looking back, Mr. Schiffbauer said, Oct. 12, 2018, was a “proto” Jan. 6.

In conflicts like this one —  not all of them played out so publicly — there is a fight underway for the soul of the Republican Party. On one side are Mr. Trump and his followers, including extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. On the other side stand those in the party who remain committed to the principle that politics, even the most contentious politics, must operate within the constraints of peaceful democracy. It is vital that this pro-democracy faction win out over the extremists and push the fringes back to the fringes.

It has happened before. The Republican Party successfully drove the paranoid extremists of the John Birch Society out of public life in the 1960s. Party leaders could do so again for the current crop of conspiracy peddlers. Voters may do it for them, as they did in so many races in this year’s midterm elections. But this internal Republican Party struggle is important for reasons far greater than the tally in a win/loss column. A healthy democracy requires both political parties to be fully committed to the rule of law and not to entertain or even tacitly encourage violence or violent speech. A large faction of one party in our country fails that test, and that has consequences for all of us.

Extremist violence is the country’s top domestic terrorist threat, according to a three-year investigation by the Democratic staff members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which reported its findings last week. “Over the past two decades, acts of domestic terrorism have dramatically increased,” the committee said in its report. “National security agencies now identify domestic terrorism as the most persistent and lethal terrorist threat to the homeland. This increase in domestic terror attacks has been predominantly perpetrated by white supremacist and anti-government extremist individuals and groups.” While there have been recent episodes of violent left-wing extremism, for the past few years, political violence has come primarily from the right.

This year has been marked by several high-profile acts of political violence: an attempted break-in at an F.B.I. office in Ohio; the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House; the mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo by a white supremacist; an armed threat against Justice Brett Kavanaugh; a foiled plan to attack a synagogue in New York.

It is impossible to fully untangle the relationship between conspiracy theories and violence. But what Americans do know should sound alarms: A survey this year found that some 18 million Americans believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and that force is justified to return him to power. Of those 18 million, eight million own guns, and one million either belong to a paramilitary group or know someone who does. That’s alarming because violent people who belong to communities, online or offline, where violence is widely accepted are more likely to act. A portion of the G.O.P. has become such a community.

The full extent of this violence is not well documented. The Senate committee’s damning report concluded that the federal government, specifically the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, has “failed to systematically track and report data on domestic terrorism as required by federal law, has not appropriately allocated its resources to match the current threat and has not aligned its definitions to make its investigations consistent and its actions proportional to the threat of domestic terrorism.” Those shortcomings need to be urgently remedied.

Beyond the obvious need for better data on extremist violence, preventing or stopping the spread of extremism is complicated, although there are some important, concrete steps that can be taken. This board has argued for stronger enforcement of state anti-militia laws, closer monitoring of extremists in law enforcement and the military, and better international cooperation to tackle this transnational issue. Social media companies need to develop new tools to keep extremist material off their platforms and adjust their algorithms so users aren’t exposed to ever more extreme content.

Yet one of the most effective ways to deter political violence is to make it unacceptable in public life. To do that, all political leaders have an important role to play. In a speech in September, President Biden did his part, when he identified the threat that the dominance of specifically “MAGA Republicans” poses not just to the Democratic Party but to the entire country. “They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country,” Mr. Biden said.

A couple of months after that speech, Americans voted in midterm elections in which hundreds of “MAGA Republicans” who had enthusiastically spread extremist statements, lies and conspiracy theories ran for local, state and federal offices. Voters rejected many of them, and while that is encouraging, elections alone are not enough.

The campaign season was marked by numerous incidents in which many Republicans used speech that has been linked to violence. They depicted gay and transgender people as “groomers”; they helped spread the racist so-called great replacement theory that has inspired numerous mass shootings; they promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, not to mention ubiquitous lies about fraud and the 2020 election, which led to the Jan. 6 attack.

Despite voters’ repudiation of many of his acolytes, Mr. Trump has announced his return to the campaign trail, a move that promises to dial up the enthusiasm of his most devoted adherents. They include, of course, members of the Proud Boys. During a debate during the 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump refused to disavow them or their movement and instead told them to “stand back and stand by.” And so they did until Jan. 6.

Mr. Trump’s reinstatement on Twitter means not only further proliferation of “degrading and dehumanizing discourse,” as Brian L. Ott, an author of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage,” warned in these pages a few days ago, but also a greater likelihood of violence. As Mr. Ott explains: “Social media generally and Twitter specifically lend themselves to simple, urgent, unreflective and emotionally charged communication. When the message is one of intolerance and violence, the result is all but certain.”

Leaders in politics, law enforcement, the media and elsewhere have an obligation to do everything they can to remove from public life those who participate in or endorse political violence.

The onus falls on Republicans. While voters this month rejected some of the most extreme candidates, the party is still very much under the spell of Mr. Trump and his brand of authoritarianism. Two prominent Republicans who have been outspoken about right-wing extremism and baseless lies, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, have been driven out of office. Meanwhile, the spread of conspiracy theories that have already inspired violence continues unabated from politicians and conservative media.

Even if Mr. Trump doesn’t become the party’s nominee for president, the party and many of its supporters seem to have convinced themselves that the spread of extremism in service of their causes is not an urgent concern. Those who can influence the direction of the party — its voters and its biggest donors and supporters — must do everything they can to convince them otherwise. American democracy depends on it.

Democrats, too, have a role to play. They should not spend money on far-right fringe candidates in the primaries with the hopes of beating them in general elections. To do so only further pollutes the public square, even if it can lead to Democratic victories, as it apparently did this year. Rather than giving in to the temptation to tar the entire party with the actions of its worst members, Democrats should continue to find opportunities for bipartisanship whenever possible.

The alternative is allowing extremism to run rampant until the degradation of American politics is complete.

A scene in Roanoke, Texas, this summer gave a chilling preview of what that future might look like if violence from the right begets violence from the left, in a country deeply divided and with far more guns than people. A group of armed right-wing demonstrators turned up to protest a drag queen brunch only to find another group of people, dressed in black and holding military-style rifles. The second group called themselves the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club and reportedly took it upon themselves to provide security for the event. The local police separated the two groups and made no arrests, but this kind of confrontation is not a sign of healthy democratic debate.

Political disagreement need not include the menace of violence. Americans, and their political leaders, have the ability to choose a different future.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

'The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance'

The National Security of the United States is under continuing attack from native-born Americans.

Our recent Democrat victory over Election Deniers in the election of 2022 was victory in a battle, but the war continues.

Today there is a group of people taking away the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power in elections to further the installation a tyranny in the United States.

trump led this movement for a time but their forces continue trying to dismantle democracy and the rule of law. 

Some very rich people who formerly backed trump now support this movement.

Democratic people and organizations will have to contest this attack at every level of government and society.

Make no mistake; it is a war for the soul of America.

Violence, threats of violence, voting restrictions, frivolous lawsuits, false propaganda, bribery, lying, compromised judges, intimidation, doxxing and numerous other malicious acts have already been committed against people at every level of the legal and democratic process. 

If the forces of democracy refuse to engage all these tactics, we will cede the country to the forces of despotism. It is not a time to stand on moral niceties - the future of the country is in peril.

Evangelicals and Politics

 

Emerging treason? Politics and identity in the Emerging Church Movement

Randall W. Reed

Appalachian State University, Boone, USA

Reed, Randall W. (2012) “Emerging Treason? Politics and Identity in the Emerging Church Movement",

Critical Research on Religion, 2:1 (2014a).

Click here for complete paper:  Evangelicals and Politics

ALL of them: 'Voters Reject Election Deniers Running to Take Over Elections'

 

By Nick Corasaniti, Nov. 12, 2022, NYTimes

Every election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls this year, as voters roundly rejected extreme partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.

The national repudiation of this coalition reached its apex on Saturday, when Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, defeated Jim Marchant, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Marchant, the Republican nominee, had helped organize a national right-wing slate of candidates under the name “America First.”

With Mr. Marchant’s loss to Mr. Aguilar, all but one of those “America First” candidates were defeated. Only Diego Morales, a Republican in deep-red Indiana, was successful, while candidates in Michigan, Arizona and New Mexico were defeated.

Their losses halted a plan by some allies of former President Donald J. Trump and other influential donors to take over the election apparatus in critical states before the 2024 presidential election. The “America First” candidates, and their explicitly partisan statements, had alarmed Democrats, independent election experts and even some Republicans, who feared that if they gained office, they could threaten the integrity of future elections.

Mr. Marchant not only repeatedly claimed that Mr. Trump had won the 2020 election, but he pledged that if he were elected, Mr. Trump would again be president in 2024.

“When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get elected, we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024,” Mr. Marchant said at a rally held by the former president in October.

During the 2020 election, it was secretaries of state — both Democrats and Republicans — who stood up to efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the results. State election officials certified vote tallies over Republican objections, protected election workers from aggressive partisan poll watchers and, in at least one case, refused a personal entreaty from the president.

The next spring, several candidates pushing the false narrative that the 2020 election had been stolen announced their intention to run to be the top election officials in critical states.

Mr. Marchant said in an interview with The New York Times in January that he had been approached by Mr. Trump’s allies to run for secretary of state and had been encouraged to organize a national slate of like-minded candidates.

He quickly cobbled together the “America First” slate, including candidates from states like Michigan, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. They began touring nationally, holding forums promoting election conspiracy theories, occasionally with leading members of the QAnon movement.

Suddenly, secretary of state races became premier attractions, elevating once sleepy, bureaucratic down-ballot races to the national spotlight. Donations, especially from alarmed Democrats, quickly flooded the races. Nearly $50 million was spent on television advertising in four states — Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Minnesota — and Democrats had a 10 to 1 spending advantage.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State — which in 2019 had just one part-time staff member — had to be built on the fly. Jena Griswold, the secretary of state in Colorado and the chair of the association, hired seven full-time staff members and raised $25 million for the cycle.

“We really believe, and continue to believe, that these races have a tremendous effect on whether this country will continue to have a vibrant democracy,” Ms. Griswold said. “Or be able to have one at all.”

Polling races for secretary of state proved difficult, but concern began to grow among some Democrats as polls suggested that voters did not have democracy at the top of their list of concerns heading into the election.

But candidates like Mr. Aguilar said they heard about democracy issues daily from voters.

“People are tired of chaos,” Mr. Aguilar said in an interview. “They want stability; they want normalcy; they want somebody who’s going to be an adult and make decisions that are fair, transparent, and in the best interest of all Nevadans.”

Mr. Aguilar, a local businessman with deep ties to the Las Vegas business and gaming communities, announced his candidacy well before the primaries. He said that threats to fair elections weighed on him every day on the campaign trail.

“Look, it was scary,” Mr. Aguilar said. “And the burden that I carried throughout the campaign knowing that was pretty extensive.”

Some of the biggest Republican committees and candidates, however, avoided the slate of “America First” candidates. In Nevada, the Republican candidates for governor and Senate never held a rally with Mr. Marchant, and they never mentioned his name in the final few months.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which is the arm of the Republican National Committee that oversees races for secretary of state, chose only to back Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia who famously rebuffed Mr. Trump’s request to “find” him enough votes to overturn the state’s results in 2020.

“Secretary Raffensperger is a principled conservative dedicated to making it easier to vote and harder to cheat, and we congratulate him on his re-election,” Dee Duncan, the president of the R.S.L.C., said in a statement.

Mr. Duncan has not mentioned any of the “America First” candidates in his statements or news releases since the polls closed on Tuesday.

Nick Corasaniti covers national politics. He was one of the lead reporters covering Donald Trump's campaign for president in 2016 and has been writing about presidential, congressional, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns for The Times since 2011. @NYTnickc • Facebook

Changing a Law That Trump Exploited

OPINION - THE EDITORIAL BOARD - New York Times

There’s a Lot Congress Can Do Now, and It Starts With Changing a Law That Trump Exploited

Nov. 11, 2022

Voters in multiple states acted to protect the integrity of American democracy in Tuesday’s elections by rejecting some of the most prominent candidates who embraced lies about the 2020 election and threatened to ignore the will of the electorate.

These are crucial and heartening results, but urgent work remains to be done.

Congress now should do its part and act, in its final weeks in session, to clarify and strengthen the federal law governing the counting and certifying of electoral votes in presidential elections. It needs to do this before control of the House passes, in all likelihood, to a Republican majority.

The 135-year-old law, known as the Electoral Count Act, is chock-full of confusing and ambiguous provisions, and legal scholars have long warned that it could trigger a crisis. That’s exactly what happened after the 2020 election, when Donald Trump and his associates exploited the law’s vague and arcane language to claim that they could overturn the will of the voters. That exploitation led directly to the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

Since then, several Republicans have joined Democrats in agreeing that a major reform to the law is necessary — a rare point of bipartisanship. The Senate introduced reform legislation over the summer, and the House passed its bill in September. While the bills contain minor differences, either would be a huge improvement over the status quo.

The most significant changes to the law would make it far harder, if not impossible, to pull off the schemes that Mr. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election and hold on to power.

For example, the law currently makes it very easy for members of Congress to obstruct and delay the final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6; any objection lodged by one representative and one senator will do the trick. Republicans took advantage of this after the 2020 election, including when Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley introduced meritless objections simply to slow the process. The new bills would raise the bar, by requiring at least one-fifth of both houses of Congress to sign on before an objection can be lodged, and by strictly limiting the grounds for any objection.

The reform bills would also clarify that the vice president’s role on Jan. 6 is purely ministerial, and that, despite Mr. Trump’s claims, the vice president has no authority to throw out electoral votes or accept a slate different from the one a state has already certified.

Congress can also do more to protect the integrity of a presidential election before the electoral votes arrive in Washington. What happens in the states, after the ballots are counted, is just as important, if not more so. The 2022 midterms featured multiple Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state, like Mark Finchem in Arizona, who have suggested they would reject the will of their own voters.

The verdict of Arizona voters on Mr. Finchem’s bid for secretary of state is not yet final. Similarly extreme Republican candidates for secretary of state have lost in states including Michigan, New Mexico and Minnesota, and Republican gubernatorial candidates who engaged in election denial lost in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Election deniers, however, remain a potent force on the right: More than 220 candidates who questioned the 2020 election have won state or federal office, and about 30 of those have said the election was stolen or rigged.

The reforms proposed in the bills address this threat by making clear that state officials must count their votes according to the state laws in place on Election Day. They may not change the result after the fact simply because they don’t like it. Critically, the new bills also steer disputes over vote tallies to the courts, where judges — not partisan officials — have the final say.

Even if these reforms pass, they are, like any other law, only words on paper. In order to work, they need to be upheld by those in positions of power, who are committed to acting in the interests of American democracy and the rule of law. Still, both the Senate and House bills are far better than what we have right now, and either one would go a long way to ensuring that the electoral-count law cannot be used as a tool for subverting the election in 2024 or beyond. Congress needs to pass the overhaul now, when it has willing majorities in both houses and well before anyone casts a ballot in 2024.

Democrats also should move quickly on the debt ceiling and on immigration.

They should act before the end of this legislative session to ensure that the federal government can borrow the money it needs to meet its obligations over the next two years — including recent and important increases in federal funding for expanding the production of renewable energy; investing in roads, high-speed internet, unleaded pipes and other infrastructure; and supporting local government, including money for law enforcement. Congress agreed to those measures after months of negotiation and compromise, and Democrats should do everything they can to defend the achievement.

The government is expected to reach the limit of its congressionally authorized borrowing capacity, known as the debt ceiling, at some point in 2023. For the government to pay its bills, Congress must raise that limit — but House Republicans have made clear that if the vote is deferred until the next Congress, they will threaten to withhold consent, risking a global financial crisis to compel the White House to accept reductions in federal spending.

It’s a serious threat: Republicans have engaged in similar brinkmanship repeatedly in recent years, most notably in 2011, when the possibility that the government might fail to meet its obligations produced a measurable increase in the interest rates the government must pay to borrow money, costing taxpayers an estimated $1.3 billion. That standoff also imposed limits on federal spending that delayed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.

Democrats could avert the immediate danger by raising the debt ceiling high enough to permit necessary federal borrowing until after the next presidential election. But there is no reason to preserve the debt ceiling as a problem for future Congresses. Democrats can end this dangerous game by passing the legislation to eliminate the debt ceiling that has been introduced by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. There is simply no reason for Congress to vote again on spending that already has been authorized.

Some Democrats worry that eliminating the debt ceiling would expose them to charges of fiscal recklessness. And not just from Republicans. President Biden just last month described the proposed elimination of the debt ceiling as “irresponsible.” The president’s choice of words was misguided and deeply counterproductive. Preserving the debt ceiling is a reckless and dangerous policy cloaked in the appearance of responsibility.

Finally, the broken state of the nation’s immigration system is an issue urgently in need of congressional action, and one on which there is a plausible path forward. In the closing weeks of the current Congress, members from both parties should restart negotiations on legislation to fix one particular piece of the immigration system: The process by which migrants claim asylum.

This board has endorsed the framework of a deal put forward last year by Republicans, including Senator John Cornyn of Texas, and Democrats, including Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The core of the bill would significantly increase the government’s capacity to process asylum claims, by allowing those with a legitimate fear of persecution to settle safely in the United States and by making it more difficult for those without legitimate claims to enter or remain in the country.

The bill also offers a road map for cooperation on other issues over the next two years. It is narrowly focused on a specific problem; the solutions it puts forward would require significant compromise on both sides, and for both sides, it improves on the status quo. Even as the current Congress wraps up its work, those who will remain, and those who will soon be joining them, can start looking for other issues on which progress may still be possible.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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