Chris Walker at TruthOut suggests that if Democrats run away from the "defund the police" movement, it could actually hurt them at the polls in 2022. You remember how well Jon Ossoff did in the 2017 Georgia 6th special? He lost. And you remember what happened when a Black Lives Matter activist ran for the same seat in the 2018 general? She won. Voters like it when you stand for something! And if you stand for something and you're not an idiot, all the better! This is why Republicans keep winning when they don't deserve to win! Not to mention that when ask folks if they want to "defund the police," they say no, but when you ask them if they want to "reallocat(e) portions of police budgets to create a new agency of first-responders...to deal with issues related to addiction or mental illness," they say yes, even though it's the same damn thing. (And, hate to pile on, but Rep. Maloney needs to understand that Republicans call Democrats "socialists" whenever Democrats take a breath, so maybe predicating your strategy on "making sure they don't call us socialists" is weakness.)
When I hear that two corporations control most of the podcasts in America, I immediately think that sounds like a job for our antitrust laws! Even though we've had a few generations of right-wing judges who will interpret antitrust law, how shall we put it, rather loosely. I'll admit I never got too much into podcasts, so it's a shame the podcast landscape will be fully-corporatized (and therefore lame!) before I ever do. And yes, I, too, remember when YouTube was good (i.e., before Google got its grubby mitts on it). We need to retrain our minds away from Facebook and Google and YouTube and toward, you know, the vast social network the internet could be.
When Jon Schwarz says "The Idea That Deficit Spending Is a Burden on Our Children Is the Dumbest Propaganda," he specifically means that "(e)very time the federal government sells a bond, it creates a liability for the government. But it also creates an asset for those who bought the bond, in exactly the same amount." Bonds can, of course, be inherited by children, more directly than the public debt can. Trouble is, naturally, that rich folks own most government bonds -- and every time our government cuts taxes for the rich, it issues more bonds to make up for the lost revenue, which means (as Al Franken told us many years ago in Lies and Lying Liars Who Tell Them) rich folks benefit from tax cuts coming and going, as they get lower taxes and the opportunity to buy more bonds.
When I hear that the nefarious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) is behind a lot of state-level bills aiming to "empower" poll watchers to keep folks of color from voting, I'm reminded that ALEC pushed Voter ID bills in the early 2010s, and then, when activists prodded corporations to end their membership in ALEC, ALEC said they wouldn't do stuff like that anymore and would just concentrate on economic issues. So, they lied about that, too. Not that I'm terribly surprised, but someone's gotta note it. (Also, let us remember that a lot of the same corporations that have spoken in favor of voting rights generally still bankroll the same right-wing politicians trying to suppress the vote.)
Robert Reich explains "Why Strongmen Are Losing the Fight Against Covid." Long story short: they all suck at governing, which you'd expect, since they're all good at whining. They're also good at drama and doing Jeff George victory laps, too. Note well that at least 40 percent of Republican voters still won't get the vaccine because their Personal Lord and Savior and his media minions can't do their job right. The good news? "40 percent of Republicans" maps out pretty well on my "25% of the electorate is batshit insane" notion, and we should be used to them by now. The bad news? These fools will keep COVID going long after we should have stamped it out, which I'm sure Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are counting on to bring them back to power.
Finally, I must admit that I found Friday's news dump was especially dispiriting, as President Biden dropped over half a trillion dollars from his American Jobs Plan proposal just to appease Republicans (who were, predictably, not appeased), while his Administration has also apparently abandoned plans to increase access to health care via a public health care option and/or letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices, both of which are popular and seem ideal for the American Families Plan. I swear, Democrats are like a football team that goes into prevent defense at the end of the first quarter. If they lose the House and Senate next year, mark Friday, May 21, 2021 as the reason why.
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