VOX: “President Donald Trump is angry about impeachment and he wants his supporters to be, too — and he’s spending millions of dollars to make that happen.”
The GOP is going all in to shield their president from the consequences of breaking the law. And if we don’t respond now, they’re going to succeed.
According to the New York Times, Trump has spent roughly 8 million dollars on digital and TV ads. On top of that, the Republican National Committee (RNC) says they’ve spent another $2.3 million. And here’s the kicker: Just yesterday, Politico broke that the American Action Network, a Republican advocacy group, is launching a $7 million anti-impeachment advertising blitz in 37 congressional districts.
Us? Here’s the truth: We want to fight back, but we’re 80% behind our fundraising goal for this month. Right now, we don’t have the money to keep up.
The GOP will do literally anything to protect Trump, but if we can’t keep pace with their spending, they will beat us. Chip in $10 TONIGHT to fund ads, calls and more to impeach Trump and push forward our progressive agenda:
If you’ve saved your information with ActBlue Express Lane, your donation to Indivisible Action will go through immediately:
We’re doing everything in our power to push impeachment forward, from running massive ad buys to making calls to making our literal own news show (the Impeachment Daily) to keep you up to date. But none of that matters if we can’t fund it. Donate now — we’re counting on you.
At 168 pages, the book takes readers through the founders’ vision of the courts, the Powell Memo, the growing influence of fossil fuels companies on the court, judicial review, and the constitution’s preference for property rights over human rights. Hartmann also covers the court’s involvement in key American movements and issues, including labor, abolition, racism, abortion, environmentalism, and the rise of the TEA Party. The final section of the book offers solutions to “save the planet, democratize, and modernize the Supreme Court. It’s a page turner.
“But isn’t Hartmann preaching to the choir?” engaged readers might ask.
What’s important about this book is it exists at all.
Blog for Iowa, and others like it in Iowa and around the country, rose up in the years after the 2004 general election offering an alternative voice to right wing talk radio, evangelical Christianity, and a media landscape where the Fairness Doctrine no longer applied and cable news companies gained hegemony with partisan, conservative messages 24/7. In addition to progressive national and state-based blogs, radio and television personalities competed to gain a progressive audience. Thom Hartmann is one who survived and thrived. He is currently the number one progressive talk show host in the United States according to the about the author section of the book.
The purpose served by The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America is presenting a narrative of the key elements of the Supreme Court’s history to a progressive audience.
So often ideas about the Supreme Court are formed by snippets of information in various media about specific decisions, the judicial nominating process, and groups like the Federalist Society which lobby the government for appointment of certain types of judges. Increasingly social media is a key driver for informing our opinions, yet it presents an incomplete picture. It is not enough. What has been lacking is a more comprehensive look at the supreme court told in language that is easy to understand. Hartmann delivers that and more.
Here’s a clip of Thom Hartmann reading from his book. The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America is available from the publisher and most places where books are sold.
How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms. Across the midwest, the rise of factory farming is destroying rural communities. And the massive corporations behind this devastation are now eyeing a post-Brexit UK market. Semi-automated pig barns now dominate large parts of rural Iowa.
When the vast expanse of rural Iowa was carved up for settlers in the 19th century, it was often divided into 160-acre lots. Four farms made a square mile, with a crisscross of dead-straight roads marking the boundaries like a sprawling chess board.
Within each square, generations of families tended pigs and cattle, grew oats and raised children, with the sons most likely to take over the farm. That is how Barb Kalbach saw the future when she left her family’s land to marry and begin farming with her new husband, Jim, 47 years ago.
“When we very first were married, we had cattle and calves,” she says. “We raised hogs from farrow to finish, and we had corn, beans, hay and oats. So did everyone around us.”
Half a century later, Kalbach surveys the destruction within the section of chessboard she shared with other farms near Dexter in southwestern Iowa. Barb and Jim are the last family still working the land, after their neighbours were picked off by waves of collapsing commodity prices and the rise of factory farming. With that came a vast transfer in wealth as farm profits funnelled into corporations or the diminishing number of families that own an increasing share of the land. Rural communities have been hollowed out.
Stacey Abrams Hires Palast Investigations Team
for Massive Federal Suit to Restore Voting Rights By Greg Palast
Stacey Abrams’ non-profit Fair Fight has retained the Palast Investigations team experts to provide court testimony, based on our six years of investigation, in Fair Fight’s federal law suit to overturn Georgia’s massive, racially biased purge of voters.
Watch the preview of the first of our series of film reports, The Purged: The Vanishing Voters of Trump’s America.
In 2018, the Palast investigations team uncovered 340,134 voters illegally removed from Georgia’s voter rolls by Secretary of State Brian Kemp while he was running for Governor against Stacey Abrams.
That was Kemp’s secretive “cleansing” operation that won him the election over Abrams, the first black woman in American history to run for governor.
Abrams often cites the illegal purge we uncovered. And now, she’s taking action. Her new group, Fair Fight, has hired the Palast team to update and expand our work to put before a court to overturn what we have dubbed, Georgia’s “Purge by Postcard.”
While the Palast Investigative Fund is thrilled with this new alliance, it only covers Georgia. We need to expose new, massive, illegal purges in Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Nevada and other states. We’ve already filed preliminary legal actions in 20 states. Now we move to the expensive process of detailed computer analysis of each purge, voter by voter, more than a quarter million in each of these states.
Our discovery and analysis of the purge list was the culmination of our six-year investigation which involved inventive undercover work, hiring a team of Silicon Valley’s top database specialists and filing our own federal law suit against Kemp.
Because Abrams’ new group is strictly non-partisan and dedicated to voting rights, the Palast investigative Fund has released to her our huge computer files and proprietary algorithms. Our chief database specialist, John Lenser, will act as the expert witness in Abrams’ lawsuit to prevent new purges in Georgia.
How refreshing. I’ve been exposing Jim Crow vote trickery for 20 years — in award-winning reports for The Guardian, Rolling Stone and Salon. But this will be the first time an official, intent on justice, has taken my evidence into a courtroom.
But we’re far from done. The “purge by postcard” scam was launched by a Supreme Court decision just last June. Since then, it’s been used with a vengeance to bleach the voter rolls whiter than white in at least 20 States, most GOP controlled.
Our lawyers have already forced a dozen purge lists from the hands of these “Purge’n Generals” – Secretaries of State totaling over 3 million voters.
Experts Lenser and Mark Swedlund are donating their time as have our dozen attorneys including Jeanne Mirer in New York, Prof. Robert Fitrakis In Ohio, Gary Flowers in Virginia.
Still, our out-of-pocket costs run to at least $30,000 per state.
Meet the victims And we never forget our journalistic purpose: exposing the trickery, cons, and ballot box blockades that go under the rubric “vote suppression.“
Not only do we get the inside, confidential documents; we bring the story to life with our unique ability to find and tell the stories of the victims. Stacey Abrams often refers to Christine Jordan, Martin Luther King‘s 92-year-old cousin, whom we filmed just as she was booted from the polling station in Atlanta. While 340,134 is a number, Miss Jordan is its human face.
We need to bring the sheer numbers and the victims of this massive new purge operation to the public in 2020 before the next election is stolen again.
About our Reports
We are finishing the first of our series of film reports, The Purged: The Vanishing Voters of Trump’s America. The first centers on our multi-year investigation of Georgia’s Jim Crow operation that defeated Stacey Abrams…and was the test run for the latest massive voter purge game that, if adopted by other states, can “re-elect” Trump.
We have partnered with a major, prestigious media outlet to carry these reports on film and in print, throughout 2020. (Watch for our announcement.)
Through our 2013-2016 work, we first exposed and helped demolish Kris Kobach’s Interstate Crosscheck system—with articles in Rolling Stone and on Democracy Now! and especially via our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, shown umpteen times by The League of Women Voters and Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Donate $100 right now, and we’ll add your name to our Georgia report credits as a supporter, for $500 we will list you as a Co-Producer and for $1,000 as a Producer.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
Why the constant, often blatant lying? For one thing, it functioned as a means of fully dominating subordinates, who would have to cast aside all their integrity to repeat outrageous falsehoods and would then be bound to the leader by shame and complicity.
“The great analysts of truth and language in politics”—writes McGill University political philosophy professor Jacob T. Levy—including “George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is…. Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.”
The forum takes place two months before the critical Iowa caucus, on Saturday, December 7 at 2 pm and will feature candidates Joe Biden, Steve Bullock, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders. All the Presidential candidates who agreed to sign the union’s three-point pledge and participated in an on-camera interview were invited to attend the forum.
The event will be held at Veteran’s Auditorium, Cedar Rapids, and will be hosted by James Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The candidates will appear onstage individually, answering questions from union members and the moderators. The event will be live-streamed at theguardian.com. Moderators are Art Cullen, Pulitzer prize-winning editor of the Storm Lake Times who is an opinion contributor to the Guardian, and Leslie Marshall of the Leslie Marshall Show.
One thing to be thankful for this week – A new Randy Rainbow video (4 minutes):
I do no know about you folks, but I could use a break to try to touch base with normal for a few days. Learning what the Republican Party has been doing to our government over the past three years has been in a way shocking. Most of us suspected it, but it is still a gut punch when you actually hear people testifying under oath about what is going on – snd st the highest levels.
As if that were not enough, I stumble across a story that is a month and a half old that confirms that the wealthiest now pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than do we working folks. Another kick in the teeth.
Try to set these things off to the side and enjoy this holiday to the fullest. There is much work to be done to take this country back from the oligarchs and return it to the democracy it was meant to be.
Last week was the Fourth of July in a congressional hearing room. It’s a start.
What Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee was called out for his link to people involved in pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens?
Speaking of the Bidens, the name of what company was used as a code word to discuss Ukraine launching an investigation of the Bidens?
According to American intelligence who is behind the effort to make it look like Ukraine was interfering in our 2016 election?
Let’s go to the corruption now. What international leader had charges or corruption brought against him by his own government this week?
According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), cigarette smoking in the US has fallen to what level in 2018?
What member of Britain’s royal family has suspended public duties due to backlash over his association with Jeffrey Epstein?
Kim Jung Un of North Korea called what Democratic politician a “rabid dog” that “must be beaten to death with a stick”?
Impeachment witness Fiona Hill is an expert on what country?
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade started in 1924. When were balloons first entered into the parade?
Another shooting at a Walmart last week. What state did it happen in this time?
What cabinet member has let it be known he is seriously returning to Kansas to run for the senate?
Friday morning’s ‘Fox and Friends’ had what well known person call in and then go on a 50 minute rambling rant?
What franchise announced it would no longer contribute to anti-LGBTQ groups and then 3 days later reversed that statement?
In what looks like it is an unholy alliance, The Chosen One had an undisclosed meeting with what social media giant CEO this week?
Well we have an official new candidate in the Democratic primary. Can you name the new candidate?
If it were a real trial this would be jury tampering. The Chosen one had meetings with what group of people who may be deciding his future last week?
The newest of pickups was introduced by what cutting edge auto company Thursday night?
Which state rolled out a new anti-drug campaign with the slogan “Meth: I’m on it”?
The State Department reversed 4 decades of US policy by saying that what international action did not violate international law?
“Black Friday” as the shopping day after Christmas came into use in what city in the 1940s to describe the mass of people clogging the downtown streets and blocking traffic?
The question is not whether Trump has committed impeachable crimes. He has.
The question is whether Republicans in Congress will affirm that an American president is not above the law. – Hillary Clinton
Answers:
Devin Nunes
Burisma
Russia
Netanyahu of Israel
13.7%
Prince Andrew
Joe Biden – I guess Kim likes The Chosen One more
Russia
1927
Oklahoma
Sec of Sate Mike Pompeo
The Chosen One
Chick-fil-a
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg
Michael Bloomberg
Republican senators
Tesla
South Dakota. And yes, that is the real slogan
Israeli settlements in the West Bank. No one else agrees with the US
Many parallels have been drawn between the coming election year and the 1932 election year. In 1932 the country and the world were in dire financial straits with people starving across the globe. While that is not true today we are only a few years removed from a near catastrophic collapse of the world financial system. Our current economy has been built on the sugar highs of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and artificially low interest rates.
On the surface things seem much better than 1932, but that is only on the surface. Also in 1932 we were enduring a financial collapse. Today we also have an environmental crisis of monumental proportions as the climate changes creating areas of super dryness and areas of continuous flooding. As evidenced in Venice Italy last week, seas are rising and they will be encroaching on highly populated areas.
In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt peopled a New Deal for America. In a similar fashion this year we have many Democratic politicians calling for a “Green New Deal” which will help undergird the economy with good paying and very necessary public works projects that will get money to workers who will spend the money while helping to stem the coming environmental crisis.
In 1932 the problem was how to pay for it all. We will have the same problem today. Republican fiscal policies over the past 40 years have been geared to one thing: bankrupting our government so any social programs would have to have their funding cut. So now we stand some $22 Trillion in debt with another couple of trillion added annually.
“New Deal efforts to address the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression required much more revenue than was coming in at the beginning of the 1930s; and later in the decade the Roosevelt Administration would face the need to raise more revenues for mobilization as the world girded for war. To meet these exigencies, New Deal leaders created several new taxes along the way, such as a liquor tax, coal tax, and Social Security tax [1]. Furthermore, President Roosevelt and his advisors were committed to the idea of progressive income and wealth taxation; as one tax historian puts it, “When it came to taxes, Roosevelt simply believed that rich people should pay more than poor people. And in emergencies, they should pay a lot more” [2].
The 1920s had been a period of continuous tax-cutting by Republican administrations, but after the stock market crash of 1929 federal revenue plummeted so dramatically that the government could not fulfill its basic functions. Even President Hoover had to relent, and the Revenue Act of 1932 was enacted. This law “spread its burden widely across the population with steep new rates for income taxpayers, as well as numerous new levies on consumption” [3]. Tax increases continued under FDR, but with greater emphasis on progressive taxes on income and wealth, rather than regressive consumption (sales) taxes [4]. The only major exception was the Social Security tax on wages, starting in 1937.
The Revenue Act of 1934 raised income taxes on the wealthy and reduced them for lower income groups; it also raised estate taxes on the wealthy and closed corporate tax loopholes [5]. The Revenue Act of 1935, sometimes called the “Wealth Tax Act,” raised taxes on the wealthy again: “The top rate jumped from 59 percent on incomes over $1 million to 75 percent on incomes over $500,000”; it “placed graduated net income taxes on corporations and a tax on incorporated dividends”; and it once again raised estate taxes [6]. The Revenue Act of 1936 taxed undistributed corporate profits and the Revenue Act of 1937 aimed to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance [7]. The Revenue Act of 1940 – by which time national defense spending was ramping up – raised taxes on corporations by 1%; increased taxes on incomes between $6,000 and $100,000; and lowered personal exemptions by 20%, thereby broadening the tax base [8].
<<snip>>
Federal taxes were the most progressive in U.S. history after the New Deal (for example, top marginal income tax rates were 91% from 1954 through 1963) and remained so through the postwar golden age of U.S. economic dominance [13]. Rates have been whittled down in the modern era, especially under presidents Kennedy, Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Not surprisingly, the national debt has soared alongside these persistently low tax rates [14].”
Simply stated if we understand that the looming environmental crisis is real {it is} and we need to become fiscally stable once again, reining in the disparities of the rich and the poor, we can find ways to pay for it. Remember that improvements made will create new jobs and new revenue streams.
Elizabeth Warren has already shown that financial plans for her Medicare for All plan can be created. So then can a way to pay for the Green New Deal be created.
Also remember that in 1933 FDR faced an attempted coup from some of the richest families in America. Sort of feels like we have gone through a 40 year coup that needs to end.
As usual from Robert Reich a simple and straight forward explanation of an issue that opponents of Medicare for All will do all they can to scare you with massive price tags and frightening lies about health care crises.
5 minutes:
Leaders in America have been trying to get health care for all since Theodore Roosevelt. 120 years is about long enough to wait.
Remember, no Republican will make health care any more accessible than it already is and will make it even harder to get if they are returned to power. A special note to the older folks among us: Republicans desperately want to do away with our current Medicare system and go to a privatized insurance system. BE AWARE.
Only Democrats will pass and implement health care plans that will cover all Americans. Republicans may claim they will, but only Democrats will actually deliver on health care promises.
Governor Kim Keynolds: (515) 281-5211 U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Iowa Members of Congress - Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) - Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) - Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) - Rep. Zach Nunn (R) Iowa US Senators - Senator Joni Ernst (R) - Senator Charles Grassley (R)
This from 
Stacey Abrams Hires Palast Investigations Team
And we never forget our journalistic purpose: exposing the trickery, cons, and ballot box blockades that go under the rubric “vote suppression.“
Any of this sound familiar?
