2023 Archives

Left to its own logic, Big Business cares only about profit. With the rules that are currently in place, Big Business is encouraged to ruthlessly pursue profit at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment. Just like in the game of Monopoly, this will eventually result in a situation where one person, or company, owns nearly everything (at least sector by sector). This happened with the railroads at the end of the 19th century, with the electric lines at the beginning of the 20th century, and with copper telephone lines in the mid-20th century in America under the Bell System, aka “Ma Bell.” Each time, it has taken the heavy hand of government to break up these monopolies, because monopolies aren’t just bad for consumers, they’re also bad for the economy as a whole.

Can we rescue our nation from the treasonous Republicans, who are trying to shut down our government to help Putin while they continue to bow and scrape to The Rapist Who Would Be King? Speaking at an event in Phoenix honoring the late Republican Senator John McCain, his old friend President Joe Biden forcefully pointed out how Trump and the movement he leads — the MAGA movement — fundamentally reject democracy and the historic American ideals that have made our country a beacon to the world for over 200 years... While there are plenty of countries and dictators all around the world who would like to tear our democracy down, the “threat” Biden was referring to is coming from within our country, from within our political system, from within a Republican Party that has been captured by a man who has repeatedly taken the side of dictators against his own nation.

The man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was named William Edward Hickman, and he lived in Los Angeles during the Roaring Twenties... Tonight is the Republican debate, where we’ll probably hear lots of predictable rants about crushing the “welfare state” and restoring “freedom” and “self-reliance.” So, once again, why are Republicans so cruel and why do they seem so fond of libertarianism? Why does Greg Abbott put razor wire in the Rio Grande river? Why does Donald Trump target people for assassination by his followers? Why does Ron DeSantis revel in keeping tens of thousands of low-income Florida children from getting Medicaid?

The Putin Caucus in the GOP, along with the fossil fuel billionaires, appear quite pleased that they’ve succeeded in intimidating fact-checkers just in time for the 2024 election… The Putin GOP wants misinformation to reign as we head into the 2024 election. Without lies, they can’t win most competitive elections, and they want to keep those lies safe from fact-checking, regardless of what accurate information the voters need or the damage they inflict on our nation. As a result, Stanford University is considering shutting down their Election Integrity Partnership that calls out political lies across social and mainstream media and their Stanford Media Observatory; other groups that do similar research are also on the brink of shutting down in the face of expensive and time-consuming attacks from Jim Jordan and other Republicans in Congress and from rightwing media. The Republican attacks on fact-checkers come as increasing numbers of Americans reject Republican policies on everything from gutting Social Security to banning abortion to making it harder for city-dwellers to vote: the new Trumpy GOP has decided that abandoning that whole pesky idea of democracy itself is the way to go.