A CNN poll (9/12) shows the nation remains politically divided, and by “politically divided” that primarily means Republicans continue to lurch farther and farther into hoax-promoting, anti-democratic extremism, “Hunter” noted at DailyKos (9/12).
Hunter cited two specific poll questions. In the first, about six in 10 self-identified Republicans claim to believe that “supporting Donald Trump” is either a “very” or “somewhat” important part of “what being a Republican means to you.”
“This is a bit weird, because Donald Trump is ... not in office. He has no current position. He is retired, bumbling around at Mar-a-Lago, regaling wedding guests with stories of how the world has wronged him, interspersing rounds of Florida golf with promotional appearances at cult meet-ups and pay-per-view boxing matches. Donald Trump does not currently need any ‘support,’ but the question has a nearly identical response breakdown to a much more interesting poll question that this question probably acts as one-to-one proxy for.
“That question? Whether ‘believing that Donald Trump won the 2020 election’ is a ‘very’ or ‘somewhat” important part of Republicanism. Those responses are near-identical, with 6 in 10 Republicans agreeing that it is.
“The notion that Trump ‘won’ the 2020 election is a hoax. It’s specifically a fascist-promoted hoax intended to discredit democratic elections themselves, because a good chunk of the party (six in ten, apparently) would rather burn democracy itself down than tolerate a world in which a self-promotional tax-dodging rapist incompetent gets booted after only one term in office. There is not even a scratch of evidence to support that Trump ‘won’ an election in which he was quite soundly defeated. Not a single shred of evidence was found to back the Trump camp’s propagandistic claims of ‘voter fraud.’ There is no state electoral count that could even be plausibly contested. There’s nothing. The notion that Trump ‘won’ is entirely the fabrication of a set of Trump allies who crafted it either to coddle the bruised ego of a delusional decompensating narcissist, as means for overthrowing the United States government, or both.
“It is fascist propaganda. It is the equivalent of proclaiming that vaccinations turn you magnetic or that a political opponent is in fact a lizard person. It’s not just false, but a toxic attempt to do harm for the sake of doing harm.”
TRUMP LED A FASCIST PURGE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. NOW HIS BASE IS FINISHING WHAT HE STARTED. A new Pro-Publica investigation highlights the nationwide push by pro-Trump Republican conspiracy theorists to invade, overwhelm, and annex the lowest tiers of their local Republican parties, Hunter noted at DailyKos (9/2). The Trumpers’ stated goal is to alter how elections are run—and how the votes are counted. ProPublica cites fascist gadfly Steve Bannon as the movement’s lead and inspiration, but that is likely giving him too much credit. If Bannon had disappeared under his three shirt collars immediately after being fired by Trump, never to be heard from again, the now conspiracy-dependent Republican and Fox News base would still act exactly as they have.
ProPublica’s details of how Republican conspiracy theorists are aggressively seeking to topple any local party figures who do not toe election hoax lines can be better read as a narrative of how fascism, in all its anti-law and pro-violence details, is now bubbling up through the party in a possibly unstoppable fashion.
That should not be surprising. Anyone claiming to be surprised by it is a rube. It was actively encouraged during years of Fox News conspiracy-peddling that reduced all policy debates to battles between the Good—meaning whichever Republicans were in office that day—against the Bad, i.e., an entire Democratic apparatus that supposedly was constructed to oppress white Americans with waves of nonwhite immigrants, institute authoritarian rule by crafting rules that would not let mass murderers so easily acquire guns, oppress conservatism by prohibiting good and proper discrimination, and so forth.
Democrats were simply the Enemy, in every Fox News narrative on any subject. The devices of demonization worked wonders on the base, and were eventually mirrored by nearly every Republican elected official as they themselves tried to substitute arguments about policy with new declarations claiming everyone from schoolteachers to scientists to wealthy Jews were conspiring against them. It is small wonder that new conspiracy hubs soon littered the bottom rungs of the conservative base, or that those bottom rungs would soon grow incensed with any members of the movement not willing to ascribe to each one of the paranoid fantasies they crafted for themselves.
Here are the details of what is happening, as explained in solid detail by ProPublica:
• Far-right radical Republicans are signing up in droves to be local precinct officers and election inspectors, demanding that elections to be “reformed” based on already-disproven election hoaxes peddled by Trump and Trump’s allies.
• The movement is explicitly conspiracy-based. It explicitly relies on false conspiracy theories and hoax claims as justification for altering how the nation’s elections are run. It is heavily associated with the “QAnon” movement, an ever-spiraling set of hoaxes claiming Democrats are behind everything from child sex trafficking rings to Jewish “space lasers.”
• The movement explicitly believes that the last election was invalid and should be overturned—or, barring that, that extreme action must be taken in order to assure Republicans win future elections.
• The movement explicitly aims to purge party members who do not agree to promote the known-false election hoaxes the movement continues to spread. Those efforts are roundly successful; those purges are indeed taking place.
• The movement is not shy in suggesting that violence may be necessary if their demands are not met or if their perceived enemies win future elections.
It is a fascist push from the “populist” base up through Republican chain of command. Trump, during his tenure, oversaw a push to purge the Republican Party of those deemed insufficiently loyal to party interests that worked from the Republican National Committee downward. The current push is working from local precincts upwards, ferreting out the “insufficiently loyal” by imposing a single test. Either local party leaders support fraudulent claims that the election was “stolen” from the buffoonish Donald Trump, or they are being purged and replaced with conspiracy crackpots willing to bellow those claims to whichever cameras may be present.
ALABAMA HEART ATTACK VICTIM TURNED DOWN AT 43 HOSPITALS, ENDS UP DEAD 200 MILES AWAY IN MISSISSIPPI. The COVID pandemic in the Deep South has filled every available hospital in some areas, causing a breakdown in emergency healthcare for patients needing urgent care, Lefty Coaster noted at DailyKos (9/12).
Hadley Hitson reported at the Montgomery Advertiser (9/10) that Ray Martin DeMonia died Sept. 1 after suffering a heart attack in Cullman, Ala., but the emergency staff at Cullman Regional Medical Center was unable to attend to him because it was full of COVID cases, so they started looking for a hospital that might be able to accommodate DeMonia. After 43 hospitals across three states were unable to accept him because of full cardiac ICUs, he was taken to Rush Foundation Hospital in Meridian, Miss., nearly 200 miles away, but he was dead on arrival. DeMonia was three days shy of his 74th birthday .
In his obituary, DeMonia’s family urged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID related emergencies,” the obituary read. “He would not want any other family to go through what his did.”
Cullman, Ala., was the site of a Trump rally three weeks before, which packed in a crowd of 45,000 Trump cult members. Few of the crowd were wearing masks, and social distancing was nonexistent.
‘OATH KEEPERS’ UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR JAN. 6 ‘SEDITIONIST CONSPIRACY,’ FBI SEARCH WARRANT REVEALS. The right-wing gaslighting emanating from Tucker Carlson’s realm and congressional Republicans about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol—claiming that because federal prosecutors haven’t yet charged any of the 600-plus people arrested for their actions that day with terrorism or insurrection, we can’t call the attack on Congress that yet—may want to pipe down now, after a search warrant served (9/7) revealed the FBI is currently pursuing a “seditious conspiracy” investigation against key players in the event, David Neiwert noted at DailyKos (9/10).
The investigation was revealed when the FBI seized the phone of an attorney who works as the general counsel for the Oath Keepers—a “Patriot” organization that played a leading role in the Capitol siege—and their founder/president, Stewart Rhodes, around whom investigators have been circling for months. The attorney, Kellye SoRelle of Texas, told HuffPost’s Ryan Reilly (9/9) that her phone was “kinda a repository of truth ... I have so much information in there, [it’s] nuts,” she said via email.
The FBI’s warrant, according to Mother Jones, sought evidence related to potential violations of nine criminal statutes, including “seditious conspiracy.” The other violations are all crimes with which the Jan. 6 defendants have already been charged, including destruction of government property, trespassing, destruction of evidence, false statements and obstruction of Congress.
As Marcy Wheeler has pointed out repeatedly at Emptywheel.net, the latter charge has been federal prosecutors’ chief means of charging the insurrectionists because a conviction carries the same 20-year federal prison sentence as sedition, which is a harder charge to prove. Moreover, it carries a terrorism enhancement that can be applied at sentencing, just as sedition does.
PROUD BOYS SHOW UP AT LOCAL SCHOOL PROTESTS. THEY FOLLOW A LARGER FAR-RIGHT BLUEPRINT. The Pacific Northwest’s gang of Proud Boys was very active in early September. In addition to ginning up violence at an anti-masking rally in Olympia, Wash. (9/4), David Neiwert of DailyKos noted (9/10), the same group of right-wing thugs forced the lockdown of three schools in Vancouver, Wash., two hours south, the day before, when one of them forced his way into a high school as part of an anti-vaccination protest.
This is not the first time that the proto-fascist street brawlers have inserted themselves into local school board controversies, nor will it be the last. That’s because the nation’s local school boards have become the primary target of a nationwide far-right campaign to overwhelm such political entities with anti-vaccination/masking agitation, along with attacks over “critical race theory,” and those explicit takeover strategies happen to mesh neatly with the Proud Boys’ emerging tactic of attaching themselves to local right-wing political events.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council—an anti-LGBTQ hate group—recently laid the strategy out for his followers in a fundraising letter, as Right Wing Watch reports, claiming that the school-board takeovers reflect a grassroots campaign:
“In many of America’s 13,800 school districts, grassroots efforts are beginning to nominate conservative, pro-family, pro-American candidates to run against left-wing incumbents. Some have launched recall campaigns to unseat school board members before the next election—before they can do any more to influence our impressionable children.
“We need to grow these small and sometimes disorganized efforts into an army of activists ready to do battle on behalf of the family and America.”
Most of the original organizing for the takeovers revolved around the faux right-wing controversy regarding “Critical Race Theory.” Most of these, as Right Wing Watch reports, are closely affiliated with evangelical Christian organizations, particularly those from the Dominionist wing of the far right—who have in fact been forming alliances with the Proud Boys on other fronts as well.
NBC News found least 165 local and national organizations whose purpose is disrupting curricula involving race and gender. Moreover, it found that the fight over CRT was soon joined by similar right-wing forces organizing against COVID-19 health restrictions in schools, particularly mask and vaccine mandates: “Reinforced by conservative think tanks, law firms and activist parents, these groups have found allies in families frustrated over COVID-19 restrictions in schools and have weaponized the right’s opposition to critical race theory, turning it into a political rallying point,” NBC reported.
While the campaigns often vary according to local conditions, they appear to operate from an identical blueprint, sharing disruption, publicity, and mobilization strategies. The recipe is simple: swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests, and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students or students declining to wear masks or take the vaccine.
The primary strategy now involves targeting as many school board members as they can for removal. So far, activists and parents have launched 50 recall efforts this year aimed at unseating 126 school board members, according to Ballotpedia, surpassing the record for a single year. Most of these recalls started as objections to COVID-19 restrictions, but others include concerns about CRT.
Prominent GOP political figures are rushing in to support the parent activists, believing these local battles will generate enthusiasm among conservative voters in 2022 and beyond. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon observed on his podcast: “The path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.”
The strategy closely resembles the 2009-11 tea party organizing—generating right-wing controversy over mainstream liberal issues, which then manifests as volatile localized and even nationalized protests. The current campaign’s organizers even acknowledge the connection.
“It seems very Tea Party-ish to me,” Dan Lennington, a lawyer with a Wisconsin organization offering free legal advice to parent groups pursuing or considering school board recalls, told the Associated Press. “These are ingredients for having an impact on future elections.”
ANTI-SEMITISM AND VICTIM’S SUPPORT FOR BIDEN BELIEVED TO BE MOTIVES FOR LAWYER’S SLAYING. Only weeks after last November’s election, Georgette Garcia Kaufman, a 50 year old woman, was shot to death while getting out of her car at her home in El Paso, Texas, on Nov. 14. Then the killer tried to enter her home, where the victim’s husband, Daniel Kaufman, upon hearing the noise, went to the door to find out what was going on, and was shot several times through the door. He survived, though.
Newsweek reported (9/10) that, according to police, the reason the couple was selected was their Joe Biden flag and a Trump doll they had displayed in front of their home. Joseph Angel Alvarez was arrested (9/8) nearly 10 months after the homicide and was held on a $2 million bond for the murder of Mrs. Kaufmann and a $500,000 for the aggravated assault of the woman’s husband. Both victims were lawyers with the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
According to a police affidavit, Alvarez in an email he sent on the night of the killing said he was “executing and exterminating the pro-choice Jewish Satan worshippers” when he allegedly decided to target the Kaufmanns’ property for the shooting.
Alvarez referred to satanic rituals at a nearby park, Alvarez also reportedly announced his intention to kill people living in the houses near the park. He demanded people “stop all murder of babies.
Cellphone records show Alvarez was at the scene when the murder happened as well as four days before, Newsweek reported
“This kind of terrorism is happening more and more,” 2Tpinessandrider noted at DailyKos (9/12). “It’s something to keep in mind when you see wingnuts posting memes about shooting ‘Antifa,’ or shooting Black Lives Matter, or ‘Free helicopter rides’ (look that one up). They are NOT kidding. They are telling us who they are, believe them.”
VACCINATION WORKS, CDC FINDS, AS STUDY SHOWS UNVAXXED ARE 11 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF COVID. A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9/10) shows people across the US who were not fully vaccinated this spring and summer were 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19 — and over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized — than those who were fully inoculated, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (9/10).
“During April 4-July 17, a total of 569,142 (92%) COVID-19 cases, 34,972 (92%) hospitalizations, and 6,132 (91%) COVID-19-associated deaths were reported among persons not fully vaccinated, and 46,312 (8%) cases, 2,976 (8%) hospitalizations, and 616 (9%) deaths were reported among fully vaccinated persons” in the 13 states examined as part of the new study, according to the CDC.
In Alabama, Utah, Colorado and the 10 other states included in the analysis, “rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths were substantially higher in persons not fully vaccinated compared with those in fully vaccinated persons,” the CDC summarized, findings that underscore the effectiveness of the available coronavirus vaccines in preventing serious illness and fatalities.
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, said during a media briefing Friday that the new research “offers further evidence of the power of vaccination.”
“Looking at cases over the past two months when the Delta variant was the predominant variant circulating in this country, those who were unvaccinated were about four and a half times more likely to get Covid-19, over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 11 times more likely to die from the disease,” said Walensky. “As the president reiterated yesterday, and as we have shown study after study, vaccination works.”
“The bottom line is this: We have the scientific tools we need to turn the corner on this pandemic,” she continued. “Vaccination works and will protect us from the severe complications of COVID-19.”
The new CDC study was released a day after President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring the vast majority of federal workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a step that public health experts applauded. The president also announced new rules that would compel businesses with 100 or more employees to mandate that their workers either get vaccinated or face weekly COVID-19 testing.
“The Department of Labor will require employers with 100 or more workers to give those workers paid time off to get vaccinated,” Biden said in a speech (9/8). “No one should lose pay in order to get vaccinated or take a loved one to get vaccinated.”
According to the latest CDC data, just over 53% of the US population is fully vaccinated and nearly 63% of Americans have received at least one dose.
As the *Washington Post* reported in August, policy experts and survey results have suggested that the lack of paid sick leave in the US is “playing a role in deterring low-wage workers from taking time off to get vaccinated.”
“Workers who do not get paid time off to get the shot or deal with potential side effects are less likely to get the vaccine, research by a Kaiser Family Foundation study shows,” the *Post* noted. “Three vaccine clinic representatives said in interviews that the time-off issue was one of a handful they commonly hear from vaccine hesitant people.”
CHILD COVID HOSPITALIZATIONS REACH A NEW HIGH AS SCHOOLS REOPEN. Just as doctors feared, more children are getting hit hard by COVID-19 as the Delta variant spreads across the country, CNN reported (9/8). And the school year just started.
“What we’re seeing now is extremely concerning,” said Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, associate professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
“This virus is really going for the people who are not vaccinated. And among those people are children who don’t qualify for the vaccine and children and teens who qualify but are choosing not to get it.”
Among the latest sobering statistics:
• A record-high 2,396 children were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of 9/7, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
• An average of 369 pediatric COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospitals every day during the week ending 9/6, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• More than 55,000 children have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since August 2020, according to CDC data. Many of those children had no known preexisting conditions.
• While childhood COVID-19 deaths are still rare, that number is increasing. As of 8/8, at least 520 children have died, according to CDC data.
Doctors say it’s critical to protect children against the Delta variant — not just for the sake of their health, but to preserve in-person learning and help prevent more aggressive variants from setting the entire country back.
HOUSE DEMS WOULD FUND $3.5T BUDGET WITH TAX HIKES House Democrats unveiled legislation (9/13) that would raise an estimated $2.9 trillion in taxes and provide the foundation for the biggest investment in the US social safety net in at least a generation.
The tax proposal—a crucial part of Democratic efforts to pass a $3.5 trillion budget bill—would also take a big bite out of a concept that has increasingly driven progressive Democrats over the past decade: Income inequality, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (9/13).
The liberal and conservative wings to the Democratic Party have a ways to go before they see eye to eye on the massive budget bill. But the House Ways and Means panel’s opening bid in how to fund the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s agenda represents a big step forward in the debate.
The measure’s tax increases target the nation’s top income earners, millionaires and billionaires, and large companies in the following ways:
• Raises the corporate tax rate on companies reporting more than $5 million in annual income from 21% to 26.5%—a partial roll back of the GOP’s 2017 tax giveaway to corporations; companies making $400,000 - $5 million would see no change, and companies making less than $400,000 would get a rate cut to 18%
• Households with taxable income over $450,000 and unmarried individuals earning more than $400,000 would see the top income tax rate restored to 39.6%, up from 37%
• People earning more than $5 million would see a 3% surtax, which is expected to raise $127 billion
• The capital gains rate paid by investors would increase from 20% to 25%—a smaller than expected increase after Biden originally suggested doubling the rate
• Increased taxes on tobacco and nicotine products, which would raise an estimated $96 billion in revenues
• Raising the U.S. minimum tax on overseas earnings from 10.5% to 16.5%—well below the 21% proposed by the White House but closer to the 15% global minimum tax rate currently being negotiated between the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the tax changes would raise roughly $2.073 trillion in revenue. But Democrats argue that savings in some places coupled with the economic gains generated by the bill’s investments in the economy will also help neutralize the bill’s price tag. Neal’s proposal omitted some of Biden’s original provisions, such as taxing the inheritances of the wealthy, but the White House largely welcomed the proposal.
Spokesperson Andrew Bates issued a statement saying the proposal meets “two core goals” President Biden had laid out at the beginning of this process.
“It does not raise taxes on Americans earning under $400,000 and it repeals the core elements of the Trump tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations that have done nothing to strengthen our country’s economic health,” Bates said.
By and large, the proposal—which will surely undergo changes—pays for the majority (but perhaps not all) of the investments the president and Democrats hope to make in addressing climate change; providing paid family leave, free universal pre-K, and community college; and reducing the costs of health care, child care, and elder care, among other initiatives.
REPUBS’ TRUST IN NATIONAL NEWS DROPS BY HALF IN JUST 5 YEARS. In just five years, the number of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents saying they trust national news organizations has plummeted from 70% in 2016 to just 35% this year, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (9/6).
Overall, nearly six in 10 Americans—58%—said they have at least some faith in national news outlets. But 78% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents express “a lot” or at least “some” trust in national news outfits. That leaves a partisan gap of some 43 points between Democrats and Republicans—the largest gap at any time since Pew began asking the question in 2016. The divide is even more pronounced between liberal Democrats (83% trust) and conservative Republicans (30% trust), yielding a yawning 53-point gap.
The change has mostly been fueled by Republicans, according to Pew.
The 35% of Republicans who have at least some trust in national news organizations in 2021 is half that of in 2016 (70%) – and has dropped 14 points since late 2019 (49%). By comparison, Democrats have remained far more consistent in the past five years, ranging somewhere between 78% and 86%.
Faith in local news has held up slightly better, with 75% of Americans expressing at least some trust in reporting from local outlets. But Republicans still have less trust than Democrats in local outlets.
From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2021
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