Dispatches

HOUSE GOP PROMISES VENGEANCE ON DEMS FOR DOING GOOD STUFF. House Republican candidates are ostensibly running on issues this fall. House Republican Conference Chair and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) insisted as much in a Fox interview (10/9). “Republicans are going to fight on behalf of the American people to help save America, to focus on economic issues, to rein in the spending that’s driving our inflation, to unleash American energy independence to lower the price of gas, energy, home heating bills. So there’s a lot that the average American family is concerned about. Republicans have solutions and legislation ready to move in the first 100 days,” she said.

They don’t, actually, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (10/10). They have a snazzy website and a one-page “Commitment to America” memo, a summary of platitudes like “support our troops,” “exercise peace through strength with our allies to counter increasing global threats,” “recover lost learning from school closures,” and “uphold free speech.” And, of course, “rigorous oversight.” All of which really means tax cuts (and defunding the IRS again, which effectively means more tax cuts) and investigations.

Here’s a 100% guaranteed promise for all investigations, all the time. Here’s Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who is the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee and thus the guy who will get the chair if Republicans take over.

“Hunter Biden and the Biden Family have peddled influence across the globe to enrich themselves at the expense of American interests,” Comer tweeted.

“It’s clear that Joe was involved. The question is: to what extent?

“We will get that answer for the American people.”

It’s all about vengeance. It’s been all about vengeance since the nation had the temerity to elect a Black man to the White House and that president was able to do big stuff, like lower millions of people’s health insurance costs. The good news is that after 12 years, the Republicans have finally abandoned Obamacare repeal. (Mostly.)

House Republicans who never managed to actually come up with a health care alternative to the Affordable Care Act and whose only real accomplishment when in the majority has been tax cuts for the rich have one skill: holding a grudge and making political hay out of it. Democrats impeached Trump? Republicans will impeach President Joe Biden, whether he actually did anything or not.

And not just Biden—they’ve already filed 14 impeachment resolutions against Biden as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Five of them have come from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, most recently seen riling up a MAGA crowd with fascistic, dangerous rhetoric: “Biden’s 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, your jobs, and your kids in school. Coming from all over the world, they’re also replacing your culture.”

Don’t think because Greene is a dangerous whack-job she doesn’t have sway in the Republican caucus. She was sitting right up front when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unveiled his “commitment” in Pennsylvania in September. “I’m going to be a strong legislator and I’ll be a very involved member of Congress,” she told the Associated Press. “I know how to work inside, and I know how to work outside. And I’m looking forward to doing that.”

The feckless McCarthy has already given in to her, clearly. So if the House does flip to Republicans, he’s going to need her and the other MAGA crowd to hang on to leadership. One Democratic aide put it bluntly and graphically in a Politico interview: “Those members will have his balls in such a vice grip that when they say ‘jump’, he’ll say ‘how high’, and it’ll be too late before he realizes the fall will kill them.”

That assessment was essentially confirmed by Comer. When he was asked recently about whether there was going to be caucus pressure to impeach Biden, he answered, “I’m not under pressure, because that’s gonna be McCarthy’s job.”

BIDEN GIVES YOUTHS ANOTHER REASON TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER: STEPS TOWARD DECRIMINALIZING MARIJUANA. President Joe Biden on took the first steps toward decriminalizing marijuana (10/6) in what Joan McCarter aptly framed as his own “October surprise.” Biden plans to pardon all federal offenses of simple marijuana possession while urging all governors to do the same. He is also instructing Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how the drug is treated under federal law.

“We classify marijuana at the same level as heroin – and more serious than fentanyl. It makes no sense,” Biden tweeted from his @Potus account.

Not only is moving toward decriminalization the right and just move, but it’s also a political winner for Democrats, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (10/6).

Among registered voters, 69% support legalizing marijuana, according to Civiqs tracking.

Among young voters ages 18-34, support for legalization spikes to 82%.

But hold on to your hats, folks, young Democratic voters 18-34 absolutely love it—90% support.

It’s difficult to overstate how important that final demographic group is to Democratic chances this fall. Young voters turned out at historic rates in both 2018 and 2020, helping to deliver the House, the Senate, and the White House to Democrats.

For Democrats to defy expectations this fall, young voters must turn out at historic rates once again. The White House and Democrats keep giving that key demographic incredible reasons to believe that government really can improve their lives while making America a more fair and just country in the process:

• Taking initial steps to decriminalize marijuana.

• Granting up to $20,000 in student debt cancellation.

• Making a historic $370 billion investment in combatting climate change.

• Pledging to codify abortion rights into federal law.

Young voters likely won’t be aware of every one of those issues, but if they hear about any one of them or any combination of them, it will undoubtedly give them a good reason to get to the polls.

REPUBLICANS GO FULL RACIST TO TURN OUT THEIR VOTERS HEADING INTO MIDTERM ELECTION. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) held nothing back at a rally for former President Donald Trump. He was talking about crime, but that was simply code for Black Americans as criminals.

With early voting started in many states and just a month to go before the midterms, the GOP has pulled out all the stops. Nothing seems to be off limits, and crime appears to be the hot-button issue to rally their base. When it comes to talking about crime, Rebekah Sager noted at DailyKos (10/10) they really mean Black people, who they love to claim are villains.

Tuberville’s rant targeted the Democrats, who he claimed aren’t just “soft on crime” but “pro-crime,” he said at the Minden, Nev., Trump rally (10/8). Then he went after the Dems who support reparations for Black American descendants of slavery.

“[Dems] want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that,” the first-term senator said.

As the Associated Press reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigations found that overall crime rates have actually gone down since 2020, although the murder rate went up 29% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, a press release from the FBI in 2021 found that over half of known offenders are White. So let’s cut the nonsense, GOP: You’re not really concerned about crime in this nation, you’re worried about staying in power, and you’re blowing the racist dog whistle to do it.

In an effort to get Republican Adam Laxalt elected and unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Tuberville made the connection between crime and criminals (Black Americans).

Before turning to politics, the Philadelphia Inquirer notes, Tuberville made millions in college football. As coach at the University of Cincinnati, he earned over $2 million annually off the backs of Black athletes who were paid nothing. Sound familiar? Like maybe the American industry of slavery?

Tom Moon, a columnist for Alabama Political Reporter, wrote on Twitter, “I mean, I’ve watched and listened to A LOT of old George Wallace speeches. You’d be hard pressed to find many that were worse than this. In 2022. Just disgusting.”

But Tuberville isn’t the only Republican beating the racist drum: Louisiana’s blustery turncoat with a fake Southern drawl and a penchant for MAGA election conspiracies, Sen. John [No Relation] Kennedy, had no issues in a recent campaign ad where he called out crime and blamed “woke leaders” and the criminals he called “crackhead[s].”

“A mom should not have to look over her shoulder when she’s pumping gas. I voted against the early release of violent criminals, and I opposed defunding the police. Look, if you hate cops just because they’re cops, the next time you get in trouble, call a crackhead.”

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson also turned to crime as an issue in his campaign while running against Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Black Democrat. According to the Inquirer, Johnson ran an ad calling Barnes “different” and “dangerous” and sent out a mailer with a darker-looking Barnes just to make sure voters got the point.

The Inquirer additionally reports that the GOP has jumped in on the Pennsylvania race, implying that Senate candidate John Fetterman’s tattoos, which mark his time as mayor of Braddock, Pa., are possibly gang-affiliated.

RAIL STRIKE LOOMS AS UNION REJECTS WHITE HOUSE-BROKERED CONTRACT PROPOSAL. A union representing railroad maintenance and construction workers announced (10/10) that its members have rejected the tentative agreement reached in September between unions and rail carriers, putting pressure on the carriers to offer a better deal to workers in order to avoid a nationwide strike in the coming weeks, Julia Conley reported at CommonDreams (10/10).

Reporting a turnout of 11,845 members, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED) said 6,646 members voted against ratifying the agreement and 5,100 supported the deal, which was brokered in September with the help of the Biden administration’s Presidential Emergency Board. Ninety-nine ballots were returned blank or were voided due to user errors.

The tentative agreement reached Sept. 15 would include one additional paid day off and permit workers to take unpaid days to receive medical care without being penalized by carriers’ strict attendance policies—two key concessions from the companies, as railroad workers’ unions had expressed deep dissatisfaction with attendance rules and a lack of any paid sick time.

The deal also would include a 24% pay raise between 2020 and 2024 and would freeze workers’ monthly contributions for their healthcare plans.

After the tentative agreement was reached (9/15), the railroad sector’s unions agreed not to strike as workers across the industry voted on the deal.

Now, said the BMWED—the nation’s third-largest rail workers’ union and a division of the Teamsters—a work stoppage could begin as early as Nov. 19, depending on upcoming votes by other unions.

Labor Notes journalist Jonah Furman called the BMWED vote “a huge deal,” as a strike by the union’s members “would shut down the national rail freight system” by itself.

The last nationwide railway shutdown took place in 1992, when a single union rejected a contract agreement and went on strike.

The BMWED announcement could sway members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), which is also a Teamsters affiliate, and the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division (SMART-TD)—two rail unions which have been negotiating a fair contract with carriers for several years and which will vote on the tentative deal in the coming weeks.

Rail carriers have seen their profits soar in recent years as workers have labored without a contract, earning stagnant wages.

“Railroaders do not feel valued,” said Tony D. Cardwell, president of BMWED. “The result of this vote indicates that there is a lot of work to do to establish goodwill and improve the morale that has been broken by the railroads’ executives and Wall Street hedge fund managers.”

EX-PARTNER OF UKRAINIAN ‘HEIRESS’ WHO INFILTRATED MAR-A-LAGO SHOT OUTSIDE CANADA RESORT. An associate of the Ukrainian woman who posed as a member of the Rothschild banking family at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club was reportedly shot Oct., 7 outside a lakeside resort northwest of Montreal, The Guardian reported (10/8)

The shooting left Valeriy Tarasenko, 44, with “significant injuries,” but he was expected to survive, said the Sûreté du Québec, the Quebec provincial police. The police said it had launched a search for the shooter and any accomplices behind the attack.

Tarasenko is known as a former business partner of Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant who was identified by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project over the summer for posing as “Anna de Rothschild” at Mar-a-Lago.

Quebec police told the Canadian newspaper LaPresse that they were trying to “shed some light on the circumstances that led to the injuries of the victim.” But for now, “to protect the investigation, no other detail can be shared,” the police added.

Tarasenko, who was born in Ukraine and raised in Moscow, told the Post-Gazette and OCCRP that he had hired Yashchyshyn in 2014 to live in his Miami condo and watch his two daughters while he traveled on business.

The FBI, according to the report, has been looking into a Miami charity, United Hearts of Mercy, which Yashchyshyn launched in 2015 and carries the same name as a non-profit founded by Tarasenko in Canada in 2010.

According to a statement by the charity’s accountant that was turned over to the FBI, the charity, established to collect money for impoverished children, was in fact a front for organized crime.

The report said more than $200,000 in United Hearts of Mercy funds came from stolen credit card numbers and bank accounts in Hong Kong and Australia. The charity’s accountant, Tatiana Verzilina, said she had been threatened if she did not turn over the money.

Yashchyshyn is not only being investigated by the FBI but also by the Quebec police’s major crimes unit, the report added. Tarasenko told the Post-Gazette that Yashchyshyn went to Mar-a-Lago to seek out new sources of money from Trump’s entourage, where she mingled with the former president and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

In an interview with the New York Post in September, Yashchyshyn, 33, said she had been the victim of smear campaign by a former lover – Tarasenko – who branded her a spy for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

In an affidavit filed in a Miami-Dade county court in February, Tarasenko described Yashchyshyn as “an active member of an international criminal organization” who had created false identities using the surnames of dynastic, brand-name European and Canadian families, including Rothschild, Kruger and Cavalli.

But Yashchyshyn rejected that claim to the outlet. “What boils my blood most is people even thinking I’m Russian or a Russian agent,” she said in a phone interview with the outlet. “Russian people don’t exist to me since they invaded my country and killed my family and took homes.”

SOCIALISTS POP UP IN THE STRANGEST PLACES. Charles Pierce at Esquire.com (10/7) recalls the vice-presidential debate in 2012, when then-VP Joe Biden put away Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, by reading a letter Ryan had written pleading for a slice of the stimulus money he was railing against in Congress. “Well, CNN took that little drama national on Friday,” Pierce noted (10/7).

Last November, GOP Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota released a statement slamming the passage of the freshly approved infrastructure law he referred to as “President Biden’s multi-trillion dollar socialist wish list.” … In a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Emmer expressed his hearty support for a multimillion dollar grant to improve part of Highway 65 in his district. The work was critical, Emmer argued, not just for his constituents, but for people all over Minnesota. Crashes were leading to fatalities. Congestion was leading to huge delays. Plus, Emmer added, “this grant also strives to serve as a social justice measure.”

None [of the letters] cite “socialism” or “radical spending.” No one included a paragraph about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy calling the law “rushed and irresponsible,” or Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the Republicans who voted for it “traitors.” Often, the letters signed by members of the House and Senate appeal using the same terms that they derided Democrats for using, from “economic growth” to “sustainability” benefits.

“A conspicuous feature of CNN’s gumshoeing is that some of the more touching appeals come from the highest echelons of the House Crazy Kaucus.” Pierce noted.

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a leading Biden critic who explained his vote against what he called a “phony” infrastructure bill by issuing a statement that “this bill only serves to advance the America Last’s socialist agenda, while completely lacking fiscal responsibility,” wrote three separate letters between March and July advocating for projects in his district. They’d enhance quality of life, Gosar wrote. They’d ease congestion and boost the economy. They’d alleviate bottlenecks and improve rural living conditions.

This did not escape the president’s notice, either. He was able to enjoy a pleasant 2012 flashback during an Oct. 7 visit to a Volvo plant in Maryland. Holding up a printout of the CNN story, he cracked, “I didn’t know there were so many socialists in the Republican caucus.”

REPUBLICANS NEVER EXPECTED TO PLAY DEFENSE IN OHIO. BUT HERE WE ARE. It’s Ohio, folks. Donald Trump won the state by about 8 points in both 2020 and 2016—a thumping. Even after Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance originally won the GOP nomination for US Senate in August with just 32% of the vote, Republicans weren’t exactly panicking, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (10/7).

Then Vance seemed to vanish from the face of the Earth, while posting what can only be described as pathetic fundraising numbers. In fact, through June, Democratic senatorial nominee Rep. Tim Ryan raised seven times as much money as Vance raised through August.

Ryan’s campaign reported raising $21.5 million through June, with $18 million spent and $3.6 million cash on hand

Vance’s campaign reported $3.6 million in contributions through August, with $3 million spent and $630,000 cash on hand.

Cue the GOP cavalry. A McConnell-aligned super PAC made a massive $28 million commitment to playing defense in Ohio after bagging efforts to play offense in Arizona, where MAGA Republican Blake Masters is struggling mightily.

But now even Trump—who helped saddle Senate Republicans with Vance, Masters, and puppy killer Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania—is coughing up at least some cash to help triage Vance’s campaign. According to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate, Ryan is edging out Vance by 1.6 points—meaning it could go either way at this point.

Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s new super PAC, is making its foray into the midterms with $2.1 million in ad buys—$1.3 million of it going to boost Vance while the remaining $770,000 is being directed at helping Oz. (MAGA Inc. has also committed $127,000 in Nevada and over $1 million in Arizona, according to AdImpact.)

On Oct. 5, Don Jr. visited the Buckeye State in an attempt to shore up support for Vance.

In recent weeks, a narrative has taken hold in mainstream media that Republicans are gaining momentum, particularly in the Senate. It’s true that several races have tightened. But with the key exception of Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, all of that tightening is taking place in seats where the GOP is playing defense.

Republicans never expected Ohio to be draining upwards of $30 million from their efforts elsewhere. In fact, in more bullish times, back in April, here was how McConnell’s PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, originally allocated its resources.

• Georgia (offense): $37 million

• North Carolina (defense): $27 million

• Pennsylvania (defense): $24 million

• Nevada (offense): $15 million

• Wisconsin (defense): $15 million

• Arizona (offense): $14 million

• Alaska (defense): $7.4 million

Playing defense in Ohio wasn’t even on that list. Now playing offense in Arizona has dropped off. Republicans’ best pickup opportunity in Georgia is nothing short of a crapshow—one they could still win, but it’s certainly not going the way they want. And for all the hype about Pennsylvania tightening, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is still more than 6 points ahead of Oz in FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate.

In the meantime, Republicans are holding their breath in Ohio—Ohio, folks.

POLLING PUTS DESANTIS AND HIS CRUEL STUNT ON THE WRONG SIDE OF PUBLIC OPINION. In what Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson previously called “a page straight out of the White Citizens Council playbook,” Florida’s Ron DeSantis lured vulnerable children and adults from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. It’s a craven political stunt designed to boost his presidential ambitions, hurt Venezuelan migrants, and “own the libs” in the process.

But polling in September showed Republicans split over GOP-pushed stunts transporting migrants. Overall, more Americans oppose it than support it. New survey results released Oct. 4 now also show that most Americans support protecting Venezuelan migrants, Gabe Ortiz noted at DailyKos. (10/6)

”The survey finds that a majority of Americans (63%), across party lines, believe that people who are fleeing Venezuela and other communist regimes should be allowed to legally request protection,” Immigration Hub said. The national poll, conducted by Civiqs, found that the vast majority of Democrats, 86%, support the asylum process. More than half of Independents, 57%, are also supportive. Among Republicans, support is at 41%.

“Some Republicans worry that the stunt, which some experts have labeled ‘a different shade of family separation,’ could cost Republicans key voters from the Venezuelan voting bloc in Florida, the fastest growing Latino community in the state,” Immigration Hub said. The polling does not favor DeSantis, with nearly 70% of Latino voters saying that Venezuelans and other migrant fleeing regimes should be able to “seek safety in the United States should be allowed to legally request protection.”

“Additionally, the poll also found that a majority of Hispanic voters (65%) believe that the Republican governors of Florida and Texas who are busing and flying immigrants who are fleeing persecution are pulling a political stunt ahead of the November elections,” polling continued.

In polling released by Reuters and Ipsos last month, nearly half of respondents said they believed that GOP leaders were engaged in human trafficking. “Forty-five percent of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll—including 63% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans—said state leaders transporting migrants were committing illegal migrant trafficking,” the polling said.

AS FED PUSHES TO ‘GET WAGES DOWN,’ STUDY SHOWS CEO PAY SOARED BY 1,460% SINCE 1978. An analysis published (10/4) shows the top executives of the largest corporations in the United States have seen their pay soar by nearly 1,500% over the past 43 years, helping to fuel a massive surge in inequality as workers’ wages lag. Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (10/4).

Between 1978 and 2021, according to new research from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), CEO compensation at the 350 largest publicly traded US companies rose by an inflation-adjusted 1,460%, far outstripping the 18.1% pay increase that the nation’s typical worker saw during that period.

The trend of soaring CEO pay has continued during the coronavirus pandemic, which caused mass economic chaos and job loss among ordinary workers. EPI found that “while millions lost jobs in the first year of the pandemic and suffered real wage declines due to inflation in the second year, CEOs’ realized compensation jumped 30.3% between 2019 and 2021.”

“Typical worker compensation among those who remained employed rose 3.9% over the same time span,” note EPI’s Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra, the authors of the new report.

The findings come amid mounting fears of a global recession triggered by central banks’ attempts to fight inflation via increasingly aggressive interest rate hikes, a strategy aimed at crushing economic demand.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the world’s most powerful central banker, has been forthright about the primary goals of rate hikes: A weaker labor market and lower wages. According to the Fed’s own projections, rate increases could throw around 1.5 million people in the US out of work by the end of next year.

“What we hope to achieve is a period of growth below trend which will cause the labor market to get back into better balance and that will bring wages back down to levels that are more consistent with 2% inflation over time,” Powell said last month.

When Powell voices his desire to “get wages down”—as he did during a May press conference—he’s not referring to the skyrocketing pay of top corporate executives or Wall Street bankers, who have seen their bonuses surge by 1,743% since 1985. As The Lever’s Matthew Cunningham-Cook reported earlier this year, Powell’s Fed has “declined to implement a law to reduce the skyrocketing paychecks of his former colleagues on Wall Street.”

Bivens and Kandra write in their new analysis that the chief executive pay surge in recent decades is not the “result of a competitive market for talent but rather reflect[s] the power of CEOs to extract concessions.”

In 2021, the CEOs of top U.S. companies raked in nearly 400 times more pay than the typical worker.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2022

Populist.com