A Defense of Democracy is Beginning in Congress

Hitler, Franco, Stalin

President Trump’s affinity for various authoritarians is well-known. He praises them for their dictatorial savagery and pines for their unfettered kleptocratic way of life. Along the way, as we all know, congressional republicans have been actively (or by their silence) aiding and abetting Trump’s moves toward some form of an anti-democratic, white Christian authoritarian, kleptocratic government. He holds truth in utter contempt, and constantly attacks and undermines anti-authoritarian democratic institutions including the professional press and news outlets, the rule of law, independent courts and independent law enforcement.

By now, none of this is new to anyone. And as we all know, Trump and his supporters completely reject all of it as a pack of lies by a vast deep state conspiracy running false flag operations to try to accomplish what it is that Trump is actually trying to do himself. The gulf in perceptions of reality between the two sides is vast and now hardened to a point such that bridging it is impossible. There is no basis for a meeting of the minds or compromise.

Americans may be unhappy about the situation, but is it certain that America’s enemies, especially Russia and China, are loving this all-American hate-fest. Especially the fact that America is under attack from within. For the last two years, neither congressional republicans nor Trump have been standing in defense of America, but instead are attacking it, either directly or by silent complicity. At present, America's enemies are winning and America is losing.

A nascent defense begins to take shape: House democrats are beginning to mount a defense. H.R. 1, the first major piece of legislation is designed to shore up democratic defenses by elevating what had been norms before Trump to the level of the rule of law. Advice from ethics officers in government were a joke and of almost no influence. Trump easily destroyed toothless norms and ethics concerns by simply ignoring them, showing just how weak and fragile our defenses of democracy really are. That failure has been massive and bipartisan, but that is a different topic.

H.R. 1 contains really interesting provisions. Vox reports:

House Democrats will unveil full details of their first bill in the new Congress on Friday — sweeping anti-corruption measures aimed at stamping out the influence of money in politics and expanding voting rights.

This is HR 1, the first thing House Democrats will tackle now that a new Congress has been sworn in. To be clear, this legislation has little to no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate or being signed by President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already bluntly stated, “That’s not going to go anywhere.”

But by making anti-corruption their No. 1 priority, House Democrats are throwing down the gauntlet for Republicans. A vast majority of Americans want to get the influence of money out of politics, and want Congress to pass laws to do so. New polling from the PAC End Citizens United found 82 percent of all voters and 84 percent of independents said they support a bill of reforms to tackle corruption.

Given how popular the issue is, and Trump’s multitude of scandals, it looks bad for Republicans to be the party opposing campaign finance reform — especially going into 2020.

In the area of campaign finance alone, these logical measures are included:

Public financing of campaigns, powered by small donations. Under Sarbanes’s vision, the federal government would provide a voluntary 6-1 match for candidates for president and Congress, which means for every dollar a candidate raises from small donations, the federal government would match it six times over. The maximum small donation that could be matched would be capped at $200. “If you give $100 to a candidate that’s meeting those requirements, then that candidate would get another $600 coming in behind them,” Sarbanes told Vox this summer. “The evidence and the modeling is that most candidates can do as well or better in terms of the dollars they raise if they step into this new system.”

Support for a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.

Passing the DISCLOSE Act, pushed by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island. This would require Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public.

Passing the Honest Ads Act, championed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Mark Warner (VA) and introduced by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) in the House, which would require Facebook and Twitter to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and share how much money was spent.

Changes to ethics rules are part of H.R. 1, including (1) requiring disclosure of 10 years of tax returns for president, vice president and candidates for president and vice president, and (2) creating a new ethical code for the US Supreme Court, ensuring all branches of government are impacted by the new law.

Changes to voting rights laws are also included, such as (1) creating a national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out, rather than opt in, and (2) ending partisan gerrymandering for federal elections and prohibiting voter roll purging, e.g., by ending use of non-forwardable mail to remove people from voter rolls.

For Trump and congressional republicans, this kind of legislation is dead on arrival. Senate majority leader McConnell calls it a power grab, which it is. It is just a power grab for voters, not his corrupt party and its corrupt, failed ideology. H.R. 1 will never pass the Senate, and probably never even be brought to the floor for a vote. And, if he had the chance, Trump would veto it without second thought. There is no way that Trump would ever willingly let his tax returns be seen.

Despite its zero chance of passage into law, H.R. 1 sets up the fight for the 2020 elections. It will be clear to everyone, and deniable by no one, where people stand in defense of America. Passage of the bill forces the republicans to let it die as quietly and opaquely as they can. For that reason, the House could pass it periodically to keep attention on the issues it addresses. That would be the same tactic the House used by passing bills to repeal Obamacare 60 or 70 times with no chance of becoming law. They made their point repeatedly. Now, it is time for democrats to make their points repeatedly.

Vox writes:

Democrats know they don’t actually have a shot of passing HR 1 through the Senate, or getting it past the president’s desk. But they recognize they need to get serious about the issue, even if Republicans won’t.

“To say to the public, from this point forward, if you give the gavel to lawmakers who are interested in being accountable to you, this is the kind of change you can expect to see,” Sarbanes said. “If you like this, give us a gavel in the Senate and give us a pen in the White House.”

The battle lines could not be clearer and the stakes probably cannot be much higher.

Mussolini

B&B orig: 2/4/19

Are the Two Parties Equally Responsible for America’s Sad State of Politics?

This is a 6-minute segment where Bill Maher pushes back on the idea that the two parties and their ideologies are basically equivalent, morally or otherwise. Is it persuasive?



B&B orig: 2/9/19

The Origins of Rising American Kleptocracy: Russian Kleptocracy

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy; an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth

A disturbing article in The Atlantic magazine, Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America, focuses on current American politics and the false image that America had about Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed in December of 1991. Washington falsely believed that Russian leaders had committed to democratic capitalism, but in fact they were dedicated authoritarian kleptocrats.

The Founding Fathers' worry: The author, Franklin Foer, points out that the Founding Fathers were very concerned with the possibility that bribery and the corruption it buys would become the norm. He is blunt on this point: “The Founders were concerned that venality would become standard procedure, and it has.” He argues that even before Trump rose to power state politicians and American elites had proved themselves to be “reliable servants of a rapacious global plutocracy.” The elites that Foer points his finger at include lawyers, lobbyists, real-estate brokers, and politicians in state capitals, all of whom enabled creation and hiding of shell companies. The financial opacity that created led to laundering of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that kleptocrats accumulate each year.

The article concludes with this: “American collusion with kleptocracy comes at a terrible cost for the rest of the world. All of the stolen money, all of those evaded tax dollars sunk into Central Park penthouses and Nevada shell companies, might otherwise fund health care and infrastructure. . . . . One bitter truth about the Russia scandal is that by the time Vladimir Putin attempted to influence the shape of our country, it was already bending in the direction of his.”

How did American get Russia so wrong?: Foer argues: “Washington had placed its faith in the new regime’s elites; it took them at their word when they professed their commitment to democratic capitalism. But Palmer [CIA station chief in the US Moscow embassy] had seen up close how the world’s growing interconnectedness—and global finance in particular—could be deployed for ill.”

That sounds much like how the US was completely deceived for years by the kleptocrats who ran and still run the government in Afghanistan. In her book, Thieves of State, Sarah Chayes describes the simple but effective technique that kleptocrats employ to facilitate systemic, massive looting of an entire nation. In essence, kleptocrats speak English and they work hard to learn the jargon and acronyms that Western minds want to hear. The poisonous lies sound true and rational because it sounds so much like us.

Although Statin Chief Palmer tried to warn congress of what was happening, congress simply could not or would not see the ugly reality he laid out for them. Maybe they were already under the spell of corruption. Foer writes: “The United States, Palmer made clear, had allowed itself to become an accomplice in this plunder. His assessment was unsparing. The West could have turned away this stolen cash; it could have stanched the outflow to shell companies and tax havens. Instead, Western banks waved Russian loot into their vaults. Palmer’s anger was intended to provoke a bout of introspection—and to fuel anxiety about the risk that rising kleptocracy posed to the West itself. . . . . This unillusioned spook was a prophet, and he spoke out at a hinge moment in the history of global corruption. America could not afford to delude itself into assuming that it would serve as the virtuous model, much less emerge as an untainted bystander.”

Morals . . . . what morals?: That speaks volumes about the utter immorality of international finance, and complicit elites and politicians who know full well exactly what they are doing. It was all about the money, nothing else. Claims of selfless patriotism or high ethical standards ring hollow. The opacity of the system they set up was intentional and necessary, not an accident or mere coincidence. There is nothing moral about this. It is all about theft and nothing more.

Claims that capitalism and business are just amoral and morality is irrelevant are completely false. There is no defense for that argument in view of the facts and the logical conclusions they lead to.

The amounts of money involved are both staggering and destabilizing. What should go into public interest spending and civilization-building go instead into bank accounts of kleptocrats and their enablers, including state governments, lawyers and the real estate industry. All kleptocrats and their enablers work very hard to hide as much of their immoral sleaze as possible, preferably all of it. If they had their way, kleptocracy would be fully legal.

The amounts of money are so great that for the enablers, they believe their own BS about their high morals.

One of history’s greatest heists is still ongoing: The scope of the theft was staggering: “In the dying days of the U.S.S.R., Palmer had watched as his old adversaries in Soviet intelligence shoveled billions from the state treasury into private accounts across Europe and the U.S. It was one of history’s greatest heists. . . . . By one estimate, more than $1 trillion now exits the world’s developing countries each year in the forms of laundered money and evaded taxes.”

An existential threat?: From time to time, B&B raises the idea that international corruption could constitute an existential threat to civilization, and maybe even the human species. Occasional articles like this reinforce that possibility. Denials by kleptocrats, including President Trump, are neither plausible nor persuasive.

The question is this: Is there still enough political honesty, will and power to turn the tide of corruption back, or is it too late, especially in view of the pro-kleptocrat, anti-rule of law Trump backed by congressional republicans?

BB orig: 2/10/19

Author: Rob Smith

This thread is not intended to argue against the value of more objectively based political decision making.Rather it assumes the positive value of such in terms of increased likelihood of progressing towards humanist goals.

I'm seeking to explore how far objectively based political decision can go and what it looks like when we get near one edge of "objectively based". I'm doing this in part because of the many examples I see of people over-estimating the lengths to which a particular approach can be effectively applied. (See D:Religion for examples of atheism and belief in scientific knowledge being pushed far beyond the reasonable boundaries.)

The issue I'm using is how we make decisions about which humanist value we prioritize when there are competing values.

Here is an article that draws attention to possible problems that can arise if we say, prioritize "happiness" over "desire". "Opinion: My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy"

The author makes a strong case for these being different things. Even opposed things in her case.

How do others here see such a contradiction being resolved using "more objectively based" political decision making approaches? Do others see any tension existing?

 B&B orig: 2/15/19