It's official: Viktor Orban, the darling of the GOP and tyrants everywhere, killed democracy in Hungary

The AP writes:

European Union lawmakers on Thursday declared that Hungary has become “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” under the leadership of its nationalist government, and that its undermining of the bloc’s democratic values had taken Hungary out of the community of democracies.

In a resolution that passed 433-to-123 with 28 abstentions, the parliamentarians raised concerns about Hungary’s constitutional and electoral systems, judicial independence, possible corruption, public procurement irregularities, LGBTQ+ rights, as well as media, academic and religious freedoms.

Meanwhile, there are these interesting observations about democracy and what radical right autocrat billionaires want:

Today, a handful of billionaires fund far-right, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, and/or ultra-nationalist political figures, movements, and alternative media personalities. Their aim is to push mainstream politics further to the right, as mainstream politicians fear losing voters to the new extreme parties. But how can elites get working people to support policies that are against their own interests? The answer is to divert them from the real causes of their misery—austerity, privatization, economic deregulation, and disinvestment, i.e., the very policies supported by billionaires—and, instead, play on their anger over immigrants and Islam.

In the US, concerns have been raised about President Trump’s affiliations with far-right hate groups and the political support he receives from those groups. Robert Mercer is a billionaire hedge fund manager and CEO of Renaissance Technologies. A Trump donor, Mercer worked with Trump’s short-lived strategist, Steve Bannon, to make Breitbart News a platform for the so-called alternative right, or “alt-right.”

Using Facebook, Cambridge Analytica also worked with employees of Palantir, a data-mapping company set up with CIA money and owned by a billionaire tech entrepreneur, the PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel. Thiel has openly stated that democracy is incompatible with capitalism. Thiel was a big investor in Facebook and Reddit, the latter being a message board that worked “meme magic” to help boost Trump’s profile on social media.

Fascism and capitalism have an incestuous history. Capitalists want “strongmen” politicians who aren’t afraid to use violence to crush unions and make economies more appealing to international investors. US Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (Ret.) testified that in 1933, following the Wall Street Crash of ’29, leaders of banking and industry plotted to install a fascist regime in the US rather than allow the New Deal social investment program. 

We don’t have fascism yet, but who knows where a heavily-funded, international far-right might end up?

Radical right billionaire Peter Thiel wrote this in 2009:

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”

Those pesky libertarians. They want to completely do away with politics and government. As we all know, that would free up a lot of power. That power would not simply disappear. Where would it flow? Certainly not to regular people. Power would flow to ruthless, arrogant billionaire capitalist autocrats like Thiel and the elites who run the Republican Party and its Christian nationalism political movement. Those infallible people know what is best for us, even if it kills us.

Sounds to me like Thiel is, more or less, another totalitarian (or at least authoritarian), fundamentalist catastrophe just itching to get the power needed to fix what ails all of us, especially our civil liberties.

Q: Is it time to tax the hell out of billionaires, including ones who preserve their vast wealth in the form of tax exempt or privileged charities or foundations that last forever?[1] 

Is it time to get rid of all tax breaks for all charities and to eliminate non-profit status in tax law, i.e., what does the cost-benefit analysis look like (I suspect the costs far outweigh the benefits)?

Footnote: 

1. For example, the authoritarian, radical right Koch brothers foundation injects a lot of mischief into American politics. It will continue to do so for generations to come. American taxpayers heavily subsidize the very organization that wants to reduce them to serfs. Wikipedia comments:

The brothers have made significant financial contributions to both libertarian and conservative think tanks and, despite being ideologically libertarian,[6][7] they have donated primarily to Republican Party candidates running for office.[8] According to writer Eric Black, this funding doesn't stem from "a change of heart, but one of tactics" since libertarianism "was costly and could be bad for the family business long term.[8] David Koch who has described himself as a social liberal, had stated in 2012 that" I think the Republican Party has a great chance of being successful and that’s why I support it [...] The Libertarian Party is a great concept. I love the ideals, but it got too far off the deep end, and so I dropped out".[8] A network of like-minded donors organized by the Kochs pledged to spend $889 million from 2009–2016 and its infrastructure has been said by Politico to rival "that of the Republican National Committee."[9] They actively fund and support organizations that contribute significantly to Republican candidates, and in particular that lobby against efforts to expand government's role in health care and climate change mitigation[10] or promote climate change denial.[11][12][13][14][15] By 2010, they had donated more than $100 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations.

Extremely disappointed Germaine keeps referring to bias news outlets like WAPO and NYTIMES

 No, not really 😏

But that is the world we live in now, where all media outlets are considered biased or promoting "fake news" when really a lot of us prefer sites that will confirm our already intrenched confirmation bias.

There is still a big diff between biased news, or biased opinion, and simply awful wackadoodle sources. 

I have seen Righties continually refer to Breitbart, Washington Examiner, or Newsmax for their sources. If you THINK that is bad, what about ZeroHedge, Epoch Times or fake medical sites like Mercola?

My take always has been: be critical, use more than one source, and don't be afraid of using factchecking sites.

Mind you, Rightwingers believe factchecking sites are themselves Left leaning.

On another political site I read this commentary and agree with it:

So, in a nutshell, I can understand not trusting CNN, or MSNBC, or some sources that are even to the Left of those two. THEY ARE BIASED. On occasion they get caught with their pants down, as happens to NYTimes and WAPO. BUT not nearly as often as Fox gets caught with their pants down. Yet neither CNN or FOX are among the worst "news and information" sites.

I did find a site that gives a more detailed account of how to recognize fake and biased news:

https://library.nwacc.edu/fakenews/what

Meanwhile I DO use Mediabiasfactcheck to check the sagacity of media sources, and Mediabiasfactcheck checks both Right and Left bias:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

However, there is within Mediabiasfactcheck two categories that I pay particular attention to because the outlets listed on those two categories ARE typically Rightwing wacko outlets:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/conspiracy/

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fake-news/

Now, WHAT ABOUT Germaine's tendency to use Leftist news sources?? 😁

From the ‘Well, duh!’ files: The energy sector lied about its climate change efforts

The New York Times writes: 

Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

The documents, subpoenaed in a House investigation of climate disinformation, show company leaders contravening industry commitments.

Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.

Internal Exxon documents show that the oil giant pressed an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, to remove language from a 2019 policy statement that “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” The Paris Agreement is the landmark 2015 pact among nations of the world to avert catastrophic global warming. The statement’s final version didn’t mention Paris.

At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.  

On Thursday, the House committee is expected to discuss some of its early findings. “It’s well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who spearheaded the investigation with Carolyn B. Maloney, the New York Democrat who leads the House committee. “The problem is that they continue to mislead,” Mr. Khanna said.

Well, duh! Exxon lied. What’s new? As usual, there are no legal ramifications for the lies and no mechanism for the public to receive reparations for the avoidable environmental damage and extinct species that carbon pollution caused. The NYT article includes emails indicating that oil executives treated climate change and heat waves as a joke. The oil industry just oozes callous arrogance about climate change damages and deaths. 

“Misled” is too weak a descriptor for what Exxon-Mobile and the others did to us. Like most or all other prominent Democrats, Mr. Khanna needs to up his rhetorical game to meets the needs of the moment.

America desperately needs meaningful regime change. Meaningful regime change definitely does not include the morally and legally corrupt and staunchly pro-pollution Republican Party.

Republican climate change deniers

How Republicans air their dirty laundry — they try not to

As one might expect, maternal deaths associated with loss of abortion rights are going to increase. From the Republican theocrat point of view, that is an inconvenient fact or truth. So, what is a self-righteous Christian theocrat to do? Obviously, hide the truth from the public as best that can be done. Better yet, make sure there is no empirical basis to assert that forced birth laws kill some women -- do not collect data on maternal deaths caused by forced births and/or lie about why you are hiding the data. The Houston Chronicle writes:

Texas health officials have missed a key window to complete the state’s first major updated count of pregnancy related deaths in nearly a decade, saying the findings will now be released next summer, most likely after the Legislature’s biennial session.

The delay, disclosed earlier this month by the Department of State Health Services, means lawmakers won’t likely be able to use the analysis, covering deaths from 2019, until the 2025 legislative cycle. The most recent state-level data available is nine years old.

In a hearing this month with the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, DSHS commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said the agency wanted to better align its methodology with that of other states, and that there hadn’t been enough staff and money to finish the review for a scheduled Sept. 1 release.

“The information we provide is not easily understood, and not easily and readily comparable to what goes on in other states,” Hellerstedt told the committee. “And the fact it isn’t easily understood or easily comparable in my mind leaves room for a great deal of misunderstanding about what the data really means.”

There you have it. “The information we provide is not easily understood, ....” What an insulting lie. It’s an in-your-face whopper. Another Houston Chronicle article from July 2022 was entitled: Risk of serious pregnancy complications has doubled since Texas abortion bans, study finds. We all know what is happening. Forced birth laws are injuring and killing women and Texas Republican politicians do not want Texans and the rest of the world to know about it.

I recall one of the things that got me to distrust and dislike Ronald Reagan shortly after he was sworn into office. He started shutting down collection of inconvenient data by the federal government. Without inconvenient and embarrassing data, the GOP would not have to lie to the American people about inconvenient facts and truths and their inconvenient logical implications. 

Republican ideologues, i.e., essentially all Republican Party elites, donors and the GOP propaganda leviathan, e.g., Faux News, hate facts and truths that contradict their dogmas, lies and stated political agendas, e.g., turning America into a bigoted, kleptocratic theocracy dominated by Christian Sharia law.

As time passes, it is a good bet that in places (federal government, states, cities, counties, local PTAs, etc.) where Republicans have political control, they will shut down, hide and/or deny as much inconvenient data collecting as possible. In a year or two, it is reasonable to expect that Texas will simply stop collecting forced birth injury and death data because it undercuts their dogmas, lies and theocratic Christian Sharia agenda.

Germaine’s political rules of thumb: It is much easier to deny inconvenient facts and truth when there is no data to assert what reality is. Therefore, morally rotted autocrats, ideologues, forced birthers, fundamentalist Christian nationalists and kleptocrats all work hard to not collect inconvenient data. But when it pops up despite their efforts to hide it, they enthusiastically deny, distort and otherwise lie, spin and/or apply crackpot motivated reasoning to downplay it. Republicans are especially expert at, and enthusiastic about, this political deceit tactic.

As Senate Democrats diddle, piddle and fiddle, their time to act slips quietly away

If the Democrats lose control of the Senate in the 2022 elections, the Republicans will probably not consent to even one federal judge nominee. At present, all Senate Republicans vote against judges that Biden nominates. The Hill writes:

President Biden’s nominee to serve as the first Black woman judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals failed to win confirmation in the Senate Tuesday after two Democratic senators missed the vote: Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.).

Public defender Arianna Freeman’s nomination to the appeals court failed by a vote of 47 to 50. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) voted “no” to give him the procedural flexibility to bring her nomination back to the floor at a future date.

Hassan and Duckworth were absent, as was Republican Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.).

Every Republican present voted against the nominee.

If both absent Democrats had been present and voted “yes” along with Schumer, Freeman would have won confirmation in a 50-49 vote. Democrats also could have won Freeman’s confirmation in a 49-49 vote, with Vice President Harris breaking the tie because of Young’s absence.

The Democrats in the Senate appear to be unable to get their effing act together. That is on them.

How Russia attacks democracy and corrupts democracy and politics worldwide

For some years now it looked as if political corruption should rank as an existential threat to modern civilization, democracy, the environment and maybe even to the human species. Civilization because political corruption tends to flourish best when there is conflict. Democracy because corruption works best in secrecy under cruel, immoral-evil tyrants, theocrats and kleptocrats. The environment because it is easiest and fastest to generate major wealth and revenues by exploiting easy to access natural resources and polluting the planet in the process.

The New York Times reports on how Russia exports pro-tyranny, anti-democratic political corruption on a vast scale worldwide.

Russia Secretly Gave $300 Million to Political Parties and Officials Worldwide, U.S. Says

Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections, according to a State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review.

Russia has probably given even more that has gone undetected, the document said.

“The Kremlin and its proxies have transferred these funds in an effort to shape foreign political environments in Moscow’s favor,” the document said. .... The State Department document was sent as a cable to American embassies around the world on Monday to summarize talking points for U.S. diplomats in conversations with foreign officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate who defeated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Its methods included the use of cyberoperations to spread online disinformation. U.S. intelligence officials also found that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized a campaign to try to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he ran for office against Mr. Trump in 2020.

The Russians pay in cash, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfers and lavish gifts, the document said. They move the money through a wide range of institutions to shield the origins of the financing, a practice called using cutouts. Those institutions include foundations, think tanks, organized crime groups, political consultancies, shell companies and Russian state-owned enterprises.

The money is also given secretly through Russian Embassy accounts and resources, the document said.  

The State Department said in the summary that it was urging governments to guard against covert political financing “not just by Russia, but also by China and other countries imitating this behavior.”

As one can imagine, countries doing this corruption business are not going to support pro-democracy politicians or political parties. They are going to support corrupt autocrats, kleptocrats and theocrats. That is why Russia supports Trump and the Republican Party and its politicians, not Democratic politicians or the Democratic Party.

This post is intended to be just another warning about the many avenues of attack on worldwide democracy and honest governance that are now being used to advance the cause of corrupt tyranny.