Republican Opacity, etc.

What the current congressional GOP leadership wants to do, eliminate domestic safety net programs and consumer protections is highly unpopular. So, they keep their mouths shut about it. The NYT writes:

At a news conference this month to showcase how Republicans will handle their looming debt ceiling showdown with Democrats, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was asked to explain what specific spending cuts his party would support in exchange for lifting the borrowing cap.

“Exactly what those are, we’re not willing to lay out here today,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that plans would be determined in consultation with House Republicans.

The refrain has been familiar in recent weeks as Republicans have insisted that they want “structural” fiscal changes in exchange for voting to raise the borrowing cap, but they have so far declined to offer a cohesive plan outlining what programs they would cut.

Since the radical right GOP leadership won’t say, one can reasonably speculate that 

(1) at least Medicare, social security, Medicaid, food stamps, all other welfare programs, the IRS, the EPA, the Education Department, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are all slated for total elimination; and 

(2) tax law and business regulations are to be revised to enhance the flow of both power and wealth to wealthy and/or powerful elites, big corporations and Christian groups and businesses. 

That’s just fair and balanced. That assessment is based on decades of government, secularism and safety net hating rhetoric from the radical right. Why not simply believe that they really do want to do what they have been saying they want to do for decades? 

Lest we forget:

“The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” -- Government hater Ronald Reagan, 1986 (37 years ago)

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Globally, democracy is in fairly bad shape. It is under constant attack by greedy, corrupt authoritarians, plutocrats, theocrats and the like. The Guardian writes about citizen’s assemblies that are being tried in a pro-democracy effort by people in political disagreement to compromise and move forward without hating each other’s guts. TG writes:

Citizens’ assemblies, a phenomenon that is gaining in popularity around the globe, date back to ancient Athens, where legislative panels, courts and councils were chosen via random selection. In a practice known as sortition, Greek citizens over the age of 30 were enlisted to debate governmental matters from city finances to military strategy. More recently, citizens’ assemblies have convened to hammer out solutions to such issues as homelessness in Los Angeles, the allocation of a $5bn budget in Melbourne, Australia, and the longstanding ban on abortion in Ireland.

In 2017, after meeting over the course of five weekends for deliberation, an Irish citizens’ assembly came up with a recommendation to legalize the procedure. Sixty-six per cent of Irish voters later approved the referendum, ending more than four decades of fruitless political debate.

Modern citizens’ assemblies are typically convened by legislative bodies, which work alongside non-profit groups to reach out to large numbers of citizens at random – sending letters like the one Bajwa received in the mail – then sorting the respondents who express interest according to social and economic factors. The result is a group of people who are randomly selected and reflect the demographics of the population as a whole.

Sortition, a word that might evoke the next chapter in the Hunger Games franchise, offers a revived spin on democracy. Instead of leaving the decision-making up to elected officials, citizens’ assemblies can offer a special interests-free alternative to politics as we know it.

This is an interesting development. Given America’s deeply polarized, corrupt and broken two-party system, maybe this offers a helpful component in the battle to save democracy from tyranny, kleptocracy and whatnot.

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A core goal of Christian nationalism is to tamp down civil liberties in an effort to shift power from citizens to church organizations and religious leaders. The Hill writes:

The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee has disbanded the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which focused on issues including voting rights, freedom of assembly and criminal justice reform policies.

In a committee meeting on Tuesday, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said this doesn’t mean topics related to these issues can’t be brought before the committee.

“Let me be very clear: any topic that’s not mentioned in the subcommittee jurisdiction is reserved for the full committee,” Comer said. “We can have a committee hearing in this committee on basically anything we want.”

Notice Comer’s intentional propaganda. Yes, the remaining full committee certainly can have hearings on civil rights and liberties. But it is reasonable to think that it won’t. Whatever actions that might be taken will be in defense of what the Christian nationalist wing of the GOP has been delivering for years, namely weakening of targeted voting rights and civil liberties such as abortion and same-sex marriage. 

Of course, gun rights will be defended if needed, but that is unlikely to be necessary. The radical right Supreme Court has probably made nearly all existing gun safety laws unconstitutional. That issue probably will not come up. 

Psychology 101?

Let me hit you with this general psychology question:

Do people (the bulk of the masses) need led? 

Merriam-Webster 

Led: a: to guide on a way especially by going in advance; b: to direct on a course or in a direction)

Granted, there are many who are the diligent types, who know how to (and take the time to) verify and evaluate data and make a judgment on such.  But for the general public, is such diligence mostly true or mostly false?

It’s true that life in general gives us personal experiences to build on, and others can’t help but be involved in such experiences.  IOW, “No man is an island; entire of itself.”  But do we, as a people, mostly take our cues from/directions from/are followers of others (e.g., the clergy, the school system, the politicians, celebrity figures, family figures, friends' influence)?  Or, more from ourselves?  Are we mostly followers or leaders?

-If yes, mostly led by others (followers), what percentage of us?  What do you think are the causes (e.g., shifts responsibility, too much work, gullibility, etc.).

-If no, mostly self-directed, self-made (leaders), make your case for that kind of independent thinking.  How does it happen?  What are the “keys?”

How culture wars work: The example of the gas stove battle

Demagoguery: political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument; the term is formally applied to just democracies, but I apply it to all kinds of political regimes including autocracies, theocracies, plutocracies, kleptocracies and the like 

Virtue signaling demagoguery

Summery: How culture war works

This, or fairly close variants, is how America’s radical right political, religious, commercial and social culture war works.

• Find an issue that can be weaponized, preferably on moral grounds, e.g., climate change, gun safety laws, abortion or gas stoves
• Demagogue it to appeal to emotion like bigotry and irrational fear to maximize public disinformation, confusion, distrust, polarization, irrational fear, anger and other emotion-driven irrationality
• Find and quietly fund experts to publicly lend credibility to the demagogues (or liars-deceivers-dividers)
• Unleash the conspiracy theory crackpots and fund their divisive free speech to pollute as many minds as possible with their cynical dark free speech
• Use free speech (campaign  contributions) to buy sympathetic politicians and powerful bureaucrats by pandering to their ideologies and their self-interest
• Let already sympathetic anti-democratic politicians demagogue[1] the issue on their own, with or without special interest input 
• Maintain a well-funded torrent of demagoguery, lies, slanders and the like for as many years or decades as needed to kill the threat, or to delay it as long as possible

That is how it works every time. That’s probably how it has worked for decades or centuries. The NYT describes the current gas stove culture war:

When Multnomah County in Oregon convened a recent public hearing on the health hazards posed by pollution from gas stoves, a toxicologist named Julie Goodman was the first to testify.

Studies linking gas stoves to childhood asthma, which have prompted talk of gas-stove bans in recent weeks and months, were “missing important context,” she said. Levels of pollutants in the kitchen, particularly a well-ventilated one, were negligible, Dr. Goodman told people at the November meeting. In fact, she said, the simple act of cooking itself, “baking, frying and sautéing,” also released emissions that had nothing to do with gas.

What Dr. Goodman didn’t tell the crowd was that she was paid to testify by a local gas provider. Dr. Goodman is a toxicologist who works for Gradient, a consulting firm that provides environmental reviews for corporations. She appeared at the county hearing on behalf of NW Natural, the local utility that is heavily reliant on gas, an affiliation she didn’t state during her testimony.

In recent months, Dr. Goodman has also worked with the American Gas Association, the industry’s main lobby group, to help it counter health concerns linked to gas.  

In an interview, Dr. Goodman said she was transparent about the approach and processes she followed in her research, including disclosing the funding she receives. She said that it had been an oversight not to have mentioned that she had been paid to testify at the Multnomah hearing on behalf of the gas utility, and she said that the opinions she expressed represented her own, not necessarily the utility’s.  

She said she wasn’t saying that the epidemiological studies showed that gas cooking doesn’t cause asthma. Still, “when considering the entire body of literature, the available epidemiology evidence is not adequate to support causation with respect to gas stoves and adverse health effects,” she said.

Whether many Americans will continue to cook and warm their homes with gas, or instead switch to electricity, has become one of the most divisive issues in public health, as well as the fight over climate action.  

The gas industry has fought back. In at least 20 mostly Republican-led states, gas utilities have persuaded lawmakers to pass bills that forbid cities from pursuing prohibitions on gas, calling them too restrictive and costly.

In the quoted parts of the NYT article, one can see some of the prominent traits in culture war tactics. The expert attacks the evidence of adverse health effects as inadequate. Both the cigarette and oil industries argued for decades that the evidence was inadequate and more research was needed. Both of those industries still argue that the evidence is inadequate for (1) the second hand cigarette smoke issue, and (2) the climate change issue. That is standard culture war delay, deceive and confuse tactics.

Also note the crackpottery and lies that Goodman spews. She claims that her opinions were her own, not the utility’s. That is a bald-faced lie. No utility is ever going to pay any expert to publicly say anything that they believe is threatening to their revenues and profits. This is standard culture war quiet deceit tactics. 

It is also worth noting that Goodman is a public relations consultant, not a practicing scientist. She is a hired gun. Consultants will say just about whatever her clients pay her to say, otherwise they would have few or no clients.

Also note that corrupted radical right Republican politicians are in the mix. Focusing on and corrupting rigid ideologues is also a standard culture war tactic. Ideologues are usually much easier to corrupt and manipulate than realists because their ideology is right and everything contradictory or inconvenient is despicable garbage and lies.

Finally, NPR commented on how fast and easily the culture war gas stove front opened up:

Gas stoves became part of the culture war in less than a week. Here’s why.

At the beginning of January 2023, the health and climate effects of gas cooking stoves in homes was an issue policy makers and academics were studying.

Then, on Jan. 9, Bloomberg News published an interview with Richard Trumka, Jr., a commissioner on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, who suggested that the government might consider stricter regulation of new gas stoves in response to health concerns about indoor air quality.

Within days, those stoves had become fodder for partisan influencers and campaign merchandise.

“God. Guns. Gas Stoves,” wrote U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, (R-Ohio) on Twitter.

Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ political organization quickly came out with aprons for sale in the style of a yellow Gadsden flag, once an icon of the Tea Party, but with a gas stove where the rattlesnake usually sits.

“Not only is Biden coming for your paycheck, he is coming for your stove. You heard me right. The White House is now attempting to ban all gas ovens and burners,” said Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Each of these pro-stove declarations came after Trumka had already clarified that the agency “isn't coming for anyone's gas stoves.”

Footnote:

1. In my firm opinion, demagoguery is inherently anti-democratic because it takes power from citizens to form beliefs and act on the basis of facts, truths and sound reasoning. By definition, demagoguery relies on denying, distorting or downplaying inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. Control of power is why dictators, theocrats, plutocrats, kleptocrats and the like are almost always hard core demagogues. For average citizens, knowledge is power, while ignorance and false belief is weakness. Dictators, theocrats and the rest want that power for themselves and they always rely on serious demagoguery to get it .

Critically endangered horse cloned; Finland is propaganda-resistant; etc.

Horse cloned using 42 year old frozen sperm: A bit of good news. A California zoo announced the birth of a critically endangered horse, a clone created with DNA preserved for 42 years. Named Kurt, the foal was born to a surrogate mother, a domestic quarter horse. Almost all surviving Przewalski's horses are related to 12 born in native habitats. Kurt was born through a breeding program to boost genetic variation in the species. The horse — also known as the Mongolian wild horse or the takhi — is shorter than domestic horses, and often has distinctive markings. The article has a 1 minute video showing the foal and mom doing their horse things.

Kurt

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Finland is propaganda-resistant:  

Finland is the European country that is least susceptible to "fake news," with other Nordic countries trailing close behind, according to a recent analysis of media literacy. The United States and much of Western Europe – including the United Kingdom, France and Germany – ranked in a lower tier with countries such as Latvia and Lithuania in an expanded version of the analysis, which measures countries’ susceptibility to false news reports.

According to the report, the “dangers of fake news and related phenomena for democracy are hard to underestimate.” The countries where media literacy is at its lowest have the greatest restrictions on press freedom and low levels of education and personal trust.

This is notable because it is a source other than me who is warning about the now-grave danger to democracy, truth and civil liberties from divisive fake news, lies, slanders and crackpottery. The radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, has been putting this kind of anti-democracy poison out for decades. 

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The radical right Republican concept of a social safety net: Truthout writes:

Republicans Want to Raise Retirement Age to 70 as Life Expectancy Is Falling

This would shorten the retirement window to a mere six years, if the latest life expectancy average holds.

House Republicans have been working out the details of their deeply unpopular plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to deepen poverty and shackle people to the labor force further into old age.

What radical right authoritarian government and citizen welfare haters don't seem to realize is that if they do nothing at all, the safety net will continue to slowly melt away.  About 41% of Americans say it's 'going to take a miracle' to be ready for retirement and ~59% of Americans say they will have to keep working longer. About 36% believe that they will never have enough money to be able to retire. Apparently, the shift of Americans into poverty isn't going fast enough for the Republican Party's taste.

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RRRRDS strikes in Connecticut (radical right reason-reality derangement syndrome): The WaPo writes on the kind of baseless crackpottery that drives the radical right's deranged but enraged culture war: 

She named her breakfast cafe Woke. 

A conservative backlash followed.

When Carmen Quiroga named her new breakfast restaurant, she wanted people to associate the cafe with waking up in the morning. She settled on Woke Breakfast & Coffee and spent six months renovating a building and developing a logo. Quiroga moved to Coventry, Conn., a few weeks before the restaurant’s opening this month. While finalizing the permits at town hall, another resident advised her to check Facebook. There, Quiroga saw several town residents criticizing her restaurant’s name, suggesting she’d chosen Woke to make a political statement. That was false, Quiroga told The Washington Post. .... 

After Quiroga put up a sign with the logo on the building in September, residents began condemning the restaurant’s name.

The town divided along the usual political line, crackpot radical right vs reactionary left. Those radical right anti-woke folks are antsy to say the least. If there is nothing to get in a froth about, they just make up some crackpottery and let all their mindless rage and hate gush out. What a bunch of WWS (whining, wuss snowflakes (sorry SNOWFLAKE)). Some folks just need to get a real, adult life.

Quick, get this photo to QAnon to decipher

its dark Illuminati meaning of the egg for 

the letter O

Ooh, an evil socialist pedophile conspiracy is afoot!

Check the basement for a child sex-trafficking operation!

Bring your AR-15s and lots of ammo!!

The AR-15 "Piecemaker"

It shoots evil socialist pedophiles (and other miscreants) 

into harmless little . . . . . pieces

En/Inquiring minds want to know...

Tell me something negative about the Democrats.  Non-U.S. people, tell us what you think from your perspective.

Are Democrats:

• Too wimpy
• Too nice
• Too much “we” and not enough “me”
• Spend too much government money
• Phony balonies
• Wolves in sheep’s clothing
• Hate rich people
• Other

What’s their “problem”?  Why wouldn’t someone vote D, rather than R?  Explain in as much detail as you can.

Markets running free and butt naked; Trump fleeced his flock; Supreme Court corruption

Buyer beware: The NYT reports: 

On Trump’s Social Network: Ads for Miracle Cures, 

Scams and Fake Merchandise

Between posts about conspiracy theories and right-wing grievances was an unusual advertisement: a photo of former President Donald J. Trump holding a $1,000 bill made of gold, which he was apparently offering free to supporters.

But there were a few catches: The bill was not free, it was not made of gold, and it was not offered by Mr. Trump.

The ad appeared on Truth Social, the right-wing social network started by Mr. Trump in late 2021, one of many pitches from hucksters and fringe marketers dominating the ads on the site.

Ads from major brands are nonexistent on the site. Instead, the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets, according to an analysis of hundreds of ads on the social network by The New York Times.

Anti-vaxx cards, evil socialism, anti-woke 

insurance companies and other garbage

One ad for a $2 bill showed a fake tweet from President Biden calling for the Federal Reserve to outlaw the bill.

Unregulated capitalism, 

it can deliver lies 😱

Big companies do not advertise on that garbage heap because it would hurt profits more than enhance them. 

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Fleecing the flock: The Guardian reports that $1 million secretly donated to the fake audit of the Arizona 2020 election came from Trump. That money came from donors to Trump. TG writes:

The identity of one of the largest benefactors behind the discredited review of Arizona’s vote count has been shrouded in secrecy. Now the Guardian can reveal that the person who partially bankrolled the failed attempt to prove that the election was stolen from Trump was … Trump.

An analysis by the watchdog group Documented has traced funding for the Arizona audit back to Trump’s Save America Pac.

Trump could have made it public that he gave $1 million to the audit. His supporters would have been fine with that because most believed the election really was fraudulent. Instead he engaged in an elaborate effort to hide his involvement. But, that won't bother many of his supporters. They still love the guy, even if he takes their money and lies to them.     

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Supreme Court corruption alert: I feel some vindication about a conflict of interest allegation I recently leveled at Bush's former Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff. He was the radical right Republican that radical right Chief Justice Roberts put in charge of the Supreme Court "investigation" into who leaked the draft decision that obliterated the right to an abortion. It turns out that the conflict was far more substantial than merely political, which was all that was public at the time. Raw Story writes:

CNN is now reporting[1] that an outside agency run by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, with long-term financial ties to the court, did the appraisal raising questions of conflicts of interest.

Of concern are questions whether Chertoff's firm, which has billed the court over $1 million for various services, may be protecting the very justices who keep sending them business.

According to CNN, "The estimated payments to Chertoff’s risk assessment firm, for consultations that extended over several months and involved a review of the justices’ homes, reached at least $1 million. The exact amount of money paid could not be determined. Supreme Court contracts are not covered by federal public disclosure rules and elude tracking on public databases," adding, "The justices have long cloaked themselves in secrecy to the point of declining to respond to questions about potential conflicts of interest, or to reveal information about some court rules and ethics codes; or to release timely information about the justices’ health and public appearances."

Once again, the secrecy that the Supreme Court has long demanded and defended without any explanation, justification or publicly apparent reason is at issue. Given the unwarranted secrecy, it is perfectly rational, fair and balanced to believe that this radical right Republican Supreme Court is not only deeply corrupt and mendacious, but it is also deeply anti-democratic. Democracy and truth die in darkness, but tyranny, lies and corruption thrive.

Put another way, why give this Supreme Court one shred of credibility unless it publicly explains itself and backs it up with evidence? Of course, a solid majority of rank and file Republicans, and essentially all elites, solidly support this court because they believe it and they are winning and the opposition is losing. It is beyond unfortunate that few of the rank and file radical right can see that democracy, inconvenient truth and everyone's civil liberties are also losing. But the elites see it clearly and they love it.

Footnote:
1. CNN writes:

Exclusive: Supreme Court did not disclose financial relationship with 

expert brought in to review leak probe

The Supreme Court did not disclose its longstanding financial ties with former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff even as it touted him as an expert who independently validated its investigation into who leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

The court’s inquiry, released last week with Chertoff’s endorsement, failed to identify who was responsible for the unprecedented leak. The decision to keep the relationship with Chertoff quiet is a reflection of a pattern of opacity at the nation’s highest court, whose rulings affect every American.  

A Chertoff Group spokeswoman declined to address questions about the firm’s previous financial dealings with the court and why Chertoff did not reveal the prior relationship. She referred questions to the Supreme Court.  

Chertoff, whose financial ties to the court have not been previously reported, already had well-known personal connections to the justices through his Ivy League education, prior judicial clerkships and tenure in the two Bush administrations.

We all know why Chertoff declined to answer questions. It's the reliable KYMS tactic in routine practice.

KYMS: keep your mouth shut