Raising social involvement, self awareness and self improvement topics, because our communities are the sum of our personal beliefs, behaviors, action or inaction. Only "we" can improve our family, work place, school, city, country, etc.
Rural legislators no longer run on what they do for their constituents. Instead, they run against cities. When a violent incident occurs in Minneapolis, they issue press releases about how awful people in the city are.
I am thinking: - freezing or reducing taxes - preventing the state from passing LGBT / Bullying laws - and stopping other "liberal city folk" laws from being forced on them - limiting refugee resettlement - stopping abortions - keeping guns
What are things that affect people who live in rural America that aren't on the list? Affordable health care? Economic support for rural communities? Measures that support family farms? Support for rural schools? How come that didn't make the list?
Part of the problem in supporting rural America is that rural America is disappearing, quite frankly, it is dying. And the things that are done, that need to be done, mostly just slow this process.
And, by the way, if rural America really had the problem with illegal immigrants they claim to have, they wouldn't employ nearly as many of them.
Republicans want to talk about numbers, Democrats want to talk about what numbers buy. The advantage of the Republican approach is that it insulates them from the real world consequences of the decisions they make. Republicans cut the defense budget and the Democrats get blamed for the aircraft carrier that goes unbuilt.
Republicans also have the advantage of being positioned to blame Democrats for cuts that neither party wants, and that neither party can effectively make. The deficit is growing because the population is aging. In the anonymity of message boards, the idea that the old should die younger in order to decrease the deficit is frequently implied and sometimes voiced, but that isn't anything a specific Republican wants to put on their campaign lit.
"There appears to be a consensus in Washington that the success of the Biden presidency will hinge on the outcome of the massive infrastructure and social-spending bills now before Congress. That may be true, but their fate won’t affect how I vote.
I’m a single-issue voter. My issue is the fate of democracy in the United States. Simply put, I have no faith that we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power. Thus, although I’m not a Democrat, I will continue to vote exclusively for Democrats — as I have done in every election since 2016 — until the GOP ceases to pose an existential threat to our freedom.
If you want to know why I’m so alarmed about the current state of my former party, look at the dueling documents released last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee about President Donald Trump’s attempt to pressure the Justice Department into helping to overturn the 2020 election.
Committee Democrats issued a lengthy report documenting all of the pressure Trump applied to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to substantiate bogus claims of election fraud. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark was nauseatingly eager to cooperate by sending a letter to Georgia’s governor and legislative leaders urging them to convene a special session to appoint pro-Trump electors in a state that Trump lost. When Rosen wouldn’t cooperate, Trump threatened to replace him with Clark.
Trump wasn’t subtle about what he wanted: “According to Rosen, Trump opened the [Jan. 3] meeting by saying, ‘One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.’ ” Trump was dissuaded from carrying out this scheme only by the threat that Justice Department leaders would resign in protest. “In attempting to enlist DOJ for personal, political purposes in an effort to maintain his hold on the White House,” the Democrats write, “Trump grossly abused the power of the presidency.”
Yet the committee Republicans issued their own report to whitewash the former president. They pretended that his refusal to accept the election results had nothing to do with his desire to stay in office. Heaven forbid! He was merely, selflessly “ensuring that . . . the American people would have confidence in the results.” (So, denying the results would raise confidence in them?) And he wasn’t pressuring Justice Department leaders to substantiate his outlandish allegations of fraud but merely making sure “that they were aware of allegations of election fraud . . . and that DOJ actually did their job by properly investigating them.”
Are the Judiciary Committee Republicans this gullible — or this cynical? Which would be worse?
The crux of their defense is that Trump ultimately did not order the Justice Department to send out the Clark letter and did not fire the acting attorney general, so he “did not abuse his constitutional authority.” That’s a bit like saying a defendant did nothing wrong because he never carried out his plan to tunnel into the bank’s safe — while ignoring the fact that he barged through the front door with a gun. Because, of course, Trump’s attempts to overturn the election were not limited to pressuring the Justice Department — or even to pressuring state-level Republican officials.
Trump repeatedly told Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the results. He evidently hoped to carry out the plan outlined in the infamous “coup memo” from his legal adviser John Eastman. Then, on Jan. 6, while Congress was meeting to certify the election, Trump incited a mob attack on the Capitol. To this day, Trump is still demanding that the election be overturned.
It is mind-boggling that a defeated president won’t accept the election outcome — the sine qua non of democracy. That has never happened in U.S. history. What is even more alarming is that more than 60 percent of Republicans agree with his preposterous assertion that the election was stolen and want him to remain as the party’s leader.
Most Republicans couldn’t care less about the latest revelations of Trump’s coup plots. There isn’t an iota of outrage on the right over the Eastman memo or the Judiciary Committee revelations. If Trump runs for president again — as he shows every sign of doing — he will be a shoo-in for the nomination.
We only narrowly defeated the Trump coup in 2020 — and his loyalists are now purging Republican officeholders who refused to cooperate with this assault on democracy. It would be foolhardy to imagine that Republican officeholders who go along with the “big lie” now — as almost all of them do — will resist it in 2024.
To prevent a successful coup in 2024, it is imperative to elect Democrats at every level of government in 2021 and 2022 — to state legislatures and governorships, as well as the House and Senate. Democrats should break a Senate filibuster to pass voting rights legislation that would help ensure free elections. But even if that doesn’t happen and Republicans rig the rules, small-D democrats can still prevail by turning out en masse to vote for Big-D Democrats.
It doesn’t matter if you think the Build Back Better bill is too small or too big. What matters now is preserving our endangered democracy. We must not get so distracted by relatively minor policy quibbles that we lose sight of the true stakes in 2021, 2022 and 2024."
Rural legislators no longer run on what they do for their constituents. Instead, they run against cities. When a violent incident occurs in Minneapolis, they issue press releases about how awful people in the city are.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
How would you know this?
ReplyDelete"what they do for their constituents"
I am thinking:
- freezing or reducing taxes
- preventing the state from passing LGBT / Bullying laws
- and stopping other "liberal city folk" laws from being forced on them
- limiting refugee resettlement
- stopping abortions
- keeping guns
are things that are popular in rural MN
All of these things are an urban agenda.
ReplyDeleteWhat are things that affect people who live in rural America that aren't on the list? Affordable health care? Economic support for rural communities? Measures that support family farms? Support for rural schools? How come that didn't make the list?
--Hiram
Part of the problem in supporting rural America is that rural America is disappearing, quite frankly, it is dying. And the things that are done, that need to be done, mostly just slow this process.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, if rural America really had the problem with illegal immigrants they claim to have, they wouldn't employ nearly as many of them.
==Hiram
Source please...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pri.org/stories/2013-05-15/meat-processing-across-midwest-largely-done-immigrants
ReplyDeleteNot sure that counts as proof of rural folks hiring many illegals...
ReplyDelete"Butchering chicken and meat is dangerous, low-paying factory work — and it leans heavily on immigrant workers, sometimes illegally."
Since meat processing is owned and operated by huge corporations.
I thought this was an interesting K. Drum post:
ReplyDeleteProgressives need to start listening to the middle class
Laurie,
ReplyDeleteExcellent link.
Kevin and myself are very aligned in these areas.
I often wonder how much is enough for Progressives?
Nov2022 is coming quick and half the DEMs want to get themselves tarred and feathered...
Imagine if they had gone after holding the budget, taxing the rich and cutting the deficit in half...
ReplyDeleteBut no... They insist on more spending, more programs, open borders, etc...
Republicans want to talk about numbers, Democrats want to talk about what numbers buy. The advantage of the Republican approach is that it insulates them from the real world consequences of the decisions they make. Republicans cut the defense budget and the Democrats get blamed for the aircraft carrier that goes unbuilt.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans also have the advantage of being positioned to blame Democrats for cuts that neither party wants, and that neither party can effectively make. The deficit is growing because the population is aging. In the anonymity of message boards, the idea that the old should die younger in order to decrease the deficit is frequently implied and sometimes voiced, but that isn't anything a specific Republican wants to put on their campaign lit.
--Hiram
Well please keep running on Tax More Spend More then...
ReplyDeletePersonally I am against that...
From the Washington Post:
ReplyDelete"I’m no Democrat — but I’m voting exclusively for Democrats to save our democracy"
https://wapo.st/3mKXJch
I don't know if the link will work. I am trying to share a gift article.
Opinion by Max Boot
ReplyDelete"There appears to be a consensus in Washington that the success of the Biden presidency will hinge on the outcome of the massive infrastructure and social-spending bills now before Congress. That may be true, but their fate won’t affect how I vote.
I’m a single-issue voter. My issue is the fate of democracy in the United States. Simply put, I have no faith that we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power. Thus, although I’m not a Democrat, I will continue to vote exclusively for Democrats — as I have done in every election since 2016 — until the GOP ceases to pose an existential threat to our freedom.
If you want to know why I’m so alarmed about the current state of my former party, look at the dueling documents released last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee about President Donald Trump’s attempt to pressure the Justice Department into helping to overturn the 2020 election.
Committee Democrats issued a lengthy report documenting all of the pressure Trump applied to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to substantiate bogus claims of election fraud. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark was nauseatingly eager to cooperate by sending a letter to Georgia’s governor and legislative leaders urging them to convene a special session to appoint pro-Trump electors in a state that Trump lost. When Rosen wouldn’t cooperate, Trump threatened to replace him with Clark.
Trump wasn’t subtle about what he wanted: “According to Rosen, Trump opened the [Jan. 3] meeting by saying, ‘One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.’ ” Trump was dissuaded from carrying out this scheme only by the threat that Justice Department leaders would resign in protest. “In attempting to enlist DOJ for personal, political purposes in an effort to maintain his hold on the White House,” the Democrats write, “Trump grossly abused the power of the presidency.”
Yet the committee Republicans issued their own report to whitewash the former president. They pretended that his refusal to accept the election results had nothing to do with his desire to stay in office. Heaven forbid! He was merely, selflessly “ensuring that . . . the American people would have confidence in the results.” (So, denying the results would raise confidence in them?) And he wasn’t pressuring Justice Department leaders to substantiate his outlandish allegations of fraud but merely making sure “that they were aware of allegations of election fraud . . . and that DOJ actually did their job by properly investigating them.”
Are the Judiciary Committee Republicans this gullible — or this cynical? Which would be worse?
The crux of their defense is that Trump ultimately did not order the Justice Department to send out the Clark letter and did not fire the acting attorney general, so he “did not abuse his constitutional authority.” That’s a bit like saying a defendant did nothing wrong because he never carried out his plan to tunnel into the bank’s safe — while ignoring the fact that he barged through the front door with a gun. Because, of course, Trump’s attempts to overturn the election were not limited to pressuring the Justice Department — or even to pressuring state-level Republican officials.
Trump repeatedly told Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the results. He evidently hoped to carry out the plan outlined in the infamous “coup memo” from his legal adviser John Eastman. Then, on Jan. 6, while Congress was meeting to certify the election, Trump incited a mob attack on the Capitol. To this day, Trump is still demanding that the election be overturned.
It is mind-boggling that a defeated president won’t accept the election outcome — the sine qua non of democracy. That has never happened in U.S. history. What is even more alarming is that more than 60 percent of Republicans agree with his preposterous assertion that the election was stolen and want him to remain as the party’s leader.
ReplyDeleteMost Republicans couldn’t care less about the latest revelations of Trump’s coup plots. There isn’t an iota of outrage on the right over the Eastman memo or the Judiciary Committee revelations. If Trump runs for president again — as he shows every sign of doing — he will be a shoo-in for the nomination.
We only narrowly defeated the Trump coup in 2020 — and his loyalists are now purging Republican officeholders who refused to cooperate with this assault on democracy. It would be foolhardy to imagine that Republican officeholders who go along with the “big lie” now — as almost all of them do — will resist it in 2024.
To prevent a successful coup in 2024, it is imperative to elect Democrats at every level of government in 2021 and 2022 — to state legislatures and governorships, as well as the House and Senate. Democrats should break a Senate filibuster to pass voting rights legislation that would help ensure free elections. But even if that doesn’t happen and Republicans rig the rules, small-D democrats can still prevail by turning out en masse to vote for Big-D Democrats.
It doesn’t matter if you think the Build Back Better bill is too small or too big. What matters now is preserving our endangered democracy. We must not get so distracted by relatively minor policy quibbles that we lose sight of the true stakes in 2021, 2022 and 2024."
It appears the gift worked. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI agree with him except for this. "relatively minor policy quibbles"
It is likely I will be plugging my nose again as I vote in 2022. :-(
Too bad we have so many crazy progressives and crazy conservatives in control. :-(