August, 2021……..America is at war with COVID-19, and losing. In part because COVID-19 is evolving [which some say can’t be happening!!!]. In large part, steadily increasingly – because of sabotage, sedition, and treason.
Sabotage: “any underhanded interference with production, work ,etc…by enemy agents..20 any undermining of a cause..”
Sedition: “incitement of public disorder or rebellion against a government; 2} any action, esp. in speech and writing, promoting such disorder or rebellion..”
Treason: “violation by a subject of his allegiance..tp the state; 2] ..such a violation directed against the United States..in levying war against the United States, or in adhering to its enemies or giving them aide and comfort.”

When does “freedom of speech,” “religious freedom,” “personal choice,” “personal responsibility” cross the wartime line of disloyalty, “giving aid and comfort” to America’s enemies?
Since political/economic enemies of America – Russia and China- are actively filling media with COVID-19 disinformation. – wouldn’t a reasonable person conclude that “Americans” deliberately doing the identical thing – be correctly accused of “giving aid and comfort” to America’s top two enemies?

Earlier American casualties in other wars show World War II dead as 405,399; World War I dead as 116,516; Korean War dead as 54,246; Vietnam dead as 58,000. A total of 634,161. American COVID-19 deaths exceed 620,000. In less than 2 weeks we’ll surpass deaths of those four wars. Our next death “target” is the Union’s Civil War 360,000 dead.

America’s “frontline troops” in the COVID-19 war – doctors and nurses, first responders – are being ground down. Several thousand died in the first COVID year. Doctors have committed suicide, so have EMT personnel. Nurses are leaving the profession – saying they feel. BETRAYED. by people in their own communities laughing at them; incredulous that people believe “Fox” falsities, internet idiots, Russian and Chinese lies over world-wide sound medical and scientific evidence.

Widely reported, for months, have been numerous deaths of American “essential workers” – people supplying our food, keeping America running. What has only begun to be reported is massive trauma inflicted on our children, K-12, college, and beyond. their childhoods and educations have been disastrously dislocated, some destroyed
Studies, papers, books will be written in years to come on damage American “adults” inflicted on our children. Even worse will be the conclusions that much was deliberately done – for various political, economic. social, religious reasons.

Examine the three definitions above: “any action, especially in speech and writing, promoting such disorder or rebellion;” “adhering to its enemies or giving them aid and comfort.”

Reflect on just current newspaper sand responsible media headlines – showing “adult” demonstrators threatening public health workers, showing up at public meetings to disrupt them, death threats to medical personnel, people attacking airline workers, people threatening school personnel over masks, people talking of using underground fake COVID-19 vaccine cards.

We were on the verge of returning to “normal” life. Deaths were dropping, more and more people were getting vaccinated. Businesses, especially restaurants and entertainments, were reopening. Fans returning to sports events. It looked like we could have a “normal” school year…..and much more…. It wasn’t to be.

It didn’t happen because “adults” acting like children – and threw tantrums. The old theory was that as an “adult” one had “rights” BUT. one also had “responsibilities.” The saboteurs, seditionists, traitors have arrogantly and irresponsibly claimed their “rights” – and refused to accept their “responsibilities.” In so doing, they’ve killed innocents.

America has always talked big on how much we love our children, even though compared to other, more civilized, “rich” nations statistics don’t show this. We are 35 of 37 “rich” nations in providing child care {now severely undermining return to “normal”}; number 37 in medical health. We are number one in gun deaths and prison populations. Many of our schools are out dated, with defective/non-existent cooling systems {now especially relevant in the COVID and global warming crises}.

The future of America is being traumatized – deliberately – by COVID-19 saboteurs, seditionists, traitors.

Children are powerless; they can’t vote, have no billionaire lobbyists; we’re ignoring the ones speaking out.
We. will. pay. for. this – BIG.

All this recent COVID damage to “our” children is on top of post-1980 damage already inflicted. The costs of raising a child, without college, are estimated to be $250,000 each. In the golden middle class era of 1947-75, families routinely had 2-3-4 children. Now many are having none, or 1 or 2. Having more than 2 kids is, statistically, largely only possible for rich people. Our ability to reproduce ourselves is declining.
If Joe Sixpack graduates high school, works 18-68, making $50,000 every year, his total lifetime earnings will be $2.5 million. Spending $250,000 per child becomes more difficult

We’re proving Lincoln correct. A “nation” divided against itself cannot stand.

Those of us who’ve “done the right thing;” who acted responsibly. – we have “rights” too. We have rights to be protected from saboteurs, seditionists, traitors giving “aid and comfort” to our enemies – COVID-19, Russia and China.
We’ve tolerated the saboteurs. Given them chances to speak. Tried to reason with them. Coddled them. Allowed them to go unpunished for their sabotage. All this got us is more senseless deaths and trauma.

In the beginning, it was said “we’re all in this together.” NO. WE. AREN’T – millions of our fellow “citizens” have decided they have special “rights.” “Rights to infect us. “Rights to infect/kill our children. “Rights” to wear out the only people saving us – doctors and nurses, first responders. “Rights” to prevent America from resuming “normal>”. “Rights” to sabotage everything this country tried to do. “Rights” to be seditionists and traitors. “Rights” to do the work of our enemies – COVID, Russia and China. “Rights” in deed.

Many of the saboteurs are self-proclaimed “law and order” people. Many claim they’re “patriots.” NO, absolutely NO they’re not. The real “law and order” people got vaccinated, wear masks. The real “patriots” are doctors and nurses, first responders, essential workers. Far too many of the real patriots have already died.

In earlier wars, people who dodged duty, were disloyal, were caught “giving aidf and comfort” to the enemy – were prosecuted, jailed, even executed.
In August, 2021, having already lost over 6230,000 innocent citizens in the COVID-19 WAR, it is time to ask who is with us, who is against – by their own actions.

The good, patriotic, Americans, who did/do what they’re supposed to – we have rights. When does our right to “Life, Liberty, and Happiness” get enforced?

Why is it that the saboteurs, seditionists, traitors get to stab the loyal Americans in the back?

The May l2, 2021, purge of conservative Wyoming Republican U.S. Representatives by other Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives removes all doubt. The Republicans have now completely moved themselves into Nineteen Eighty Four status. From the movies back panel: “The classic George Orwell story set in a world where absolute conformity in action, word and thought including loyalty to Big Brother is demanded.”

So….loyalty to “Big Brother” means that the Republican Party of 1854-1960 is no more. Even the increasingly irrational and insane Republican Party of l964-2016 is no more. All that is required is a formal name change – to – The Trump Dictatorship.

The Cheney Purge removed all doubts that Trumpanistas stand for lies and lunacy; cruelty and craziness; destruction and divisiveness; racism and reaction; fascism and fraud..

We don’t even need to go back into the last 40 years of Republican deliberate destruction of what we used to know was “the American Dream; done by reverse Robin Hood tax cuts for the least deserving Americans: the obscenely overpaid top 1% and corporations moving jobs overseas.

All one needs to do is look at the Republican response to COVID-19 – irrational and incompetent. By comparison to rational countries like South Korea, American cases and deaths, per capita, are many times worse. The Republican mantra has been “personal responsibility.” Even leaving carve outs for “religious liberty” claims, the main response from “responsible” conservatives has been a series of super spreader events; plus multiple bullying events all over America.
Enraged “personal responsibility” conservatives have threatened retail employees, assaulted retail workers, been kicked off airplanes, and, of course – threatened to shoot people who denied their “right” to go without masks even in private property stores.

We are seeing a steady descent into anarchy, accelerated by the claim that: “I have rights.” But, no responsibilities to any other human being. Just “personal responsibility” rights. The ultimate “ME” over the collective “We.”

So…the CDC feels that all Americans can be trusted to do “the right thing” with respect to COVID-19. We’re all on “the honor system.” If we haven’t had a full course of COVID-19 vaccines, we’ll feel “honor bound’ to continue wearing masks – as a sign of caring for our fellow Americans. Since less than 50% of adults have had a full vaccine, that means in public spaces we’ll see about half the people with masks, RIGHT???

When the COVID-19 cases, and deaths, resume going up – we’ll know that faith has been misplaced. And since the COVID-19 resisters have “privacy rights,” the victims won’t know who sickened them, or possibly killed their under l2-aged child.

In our upside down America, those who refuse to respect your rights to live have “rights.” You don’t. Lies, lunacy, cruelty, craziness have a price. “Personal responsibility” without responsibility has a price. It might be somebody you love.

In post-1980 America, society has been torn apart by religious zealots demanding special treatment in the name of “religious liberty.” They have justified their unconstitutional claims of unrestrained “religious liberty” by attempting to rewrite American history and law. This has been done with the usual far right technique of plausible lies, twisting and taking out of context words, and making up things never said.
Below are some of the historical true facts there prove the zealots to be frauds and liars.

Above all, in America, there is this one central question: Should a church you DON’T ATTEND be able
to impact YOUR life in any way? Should this church[s] be able to put its particular dogma into law
that prohibited YOU from doing life’s normal functions on YOUR terms?

The Founding Fathers’ generation said “NO,” absolutely not. YOU can judge for yourself>

1] North Carolina state constitution, 1776
Article XXXI – “That no clergyman, or preacher of the gospel, of any denomination, shall be capable of being a member of either the Senate, House of Commons, or Council of State, while he continues ..pastoral function.”
Article XXXIV – There shall be no establishment of anyone religious church or denomination in this state, in preference to any other, neither shall any person, on any pretense whatsoever, be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith or judgment, nor be obliged to pay, for the purchase of any glebe, or the building of any house of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry…”
note: this is taken from Edwin Gaustad’s “Faith of the Founders, pages 134-145; note also that 8 states prohibited religious ministers from political activity and 4 prohibited a religious test for office]

2] On October 16, 1776, “The Ten Thousand Name Petition” was presented to the Virginia Assembly. Organized mostly by Baptists, “It called for the church of England’s disestablishment in the Virginia colony and breaking the “yoke” of religious oppression.” [“Church & State,” December, 2020, page 21]

3] Article VI of the Constitution: “…but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

4] The “Treaty of Tripoli,” signed in Tripoli November 4, 1796, and again at Algiers January 3, 1797, Article 11:
“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, – as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims]…it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing….”
The treaty was negotiated by the Washington administration, endorsed by the Adams administration, read aloud in the U.S. Senate. The Senate ratified the Treaty of Tripoli unanimously, without debate – June 7, 1797.
the above from: “Church & State,” March, 2021, page 7]

5] No Bibles were used for inauguration ceremonies for presidents Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson. President J.Q. Adams swore his oath on a law book. President Pierce affirmed, rather than swore the oath, didn’t use a Bible in 1853. [the above from “Church & State,” January, 2021, page 12]

6] Several of the original 13 states had an “established church<: by 1830 – all had eliminated them.

7] In his near-definitive “The Establishment Clause Religion and the First Amendment<; Leonard Levy mentions the emphatic efforts of two highly respected and influential Baptist ministers in the 1770s and 1780s , John Leland and Isaac Backus, and their successful advocacy for separation of church and state. [pages 111, 112] Most of the book is a documented refutation of any and all claims seeking to undermine the Founders determination to achieve strict separation of church and state. Chapter 5, “The Nonpreferentialists” is a robust criticism of those “..quick to rely on a few historical facts which, yanked out of context..” seem to offer “proof” for false claims. On page XII, Levy says former Chief Justice Rehnquist “..flunked history..” in a 1985 opinion.

8] In his “Blasphemy How the Religious Right is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence,” Alan Dershowitz accuses the Religious Right’s Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Alan Keyes, and others of repeated false claims. And reveals the motive behind “this mendacity: if the Religious Right can convince enough gullible Americans that the United States was founded as a religious nation, they can require religious control of public schools, federal funding of churches and church-based programs, religious test for elected and appointed officials, and much more.”

9] Garrett Epps’ “Wrong and Dangerous Ten Right-Wing Myths About Our Constitution,” includes Chapter Four’ “The constitution doesn’t Separate church and State.” “The attack on separation involves twisting words and reading history backward, and involves making some inconvenient parts..disappear. Most ardently espoused by loud foes of “big government,” the attack aims to place that big government in charge of American’s spiritual lives.’ [58] The term “wall of separation began in 1644, with Baptist theologian Roger Williams [driven out of Massachusetts] [59]
Epps attacks religious right favored “historian” David Barton as “..more than a crackpot, he is a charlatan..” throwing dust in reader’s eyes. [61] “The Founding generation’s opinions on religion cover a wide span, running all the way from orthodoxy to almost total infidelity. The First Amendment protected all these opinions.” [64]

10] Andrew Seidel’s “The Founding Myth Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American,” states: “The Declaration of Independence is an anti-Christian document with snippets of religious-sounding language as window dressing. If Jefferson and the other revolutionaries had been devout Christians, they never would have rebelled, the Declaration would never have been written, and America’s political relationship to the United Kingdom today would resemble Canada’s. The Christian bible stands directly opposed to the Declaration’s central ideas, including that it is “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [their government], and to institute a new Government.” See Paul’s letter to the Romans.
“Christian nationalism is not solely about religion. It is an unholy alliance, an incestuous marriage of conservative politics and conservative Christianity. [see the highly secretive, powerful “Council for National Policy’ – page 8]
“Project Blitz encapsulates the problem Christian nationalism poses. First, it seeks to alter our history, values, and national identity. Then it codifies Christian privilege in the law, favoring Christians above all others. Finally, it legally disfavors the nonreligious, non-Christians, and minorities such as the LGBTQ community…” [page 6]
Part II – “United States v. The Bible” and Part III – “The Ten Commandments v. the Constitution” present the case.

11] Randall Balmer’s “Thy Kingdom Come How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America An Evangelical’s Lament” contains this: “I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” Billy Graham, “Parade,” 1981 And this:
“I”m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?” Barry Goldwater, 1964
“I write as a jilted lover. The evangelical faith that nurtured me as a child and sustains me as an adult has been hijacked by right-wing zealots who have distorted the gospel of Jesus Christ, defaulted on the noble legacy of 19th century evangelical activism, and failed to appreciate the genius of the First Amendment….When they do quote the Bible, they wrench passages out of context and offer pinched, literalistic interpretations……The effect of this right-wing takeover has been a poisoning of public discourse and a distortion of the faith.” [IX]

12] Erwin Chemerinsky’s “The Conservative Assault On the Constitution” states: “..to understand what conservatives have accomplished it is necessary to look beyond the Supreme Court and beyond the judiciary. The assault on the Constitution is the result of a concerted effort by conservatives to alter foundational constitutional principles. The focus needs to be..on policies developed during the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, and Bush…..Young lawyers who served in the Reagan administration and were deeply committed to its conservative agenda, such as John Roberts and Samuel Alito, came to be Supreme Court justices. It is a mistake to see the policies of the Bush administration or the Roberts Court in isolation from a larger conservative movement that has sought to alter, and in many areas succeeded in altering, basic precepts of constitutional law.” [29-30] “Four justices – Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas – repeatedly had said that they rejected the notion of a separation of church and state.” [113]
Chapter 3 is “Dismantling the Wall Separating Church and State.”

13] Internationally known and respected Baptist minister Charles Kimball”s “When Religion Becomes Evil” provides “The Five Warning Signs of Corruption in Religion: absolute truth claims, blind obedience, establishing the “ideal” time, the end justifies any means, declaring holy war.”
“It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history.” [1]
“Christians who take the Bible literally are either ignorant or self-deluded. No one takes the Bible literally.” [57]
“It is important to remember that freedom from religion is a corollary to freedom of religion.” [93-94]
“Christian reconstructionists in America are only one step removed from their counterparts with a concrete, divinely ordained plan for an Islamic state or the reconstituted, expanded biblical state of Israel. The gap begins to close when the agenda includes denigration of Islam or direct action against abortion clinics.” [121]

14] Damon Linker’s “The Theocons Secular America Under Siege” states; “THeoconism teaches that a secular society is both undesirable and unsustainable…the United States has been a thoroughly Christian nation…the liberal and secular drift of American culture since the 1960s is the result of..liberal and secular elites…to impose their corrupt views..through undemocratic means [..the courts]…consequences..are a sex-saturated popular culture..collapse of..important social institutions [..traditional marriage]..separation of law from religiously based moral principles.. a “culture of death]……; the solution..is to bring ..America [back] into line with ..moral strictures of biblical religion..” [4]

15] The most powerful and distressing part of Katherine Stewart’s “The Power Worshippers…Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism” is pages 235-247 – the case histories of several people victimized by being under the control of fundamentalist religion controlled health care institutions: “Controlling Bodies: What “Religious Liberty” Looks Like from the Stretcher.” Denied medication, one woman gave birth to a baby without a brain.One woman had her water break prematurely. Testing revealed the fetus had no chance of survival – but the hospital denied her relief for 5 weeks. A similar case also occurred – denial until on the 4th trip – her body began delivering the products in front of an administrator filling out discharge paperwork- which “qualified” her for proper medical help!!!!
A 19-year old came to an emergency room for help with her miscarriage – denied twice, with a dead baby and a fever, the hospital waited until her blood pressure was low and she was septic before helping her.
Another woman, with a dead 2nd child went to a pharmacy for a relieving prescription from her doctor – the pharmacist refused to fill it – as she stood in line with her child and 5 customers who heard everything – denied.
A Washington state man, in hospice care because he was dying from brain cancer, asked for information on legal medically assisted death – it was denied. So, he got a gun – and blew his brains out in a bathtub – traumatizing the nurses.
Stewart herself started bleeding at 13 weeks of her second pregnancy. Taken by ambulance to an emergency ward with low blood pressure… “I was left to hemorrhage alone. On several occasions hospital attendants came by my blood-soaked sheets, but no one would touch me.” One doctor got angry nd walked away. After going into shock and losing “nearly 40% of my blood” they gave her the required care.

16] Pages 219-245 of Sarah Posner’s “Unholy Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump,” detail the massive extent of contacts between American far right people and far right people in Eastern Europe and Russia. One could draw a conclusion that the Americans were deliberately sabotaging America and democracy world-wide. One far right strategist visited an Eastern Europe authoritarian and planned his successful election strategy. An elected Republican Representative is called a “Putin ally.” Hungarian lobbyists are working Congress with the help of a former Republican Representative. A big part of all this is religion and “family issues.”
Pages 246-258 discuss “The Assault on Reality,” emphasizing the support Trump got from the religious right base, and significantly “From a prodigious infrastructure decades in the making, including networks of churches, advocacy organizations, charismatic televangelists, and Christian media……..In the Trump presidency, Christian right leaders routinely boast that they attend high-level meetings, and that the White House seeks their counsel on important matters of policy, from religious freedom to prison reform to Israel. these leaders….have become accomplices in Trump’s assault on the truth….Trump has consistently used these Christian right supporters as a shield against news coverage that exposes his wrongdoing.”

17] David Cohen and Krysten Connon”s “Living in the Crosshairs The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism” details how people are targeted – at home, at work, in community spaces, and on-line. Not just providers, but also families, neighbors, and friends. Chapter l – provides “Seven Stories of Targeted Harassment.” Chapter 7 – provides “Six Stories of Law and Targeted Harassment.”

Is this partial list of information enough? Should a church you don’t attend impact your life?

Given the intentions, the pattern, and the results – what would a reasonable person conclude?

So far in our journey through the 1980-2021 SABOTAGE of America by the radical “right” and Republicans we’ve spent time mostly talking in broad generalizations of the many CRIMES committed. This continues, but now we turn to stories of people victimized – a few names of the millions of Americans victimized by the GREED, ZEALOTRY, and inhumane CRUELTY of “conservatives.”
This is the story of how the rich and powerful hurt innocent people – DELIBERATELY – to get richer; of how they used the power of government to rewrite and rig rules; how they used the economic power of corporations to rig rules.

ABOVE ALL – this is the story of monumental GREED – and NOT caring who gets hurt in order to make yet ANOTHER million or billion; also the story of monumental ARROGANCE – they “earned” their ill-gotten gains.

This has been recently illustrated by the 2008 Crash and Recession, and by the climate crisis denial [for 40 years] – a brutal and 100% uncaring about consequences [“collateral damage”] to fellow workers, and to planet earth.
There has been a willingness to CORRUPT anything and everything to get richer – truth, government, history, science, law, America, earth – and – ABOVE ALL – an absolute CONTEMPT – for other human beings.

It didn’t have to be this way – other, civilized, nations did things differently, and still do; other, more civilized, nations cared about the lower 90% – so they have better health care, child care, better educational achievement, better standards of living, are far less likely to be shot – are HAPPIER and HEALTHIER.

In other chapters we’ve told you about the ENGINEERED economic inequality [“The Spirit Level”], the master plan [“Evil Geniuses”], corrupting law [“Supreme Inequality’}, sabotaging government [“Broken Government’], financing corruption [“Dark Money”]. Yet to come” attacks on the very concept of TRUTH, the very deliberate MISINFORMATION, the unconstitutional RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY, and much more.

Here we turn to “Who Stole the American Dream” and the shattered lives that followed. We begin to examine “Why Our Families Can’t Afford America,” and “The Disposable American,” and “Illegal People,” and “The End of Work,” and “Disaster Capitalism,” and “Predator Nation” [corporate criminals & the “hijacking of America”].

Behind all of these master stories is this: the shattered lives of millions of innocent Americans, some of whom kill themselves in “deaths of despair.” There are the two Dunlaps – one rich and cruelly uncaring, on the victim. Some of the stories of “creative destruction” are told – MILLIONS are not.

One of the keys is how the rich and corporations “packaged” this – the masterful narratives and “code words,” and “bumper sticker” slogans that were/are created to LIE to the victims [the lower 90%]. Simple, emotional, “divide and conquer” methods to convince many of their victims that the “real’ cause of their misery was “the Other” – selected targets to distract attention from the true REAL VILLAINS – the rich and corporations.

Who the REAL VILLAINS are is beyond dispute – the rich and the corporations, a matter of historical record [1865-1901 greed, 1929 & 2008 crashes, 1930’s Great Depression, aid to Nazis in WW II, etc.]. All this and more – corruption of the Constitution and law, outsourcing, attacks on labor unions [including murder], top 1% tax cuts & subsidies – needs to be “packaged” into believable LIES to cover it up.
What can’t be covered up are the millions of victims – homeless and hungry, unemployed and underemployed – the TRUE VICTIMS OF GREED, CRUELTY, and ZEALOTRY – the Smashed Dreams and Shattered Lives.

The clues for YOUR detective work are simple! As in the [Republican] Watergate scandal, take the advice of “Deep Throat” – follow the money. In this case, follow the I.R.S. statistics for pre-1980 and post-1980 income distributions. This has already been done for you by many analysts. A table of this is in the March/April, 2011 “Mother Jones” magazine on page 63. Thomas Picketty’s 2020 book, “Capital and Ideology” has numerous graphs illustrating this, as does other work by him, Emmanuel Saez, Jacob Hacker, and Paul Pierson. There’s NO DOUBT, “It’s The Inequality, Stupid” [page 25, March/April, 20ll, “Mother Jones”].

Like everything else discussed in Sabotaging America” – none of this is an accident. As has been much documented – it is all part of the ‘Evil Geniuses” master plan. That plan is a PLUTOCRATIC AMERICAN THEOCRACY. An America controlled by the political, economic, social, religious “right.” They’re all in this together. Membership [when not kept secret] in many groups is interchangeable. Funding by far right rogue billionaires is shared.
The intended result: return America to at least 1950, or 1919, or 1880. The fact YOUR dreams are smashed, YOUR life shattered – is of no consequence to them. In order to “save America” – some people will be hurt [“collateral damage”]. But it won’t be them.

Pulitzer Prize winner Headrick Smith’s “who Stole the American Dream” [2012] states: “Over the past three decades, we have become Two Americas…no longer one large American family with shared prosperity and shared political and economic power…Today, the gravest challenge and most corrosive fault line..is the gross inequality of income and wealth…The danger is that if the extremes become too great, the wealth dichotomy tears the social fabric of the country, undermines our ideal of equal opportunity, and puts the whole economy at risk…contrary to political arguments put forward by not taxing the rich…concentrated wealth works against economic growth.
“The opposite has happened in America since the late 1970s. The soaring wealth of the super-rich has brought the unraveling of the American Dream for the middle class..”
“Germany took a different fork..in the 1980s and it has fared far better than America…German leaders worked hard to keep their high-wage, high-skilled jobs at home…The difference is not in technology, but in our government policies and our corporate strategies.”
“..downsizing, offshoring, and wedge economics have backfired. For the economy, they don’t work. For the nation, they don’t work.”

The only double Pulitzer Prizing winning reporting team, Donald Bartlett and James Steele’s “The Betrayal of the American Dream’ [2012] states:”The Betrayal of the American Dream” is the story of how a small number of people in power have deliberately put in place policies that have enriched themselves while cutting the ground out from underneath America’s greatest asset – its middle class
“Their actions, going back more than three decades, have relegated untold numbers of American men and women to the economic scrap heap – to lives of reduced earnings, chronic job insecurity, and a retirement with fewer and fewer benefits…..America is now ruled by the few – the wealthy and the powerful who have become this country’s ruling class.
“What happened to the middle class in the 1980s and early 1990s wasn’t just a blip, but part of a disturbing pattern….The country that once offered so much to its people..has begun to eat its own.”
The economic elite have accomplished this by relentlessly pressing their advantage,,that exists for the simplest of reasons: the rich buy influence….With the Supreme Court “Citizens United” ruling..the message was driven home to the middle class…that the ability of average Americans to influence elected officials would be overwhelmed by [the top 1%’s] money.”
Chapter one has Barbara Joy Whitehouse’s story; and Lisa Gentner’s. Chapter 2 has Judy Bowman’s story; and “Boeing’s Faustian Bargain.” Chapter 3 has Randy Badman’s story; and Bill & Christy Stamp’s story.

Award-winning Alissa Quart’s “Squeezed Why Our Families Can’t Afford America” [2018] is full of stories describing what has happened to people in the post-1980 “winner take all” America. Teachers with second jobs, adjunct professors on food stamps, 24-hour day care centers for stressed workers, people co-parenting because they can’t raise their kids by themselves, workers without sick leave; people blaming themselves for what has happened to them. Page 6: mentions economist Guy Standing’s term for :this just-making-it group, “the Middle Precarit – people, often college-educated, for whom the supposed “American Dream” has not occurred. Page 8: what the term “Middle Class’ USED TO MEAN..
Page 37: Justin Thomas’ story – “For me to help my daughters with their dreams, I have to give up my dreams.” And the Thomas family’s nightly macaroni and cheese with baked potatoes diet. Page 45: Linda Tirado wrote “Being poor while working hard is fucking crushing.” Page 97; the “thirtysomething lawyer and his wife live with her parents to save on rent. Page 153: former Pulitzer nominee laid off, now an Uber driver.

Award winning Louis Uchitelle’s “The Disposable American Layoffs and Their Consequences” [2006] states; “More than two decades have passed since the modern layoff first appeared as a mass phenomenon in American life. Until that happened, companies tried to avoid layoffs. They were a sign of corporate failure and a violation of accepted business behavior. Over the years..permanent separation of people from their jobs, abruptly and against their wishes, gradually became standard management practice, and in the late 1990s we finally acquiesced….Three myths help us do that.. {a promised] payoff [which doesn’t occur]; the laid -off must save themselves…;…the pros and cons of layoffs are entirely measurable in dollars and cents..”
Chapter one is the story of how one town is devastated by losing the quality of its main main industry. Chapter three is the story of laid off airline mechanics [from the top shop] training to get themselves “retrained” – but for what? Chapter four is up-close stories of some of those laid-off mechanics trying to adjust. Chapter 5 is the stories of Virginia Gibbs and Diane Holthausen. Chapter eight is about the mental aspect of Erin Brown, his wife says: “I think the lay off destroyed his self-esteem.”

Award winning photojournalist David Bacon’s “Illegal People How Globalism Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.” [2008} discusses [pg. 32-33] how rich corporations run Mexico; how NAFTA led to one of the biggest Mexican migrations to the United States [51] – part of the corporate transformation of Mexico [53]; hoe Mexican “reforms’ led to privatization which benefitted Mexican billionaires and American corporations [58-59]; the effect of World Bank and IMF policies [60] were good for the rich, bad for workers; how 1994 U.S. speculators [usual Wall Street suspects!] created a crisis [61]
“The same system that produces migration needs and uses that labor…’The economic interests of the overwhelming majority of [U.S.] employers favors borders as porous for labor as possible.”…but labor must arrive in a vulnerable, second-class status, at a price they want to pay.” Employers use government against labor [134-35]. Pages 150-53 – using I.N.S. raids as a political tool; pressure on Congress to get laws making it easier to recruit foreigners. Page 172 – employers go to India to recruit whenU.S. labor gets organized and demands legal rights
“This system of casualized employment {is] …growing throughout the United States…The economic pressure of competing layers of contractors, recruiters, and labor agencies would inevitably exert THE SAME CONSTANT DOWNWARD PRESSURE ON WAGES AND CONDITIONS.” [182]

Bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End of Work The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era” [1995; 2004] lays out the possible ultimate question: EVERY NATION WILL HAVE TO RETHINK THE ROLE OF HUMAN BEINGS. Why? Because the possibility exists by 2040-2050, all earthly work might be done by 5% of adults. What comes next? Who are the winners and losers [need we ask?]? Do adults all become ‘disposable?”
Obviously – in a utopian world, we COULD create paradise on earth. We COULD have shared basic income. Will the work of robots, automation, A.I be used for the betterment of all? What will the current top 1% world rulers allow to happen? We COULD be asked to totally reassess the value of work. We WILL be asked to reexamine how the rewards of work are distributed. So – what is a human being “worth?” Why are we here?

Award winning Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” [2007} documents how well-connected top 1% figures and corporations manage to “use” a crisis to their economic advantage – when the public is in some kind of “shock’ from a disaster. Often this involves “privatization’ of what used to be public assets – offered as a “solution” to the crisis. Privatization had been a long-held goal – the problem was how to sell it to the public. The disaster is their chance, while the public is traumatized,
Klein offers you a tour of 1972-2007 efforts by adherents of the “Chicago School” to profit from disasters all over the world. The “solution” offered is usually radical “free market reforms.” “Reforms” is often used – it sounds like a real improvement, not the radical reactionary change it really is.
Page l4-l5, how the Bush II administration capitalized on 9/11; page 126 – “free market’ ideology in Latin America; page 177 – “Friedmanism” produces economic war on 98% of Bolivian people; page 232 – the part of 1989 Tinamen Square that western accounts left out; page 276 – how Western leaders – IMF – World Bank were guilty of “one of the greatest crimes committed against a democracy in modern history” in Russia.
Obviously, the interests of ordinary people are of no consequence.

Academy Award winner [“Inside Job”] Charles Ferguson’s “Predator Nation Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America” [2012] documents “…the abundant evidence of widespread criminal behavior in the financial sector…that over the last 30 years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry….now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on the American economic growth.”
On pages 190-207, Ferguson lists “prosecutable crimes” committed during the bubble, the crisis, and the aftermath by financial service firms – fraud, bribery, perjury antitrust violations, personal conduct violations.. In contrast to 1980s S&L bailout crises, virtually nobody is significantly punished for their crimes around the 2008 Crash.
Ferguson, page 21 – “The costs of financial deregulation are staggering.” 50,00-100,000 Americans benefitted – 300 million American didn’t and paid the price – which for many is still ongoing.
Millions of Americans had their dreams smashed, their lives shattered. Homes and equity lost. Lives turned upside down. Extra taxes paid to cover government losses. We’ll never know how many Americans lives were permanently damaged – because in America, you’re on your own.

From “The war on the middle class” file comes this: David Morris’ 7/19/95, column: “Republicans’ class warfare targets working class, the poor:” “About 700 very rich Americans renounce their citizenship each year to avoid paying taxes. President Clinton proposed to tax these selfish people as they left our shores. House Republicans refused. Some were downright sympathetic with the turncoats…..Multimillionaires as victims. The Republican view.”
A September/october, 2018, “Washington Monthly” had a review of Devin Fergus’ “Land of the Fee Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” are inflicting “death by a thousand cuts on the American dream – all done by “market forces’ under the auspices of deregulation. And, of course, private equity firms are mentioned!!! Clinton tried to provide remedies here – but [surprise!!!] “Instead, it was hobbled by Republicans..”!!!!!!
A 8/12/2018 Andrew Van Darn article; “Foreclosure study: Send a kid to college, risk losing your home.” Having child costs you $233,610 through age 18. Consumer debt would be below 2007 levels if it weren’t for student loans.
A 8/26/2018 article by Sara Coello: “‘Till Illness Do Us Part? Some parents are considering divorce in order to provide care for children.” Why is this necessary in America? June, 2019, “In these Times,’ page 9, “Estimated 530,000 families file for bankruptcy each year for medical issues and bills.” and – 44% of Americans who don’t go to a doctor when sick or injured because of cost in 208. Cost of heart bypass in 2016 USA: $75,375; cost in Netherlands: $15,742 !!!!!!!
“The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it” Posted 7/15/2010, 02:25 pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession. From The Business Insider.

So – what would a reasonable person conclude on “Who Stole The American Dream?” Remember – this is only a small fraction of the evidence YOU could consider, if YOU cared what happened in 1980-2021 America.

Smashed Dreams and Shattered Lives did NOT happen by accident.

Reactionary, often anti-democratic, billionaires are charged with trying to change and control America.
Why should a reasonable person believe this?

Begin with commentary from the last 2,000 years:
-Plutarch: “Am imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
-Matthew 19:21-24: “…It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God.”
-Daniel Webster: “The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create rapid
accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor…”
-Abraham Lincoln [1864]: “Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will
follow.”
-Mark Twain: “Why do we need government? To protect us from the crooks and scoundrels.”
-Honore Balzac: “Behind every great fortune is a crime.”
-Theodore Roosevelt [1906]: “The primary objective should be to put a constantly increasing burden on the
inheritance of those swollen fortunes, which is certainly of no benefit to this
country to perpetuate
-Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
-Dwight Eisenhower: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence…by the military industrial complex…We must never let the weight of this
combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
-Joseph Stigitz: “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.”
-Abraham Lincoln [1837]: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people.”
[note: some above quotes from D.C.Johnston’s “Divided”]

For more perspective, refer to historical facts of top 1% and corporate actions:
-1865-1901 “Robber Barons” era, also known as “The Gilded Age” – for the massive corruption of the American economy
and government by the top 1% and corporations. [Lincoln, Tain, Balzac above] Republicans dominate.
– 1920-1929 – known as “The Roaring Twenties” for many things. Republican presidents, 1921-1932. Speculation and
“exuberance” on Wall Street without regulation leads to the “Great Depression,” 1920-1941. Hitler, World War
II, and much misery of people world-wide.
-the 1933 plot by the top 1& and corporations to take over American government, revealed in a February, 1935
Congressional report [Jules Archer’s “The Plot to Seize the White House”]
-corporate aid to the Nazis, 1933-1949, including DURING World War II {Edwin Black’s “IBM and The Holocaust” and
Charles Higham’s “Trading With The Enemy”]
-top 1% and corporate opposition to almost all 1901-1970 reforms that benefit ordinary Americans
-subversion of corporate critics – Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader – whose work threatened their profits
-opposition to dealing with the CLIMATE CRISIS now threatening the very existence of the earth – the single
GREATEST CRIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. For what? Their GREED.

SO – is it possible, that reactionary billionaires might want to subvert America? With above, below, and much, much more FACTUAL EVIDENCE the answer is “YES”

Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” belongs on every American’s bookshelf who cares about a democratic America. It is that simple. The 1980-2021 existence of the various antidemocratic forces in America is not an accident. They’ve been encouraged and financed [millions virtually every year] by the reactionary billionaires Mayer documents.
Page 377, “Phil DuBose, the former Koch Industries manager who spent 26 years working for the Kochs before testifying against them in court, had no doubt that they now had their sights on all three branches of government. “What they want is to get their own way…The little people? They’d get gobbled up.”
Page 53, “…Doherty, the libertarian chronicler who has interviewed both brothers…Charles’s aim, he said, was to tear the government out “at the root.”
Page 82, “The new, hyper-partisan think tanks…introduced doubt into areas of settled academic and scientific scholarship, undermined genuinely unbiased experts, and gave politicians a menu of conflicting statistics and arguments from which to choose…..partisan shills would create “balance” based on fraudulent research and deceive the public about pressing issues in which their sponsors had financial interests.”
Page 105, “..the Olin Foundation was investing in William F. Buckley…also funding Allan Bloom [attack higher ed]….also supported Dinesh D’Souza [blasted “political correctness’]…..funded professors at leading schools all over the country [Harvard program emphasizing a conservative interp of American history; $8.4 million for a hawkish foreign policy approach]…….Through these carefully curated programs, the foundation trained the next generation of conservatives….Between 1990 and 2001, 56..Olin fellows..continued to teach [at top schools]…Many others became public figures in government, think tanks, and the media.”
Page 113, “The Bradley Foundation virtually drove the early national “school choice” movement, waging an all-out assault on teacher’s unions and traditional public schools….militated for parents to be able to use public funds to send their children to private and parochial schools” [with help from “conservative” Supreme Court “Justices”]
Page 137, ‘The Kochs never did play by the rules. They had their own playing field. They just didn’t abide by anything.”
Page 233-235: “The DeVoses were..deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy, described by The New York Times as a “little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” which..”met behind closed doors in undisclosed locations”…three times a year. Membership lists were secret….There was overlap with a number of other participants in the Koch seminars…surreptitiously fund attack ads……few issues were more central to the DeVos family’s mission than eradicating restraints on political spending….DeVos..said, “I have decided..to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point.”

There is also a documentary DVD, “Dark Money< directed by Kimberly Reed, written by Reed and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg. It stars the state of Montana. A review by Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times, appeared on 9/7/2018 – “Documentary tracks the harm from secretive campaign contributions.”

Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains The Deep History of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America” [2017] was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize and the Lillian smith Book Award, finalist for the National Book Award is also a book belonging on patriotic American book shelves.
Page xvii, “..take a longer view…the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance….a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation….an action would be taken by governmental figures on the radical right that went well beyond typical party politics….”
Page xviii, “..what happened in Wisconsin in 2011..governor Scott Walker put forth legislation to strip public employees of nearly all their collective bargaining rights……in New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie started attacking teachers….Equally mysterious were the moves by several GOP-controlled state legislatures to inflict flesh-wounding cuts in public education….In Wisconsin, North Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Iowa, these same GOP-controlled legislatures also took aim at state universities and colleges…..Then came a surge of synchronized proposals to suppress voter turnout…..its all-out campaign to defeat the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act..” [pg. 134 – A.L.E.C.!!!!!]
Page xxix, “The Koch team’s most important stealth move, and the one that proved most critical to success, was to wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party…..The new men in the wings respect only compliance; if they fail to get it, they respond with swift vengeance. The cadre targets for removal any old-time Republicans deemed a problem, throwing big money into their next primary race to unseat them and replace them with the cause’s more “conservative” choices – or at least teach them to heel.”
Page 126, “The “campaign for the courts”…sought “to mold a new jurisprudence” that would radically change “the way justice is dispensed in our society>” In particular…”to make the protection and enhancement of corporate profits and private wealth the cornerstones of our legal system.”…investors helped fund “law and economics” programs..and property rights “public interest” law firms…..to train journalists in an approach to law that was sympathetic to corporations that found themselves in court.” [SUCCESSFUL, see Rehnquist-Roberts Courts PATTERN]
Pages 227 – the Koch plan for a Constitutional revolution [6 major points]

Anne Nelson’s “Shadow Network Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right” [2019], pages ix-xii lists the names of “Dramatis Personae,” with * marks for members of the “Council for National Policy [4l. not a complete roster – fundamentalists, political operatives, media, money, organization leaders.
Pages xiv-xix, “The CNP was founded in 1981 by a small group of archconservatives who realized the tides of history had turned against them…They dreamed of restoring a 19th century patriarchy that limited the civil rights of women, minorities, immigrants, and workers, with no income tax to vex the rich or social safety net to aid the poor……So the CNP decided to change the rules….Three key players dominate [radio]: Salem Media Group, Bott Radio Network, and the American Family Radio networks…they have connected their holdings to a cohort of pastors, politicians, and tycoons, creating an armada of radio stations and news outlets loyal to the CNP’s political agenda, and selling millions of Americans on its harsh combination of plutocracy and theocracy.
“The cumulative effect is the creation of a parallel universe of information…devastating to American democracy…The CNP and its allies spent years building party machines at a state level…..The movement has..appropriated a vocabulary that it deploys with Orwellian flair. “Family” is code word for homophobic, and “defense of marriage” means prohibition of same-sex unions. “Fairness” and “justice” means lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations. ‘Values” means conservative evangelical ideology. “Right to work” means depriving unions of the benefits of collective bargaining.”…..At the heart of the debate is climate……..Members of the Council for National Policy have worked in concert with affiliates of the Koch network…”

Gordon Lafer wrote “The One Percent Solution How Corporations are Remaking America One State at a Time” [2017] to provide “a comprehensive account of legislation promoted by the nation;s biggest corporate lobbies across all fifty state legislatures and encompassing a wide range of labor and economic policies.
“In an era of growing economic insecurity, it turns out that one of the main reasons life is becoming harder for American workers is a relentless – and concerted – offensive by the country’s best-funded and most powerful political forces: corporate lobbies empowered by the Supreme Court to influence legislative outcomes with an endless supply of cash. These actors have successfully championed hundreds of new laws that lower wages, eliminate paid sick leave, undo the right to sue over job discrimination, and cut essential public services.”
Page 7, “For the first time ever, in 2012 more than half of all income in America went to the richest 10 percent..a degree of inequality surpassing even..the late 1920s….one historian of oligarchy notes that the richest 400..in the United States now exercise a degree of influence over society comparable to that of the rulers of ancient Rome>”
Page 27, “The conservative strategist William Kristol famously a logical reason [for opposition to single-payer}..in a 1993 memo outlining the dangers of President Bill Clinton’s health care proposal. Kristol argued that successful health care reform COULD FUNDAMENTALLY RESHAPE THE WAY PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE ECONOMY, RAISING THEIR SENSE OF WHAT THE PUBLIC [through its government] COULD DEMAND OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR.
Page 70, “…the deficits of all 50 states could have been erased entirely through TWO SIMPLE POLICY CHANGES: undoing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%..and taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income.”
Page 175, “>>scientists using a NASA-funded model projected the unsustainable demands on natural resources, combined with economic stratification of society into Elites ans Masses, could lead to a widespread collapse of civilization” [study modeled 5,000 years of civilizations – “closely reflecting the reality of the world today”].

For even more perspective, one can read Nomi Prins’ “All the Presidents’ Bankers…The Hidden Alliance that Drive American Power” [2014] My take; bottom line – the big bankers ALWAYS get what they want, regardless.

And – for a different, slightly, perspective – one can read “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt {2018]. Unfortunately, we have too many examples. America is NOT guaranteed to continue to last forever – not without ordinary people making an effort – this means YOU. Who have YOU voted for since 2010 – and why?

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis” famous “either-or” warning should be clear to YOU by now. In Lincoln’s immortal words, we either have a government of the people, by the people, FOR the people – or, we have what has been documented above – a government by-of-FOR the rich.

The Koch-captured Republican party has, since 1980, but even more so, since 2010, placed us on the slippery slope, sliding ever more each Supreme Court decision, ever more Republican Congressional moves toward a plutocratic theocracy.

I miss my parents, people of the “Greatest Generation.” But, as we talk about often, we’re glad they’re not here to see what America has become – a travesty of the 1947-73 peak. Dad spent 3 years fighting fascism – and now we have the beginnings of it here. Mom and Dad believed in simple things: doing the right thing, treating people with respect, just simple decency. America, in which Abraham Lincoln could no longer be nominated by the party he helped create, has disgraced itself – but that was/is the PLAN. America 2021 is NOT an accident – it has been bought by the obscene wealth of greedy, authoritarian billionaires. If YOU can’t see that – we’re in big trouble.

The following is the story [part of it] of most likely the biggest, most damaging, and most enduring CRIME in American history. Much of this CRIME has been done in plain sight. Much else has been done quietly, not known to most people [partly by intent]. It has been done in the states and in the federal system. It has been done by legislatures, by executives, by courts. Essentially – it is very simple: just rewrite the rules.

What is this major damaging and enduring CRIME? It has been, and unfortunately, still is, the ECONOMIC APARTHEID of America. Better known as: “ECONOMIC INEQUALITY.

Background: from 1947 – 1973, the United States created the model of economic democracy. The wealth of America was shared; shared on a fairly equal basis – from the poorest to the richest. This period still is the statistical high point of America. For the top 1% and corporations, this was “too good a deal.” They wanted a bigger share.

Background, II: so, beginning in the late 1970s, massively accelerating in the 1980s, the top 1% and corporations began their revolt. They organized, they “lobbied,” they increased political campaign contributions, they worked to get “business friendly’ legislatures, executives, and courts. It was VERY successful. The result is 2021 America.

BOTTOM LINE: the consensus is the “average” American employee is getting ROBBED of about $10,000 per year of his/her income compared to 1947-1979 UNSPUN I.R.S. data in the 1989 – 202x era – ONE cost.

The loss of all this income, for 40 years, has created a host of other societal problems. Some of YOUR sources are listed below. BUT if YOU want to find the truth beyond this – you must go to other SERIOUS and TRUTHFUL sources. This will require research – in serious works. Some will be located in the footnotes of books listed below.

CAUTION: YOU are getting into an area the top 1% and corporations most definitely do NOT want you to enter. They have, and will continue to use the “tobacco defense” of denial and muddying the water. They have already attempted to deny the work of one of the following books, so much so, the authors set up a web site to counter the attack. The perps of this CRIME have created a massive network of “think tanks” to supply media and friendly government with much “scholarship” denying what they’ve done.
Much of the damage is irreversible – the stolen money is gone, the damage to workers and their families can’t be undone. The damage to AMERICA has been significant and traumatic – we are a weaker, more divided country because of this CRIME; our total governmental system has been CORRUPTED. We are a far less democratic nation in 2021 than we were in 1979. AMERICA is significantly advanced toward plutocracy. In many ways, it is like the political and economic reforms of 1901 – 1975 never happened, so completely have they been neutered.

“Economic Apartheid in America” by Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel with United for a Fair Economy and Class Action [2005] asks you one basic question:about the purpose of economic activity: “Is the economy to serve the people who make it up, or is their labor for the sake of lining the pockets of the rich and powerful?”

This is a very readable book. The highlights are the various graphs that clearly spell out what has happened. If you do nothing else, turn to pages 41 and 42. Page 4l ‘s graph is: “1979 to 2003 – real family income growth by quintile and for the top 5%, We Grew Apart.” The richer one was, the more money they made. Page 42’ graph is: “1947 to 1979 – real family income growth by quintile and for top 5%, WE Grew Together.” The four “bottom” quintiles all grew FASTER than than the top 20%. The group with the most growth – was the poorest. The top 5% grew the least. “Obviously” this could not be allowed to continue – “too good a deal” for Joe Sixpack. And, it didn’t continue.
Collins and Yeskel discuss the causes of economic inequality and the consequences. They also give you things YOU can do to make AMERICA whole again. #1 – who YOU vote for makes a big difference. One of the two major parties has been behind much of this CRIME, the other is guilty of not resisting harder.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s “The Spirit Level Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” [2009] is one of the books EVERY American should read. There are many reasons why it was an international bestseller – the dame reasons why it was attacked. It told the TRUTH about economic inequality. In response to the attacks, they set up a web site. The original content has been changed – which is unfortunate because one can’t read the attacks and the defense, which came from multiple sources. http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk
Using these metrics, they evaluated the 22 rich nations and the 50 American states: level of trust; mental illness [including addiction]; life expectancy and infant mortality; obesity; children’s educational performance; teenage births; homicides; imprisonment rates; social mobility [not in U.S.states].
On page 29: “It is clear that greater equality, as well as improving the well-being of the whole population, is also the key to national standards of achievement and how countries perform in lots of different fields.” Page 53: “People trust each other most in the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands.” Page 155: “More unequal societies are harsher, tougher places.” Page 176: “..the vast majority is harmed by greater inequality,” Pages 2l0-212 detail the damage to young children from living in more unequal societies – some of which they NEVER outgrow. Page 244: “The ending of that consensus [the post-WW ii prosperity] was very clearly related to a rightward shift n political opinion.”
Page 264: “THe truth is that modern inequality exists because democracy is excluded from the economic sphere.” Page 277: “It is now almost universally accepted amongst scholars and practitioners of public health that the most important determinants of health are social and economic circumstances.” Page 295: “There are few things more corrosive of a properly functioning democracy and of the market than corruption and unbridled GREED.”

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz wrote the New York Times bestseller, “The Price of Inequality How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future [2012]. On page 334, he states: “This book is not about the politics of envy….This book is instead about the politics of efficiency and fairness. The central argument is that the model that best describes income determination at the top is not one based on individual’s contributions to society [the “marginal productivity theory..”], even though, of course, some at the top have made enormous contributions. Much of the income at the top is what we have called rents. these rents have moved dollars from the bottom and middle to the top, and distorted the market to the advantage of some and to the disadvantage of others.”
“A central theme..is that there has been a battle of ideas – over what kinds of society, what kinds of policies, are best for MOST citizens – and that this battle has seen an attempt to persuade everyone that what’s good for the 1 percent, what the top cares about and wants, is good for everyone: lower tax rates at the top, reduce the deficit, downsize the government.” [321]
“A central theme..is that much of the inequality in our society arises because private rewards differ from social returns, and that the high level of inequality that now characterizes the United States and the WIDESPREAD ACCEPTANCE of that level of inequality…makes it difficult in the United States to adopt good policies.” [127]
“…clearly the election of President Ronald Reagan represented a turning point in the United States. Among the precipitating event were the beginning of the deregulation of the financial sector and the reduction in the progressivity of the tax system.” [xxxi} The results: 2008 crash, excessive Wall Street profits and financialization of the economy, excessive tax rate cuts t the top [70% to 35%], excessive capital gains tax cuts – the very rich pay at tax rates below ordinary people.

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote “Winner – Take – All – Politics How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class” [2010) They state: “..in the majority of rich nations for which we have evidence, income redistribution over the past few decades has either held steady or actually risen….inequality created by the market has been significantly softened by a greater government role.” [52] “American CEOs are paid more than twice the average for other rich nations….it also takes different forms..” [63]
Adam Smith, a limited government-free-market icon, stated in “The Wealth of Nations:” “Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality….Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality, instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or those who have some property against those who have none at all.” [82] Smith was a “resolute skeptic” about the rationality of unfettered financial markets!!!
On pages 110-112, “Unrepresentative Democracy,” analysis shows that U.S. Senators largely pay consideration for what the top 1/3 of voters want done. There is also [2007] a huge public misunderstanding of what CEO incomes are. The public thought CEOs made about $500,000. They actually were averaging $14 million at S&P 500 companies!!!!!!! [154-55]They speculated this might contribute to lack of concern what CEOs were making.
Business saw financing Republicans as an investment. Financing Democrats was insurance. [179-80] The goal was to minimize “distasteful legislation” – keep some issues off limits, add critical loopholes. Financing both sides provided bipartisan cover for the Republican “business friendly initiatives.”

Pulitzer Prize winner

david Cay Johnston”s “Divided… The Perils of Our Growing Inequality” [2014] is a collection of the thinking of many people on “Inequality.” It includes this from Pope Francis I: “…today we..have to say “thou shalt not to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills….Today everything comes under the laws of competition and survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless…..Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded.” [xv] Plutarch: “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” [xix] Theodore Roosevelt: “The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.” [xx] Joseph Stiglitz: “American inequality didn’t just happen,. It was created.” [xxi]
Sean Reardon: “Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race…..children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness test when they enter kindergarten.” [124-26]
Robert Kuttner: “We could have had a brand of globalization in which the ability to sell products to the United States depended on meeting certain social minimums, involving wages, organizing rights, environmental standards, treatment of children, and so on. But because that was not the globalization that corporate America sought, it is not what has evolved.” [248]
The good side of ordinary people is revealed in “the prom dress’ story, pages 309-311.

For shorter, magazine style pieces, turn to these:
– November, 2018 “Scientific American – “The Science of Inequality” – discussing “Rigged economy;” “automating bias,” ‘the health-wealth gap,” “the environmental cost of inequality”
– June, 2018 “The Atlantic” – “The Birth of A New American Aristocracy” – “The class divide is already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part of the problem.”
– April/March, 2011 “Mother Jones – “Plutocracy now” – especially page 25’s 3 graphs detailing inequality, and page 63’s “Your Loss, Their Gain” chart showing how much money YOU’VE given the top 1% !!!!!!!!
– September/October, 2014 “Mother Jones “Survival of the Richest” graphics on how the “Trickle Up” dynamics work in real life; “working more, earning less”
– December l, 2013 “Washington Spectator” provides a review of the DVD “Inequality for All” starring Robert Reich. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth. See inequality.org for a sampling

– not short, but very good: Thomas Picketty 2020 “Capital and Ideology. Lots of very good graphs. Page 28: “the 1980-2018 large fortunes grew at 3-4 times the global economy growth rate – this CANNOT continue indefinitely, unless all global wealth falls into the hands of the billionaires.********** Page 30: the American top 10% 2010-2020 share of 50% of wealth exceeded the 1900-1910 amount!!!****** Page 3l: the American 1932-1980 top marginal income tax rate AVERAGED 81% – this obviously did NOT destroy capitalism in America!!!******* Page 33: productivity was HIGHER in 1950-1990 than it was in 1990-2020!!!******

So – friends, what would a “reasonable person think” about the American Economic Apartheid?” Was it “accidental” – as in “it couldn’t be avoided?” Was it a result of 1789-2021 economic American trends? Was it something that was an “unfortunate result of good intentions?”

NO!!! Only if you are really uniformed, trusting “patriotic” – But most of all because you’re really, really
STUPID. Sorry – but ALL evidence, world-wide points to the only
conceivable conclusion: this was/is the biggest, most damaging, most enduring
CRIME. The top 1% and corporations set out to destroy 1947-73 America, and they did.

How would a reasonable person evaluate what has happened in America since l969, and most especially, since 1980? What “proof” would provide a fair, fact-based answer? One method would be to look for PATTERNS of words and actions. Another is to look for the INTENT of words and policies. Another is to compare historical eras. This has been done on many levels for the two major post-World War II American eras. The acknowledged statistical peak of America was reached between l947 to roughly 1973. In that era, anybody, with a high school education could, and DID succeed in providing for his/her family. I know – I lived then. I saw it on our block. Statistically, since 1980, it has steadily become difficult for “the average person” to match 1947-73 standards. Why? What happened?

There have been two Republican parties. One, from 1854 to 1960, with some significant exceptions, helped build modern America. The second, from 1960 forward has steadily become more radically far “right” and more destructive. It has often claimed to stand for “liberty” or “freedom,” but when fully analyzed, an objective person begins to see this doesn’t mean “liberty” and “freedom” for everybody.

Supplied below are the observations of a number of people who were there, who watched what the INTENT of far right and Republican policies was. Some of them helped the destruction occur.

Again, go back to the founding American principles” “all men are created equal,” and the purpose of the government of “We the people” is to “promote the general Welfare.” Any government policy that doesn’t do these two basic things is both unconstitutional, but also unAmerican. Since 1980, this has all too often been the case.

John Dean’s “Broken Government How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches” [2007} says: “Today, any objective observer must conclude that it is the Democrats who…have the needs of the public at the top of their agenda. Republicans…have become the party of special interests. [XIV] “Republicans..have demonstrated during the past several decades a remarkable incapacity to govern..should be held accountable for the damage they have done to democracy.” [XVI] “Republicans are unmatched in modern politics for their willingness to play dirty, to go negative and nasty, and to play hardball, a ruthlessness ….” [18}
“Few people are aware how Republican presidents have spent the last four decades remaking the judiciary in their own image, and in so doing have politicized – and diminished – the nonpolitical branch.” [23] “…how conservatives have changed the law by writing law journal articles, then taking their invented ideas to court, where conservative judges have embraced them…” [110]
“…I do know that if another Republican president should follow Bush II, and another generation of conservative jurists is appointed, the federal judiciary will become a bastion of radical conservatism with no interest in restraining presidential powers and no interest in personal rights and liberties, but great interest in servicing the law to meet the needs of social, religious, and business conservatives.” [119-120] WHAT HAPPENED IN 2017-2021?????????????
“Bork, whom Reagan’s own staff had described as a “ring-wing zealot, was chosen to please the right-wing base, although he was publicly packaged as a moderate conservative..” [137] WE’VE SEEN THIS AGAIN!!!!!!!, many times.

“Republicans have simply dismantled or ignored countless well-established processes found in the rules, customs, norms, traditions, laws, and constitutional mandates…Refusing to govern by traditional standards, they create their own self-serving schemes that often they do not even attempt to justify, while at other times they rely on legal opinions that should result in disbarment of the attorneys that write them.” [175-176}

The highly respected Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein investigative duo, with a 40-year track record of bipartisan reporting, wrote “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks…..How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism” [2012].
They concluded with this judgment: “In every chapter of this book, we have documented the ways in which the Republican Party has become the insurgent outlier in American politics and as such contributes disproportionately to its dysfunction…..the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party itself….must change if U.S. democracy is to regain its health. The contemporary GOP, to the horror of many of its longtime stalwarts and leaders…has veered toward tolerance of extreme ideological beliefs and policies and the embrace of cynical and destructive means to advance the political ends over problem solving.” [185]

Mike Lofgren, a Republican Congressional senior analyst, wrote “The Party Is Over…..How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.” [2012] “>>>I watched with a mixture of fascination and foreboding as my party was hijacked by a new crop of opportunists and true believers hell-bent on dragging the country into their jerry-built New Jerusalem: an upside-down utopia in which corporations rule; the Constitution, like science, is faith-based; and war is the first, not the last, resort in foreign policy.” [2] “…the GOP has confected a shrewd marketing campaign: play up the culture wars and demagogue national security issues to distract voters from their real intentions…” [helping the plutocracy that runs the country} [13]

Stuart Stevens, a Republican lead strategist and media consultant for 25 years, wrote “It Was All A Lie How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump” [2020] “I have no one to blame but myself. I believed> That’s where it all started to go wrong. I was drawn to a party that espoused a core set of values: character counts…the national debt actually mattered, immigration made America great….these principles were assumed to be shared and defined what it meant to be a Republican…..What a fool I was. All of these immutable truths turned out to be mere marketing slogans. None of it meant anything….What I missed was one simple reality: It was all a lie.” [3]
“There is nothing strange or unexpected about Donald Trump. He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party. Trump isn’t an aberration of the Republican Party; he IS the Republican Party in a purified form.” [4]
“Race has defined the modern Republican Party.” [31] “”Family values” was never a set of morals or values that the Republican Party really desired to live by; instead, “family values” was useful in attacking and defining Democrats….It was an “otherness” tool..” [39] “For all their bluster about the federal government and states’ rights, the most conservative states..are far and away the most dependent on federal aid.” [60]
“Today the intellectual leaders of the Republican Party are the paranoids, kooks, know-nothings, and bigots who once could be heard only on late-night talk shows…” [94] “…the behavior of the right-wing media ecosystem represents a radicalization of roughly a third of the American media system.” [105] “The Republican Party is held aloft by a large, powerful, and ever-growing industry of deceit. The purpose of much of conservative media is to lie….” [124]

Charles Sykes, a long-time host of the #1 conservative talk show in Wisconsin, wrote “How the Right Lost Its Mind” [2017] “There came a moment when I realized that conservatives had created an alternative reality bubble and that I perhaps helped shape it. Somewhere along the line much of the echo chamber turned on the very principles that had once animated it, replacing the ideas of freedom, limited government, and constitutionalism with a crude populist nativism that fed into the Right’s media zeitgeist.” [XIV}
“The American Right,” Matthew Sheffield writes, “has become willfully disengaged from its fellow citizens thanks to a wonderful virtual-reality machine in which conservatives..can believe anything they wish, no matter how at odds it is with reality.”” [16} “In the echo chamber, the volume was set at “Outrage.”….the business model of the Right media.” [78]

Jonathon Chait wrote “The Big Con Crackpot Economics and the Fleecing of America” [2007] “…American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane…The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago – that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance, or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government – are now so pervasive they barely attract any notice.” [1] “After taking control of Congress, Republicans began letting lobbyists write legislation for them.” [58]
“…dishonesty has become integral to the Republican agenda…the GOP, and the conservative movement, have embraced an economic agenda far out of step with the majority of the voting public. Republicans simply can’t win office or get their ideas enacted into law, without fundamentally misleading the public. Lying has become a systemic necessity.” [119]

Chris Mooney wrote “The Republican Brain The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality” [2012] “in aggregate, political liberals and political conservatives are different – in ways that extend far beyond mere philosophy or views about public policy. They have different personalities, psychological needs, and moral intuitions or responses. They are different people.” [62]
“…within the conservative fold, there is one group that exhibits the traits just discussed – closed mindedness, low integrative complexity, very low Openness – to any extent that it is hard to say anything good about: so-called authoritarians. They’re not all conservatives, but they’re surprisingly prevalent in the United States…Authoritarians are..increasingly strong in today’s Republican Party – and especially in its most extreme and ideological arm.”The Tea Party is an overwhelmingly authoritarian group of folks,” ……[71-72]
“…science can..be..highly destabilizing and threatening to conservative values..with the potential to undermine traditional sources of authority that conservatives respect. Scientific evidence “has a possible effect over the market, foreign policy, religion, all kinds of things….So they can’t have that.”” [82]

Prominent ex-conservative Max Boot wrote “The Corrosion of Conservatism Why I Left the Right” [2018] “My ideology has come into conflict with reality – and reality is winning. I have undertaken a painful and difficult intellectual journey….I am now forced to think for myself, and that is not an easy thing to do…..I am no longer a Republican…I am a man without a party….The question that haunts me is: Did I somehow contribute to the rise of this dark force in American life with my advocacy for conservatism….I am now convinced the Republican Party must suffer repeated and devastating defeats. It must pay a heavy price for its embrace of white nationalism and knownothingism. Only if the GOP as currently constituted is burned to the ground will there be any chance to build a reasonable center-right party out of the ashes.” [XXI] Only if the current GOP is BURNED TO THE GROUND is there a chance….
“…it’s obvious that the whole history of modern conservatism is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, ignorance, isolationism, and know-nothingism.” [165]
“Voters should simply vote against ALL Republicans as long as Trumpism remains such a dire threat to our republic. And they should keep on doing do however long it takes to purge the taint of Trumpism.” [201]
*******!!!!**** Alert readers will remember the closing quote in John Dean’s “Broken Government” [2007] – from a “long-time Republican:” people should not vote for ANY Republican. Nothing changed!!!

Award-winning Thomas Frank wrote “The Wrecking Crew How Conservatives Rule” [2008] “…Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society…..and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we’ve come to expect from Washington….put conservatism in charge of the state, and…The ruination they have wrought has been thorough..a professional job. Repairing it will require years…” [4-5]
“Conservatism, as we know it, is a movement that is about GREED…” [7]
“The inevitable consequence of plutocracy..is bought government. As Justice Louis Brandeis said..:
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands
of a few, but we can’t have both.” [271]

Long-time Republican operative David Brock wrote “Blinded By The Right The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative” [2002] as an apology and a confessional, of what belatedly he realized what he’d done for “the cause.”
“I had begun my career by suppressing my liberal social values to get ahead in the conservative movement: then I abandoned the conservative traditions of restraint and civility for Gingrichian ends-justify-the-means radicalism. As a closeted gat man, I did the work of the right-wing lawyers of the Federalist Society, the Christian Coalition, and the worst bigots from Arkansas-racist, homophobic Clinton haters. Through it all – the destructive partisanship, the careerism, the personal aggrandizement – in my mind I managed to rationalize each of my actions and hold on to the idea that I wasn’t like the Ruddys, the Scaifes, the Falwells, the Tyrrells, theFunds – I was better than they were. Whatever else I may have been, I wasn’t a liar. But I was no better than the Arkansas Project brigade after all. The strange lies were mine. All the attacks, the hateful rhetoric, the dark alliances and strange conspiracies, an eye for an eye, nuts and sluts, defending Pinochet, throwing grenades, carpet bombing the White House. Bob Bork. Bob Tyrrell. Bob Dornan. Bob Bartley. Bob Barr – it all led right here. I lost my soul.”

So – dear reader – this is only the BEGINNING – do you need more detail and documentation? There are many real “public interest” groups: The League of Women Voters, The Brennan Center, Public Citizen, Common Cause. Their mission is to “promote the general Welfare.”

I have said nothing about the Democrats. They are not blame-free. They’ve not resisted cruelty and incompetence when they could’ve. They’ve not defended what the American public wants them to defend – the social safety net, common decency, an inclusive America, economic equality, and much more. They, and much of the American public thought most of the job had been accomplished, l933-l965. It had – with significant work not completed.
Few counted on the “revenge of the empire” to be so amoral, so greedy, so cruel. Few, even moderate Republicans, expected the Republican Party to be taken over by the far right so quickly in the 1970s.
The events of 1980-2021 are a cruel, corrupt, greedy, authoritarian, theocratic attempt to not only undue the New Deal, but much of 1789-1980 American traditions, values, and norms. A major part of the attack is THE BIG LIE – repeated endlessly by the far right propaganda outlets. They’ve tried to rewrite American history; to rewrite science; to corrupt the Constitution by using parts of it to attack other parts. The Roberts Court has now almost neutered the “freedom from religion” embodied in the “establishment clause” by claiming the “freedom of religion” clause is superior – unprecedented in scope since 1791 – thus you can now be forced to support a church you DON’T attend with YOUR tax dollars.
So – guess what? All this, in the end, is about YOU! The Republican autocratic theocracy is a threat to YOUR liberties. We’re NOT talking about some obscure intellectual argument. The far political-economic-social-religious far right intends to rewrite the American rules. The people quoted above have given YOU enough info to understand this. Do YOU WANT TO?
A large, formerly middle class based democracy can’t be destroyed UNLESS its people get apathetic. UNLESS large amounts of its people accept being MISINFORMED & LIED TO. UNLESS voters elect radical candidates who destroy the country – and then, KEEP ELECTING THEM – and then wonder why the country doesn’t work like it used to.

The evidence should be clear. A reasonable person shouldn’t have much trouble connecting all the 1980-2021 dots; shouldn’t have much trouble understanding the overall 1980-2021 PATTERNS; should be able to clearly understand the INTENT of things being done – like, obviously [right?] – the immoral 2017 tax cut, the effort to stock the federal judiciary with almost 100% guaranteed votes, the elimination of increasing numbers of lower 90% jobs – right?

“Supreme Inequality” by Adam Cohen[2020] is subtitled “THe Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle For A More Unjust America.” He is not alone in this accusation. Nor, is he alone in documenting the charge with much evidence – often using the very words of the Supreme Court Justices to prove the case.

It is very important that we have a set of valid premises to discuss this oft-made charge. Let us proceed from the standpoint of this: “What would a reasonable person, given the evidence conclude?” What principles should guide the investigation? Consider these: WE judge by basics such as: “All men are created equal;” from the Constitution’s Preamble “..to promote the general Welfare..” Decisions that fail these tests are “wrong.”

Page 306-07: “These dual totalitarian visions [“King” & “Strieff”] are a logical extension of where the Court has taken the nation in the past fifty years. Economic inequality has risen at a furious pace, the middle class has contracted..the status of the poor..ever more precarious. This..makes firmer methods of social control…oppressive…policing likely if not inevitable.”
Page 305: “Sotomayor, in her own dissent..delivered a personal warning to the American people…”The Court today [Strieff]] holds that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. Do not be soothed by the opinion’s technical language. This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants – even if you are doing nothing wrong.” As a result, anything the officer finds by “searching you” can be used in criminal prosecution.

SO – how does this effect ME? Check with any post-1933 dictatorship. The secret police had the RIGHT to stop you on the street, or invade your home. This is part of the overall 1969-2021 Supreme Court pattern. And – it is also part of the entire 1789-2021 pattern – excepting one era – of supporting the rich and powerful against the people.

In the name of “the law” much cruelty to people has been done. Cohen gives examples on pages 4l, 8l, 97, l03, 202, 288. Single Moms, Army vets with 3 kids, school kids, health care, older workers, innocent people pleading guilty, customers who were cheated, and on and on. Sometimes the Court said: “This isn’t our job,” etc. But corporations “needed” their help!!!

As many analysts have said: observe the PATTERN. Who are the consistent “winners” and “losers?” Who does the Court feel compelled to help, to not help? Are there rational bases for decisions, or, are they making stuff up? Is the Court following time-tested principles uniformly, or, are they “cherry-picking” parts of details? Is there any empathy for ordinary people caught up in crazy things beyond their control? Are the decisions reasonable – you can agree it was “fair.” Did they follow “All men are created equal?” Did the decision “promote the general Welfare?” Has the overall PATTERN made America more just, a better society, more humane?

Adam Cohen’s “Supreme Inequality” says “NO – the recent Courts have definitely NOT made America better. By international standards, America is worse off – and the Supreme Court is a big reason why. Cohen takes YOU through specific cases, explaining how and why chances to improve America were paths not taken.

Cohen is not alone. Listed below are others saying similar things. AND – all of this is the tip of the iceberg.

Adam Winkler – “WE The Corporations How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights” [2018]. Much of it started with a lie in December, 1882, to the Supreme Court bout the “intent” of the 14th Amendment. From 1868 to 1912, the Supreme court decided 312 cases on 14th Amendment basis for corporations – and – 28 for African-Americans, for whom it was intended. There is NOTHING in the Constitution for corporations. Founders, including Madison, Jefferson, Wilson expressed fears for corporate power. George Mason refused to sign the Constitution because he felt it wasn’t strong enough against corporations

Laurence Tribe & Joshua Matz – “Uncertain Justice The Roberts Court and The Constitution {2014]. They note a Roberts Court pattern of attacking any Congressional effort to regulate, any regulation on anything [54,84]. They note that free speech is not necessarily good for regular people [139]. They say the Roberts court “has dealt critical legal rules a death of a thousand cuts – leaving many of our rights intact but making them effectively impossible to enforce in any court.” [284]
“The Roberts Court has issued a string of rulings that make it virtually impossible to escape arbitration agreements…..The result has been a rapid expansion of private arbitration as a parallel justice system…..With each passing day, public courts more permanently disappear as a real option for many Americans in their dealings with big business….”[295] “..the Roberts Court is determinedly proving ..it is..an anti-court Court.” [299]

Erwin Chemerinsky – “The Case Against The Supreme Court” [2014] “..the thesis of this book: The Court has frequently failed, throughout American history, at its most important tasks, at its most important moments.” [5] “..the Supreme Court usually sides with big business and government power and fails to protect people’s rights.” [6] “We should realize this is an emperor that truly has no clothes. For too long we have treated the Court as if they are the high priests of the law, or at least as if they are the smartest and best lawyers in society. We have pretended that the Court is a neutral body discovering the law and then mechanically applying it. None [of this is] correct.” [14]
Chapters 5, 6, 7 are about the many failings of the Roberts Court – to only 2014.

Ian Millhiser – “Injustices The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted” [2015] “..the justices frequently ignored rights that are explicitly protected by the text of the Constitution….The justices..have routinely committed two complementary sins against the Constitution. They’ve embraced extra-constitutional limits on the government’s ability to protect the most vulnerable Americans, while simultaneously refusing to enforce right s that are explicitly enshrined in the Constitution’s text….they paved a trail of misery as a result. Few institutions have inflicted greater suffering on more Americans than the Supreme Court..” [xiii-iv]

David A. Kaplan – “The Most Dangerous Branch Inside the Supreme Court’s Assault on the Constitution” [2018] “For much of its history, the Court stayed almost entirely out of the affairs of Congress. Before the 20th century, the justices declared federal laws unconstitutional only 5 times. By midcentury, they were doing so at a rate of about one a term. And by the 1990s, the Court was throwing out 3 or 4 federal laws each term. The numbers didn’t suddenly go up because legislation was written with less care – or because the justices had become wiser.” [17]
“When the votes of justices in controversial cases can be predicted at the outset, constitutional law simply becomes partisan politics by another name. If you usually know beforehand how justices will come out – and if it’s a function of the political party of the president who appointed them – what’s the point of having a Court? Did we really establish a system of self-government in which those life-tenured judges decide so much social policy? [19]

There are two other items to discuss: the preposterous theories of “originalism” and “textualism;” and a legal group known by the name of “The Federalist Society.”

Originalism has already been dealt with on this site, but for a refresher, consult Samuel A. Marcosson”s “Original Sin…Clarence Thomas and the Failure of the Constitutional Conservatives” [2002} To be blunt and brief – Marcosson destroys “originalism” by throwing Thomas” and Scalia’s words back at them. The words “making it up” and “false statement” appear; so does “now you see it, now you don’t.” “…originalists have failed on their own terms>’ [13] “Originalism is a jurisprudence of deafness…” [25] Thomas’ judicial opinions and pre-Court political views have a “striking similarity.” [29]
“…Bush v. Gore is simply the latest example of the conservative majority’s inconsistency….also the most important example and the one most devastating to the Court’s legitimacy…..just the latest in a long line of constitutional decisions that are indefensible on the merits and comprehensible only through the prism of the political ideology of the justices. Rather than standing alone as evidence of the politicalization of the Court by its most conservative wing, it is the smoking gun… the one that cinches the case.” [106]

The Federalist Society was created in the early 1980s by three “conservative” partisans [some might say reactionary] on the belief the American Bar Association was “too liberal.” It was financed by a “conservative” billionaire who didn’t like the course America had followed. From modest beginnings it has mushroomed into a major American legal force. The Federalist Society has three announced principles: the state exists to preserve freedom; the separation of constitutional powers is central to our constitution; it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be. As always, the devil is in the details. The real life mission of the Federalist Society is to push how American law is interpreted and used to the “right.” [some might say to ‘reactionary’ points].
The Federalist Society is perhaps THE major legal player for “the right.” In Republican administrations, many/most positions of legal nature have been manned by Society member. It is almost a requirement to be a Federalist Society member to obtain a Republican nomination for a judgeship. The society often does all the vetting. With the possible exception of one, all current Republican appointed Supreme court Justices have been Federalist Society members.A high-ranking society member has said the Federalist Society operates as a “check” on the Supreme Court.
The Federalist Society has inserted “Law and Economics” departments in most major U.S. law schools. One in a major university has “helped” by a $44 million donation to the school. Society members operate “training’ sessions for judges. Members also supply much “scholarship” to the legal community. Some has been quoted from the bench by Supreme court justices.

Amanda Hollis-Brusky’s “Ideas With Consequences The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution” [2015] has diagrammed out how the Federalist Society works to push test cases up to the Supreme Court. Several major 21st century cases were near-100% Federalist Society operations, start to finish. The “counterrevolution” is changing American law to a much more “conservative,” especially “business-friendly” nature. Their definition of “freedom” is quite likely NOT to be what you think it is!!! Much of their definition of “freedom” is freedom to do whatever they want – free from any and all restraints by any government. This is a major reason why the Federalist society has received so much funding from “conservative” billionaires.

Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin’s “The Federalist Society How Conservatives Took Back The Law From Liberals” [2013] is another excellent work on the Society. Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor. Slate.com wrote this review: “A compelling intellectual history of the rise of the powerful Federalist Society, this is a thoughtful recounting of all the ways in which the group has impacted and influenced legal doctrine, and a roadmap of what’s to come should their ascendancy continue. Anyone who cares about the courts or the law will find “The Federalist Society” a stark reminder of the power of abstract ideas to effect real and lasting change for decades.”

Like other things, YOU should now have enough info to understand that the state of American law in 2021 is NOT an accident. Like many other crucial aspects of our country, the law has been deliberately changed and decisively pushed to the right, 1980-2021. Like the economy, this has not benefitted all Americans. Like the economy, it was intended to.

SO – at the beginning, your challenge was this: what would a “reasonable” person conclude? Has the forcibly changed American legal system met the test of principles: “all men are created equal,” and the government’s job is to “promote the general Welfare?” Hint: the goal of the “right” is that it wouldn’t. AND – another challenge for you: what has been the overall PATTERN? You should be able to figure out the winners and losers, right????? The use of the word “sabotage” was not an accident – because that’s what the PATTERN of evidence leads to, unfortunately.

Evil Geniuses is Kurt Andersen’s latest book. It reads like a crime novel. Unfortunately it isn’t a novel. But it IS a discussion of a crime. A crime largely inspired by monumental GREED, but also twisted, corrupted ideology.

Buy this book! Read it. Think about it. Discuss it. This is a sad story of how what was once the greatest human success story was deliberately dismantled. That was the American period of 1947 – 1975. You can read all the statistics proving this. Or talk to those fortunate to have lived it. I know. Because I was there.

1947-1975 America was the result of l900-l9l5 and 1933-65 reforms. The INTENT was to create a society in which ordinary people could and would thrive. They did. It wasn’t perfect. But it was America’s peak.
America was blessed by one of our greatest presidents, by one of the two greatest Supreme Court Chief Justices, and by “The Greatest Generation” of people. After World War II they were our neighbors, our teachers, our bosses.

This was “too good a deal” in the eyes of the “right,” especially the rich and corporations. They didn’t want to share the wealth America generated – so they decided to change the rules. They’ve been very successful – thus “Evil Geniuses.”

Some of you may not wish to accept Andersen’s indictment. First, consider he is NOT alone. Second, understand who he is talking about. From 1865 to 2021, the rich and corporations have attempted to sabotage ANY effort to restrain their greedy behaviors. Document by examining 1865-2021 labor history. Employers have done virtually anything, including murder to squash ANY labor resistance. Research WHY antitrust laws were written. Read Jules Archer’s book, “The Plot to Seize the White House” – the true story on the July-November, 1933 plot. Read Charles Higham’s “Trading With The Enemy” – “An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949. Read Edwin Black’s “IBM and The Holocaust” – how IBM greatly aided the most evil government of all time. Research how the “right” and Republicans have resisted 20th century social safety net reforms like Social Security, labor rights, civil rights, Medicare.

All of this is YOUR background to “Evil Geniuses.”

Start with this, from page 203: “the rules of our economy were rewritten as a high-stakes game of musical chairs….our economy since 1980 has been a particularly sadistic version of the game.” YES – YOU are playing this twisted form of “musical chairs” in real life. And, as in the game, there is only one winner: the top 1%

Next, we go to page 299. Conservative federal judge Richard Posner: As a member of Congress “you are a slave to the donors. They own you. That’s [the] real corruption, the ownership of Congress by the rich.”

The key chapters are: “Raw Deal: What Happened in the 1980s Didn’t Stay in the 1980s;” ‘The Rule of Law;” “How Wall Street Ate America;” ‘Ruthless Beats Reasonable;” ‘Winners and Losers in the Class War.”

The key statistics are on: pages ll8-l22 “The Decade When Everything Changed and Our Present Was Created: 57 Data Points [what’s good for big business, Wall Street and the rich – and what’s bad for YOU; on pages 190 & 295 – how rigging the rules costs YOU $10,000 every year; on pages 292-295 “Nobody but the Rich [and nearly rich] Got Richer: 27 Ways the Pie Is Cut Differently Now”

The key events are: a speech [1970] and a famous memo [1971] by future Supreme Court Justice; Supreme Court decisions “Buckley-Valeo,” “Bellotti,” and “Citizens United” which increasingly allowed speech to be money [meaning the richer you were, the more “speech” you were entitled to!!!]; President Reagan’s crushing of the 1981 PATCO strike [the war is over]; the creation of numerous “conservative ” [many say reactionary] legal groups to provide “scholarship” [many say twisted reasoning] and judicial candidates; ending the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987 which enabled the subsequent rabid truth twisting and lies on various media.

The key people are: 5 right-wing billionaires funding most of the groups that do the undermining; the Reagan Administration who began the governmental subversion; 1969-2021 Republican judicial appointees to federal courts who’ve often done the legal undermining; the various legal far right groups that bring “test cases” to the courts to undermine the 1789-1979 American system.

Some perspective for YOU on greed and comparative incomes: if Joe SixPack graduates high school and works 18-68 making $50,000 every year, his lifetime, TOTAL earnings would be $2.5 million. If Suzie Sorority graduates college and then works 22-68, her lifetime TOTAL earnings would be $4.6 million. The U.S. president makes bout $400,000 a year, as THE most important person in the world. SO
Why does ANYBODY make $5-10-20-30 million in one year??? Do you really believe that person “earned” this, “deserves” this – EVERY year???????

America has always had “rich” people. I worked for one. He treated people fairly. And when he died, it seemed like half the local community was there – the line to talk to his widow and kids was out the door. It was out the door when I left.
The difference, then and now – balance, restraint, norms, self-imposed limits and societal limits on what was acceptable. These “old fashioned” restraints are gone – replaced by endless, never-satisfied GREED.

In 2020, Stuart Stevens, a 25-year top Republican election operative said these words [pages 368-370]: “those of us in the Republican Party built this moment [the COVID-19 crisis],” because “the failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies dear to the Republican Party…Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect.”
Stuart Stevens wrote “It Was All A Lie How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.” [2020]

If YOU want seriously to know why 2021 America doesn’t work for the lower 90% – Andersen’s “Evil Geniuses” STARTS your journey. Unfortunately, the plot to erase the 1947-1975 middle class “golden age” is all too real. The work gradually, deliberately unfolded during the infamous 1980-2020 period. The right and the rich have won – at least for now – if YOU allow it.

From pages 386-87, consider what the future COULD be: from the London “Financial Times,” April, 2020: headlines –
“VIRUS LAYS BARE THE FRAILTY OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT”
‘RADICAL REFORMS ARE REQUIRED TO FORGE A SOCIETY THAT WILL WORK FOR ALL”
Then, some of what “these ultimate Establishment conservatives” wrote”
As western leaders learnt in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone. Today’s crisis is laying bare how far many rich societies fall short of this ideal…We are not really all in this together…Better paid knowledge workers often face only the nuisance of working from home….Radical reforms – reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table….Redistribution will again be on the agenda…..Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.”

SO – my friends, my fellow Americans – what does it mean to be an “American?” What does it mean to be a “human being?” What does it mean for people to “live with dignity” in the internet age?

Kurt Andersen has told you what the greedy “top 1%” wants. Is this what YOU want – for yourself, for your children, for your grandchildren? If not, speak up!!! Get organized!!! Stop voting Republican [the party that can no longer nominate Lincoln, Teddy R, Eisenhower – their best}.

2016-2021 has been an embarrassment, an awful black stain. We’re better than that, aren’t WE? Prove it.

How would a reasonable person evaluate recent American history The place to start is observing PATTERNS of intent, policies, and results. What was the general plan for America, for the American people, the society, the government, the economy? How would the benefits of living and working in America be shared? Would they be shared? Would recent America be a continuation of 1789 forward intent and trends? Would things improve for the ENTIRE population?
The general consensus is there have been two different, distinct recent American periods: 1933-1980 and 1980 to present [2021]. There were two different visions of America.
Below are listed 10 books to start your search. Each of these is excellent themselves. BUT – to open them is also to open a window on one thread of what has happened to America, 1980-2021. As one follows these trails of evidence, it will soon become obvious a much bigger story exists. And also, that many of these trails will be connected. That is NOT an accident. What has happened to America, 1980-2021 is also NOT an accident.
Some people did NOT like what happened – it was too democratic. Too many people shared in the success, and some of them were “undeserving.” The 1933-1980 America was “too good a deal for too many.” A correction needed to be done. The radical American “right” – political, economic, religious, social – decided they had the “answers.” Below are some of the stories of their destructive, cruel, and antidemocratic efforts.

1] Kurt Andersen – “Evil Geniuses” [2020]. Andersen talks about how he slowly began to see “real plots in plain sight.” Various incidents and people crossed his path. He connected dots. “..Evil Geniuses” chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business.” “..an egregiously revised American social contract has been put in place..”

2] Adam Cohen – “Supreme Inequality” [2020] Cohen is the latest to offer negative critiques of the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts. One earlier analyst suggested “conservative” Republican appointees had more in common with the 1996 Republican platform than The Federalist. Cohen mentions how “one academic study that examined the Court’s decisions from 1938 to 2010 concluded that 2010 was the most conservative year.” A conservative law professor: “These decisions are not the work of a conservative court.” The prevailing “conservative” philosophy, “originalism,’ was debunked in advance by the Founders, including Chief Justice Marshall. Cohen’s value is that he gives you the results and “logic” of specific cases. The Roberts Court revealed by this is not a benefit for America.

3] John W. Dean – “Broken Government How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches” [2007] Little, if anything, has changed from 2007. Dean concludes with a quote from “an old friend from the Nixon White House – a “life-long Republican” who knew Bush and Cheney personally: “People should not vote for ANY Republican, because they’re dangerous, dishonest, and self-serving….another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable.” Unfortunately, we know how this worked out.

4] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett – “The Spirit Level Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” [2009] The “Spirit Level” looks at the 22 “Rich” nations and the 50 American states. Graphs of the 9 metrics show comparative “quality of life” status of each government unit. America does not do well. The “likely suspects” among American states do not do well, especially one particular historical-geographic area. The authors state the 1950s and 1960s were a high point of of equality and social connectedness; since 1975 there has been a reversal. Every American should read this book.

5] Jane Mayer – “Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” [2016]. “…a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.” Inside the front cover is a spider’s web of “THE NETWORK – Political and Issue Spending [501c4s & 501c6s” – many having innocent names [“Americans for Job Security”]. In 1980, conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. characterized their views as “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.” Little, if anything, has changed.

6] Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith – “Who Stole the American Dream?” [2012] A Bloomberg News review includes: “The top 0.1 percent – about 3l5,000 people out of 315 million Americans – garner roughly half of all capital gains in the U.S.” “The 400-plus pages of drab, personality-free prose on all the ways the rich have been sticking it to the middle class since the late 1970s read like a Times investigative report from hell.” The I.D. of the Dream Stealers is clear.

7] Kristin Kobbes Du Mez – “Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith and Fractured A nation” [2020]. Here is the BIG QUESTION: Should a church YOU don’t attend have any control over your life? If YOUR answer is no, then you have much to worry about. Du Mez is the latest to examine this issue. It is documented beyond any doubt that the American religious right’s goal is an American theocracy – run by them. Given the events of 2016-2021, it should be obvious there are few limits to this “holy war.”

8] Allen Frances – “twilight of american sanity A Psychiatrist Analyzes The Age Of Trump” [2017] It is comforting to see President Donald Trump as a crazy man, a one-off, an exception – not a reflection on us or our democracy. But in ways I never anticipated, his rise was absolutely predictable and a mirror on our soul…What does it say about us, that we’ve elected someone so manifestly unfit and unprepared to determine America’s future? Trump is a symptom of a world in distress, not its sole cause. Blaming him for all our troubles misses the deeper, underlying societal sickness that made possible his unlikely ascent. Calling Trump crazy allows us to avoid confronting the craziness of our society – if we want to get sane, we must first gain insight about ourselves. Simply put: Trump isn’t crazy, but our society is.”

9] Michiko Kakutani – “The Death of Truth” [2018] Quoting Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction [i.e., the reality of experience] and the distinction between true and false [i.e., the standards of thought] no longer exist.” We are victims of “truth decay.” Former acting attorney general Sally Yates: truth is one of the things that separates us from an autocracy. If we don’t hold people in public life, government or media, accountable for the truth, than WE, US, normalize indifference to the truth. According to Jefferson, America was predicated on reason and truth.

10] David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt – “The Fox Effect How Roger Ailes Turned a Network Into A Propaganda Machine” [2012] The authors relate how Fox “News” became “an active and unapologetic Republican Party mouthpiece.” They say: Fox isn’t a news organization. Numerous studies and polls show Fox viewers “among the most ignorant on a variety of issues.” The problem, of course, is that Fox viewers BELIEVE they are hearing TRUTH and FACTS. Because their trusted broadcasters said it was. The listeners to the “Fox News echo chamber” live in a 24/7 feedback loop of constant reinforcement. This gets us back to “The Death of Truth.” We are polarized largely because significant numbers are living in a different reality – and defiantly refuse to accept they aren’t.

This is only the beginning. Do YOU have the courage, the curiosity, to question? Not only analysis, but numerical documentation is available. To start your journey on the reasons behind the different America that has been deliberately created – start simple. Get unpsun I.R.S. data on America income distributions, say 1947-1979, then l980-2020. This has already been done for you. Check work done by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Jacob Hacker, Paul Pierson. Or – find the March/April, 2011 issue of “Mother Jones” magazine. Find out how much money YOU are being cheated out of each year!!!
And just as important – discover for yourself – how much damage has been done to America society, because of greed, because of religious zealotry. None of it was an accident.