Weekly, if not daily, reminders of the abusive, cruel, corrupt, and criminality of the Far Right are readily available in HEADLINES!!!!! Below are just some:

1]. “EBay is fined $3M for workers who sent live spiders to harass writers” ”EBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct.” [ Alanna Durkin Richer; Associated Press; 1/12/2024 ]

2]. “U.S. says Volkswagen’s effort to prevent wrongdoing needs work” ”Nearly three years after Volkswagen admitted to a vas emissions cheating scheme..admitted programming millions of diesel cars..” [Jack Ewing; N.Y. Times; 2/28/2018]

3] ”Panama Papers show how U.S. citizens hid millions” ”..the firm explained: “He needs asset protection schemes, which we are trying to sell him.” Mossack Fonseca managed eight shell companies and a foundation on the family’s behalf, moving at least $134 million through seven banks in six countries – little of which could be raced directly..” 
[Eric Lipton, Julie Creswell; New York Times; 6/6/2016]

4]. “California recovers $20M from JPMorgan”. “..a subsidiary of JPMorgan..pulled down an extra $73 million by exploiting a small wrinkle in the state’s electricity market.” [ 7/31/2012 ]

5] ”Medtronic to settle suit for $85 million” ”..class action lawsuit that alleged the company misled investors regarding its Infuse bone-growth device.” [ James Walsh; Mpls Star Tribune’ 3/31/2012 ]

6]. “IRS: Taxes evaded on $43 million” ”A 79-year-old Palm Beach woman made tax evasion history..when she admitted to failing to tell the Internal Revenue Service about a whopping $43 million she had stashed in foreign accounts..one of roughly five dozen taxpayers who have been charged..since 2008..as many as 20,000 U.S. citizens had hidden $20 billion..overseas..” [ Jane Musgrave; Palm Beach Post; 1/9/2013
    ******** THIS is my all time favorite tax evasion story – shows you the entitlement thinking of many
         rich Americans – at age 79, can she begin to spend $43 million before death?

7]. “Judge: Rail talks can be included in lawsuits” ”The lawsuits said the railroads conspired to boost prices starting in 2003 by imposing fuel surcharges and pocketing billions..in profits.” [ Josh Funk; Associated Press; 2/23/2021 ]

8]. “Juul to pay 6 states $462 M to settle e-cigarette cases”. “Juul lit a nationwide public health crisis by putting addictive products in the hands of minors and convincing them its harmless.” [Karen Matthews; Assoc. Press; 4/13/2023]

9] ”Big Banks ring up costly punishment” ”Giant banks have racked up more than $4 billion in U.S. penalties in a wave of settlements..the penalties..cast fresh light on the persistence of financial professionals misbehavior..”
   [ Lananh Nguyen; Bloomberg News; 11/4/2020 ]

10] ”Senate panel: Banks helped hedge funds dodge taxes”. “Two giant banks helped at least a dozen hedge funds skirt full payment on more than $100 billion worth of stock trades..” [ Kevin Hall; McClatchy Newspapers; 7/28/2014 ]

11]. “Overdraft fees often exceed cost of purchase”. “..Banks profit by collecting more than half their checking account income from these fees.” [ Josh Boak; Associated Press; 8/1/2014 ]

12]. “Health firm pays for Medicare overbilling”. “..settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging..14 of its hospitals unnecessarily admitted patients and..”upcoded” patient diagnosis, exaggerating their illnesses in order to receive more Medicare dollars.” [ 8/4/2018 ]

We, the People, cll the award-winning author of 25 books in a dozen languages, Thom Hartmann, to testify on the American oligarchy, and how it has already sabotaged democracy.

Hartmann: The American governmental system has four branches, three in the Constitution, the fourth protected by the First Amendment. ”The media have always been the initial pivot point..for control of public opinion and, through that, control of the government itself ”..telecommunications laws from the 1920s and 1930s kept most newspapers, cable systems, internet providers, and radio and TV stations locally owned to prevent oligarchs from asserting singular control over information and news..”
 ”That all changed in 1996 ..[with].. the Telecommunications Act..the result of tens of millions of dollars of telecom industry lobbying and thus was supported by bought-out majorities of both parties in the House and Senate..”
  “The Act wiped out those protections for local media, turning our nation’s cable systems, internet service providers, newspapers, and radio and TV stations over to a small handful of media oligarchs.

Hartmann”. “.. statins owned by local folks, but they all had local news operations that were enthusiastic about investigating and outing local corruption, and they provided vital public service when there were local emergencies…’
 ”The broadcasting of actual news was required by the FCC through..the Fairness Doctrine, which required stations to “program in the public interest”..requiring both national and local news at least every hour on radio, and at least one hour [split 50/50 local/national] during prime time on TV
 ”The Fairness Doctrine also required stations that aired “editorials from the station’s ownership or management to be balanced with “equal time” by an outside source offering an opposing point of view.”

Hartmann: ”The result of these two sets of restrictions was a diversity of viewpoints, basic standards of honesty and fairness for news operations, the strengthening of democracy through an educated and informed electorate, and a local programming focus that served the needs of every community in America.”
 ”In 1987, Ronald Reagan ordered the FCC to stop enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, and in August 2011 it was removed from the FCC’s rules by the Obama administration.”…..
 ”..unprofitable news became very profitable infotainment, and radio and TV stations no longer had to “pay” for their monopoly use of our public airwaves with “programming in the public interest.”
 ”Clear Channel, a regional owner of a handful of radio stations, went on a buying spree right after Clinton signed that legislation and ended up owning 1,225 stations in 300 cities and towns, dominating the radio markets of the nation’s 112 major media markets.”
 ”Several other big companies jumped into the fray, with one, Cumulus, owning more than 400 stations across the country, including some of the nation’s largest.”…
 ”The result is that an entire city can have multiple radio stations with few to no local people actually broadcasting live on the air.”…

Hartmann: ”..a few years back, I met one of the owners of Cumulus in the offices of a U.S. senator, who inquired if the network..would be putting progressive programming on any of their 400-plus stations.”
 ”No way,” the billionaire network owner told us both. He said he’d never put shows on his stations that were “hostile to business” and wanted “to raise my taxes.”…
 ”A group of Salem-employee talk hosts, most prominently Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt, broadcast daily hard-right-wing shows from coast to coast, and I asked him if he’d consider adding a progressive show like mine.”
 ”Not a chance,’ he said. ”We’re a Christian company, so we’d never consider a liberal on our airwaves.” When I protested that I was a Christian myself, he said it wasn’t possible for a liberal to be a true follower of Christ.”

Hartmann: ”..in every nook and cranny of America you can tune across your radio dial and find an oligarch-friendly conservative talk show host..”…
 ”Our TV markets are similarly concentrated, with the most notorious television monoply being Sinclair, which owns more than 200 TV stations across the country. Newspapers are similarly concentrated in ownership, with few local papers of any significance surviving, as are the cable TV and internet service providers.”
 
Hartmann: ”The outcome of all this corporate ownership of media in nearly all forms is that the story line preferred by oligarchs – many of them media oligarchs – is constantly available to Americans, but the voices that would challenge oligarchy and promote democracy are limited to struggling nonprofit entities like Pacifica Network [radio] and Free Speech TV.”
 ”Roughly 90% of American media [by viewership, readership, and listenership] is owned by only six companies. A small handful of media executives decide what we’ll see, hear, and read..”..

Hartmann: ”Control of a big enough chunk of the fourth estate, essential to launching and maintaining oligarchy, has largely been accomplished and has been the single greatest factor in the crisis of widespread supoort for pro-oligarch, anti-democracy policies and politicians.
 ”The next step may be even more ominous, as on May 29, 2020, Trump’s …FCC…authorized any foreign oligarch [or government, via an oligarch] to own any U.S. media, doing away with a previous 25% ownership cap.”…
 ”In the 2010 U.S.Supreme Court case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent that he decision “would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”…

Hartmann: ”For rule by the rich, aka oligarchy, to really and truly seize control of a nation, that nation must first
Halegalize bribery of politicians by the oligarchs themselves. We are now fully there..”…

Hartmann: ”In 1907, at the urging of Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, Congress passed the Tillman Act, which made it a felony for any corporation to contribute anything of value to any campaign or politician running for federal office. Most states adopted similar laws..”..
 ”Following the Nixon bribery scandals of 1974, Congress passed a number of “good government” laws limiting the ability of oligarchs or their corporations to fund federal politicians, as well as expanding a 1966 law that provided for public financing of presidential elections.”

Hartmann: ”..most of all that crashed and burned in 1976 and 1978 when, in a pair of decisions known as Buckley and Bellotti [ Buckley v. Valeo and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti], the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that when American oligarchs owned politicians, it wasn’t corruption or bribery but, instead, First Amendment-protected “free speech” [Buckley] that was also available to corporations [Bellotti].
 ”Those decisions unleashed a flood of money that in the 1980 election just two years later swept Ronald Reagan into power and kicked off the modern era of American oligarchy.”
 ”At the state level, a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC] was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1975 by conservative oligarchs and the businesses that made them rich. Today it has more than 2,000 state legislators – all but a handful of them Republicans – who meet several times a year with hundreds of corporate lobbyists to take corporate-lobbyist-written “model legislation” that ALEC-funded legislators then introduce into their state legislatures.”

The following goodies are courtesy of Leland Gregory’s ”Stupid Conservatives”;
1]. “When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’ m just like ‘Oh, shut up.’ I’m so sock of them because they’re always complaining.” [Glen Beck, The Glen Beck Program; 9/9/2005]

2] ”Nothin is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.” [Tom DeLy; 3/12/2003 ]

3]. “We pick up stray animals and spay them. These mothers need to be spayed if they can’t take care of their [children].” [Charleston City, South Carolina, councilman Larry Shirley; Charleston Post and Courier, 9/29/2006; on his solution to the city’s youth crime problem }

4]. “I think, on a national level, your Department of Law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out.” [ Sarah Palin, ABC News interview; 7/7/2009; referring to a governmental department that does not exist. ]

5]. “I have no problem with homosexuality – I have a problem with homosexual acts.” [. Senator Rick Santorum [R-Pa]; 4/7/2003; clarifying earlier remarks in which he equated homosexuality with incest and bestiality.}

6]. “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, antifamily political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” [ Pat Robertson; fund-raising letter; 1992 ]

7] ”Virginia state legislator Bob Marshall voiced his opposition to spending state money for Planned Parenthood by claiming that the organization is partly responsible for the number of disabled children in America. ”The number who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically,” Marshall said. ”Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.” Marshall went on to explain his biblical reference: ”In the Old Testament, the firstborn of every being, animal, and man was dedicated to the Lord.” According to a February 22, 2010, article in the Richmond News Leader, Marshall said the organization should rename itself “Planned Barrenhood.”

8]. “He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking, and it’s purely an act….This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting, one of the two.” [ Rush Limbaugh; The Rush Limbaugh Show; 10/23/2006; on an ad endorsing Democrat Claire McCaskill [who supports embryonic stem-cell research ]. for U.S. Senate by Michael J. Fox, who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease ]

 9

“Surveillance Capitalism” – the definition:
    1. “A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial
practices of extraction, prediction, and sales; 2. A parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods
and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modification; 3. A rogue mutation of
capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge, and power unprecedented in human history;
4. The foundational framework of a surveillance economy; 5. As significant a threat to human nature in the
twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth;
6. The origin of a new instrumentarian power that asserts dominance over society and presents startling
challenges to market democracy; 7. A movement that aims to impose a new collective order based on total
certainty; 8. An expropriation of critical human rights that is best understood as a coup from above: an
overthrow of the people’s sovereignty.”  [Source: ”The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, Shoshana Zuboff]

Read these words very carefully – Zuboff is discussing how the Internet really works. Yes – YOU. get services and information. Some of YOU conduct your whole life on the internet. What Zuboff is saying: YOU. and human society are paying a price – we are GIVING UP OUR PERSONAL INFORMATION, for FREE!!!!!!! – to others who are making billions off US, for free. WORSE – the few major Internet leading powers are becoming an unseen, unrecognized dictatorship. A dictatorship that has more power than any other in human history. Because – it is becoming increasingly difficult to operate, and live, in this “Surveillance Capitalism” – without the Internet.

Ask YOURSELF: WHY does Zuboff say “hidden commercial practices”???  WHY does she say “a parasitic economic logic”???  WHY does she say “A rogue mutation of capitalism”???  WHY does she say “a significant threat to human nature”???  WHY does she say “asserts dominance over society and presents startling challenges”.  WHY does she say “aims to impose a new collective order”???  WHY does she say “An expropriation of critical human rights”???

Read this book – if YOU. care about your own future and that of your children and grandchildren. If you are lazy – just read the 30-page conclusion.

Then ask YOURSELF. who gave the dominant Internet corporations the authority and “right” to create this “surveillance capitalism’? Did YOU. vote for this??? Or – did YOU. give away your vote when you signed up for Internet services? 
    THINK - how many private secrets about. YOUR. life are now “owned” by a corporation? Ask. YOURSELF: did the Nazis and the Soviets EVER have this knowledge and power over. EVERY. person?????
    Read about “behavior modification.”    Read about being able to predict what other humans are going to do.

   Ask. YOURSELF. - if a corporation has this much knowledge about. YOU. - are YOU. really. FREE????????????

Begin to research – how much damage to humans has ALREADY occurred because of the Internet and this “surveillance capitalism”??? Young people, many/most children are reporting severe mental issues – some considering suicide. Some people are spending several hours each day on the Internet – WHY????? Exactly WHAT compels them to do this?
     Research what is ALREADY known about the “business model” of major Internet corporations. Governments have pressed them about how they operate. They’ve given up vague assurances – BUT - NEVER have they said anything about CHANGING. THEIR BUSINESS MODEL.  WHY?????  Research on the addictiveness of being on the Internet. WHY do YOU. keep clicking???  Besides more revenue, what else do the major Internet corporations obtain when YOU. keep on clicking?

    Ask YOURSELF: is that little plastic “phone” in. YOUR. hand  YOUR. servant, or, is it. YOUR. master?????????

Consider the following information on how badly and decisively the Rich and corporations have taken an economy that SHARED THE WEALTH, 1947-1973, to 2024, where the lower 90% of hard working Americans have been ROBBED BLIND by the Rich and corporations:

1] From “Tax The Rich,” by Morris Pearl and Erica Payne, page 166: 
     “A study by Princeton professor Martin Gilens [August, 2012] shows that between the 1980s and the
    2010s, policies supported by the rich ended up being passed into law between 60% and 70% of the time.
    Similarly, policies supported by businesses and special-interest lobbies ended up being passed into law
    between 60% and 70% of the time. In contrast, policies supported by a majority of voters ended up being
    passed into law only about 30% of the time, and every single time one of those policies became law, it
    also had the support of either business lobbies, the rich, or both. According to the study, not a single
    policy supported by the majority of voters but opposed b y the rich and the business community ended
    up being passed into law.”
      [NOT A SINGLE POLICY OPPOSED BY THE RICH AND BUSINESS BECAME LAW !!!!!!!! NOT ONE]

2] From “The Scheme. How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court,” by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse with Jennifer Mueller, Appendix A:
     ”The following chart expands upon the analysis first presented in Senator Whitehouse’s April 2019
    article for the American Constitution Society, “A Right-Wing Rout: What the ‘Roberts Five’ Decisions
    Tell Us About the Integrity of Today’s Supreme Court.” It has been updated to reflect eighty cases that
    were decided by a 5-4 opinion by the Roberts Five [Justices Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Thomas, and
    Scalia or Gorsuch], each of which served one of the following conservative interests: [1] controlling
    the political process to benefit conservative interests; [2[ protecting corporations from liability and
    letting polluters pollute; [3] restricting civil rights and condoning discrimination; and [4] advancing
    a far-right social agenda.”..
     ”Where appropriate, the appendix also identifies the judicial principles these conservative justices
    generally espouse, but which they arguably disregarded in these cases to achieve a desired outcome,
    including: [1]. stare decisis; [2]. judicial restraint; [3[. originalism; [4]. textualism; and [5]. aversion to
    fact finding.”   [PRINCIPLES DISREGARDED TO ACHIEVE A DESIRED OUTCOME !!!]
 Refer to chapter l4 “The 80 [aka The Prize]’}. which discuses those 80 5-4 votes: ”And we found a staggering pattern: in every one of those seventy-three cases, 730, the conservative big-money interests won. Every. Single. Time…..
the most dangerous victories actually tilt the political or legal or regulatory fields in favor of the donor interests in ways that will enable streams of future victories. Indisputably, the big, dark-money special interests have gotten what they paid for..”   Re-read this section, multiple times, this is a RIGGED. “court.”  American “democracy” is being lost, 
one Roberts “court” decision at a time. - a PATTERN. of 2005 – 2023.  The rich and corporations have bought decisions favorable to them.  This is why some courageous commentators are now, in print, describing the
Roberts “court’ as CORRUPT, some saying the Roberts “court” is. THE. SINGLE. BIGGEST. THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 

3] Consider, and compare March-April, 2011 Mother Jones, and, January-February, 2024 Mother Jones articles on wealth and income in America. The 2011 “Plutocracy now” article concentrates on income. The bottom 90% “average income per family was $31,244; the top 10% income was $164,647; the top 1%. income was $1,137,684; the top o.01% income was $27,342,212. The richest 10% controlled 73.1% of American’s net worth – 34.6% by the top 1% alone.
  The 2011 article had a “Your Loss, Their Gain” chart which showed the bottom 90% had ALL lost income to the top 1%. It also had an article “Plutonomics” which mentioned “In a 2006 memo to Citigroup’s wealthy clients, lead “strategist” Ajay Kapur declared, “Our thesis is that the rich are the dominant drivers of demand” in the U.S. and other “plutonomies. How does a country become a plutonomy? One essential factor, he wrote, is “favorable treatment by market-friendly governments [to allow] the rich to prosper.”
 The 2024 article of the special edition of Mother Jones – “American Oligarchy”. [the entire magazine !!!!!], contains a chart “Mind the Gap,” discussing “Average real wealth per U.S. adult..” The 50-90% [middle class] adult has $401,900; the top 10% adult has $3.8 million; the top 1% adult has $19.1 million; the top 0.01 % adult has $533.8 million. The U.S. has more billionaires than any other nation – #2 China has about 1/3 as many; nations 2-6 together have slightly more billionaires.

4] Research the U.S. national debt. You’ll find the American national debt for ALL of 1789 – 1980 was LESS than $1 trillion. Reagan and Bush I added $3.4 trillion; Bush II added [an incomplete] $6.1 trillion. Obama added @.4 trillion – largely to recover from the effects of the Bush II-caused 2007-09 Great Recession. [data as of 10/28/2011] Then there is the immoral, KNOWN TO BE DESTRUCTIVE 2017 Trump tax cut – which is 25% of current debt [and counting!!!]
 As of 2/7/2010, the Congressional Budget Office projected th national debt would be more than $15 trillion by 2020. those projections “are based on assumptions that include the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and lower war expectations.” This DID NOT HAPPEN.
 A “Journal of Economic Perspectives” for winter, 2007, article by Thomas Picketty and Emmanuel Saez. “How Progressive is the U.S. Federal Tax System?,” shows “average federal tax rates for top income groups, 1970-2004, dropping for ALL. The top 0.01% rate drops about over 50% – from about 75% to slightly over 30%; the top 0.1% rate drops about 50% [ from about 63-64% to slightly over 30%; the top 1% rate drops from about 49% to about 31%.

5]. Do YOUR own FACTUAL, mainstream-based, UNSPUN. research – Census Bureau, IRS, CBO, GAO UNSPUN numbers for 1945 – 2024. As the articles discussed above will show YOU – the CLEAR. OVERALL. PATTERN. is massive bias in favor of the rich and corporations. The. documented. MASSIVE shift of middle class income to the top 1-5% has had devastating, destructive effects on American society, economy, society.
      All this, plus much, much more – is WHY the Far Right Threat to American Democracy exists. This will not change- unless. YOU, your friends, neighbors, relatives. do more than protest.  Unless YOU. vote the mouthpieces for the rich and corporations out of office. - THIIS. WILL. CONTINUE.  This is. THE. ISSUE, THE. CAUSE. for the distress of a majority of Americans.
    If. YOU. continue to vote based on “culture war” issues – the rich and the corporations they control - will continue to. LAUGH. AT. YOU. ALL. THE. WAY. TO. THE BANK !!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Far RIGHT hypocrisy and lies on taxes, debt, and spending know NO. BOUNDS. Their prime goal is to protect immoral, and destructive special privileges of the rich and corporations. Consider the following evidence:

1]. the U.S. debt for 1789 – l980 was LESS. THAN. $l trillion when Reagan, Bush II, Trump tax cuts for the rich and corporations began. One of, if not THE most immoral, unAmerican, undemocratic actions by ANY American government was the 2017 Trump tax cuts for the Rich and Corporations. It was passed KNOWING that it would add to the national debt. Passed KNOWING it was destructive.   Do your own research [in main stream sources, checking. UNSPUN Census, IRS, GAO, CBO numbers] The U.S. national debt. BLOWS UP. after the Reagan, Bush II, Trump tax cuts.

2]. Between 1932 – 1980, the top U. s. “marginal tax” rate averaged 81%; the top estate tax rate near 70%. [Source: ”Capital in the Twenty-First Century”}. THE statistical top middle class American prosperity era is 1947-1973. This is. NOT. a coincidence!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Post-1945, it was deliberate, planned. U.S. government policy to. ‘SHARE. THE WEALTH”. - and. – it worked. The greedy rich and corporations did not want to “share the wealth.” Since 1980, they have pressured Congress to change the rules – and, to continue to receive. “campaign contributions”. [from. RICH DONORS] – Congress lowered taxes on the rich and corporations – which gives YOU. the massive economic inequality of 2024.

3]. University of Texas law professor Johnson and colleagues “have shown how Congress, by closing loopholes could raise $1 trillion each year without any new taxes or rate increases.” [Source: “The Fine Print”, 2012] There YOU. have it!!
  All the FAR RIGHT screaming and posturing is barnyard material. THE solution was known in 2012. So, why hasn’t the FAR RIGHT scream and postured for it????? Because the FAR RIGHT. billionaire donors would cut off their “campaign contributions”!!!!!!!!!!!!
       All Congress has to do is cut off all the loopholes. THEY. installed – presto - no more “crisis”!!!!!!!!!
   THIS. , fellow Americans is all YOU. need to know. - WHY. - the rich and corporations are a threat to democracy.

4]. Between $400 – $600 billion in taxes is. NOT. paid EVERY. YEAR. - 61% no paid by the top 1% [Source”. “Tax The Rich”] So – the FAR RIGHT Congressional screamers can end this too – make sure this can’t happen. But. – that would anger their top 1% ”campaign contributions” donors !!!!!!!!!!!

5] The I.M.F. calculates the U.S. subsidizes the fossil fuel industry EVERY YEAR with $660 billion. {Source: “The Scheme”]. So – the FAR RIGHT Congressional hypocrites could end this too. But - that would anger their FAR RIGHT “campaign contributions” donors !!!!!!!!!!!

6]. U.S. health care inefficiencies and waste cost $500 billion a year. Calculations done by McKinsey Global Institute report, 2007. [Source: “Free Lunch”]  So – America’s #37 best “health care” system could be charging taxpayers less. YOU might think since the FAR RIGHT Congressional screamers want to save taxpayer money, they’d be all over this. Wrong – not a peep. You don’t suppose this too might endanger “campaign contributions”????????

7] 61% of “American” corporations, 39% of large corporations, paid. $0 % corporate income taxes between 1996 – 2000.
    The CBO said that ordinary citizen’s tax bills will INCREASE, 2008-2013. - while corporate tax bills will DECREASE $327 billion.     The U.S. Treasury may be losing $100 billion EACH YEAR. to shell companies.
    Because of loopholes, the U.S. corporate tax rate is. THE. 3RD. LOWEST. WORLDWIDE. as a percentage of GDP.
The corporate share of the total U.S. tax burden was about 50% in 1940 – in 2003, it was 14.4% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
   Source: Parade Magazine, 4/13/ 2008 “Parade Magazine Intelligence Report: ’Are You Paying for Corporate Fat Cats?” ].  - !!!!!!!!! the correct answer:  YES !!!!!!!!!!!!  ”Campaign contributions” in action!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
     So – the FAR RIGHT Congressional screamers [scammers!!!!!!!!!] could end this – BUT they fear doing this moral, patriotic, democratic. thing. - because. - their “campaign contributions” will end !!!!!!!!!!!

8]. In 2020, 55 large corporations paid $0. in federal income taxes [which saved them/ cost YOU. $8.5 billion] if they had been taxed at the statutory rate; AND !!!! – ‘YOUR”. government gave them $3.5 billion in tax rebates !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1}. Justice Brandeis: ”We can either have a democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentration in the hands of a few. But we cannot have both.”

2]. Barlett & Steele: ”We are no longer the democracy we once were. We have become a plutocracy.. In 2011, AdAge..declared the era of mass affluence over in America.. “Simply put, a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending.” [ “The Betrayal of The American Dream” ]

3] Adam Smith: ”We can’t have free markets because the world is too complex and independent to let everyone run around doing whatever he or she wants to do. As a society, we have to regulate conduct when it interferes with other people’s freedoms or when it threatens damage to other people’s property.” [Oreskes &nConway: “The Big Myth”]

4]. John Ehrenberg: ”When allis said and done, the contemporary Right is about attacking equality and serving wealth..foundations, think tanks, newspapers, publishers, institutions..[developed].. this program..they’ve largely succeeded in getting th country to debate elementary principles of equality and democracy on their terms.”
     [“$ervants of Wealth..”]

5]. Joe Stiglitz: The standard mantra of some: taxes stifle growth. ”..far from it. Over the period 2000 to 2010, high-taxing Sweden..grew far faster than the United States..taxes financed public expenditures – investments in education, technology, and infrastructure – and the public expenditures were what..sustained the high growth.”
     [Nobel Prize winner in Economics]

6]. John Bogle: ”..late in the twentieth century, something went wrong..one more aberration.. What went wrong this time..was a “pathological mutation of capitalism.” The classic system – owners’ capitalism – had been based on a dedication to serving the interests of the corporation’s owners..But a new system..managers’ capitalism – in which, Pfaff wrote, ”the corporation [was] run to the profit of the managers, in complicity if not conspiracy with accountants and managers of other corporations..a corruption of capitalism itself.’
 ”The age of managers’ capitalism has had dire consequences for our notion of some sort of fairness in American society, and is a major cause of the increase in the gap between America’s rich and poor.”
     [ “Battle for the Soul of Capitalism” ]

7]. Patricia Sexton: ”In most other Western democracies, the legal system has been somewhat sympathetic, or at least relatively impartial..often resisting employer demands, protecting labor at critical moments, and sometimes even embracing it..[Not America].. Rarely has the legal system been its advocate, protector, or even a neutral party, and more typically it has been an adversary.”
 ”In early U.S. history, the legal system treated unions as criminal conspiracies; still later, it accepted some strikes as legal in principle but often treated..activities associated with them..as criminal conspiracies.”
      [. “The War on Labor and the Left” ]

8]. David C. Johnston: ”Wall Street..measures companies by their success in creating barriers to competition..The investment research firm Morningstar rates companies using a “moat index” to measure success at avoiding..rigors of market competition..: “The concept of economic moats is a cornerstone of our stock-investment philosophy..Moats are important to investors because any time a company develops a useful product..other firms try to capitalize..competition makes it difficult for most firms to generate strong growth and margins over an extended period of time.”
     [ “The Fine Print” ]

9]. Lee Drutman & Steven Teles: ”More than three decades of disinvesting in government’s capacity to keep up with skyrocketing numbers of lobbyists and policy institutions, well-organized partisans, and an increasingly complex social and legal context,” have created “a power asymmetry crisis.”
  ”..weak government doesn’t mean efficient government. It means government that gives away the store to rent seekers far too often..government that must confront the most vital challenges facing it – facing us – with one habd tied behind its back.”    [ “American Amnesia” ]

10] Oreskes & Conway: ”..in 1986, a new panic in the tobacco industry: ”The cause was a new Surgeon General’s report that concluded..second hand smoke could cause cancer even in otherwise healthy nonsmokers.” Fred Singer and the Tobacco Institute ”claimed..the EPA was doing “bad science.” To make this..seem credible..they began a smear campaign to discredit the EPA in general and tarnish any scientific results..any that any industry didn’t like as “junk.”
      [ “Merchants of Doubt” ]

11]. Alec MacGillis: ”Brick and mortar retail was reeling by the end of 2017. Nearly 7,000 stores closed that year..”It’s not stores that are dying,” wrote business professor Scott Galloway, but the middle class – and it turn, the businesses that serve that once-great cohort and its neighborhoods.” [ “Fulfillment” ]

12] Hacker & Pierson: ”Financing the GOP was an investment. Business dollars nurtured a cadre of elected officials committed to advancing a deregulatory and tax-cutting agenda…Money to Democrats..was a form of insurance..destined for the powerful and “moderate,” with the goal of minimizing any prospect of distasteful legislation..help keep issues off the agenda,,add critical loopholes..provide valuable bipartisan cover for business-friendly Republicans.”   [ “Winner-Take-All Politics” ]

We, The People, call Henry Giroux to offer testimony on the Far Right threat of fascism. Testimony is excerpts from Giroux’s ”American Nightmare Facing the Challenge of Fascism,” ”Staring Into The Authoritarian Abyss”:

Giroux: ”..America has descended..into a drama styled after theater of the absurd. Unbridled anti-intellectualism, Deception, and “vindictive chaos” have created conditions for repeating elements of a morally reprehensible past in the guise of “Making America Great Again.” Advancing an alarmist agenda bolstered by “alternative facts,” the Trump presidency has unleashed a type of anti-politics that unburdens people of any responsibility to challenge – let alone change – the fundamental precepts of a society torn asunder by open bigotry, blatant misogyny, massive inequality, an violence…………….. America now mimics a failing state as the credibility of its democratic institutions and the trustworthiness of its leadership openly depreciate on the global stage.”……

Giroux: ”Trump’s ascendency has revealed the degree to which acute political illiteracy, corruption, and contempt for reason have become defining features of present-day U.S. culture. His rise has involved using threats of violence and intimidation to shock and incite everyday people, and is preceded by a serious decline of American public life. Taken with relentless lying and targeted attacks on dissent, the result is a political climate that recalls those of past pre-fascit societies…..
 ”Trumpism is symptomatic of the decline of the United States into a new, commercially integrated, American-style fascism.
 ”The danger signs are not just in the United states…Unemployment, wage stagnation, vision-less futures, a growing sense of precarity and insecurity for working and lower middle classes, and an increasing sense of atomization and alienation – all of it fueled by austerity measures, a growing worldwide culture of fear, and a permanent war culture – are undermining not only the foundations of democracy, b ut a belief in the value of democracy itself.”…
 ”Not only have many millennials lost their faith in democracy, but many are less willing to oppose military coups and no longer view civil rights as absolutely essential; more than a quarter dismiss the importance of free elections to democracy.”

Giroux: “The world is now witnessing how the conditions that have been undermining U.S. democracy over the last forty years have brought us to a place where resurgent forms of nativism, racism, and misogyny, have consolidated and aligned as a social base for an authoritarian, corporate, political-economic order.”…
 ”Trump is ,ore than an opportunistic clown who leveraged his reality-show celebrity for political gain; he has been a vehicle for right-wing populism by rousing uneducated white fear and committing it to a pro-corporate economic agenda.”…
 ”As is evident in the rise of numerous modes of fascism since the 1920s, authoritarianism takes many forms, and aligns itself with the worst dimensions of the historical contexts in which it gains political and ideological currency. Trump is the endpoint of a social order that values self-interest over compassion, profit over basic human needs, and corruption over justice.”

Giroux: ”I think the artist Sable Elyse Smith is right in arguing that ignorance is more than the absence of knowledge or the refusal to know, it is also a form of violence that is woven into the fabric of everyday life by powerful disimagination machines, and its ultimate goal is to enable us to not only consume pain and to propagate it, but also to relish in it as a form of entertainment and emotional uplift. This is a culture of social abandonment and terminal exclusion. Justice in this discourse is disposable, along with the institutions that make it possible.”

Giroux: ”Trump…is the overt and unapologetic symbol of a feral capitalism that has been decades in the making. He is the theatrical postmodern self-absorbed Frankenstein monster that embodies and makes clear a history of savagery, greed, and predatory cruelty that has reached its endpoint – a poisonous form of American authoritarianism.”…
 ”Authoritarians live in fear of criticism, dissent, community, solidarity, and the social imagination. Brad Evans captures it well in his comment on the importance of language and books: ’If you don’t provide people with the intellectual tools to empower critically minded subjects, you end up with incarcerated minds. A world without books is a world foreclosed. Every great tyranny begins by declaring a war upon the imagination and the appropriation or imprisonment of those deemed to be its most creative.”
 ”And it is precisely in the recognition and struggle against the imagination, the war on truth, and the attack on democratic public spheres that the power and horror of authoritarian rule becomes visible and therefore vulnerable.”

Giroux: ”Many Americans seem to display a growing fondness for misinformation, an attitude that reinforces the disintegration of the civic culture and even the communicative function of language…falsehood and deception no longer appear marginal to political debate; they now seem to shape much of what is spoken in the public sphere..”

Giroux: ”Trumpism, as a form of nascent fascism, is being built around aggression, hatred, and violence, while coddling white supremacy as an acceptable form of historical national heritage.”

Giroux: ”Leaders of..mass totalitarian movements do not need to believe in the truth of their lies and ideological cliches. The point of their fabrications is not to establish facts, but to create a coherent fictional reality. What a movement demands of its leaders is the articulation of a consistent narrative combined with the ability to abolish the capacity for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, between realty and fiction.”

Giroux: ”Every day that Donald Trump remains employed as a public servant5 is a day he takes us closer to fascism.”

Giroux: ”Trump’s reign will continue to usher in an extreme version of pro-corporate capitalism in which all human activities, practices, and institutions will be subject to market principles and commercialization.”…

Giroux: ”American are witnessing the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism and fascism that are challenging the very ability for society to function as a civilian democracy.”

Giroux: ”..the more serious issue ignored by mainstream media should be a focus on what kind of political and economic system produces demagogues like Trump, the people who support him, and a gangster capitalism with its organized culture of violence.”

Giroux: ”..what I argue..is that resisting the whitewashing of history is a core issue. History unexpurgated provides us with a vital resource that helps inform the ethical ground for resistance, an antidote to Trump’s politics of disinformation, diversion, division, and fragmentation..history reminds us that in the face of emerging forms of authoritarianism, solidarity is essential. People need to network and organize..”

Giroux: ”Trumpism offers fascist purification rituals motivated by social intolerance and the attempt to re-create a system of white privilege that extends from and perpetuates founding narratives of Anglo settler-colonialism.”

Giroux: ”Trumpism openly legitimizes armed white supremacy and social intolerance. Those considered flawed and disposable due to race, residency status, political affiliation, gender, sexual preference, and religious practice are subjected to increased suspicion, surveillance, exclusion, and increased vulnerability to hate crimes.”

Giroux: ”As Hannah Arendt once predicted, totalitarianism’s curse is upon us once again, and it has emerged in forms unique to the tyranny of the times in which we live. Trump has brought the terrors of the past into full view..In response, we must create a new language for politics, resistance, and hope. This must be a language that exposes and counters the drift toward fascism that Trumpism clearly accelerates.”

The plot of the upper 1% and major corporations to overthrow American government existed between July and November, 1933.  The McCormack-Dickstein Committee began Congressional hearings in New York City on November 20, 1934.  A final report was issued February l5, 1935.

  But – chances are near 100%. YOU. haven’t heard of this plot.  Because. - it has been covered up. It is highly unlikely. YOU. have heard of this plot in ANY. American classroom – high school or college.

  If you are a dedicated American, then this FAR Right plot is discussed in Jules Archer’s. “The Plot to Seize the White House.” As Time Magazine said: ”Fascinating and alarmingly true!”
  The hero was double Medal of Honor winner General Smedley Butler. The plotters, a who’s who of the top 1% and top corporations, needed “boots on the ground.” They made the mistake of contacting General Butler. The plan was for Butler to lead a march of World War I veterans against the Roosevelt administration. Butler contacted Congress.
 Among the guilty parties were executives of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chase Bank, the Texas Company, ITT, Ford, Sterling Products. Helping them were government officials: a Secretary of Commerce, an assistant Secretary of State, and ambassadors to France and Great Britain.

  Related material on this era can be found in Charles Higham’s. “Trading With The Enemy. An Expose of Nazi-American Money Plot of 1933-1949.” Included here is a 1944 Swiss bank discussion of $378 million in looted Nazi gold for use of Nazi leaders AFTER. the war.
   Edwin Black’s. “IBM and The Holocaust. The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation”. documents how IBM’s technology made the operation of Nazi Germany possible. Black traces the money flow, during the war, from Nazi Germany to the U.S. IBM headquarters. IBM was “too important” to the US in the ‘Cold War” so they escaped punishment

 More related information is contained by Bradley W. Hart’s. “Hitler’s American Friends. The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States. Hart eerily relates many events and actions that sound all too familiar: the goal of Nazi propaganda was to create confusion by sowing discord and turning Americans against each other; there was a Nazi plot to meddle in the 1940 presidential election; and “The darkest underbellies of American society were at the heart of this: anti-Semitism, religious bigotry, and greed..fundamental forces drew these groups together.”

 The current Far Right began to reemerge in the late 1940s – early 1950s “Red Scare’: ”McCarthyism”; then the “John Birch Society”: then Nixon’s 1968 “law and order” campaign with it’s ‘Southern Strategy.”

 It is not a coincidence recent authoritarian parties have all opposed women’s rights, civil rights, labor rights and unions, press freedoms, accountability; and favor mass rallies where demagogues entertained adoring crowds of “true believers,” and approved violence in the streets against their opponents [who are often ‘untermenschen’]

Serious students of recent American events should also read John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer’s “Authoritarian Nightmare.” Based on Altemeyer’s decades of research nad study of recent events, this 2020 book came to the conclusion about 14% of American adults were Far Right enough to be considered supporters of authoritarian leaders, many just waiting for the next Far Right authoritarian to lead them. 

  SO – where does this leave us???  Start with Franklin’s famous September, 1787, response to a question about what the 1787 Constitutional Convention had created. Franklin: ”A republic, if you can keep it.”  
  THE question in 2024 and beyond: how many Americans WANT. to preserve what remains of our “democracy”???

  Another important point to consider: just from the evidence above – “It Can Happen Here” - democracy is fragile, and there are many on the Far Right who have DEMONSTRATED their desire to change America to an oligarchic theocracy.   Currently, these people hold power, have huge fortunes to spend, are often in the news spouting their anti-democratic propaganda – always dressed u in some plausible rationale -like that for the 2017 tax cuts, or for “supreme court’ rulings of “Shelby County,” ”Citizens United,” and “Dobbs.” 

 In 1933 – the American people elected Franklin Roosevelt. The Germans elected Adolf Hitler. Democracy is fragile. o

Consider some excerpts from Victor Klemperer’s “The Language Of the Third Reich. Klemperer survived 1933-1945 because of his marriage to an Aryan. He kept detailed diaries, which have also been published.

• 3 – “The fear of the thinking man and the hatred of the intellect..”
  l5 – “..Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures..imposed on them in a million repetitions..”
    ”And what happens if the..language is made up of poisonous elements or has been made the bearer of poisons? Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic..”
  23 – “The sole purpose of [Nazi language] is to strip everyone of their individuality, to paralyze them as personalities, to make them into unthinking and docile cattle..”
  48 - ”untermensch”.  94 – “racial defilement”  149 – “liquidated”  150 – “the final solution”
       l54 – “force into line”  161 – “Nordified”  169 – “gone away”  186 – “collected”
           228 – “a defensive war on the move”
  108 – “But the Fuhrer announced only recently that we are definitely going to win. And he has never lied yet. I believe in Hitler. No, God wouldn’t leave him in the lurch.”
  111- ”..the Fuhrer again and again underlined his uniquely close relationship with the Godhead, his special status as the chosen one, his religious mission.”
  112 – “From 1933 to 1945..this elevation of the Fuhrer to the status of a god, this alignment of his person and his actions with the Savior and the Bible, took place day by day..”
  113 – “In the announcement for the election of 1938 to ratify the annexation of Austria, in the endorsement of Greater Germany, it is claimed..Hitler is an agent of Providence.”
  117 – “..Nazism was accepted by millions as gospel because it appropriated the language of the gospel.”
  163 - ”The definitive expression for the [Nazis], both lexically and conceptually, is ‘Fortress Europe’. [honorable continent, betrayed by England, Russian and American threats]
  175 – “[Hitler] knows..he can only expect loyalty from those who inhabit a similarly primitive world..the..most effective means of keeping them there is to nurture, legitimize and..glorify the instinctive hatred of the Jews.”
  176 – “The Jew is the most important person in Hitler’s state:..the popular scapegoat, the most plausible adversary. Had the Fuhrer..achieved his aim of exterminating all..Jews, he would have had to invent new ones, because without the Jewish devil..there never would have been the radiant figure of the Nordic Teuton.”
  176 - ”Hitler’s..instructions of the Party..The golden rule is always: don’t let your listeners engage in critical thought, deal with everything simplistically!…reduce everything to a common denominator..”
  177 - ”..whatever actions are taken, they are..defensive measures [against] murderous Jewish attacks on Hitler’s Germany..peace-loving Germans are only..defending ourselves.”
  215 – Nazi use of superlatives: ”biggest”  “best”  “greatest”  “total”  “historic”
  217 – “The extraordinary thing was the shameless transparency of the lies revealed by the figures; one of the fundamentals of Nazi doctrine is the conviction that the masses are unthinking and that their minds can be completely dulled.”
  221 – “There can’t be a single speech of the Fuhrer that doesn’t long-windedly list Germany’s successes and sarcastically insult the enemy.”
  237 – “The whole emotional mendacity of Nazism, the whole mortal sin of deliberately twisting things founded on reason into the realm of emotions, and deliberate distortion for the sake of sentimental mystification…”
  256 – “But the consummate and most characteristic feature of the Nazi art of language..the real achievement..lies in the unscrupulous mixture of heterogeneous stylistic elements..in the most abruptly antithetical leaps from a learned tone to a proletarian one, from sobriety to the tone of the preacher, from icy rationalism to the sentimentality of a manfully repressed tear..no time for critical reasoning…”
  
  NOW – go back over this 1933-45 eyewitness account. In recent years, have YOU seen a reenactment of this language strategy? A certain politician claims that he has never read anything about this era, knows nothing of the main practitioner of these words and strategies….. However, his first wife, in a major national publication, said this man Did have a copy of Hitler’s speeches by his bed……………. And, we all “know” that this second man “..has never lied yet.”