Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Trump Proclaims Nevada Has Made It 'Impossible' for GOP to Win by Expanding Voting Rights During Pandemic
"Trump and his allies have always been motivated by partisanship, even at the expense of American lives."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/03/trump-proclaims-nevada-has-made-it-impossible-gop-win-expanding-voting-rights-during
In a Monday morning tweet attacking Nevada's proposed expansion of mail-in voting as "an illegal late night coup," President Donald Trump once again openly admitted that increasing access to the ballot amid the Covid-19 pandemic poses a dire threat to the Republican Party's ability to win elections.
"Nevada's clubhouse governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state," Trump wrote, referring to the Nevada State Senate's passage Sunday of legislation that would send every active registered voter a mail-in ballot ahead of the November elections. Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill.
"Post Office could never handle the Traffic of Mail-In Votes without preparation," continued Trump, whose administration, critics warn, is currently attempting to sabotage and undermine the U.S. Postal Service.
"Using Covid to steal the state," the president added. "See you in Court!"
As Common Dreams reported in May, the Republican National Committee and right-wing advocacy groups are spending millions on lawsuits combating state efforts to expand mail-in ballot access as a safe alternative to in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
"It's incredible that the president of the United States keeps openly saying that the only way that he and his political allies can keep their grip on power is by making it harder for large swaths of the population to vote," said Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Trump's tweet Monday was just his latest baseless attack on vote-by-mail expansion, which the president has repeatedly claimed—without evidence—will lead to a surge in voter fraud and cost him the presidential race.
Contradicting the narrative pushed by the president and the GOP, Nevada's Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske told state lawmakers last week that her office is not aware of any voter fraud from the state's June primary, which was conducted largely by mail.
William McCurdy II, chair of the Nevada State Democratic Party, said in a statement Sunday that Trump's "protestations against mail-in voting represent an utterly hypocritical attempt to deny Nevadans the same rights" he and members of his administration have exercised repeatedly in past elections.
"Trump and his allies have always been motivated by partisanship, even at the expense of American lives," said McCurdy. "That he would threaten Nevada Democrats' work to protect voting access through a crisis of his own making is both despicable and par for the course. But Democrats will not be intimidated. We stand with Nevadans and will do the necessary work to ensure every eligible voter can participate easily and safely in what will surely be the most important election in a lifetime."
Trump's Millionaire Treasury Secretary Uses Debunked GOP Talking Point to Justify Slashing $600 Unemployment Boost
"Inflicting suffering on tens of millions of Americans by cutting unemployment benefits because of an anecdotal 'some cases' argument that has been refuted again and again is a stupid way to make policy."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/03/trumps-millionaire-treasury-secretary-uses-debunked-gop-talking-point-justify
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday recycled a debunked right-wing talking point to justify the GOP's proposal to cut by more than half the $600-per-week federal boost in unemployment benefits that expired at the end of last week, depriving around 30 million Americans of a key economic lifeline as joblessness remains at historic levels.
In an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Mnuchin claimed "there's no question" that the $600 weekly boost in unemployment insurance (UI) created a disincentive to work.
As a counterpoint, the Treasury Secretary cited a "Chicago study"—apparently referring to May research from the University of Chicago showing that under the $600-per-week boost, 68% of unemployed workers who were eligible for UI could have received benefits that exceeded their previous work income. That study, however, did not examine whether the benefits created a disincentive for the unemployed to seek work.When host Martha Raddatz pointed to a recent Yale study that found "no evidence that more generous benefits disincentivized work," Mnuchin responded, "I went to Yale, I agree on certain things, I don't always agree."
"There are cases where people are overpaid," said Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose net worth is estimated to be around $400 million.
The $600 weekly payment amounts to around what a worker would earn working 40 hours per week at a $15-an-hour wage. The fact that some workers earned more under the enhanced unemployment benefits than they did from their jobs makes the case for raising wages, not cutting benefits, progressives have argued.
Senate Republicans have proposed cutting the $600 weekly boost to $200—a $1,600 monthly benefit cut for tens of millions of people.
In response to Mnuchin's remarks, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) tweeted that "inflicting suffering on tens of millions of Americans by cutting unemployment benefits because of an anecdotal 'some cases' argument that has been refuted again and again by studies of actual data is a stupid way to make policy."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Mnuchin for wanting to to "slash $600 a week in unemployment benefits for 30 million workers who lost jobs" while supporting "the continuation of a $500 billion slush fund for corporations."
"The Trump administration loves socialism for the rich, unfettered capitalism for everyone else," said Sanders.
The $600-per-week increase in unemployment benefits expired on Friday as Republican and Democratic negotiators failed to reach an agreement to extend the payments—even amid dire warnings that a lapse could lead to a surge in evictions, increased hunger, and massive job loss.
Mnuchin on Sunday touted the White House's offer of a one-week extension of the $600 payments, but Democratic congressional leaders and other critics dismissed the proposal as a "sham" given that it would likely take weeks for states to distribute the payments.
"They proposed it after it was too late to prevent a benefits lapse," tweeted HuffPost's Arthur Delaney. "The last checks had already gone out. State workforce agencies have thoroughly demonstrated they don't do policy changes on a dime. Republicans opposed the $600 from before anyone received their first check and they made sure the benefits stopped."
Democratic leaders met with Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Saturday for a rare weekend discussion as the two sides remain far apart on key priorities for the next Covid-19 stimulus package, from unemployment benefits to additional aid for state and local governments.
In a Dear Colleague letter on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described the weekend meeting as "more productive than our previous discussions" but added that no agreement was reached.
"This is a very different kind of negotiation, because of what is at stake," Pelosi wrote. "Millions of children are food insecure, millions of families are at risk of eviction, and for the nineteenth straight week, over one million Americans applied for unemployment insurance... All parties must understand the gravity of the situation in order to reach an agreement that protects Americans' lives, livelihoods, and the life of our democracy."
When Corporate Power Is Your Real Government, Corporate Media Is State Media
Caitlin Johnstone August 1, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/when-corporate-power-is-your-real-government-corporate-media-is-state-media/
The New York Times published an astonishingly horrible article the other day titled “Latin America Is Facing a ‘Decline of Democracy’ Under the Pandemic” accusing governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua of exploiting Covid-19 to quash opposition and oppress democracy.
The article sources its jarringly propagandistic claims in multiple US government-funded narrative management operations like the Wilson Center and the National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Freedom House, the extensively plutocrat-funded Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the United States Naval Academy.
The crown jewel of this piece of State Department stenography reads as follows:
“Adding to these challenges, democracy in Latin America has also lost a champion in the United States, which had played an important role in promoting democracy after the end of the Cold War by financing good governance programs and calling out authoritarian abuses.”
Whoa, nelly.
The fact that America’s most widely regarded newspaper feels perfectly comfortable making such a spectacularly in-your-face lie on behalf of the US government tells you everything you need to know about what the mass media in America really are and what they do.
The United States has never at any time been a champion of democracy in Latin America, before or since the Cold War. It has intervened hundreds of times in the continent’s affairs throughout history with everything from murderous corporate colonialism to deadly CIA regime change operations to overt military invasions. It is currently trying to orchestrate a coup in Venezuela after failing to stage one during the Bush administration, it’s pushing regime change in Nicaragua, and The New York Times itself admitted this year that it was wrong to promote the false US government narrative of electoral shenanigans in Bolivia’s presidential race last year, a narrative which facilitated a bloody fascist coup.
Why is propaganda used in an ostensibly free democracy with an ostensibly free media? Why are its news media outlets so consistently in alignment with every foreign policy objective of US government agencies no matter how destructive and inexcusable? If the media and the government are two separate institutions, why do they so consistently function as though they are not separate?
Well, that’s easy. It’s because they aren’t separate. The only thing keeping this from being seen is the fact that America’s real government isn’t located where people think it is.
In a corporatist system of government, where no hard lines are drawn between corporate/financial power and state power, corporate media is state media. Since bribery is legal in the US political system in the form of corporate lobbying and campaign donations, America’s elected government is controlled by wealthy elites who have money to burn and who benefit from maintaining a specific status quo arrangement.
The fact that this same plutocratic class also owns America’s media, which is now so consolidated that it’s almost entirely run by just six corporations, means that the people who run the government also run the media. This allows America’s true rulers to set up a system which promotes narratives that are favorable to their desired status quo.
Which means that the US has state propaganda. They just don’t call it that themselves.
Strip away the phony two-handed sock puppet show of US electoral politics and look at how power actually moves in that country, and you just see one more tyrannical regime which propagandizes its citizens, brutally cracks down on protesters, deliberately keeps its populace impoverished so they don’t get powerful enough to change things, and attacks any nation which dares to disobey its dictates.
Beneath the thin layer of narrative overlay about freedom and democracy, the US is just one more despotic, bloodthirsty empire. It’s no better than any of the other despotic, bloodthirsty empires throughout history. It just has good PR.
Plutocrats not only exert control over America’s media and politics, they also form alliances with the secretive government agencies whose operators remain amid the comings and goings of the official elected government. We see examples of this in the way new money tech plutocrats like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and Pierre Omidyar have direct relationships with the CIA and its proxies.
We also see it in the sexual blackmail operation which was facilitated by the late Jeffrey Epstein in connection with billionaire Leslie Wexner and Israeli intelligence, along with potentially the FBI and/or other US intelligence agencies. Today the internet is abuzz as newly unsealed court documents relating to Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell reveal witness testimony regarding underage sex trafficking, with such high-profile names appearing in the documents as Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew.
The Overton window of acceptable political discourse has been shrunk into such a narrow spectrum of debate that talking about even well-known and extensively documented facts involving the real nature of America’s government and media will get you laughingly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, which is itself a symptom of tight narrative control by a ruling class which much prefers Americans thinking they live in a free democracy whose government they control with their votes.
In the old days you used to be able to tell who your rulers were because they’d sit on thrones and wear golden crowns and make you bow before them. Human consciousness eventually evolved beyond the acceptability of such brazen indignities, so it became necessary for rulers to take on more of a background role while the citizenry clap and cheer for the illusory puppet show of electoral politics.
But the kings are still among us, just as cruel and tyrannical as ever. They’ve just figured out how to mask their tyranny behind the facade of freedom.
But 2020 has been a year of revelations, a trend which seems likely to continue accelerating. Truth cannot stay hidden forever.
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