It's time to defund the Republican Party
By Thom Hartmann A...
In yesterday's rant, I laid out all the reasons why Democrats should put at the top of their priority list "defunding the Republican Party." Here's a little background, and how to do it.Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party. While the Republican party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions.
So Ronald Reagan, as part of his "Reagan Revolution," figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America's unions. His first shot was to destroy Patco, the air traffic controller's union, and he did it in less than a week in August, 1981.
He, with Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court than embarked on an eight-year campaign to eliminate unions from the American landscape, thus wiping out the Democratic Party's ability to win elections.
It worked, and by 1992 American union membership, and their ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party had to take money from giant corporations and billionaires to prevail in that election year.
Reagan's plan not only kneecapped the Democratic Party for the next 40 years, but also changed the party at its core, turning it from LBJ's Great Society Party into Bill Clinton's corporate-friendly DLC/New Democrat Party, now in bed with big banks, insurance companies, etc.
If Democrats want to defund the Republican party, which may force it to start focusing on the needs of regular people rather than just billionaires and corporations, there are a few obvious steps they should pursue. They include:
- End Red State welfare. Kentucky gets $2.41 for every dollar they send to Washington DC. Most other Red States are similarly "taker" states, so let's fight for a law limiting states to no more than $1.50 for every dollar they sent to DC in tax revenues. Call it Welfare Reform!
- End corporate welfare that gets recycled to GOP politicians. This includes $600 billion a year to fossil fuel companies, and over $1 trillion a year we give to big Pharma, insurance companies (like subsidies for the "Medicare Advantage†scam), and "Big Ag" support.
- End corporate monopolies. Break up giant corporations and make America safe again for small businesses while rejuvenating local economies. From airlines to tech to banking and retail, giant monopolies rip off working class Americans and use some of that money to fund the GOP.
- Bring back Eisenhower's 91% top tax rate. America's strongest economy was 1950 to 1980, with a top tax rate of 91% to 74%. We built highways, schools, hospitals, and put men on the moon. Reagan cut that to 25%, and the billionaires it produced now pour money into the GOP.
- Follow Europe's example and impose a 1% tax on great fortunes. Average Americans pay a wealth tax every year: the property tax on their largest store of wealth, their homes. Billionaires should pay a similar annual tax on their money bins.
- End campaign contributions from corporations, end SuperPACs and limit billionaires' ability to skew our politics. We did this in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals, but the Supreme Court blew it up. There are multiple ways around that, and the Democratic Party should make this job one.
These simple "Contract with America" steps, along with restoring the ability of American workers to unionize, will not only revive the Democratic Party, but also restore America to economic greatness and give us a far more honest political system.
-Thom
Comments
#2
trumpie boy made an effort to defund social security. Doing this would give the GOP a good dose of their own medicine. And it would work!!
Changing the tax code to what it was in the 1950's would be a great idea. JFK dropped it down to 74% which still was a good rate for tax fairness.
This would also put a huge dent in this "gimme" or "I am #1" mentality we are seeing prevalent today. The pandemic is changing that a little, but I would like to see it gone.
#3
Why would the Democrats do any of that? Biden got more from the rich and corporates than Trump did.
#4
No, he didn't.
#5
Tom, excellent ideas that most progressives would work toward. I really like the idea of of a buck-fifty on the dollar...let's give the Red States a taste of Trumpian no-bail-out medicine.
3000 dead in a day; we are number one. We are led by the number one sociopathic idiot. The scientists were so on the money in their predictions. I saw footage of a newborn in a hospital swaddled in a blanky with a face shield. Good idea---heart breaking picture. It was taken in a foreign country. So much for us to learn, so little time. It's our job to put people in office that are able to study, find the truth, and are willing to face it.
#6
Despite what you might read here, Democrats received more money from billionaires, than Republicans. In fact, as of Oct 1, Donald Trump received 252 million$ from small donars (a small donars is defined as someone contributing less than 200.00$) the most of any presidential candidate in history. As of October 1, Democrats have outspent Republicans 53% to 39%. (7% third party).
It's obvious that large donars are supporting Democrats, and more small donars are supporting Republicans. Don't buy into the BS that the Democrats are the party of the 'little guy' in fact, it's the opposite that's true. The Republicans receive more 'small donar' contributions, and less 'big money'.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/2020-election-to-near-11-billio...
#7
Haha, at least this time Doorknobs put her comment in context with a reference, which I don't fundamentally disagree with, other than with her second-to-last sentence about the Republicans being the party of the little guy.
WRONG! History of course demonstrates quite clearly that that is a completely false statement, wildly conflated from the unique money dynamics of this particular campaign season. But let's put that sticky wicket aside for the moment -- a worthy discussion to be had later perhaps, as in: Let's get all organized money out of our politics -- on both sides of our hopeless political divide! -- a subject broached in yesterday's comment section.
Today, we're roping a different dope, Karl Smiley, who said that "Biden got more from the rich and corporates than Trump did." One can "assume" (making an "ass of u and me") that he was probably also referring to this campaign season. Nevertheless, it's a declarative statement completely divorced from any context or reference, like a floating turd lost at sea.
So, that throws the outhouse door wide open for an opportunity to use a different, more revealing metric: of just how much money has been lavished on Trump throughout his life by the "rich and corporates" -- literally from birth as a trust-fund baby benefitting from his daddy's skillset at hiding the millions that he gained illegally by cheating massively on his taxes. Like father, like son.
From his daddy's shady companies to America's biggest banks; to Deutsche Bank (Russian oligarchs' preferred money-laundering machine); to foreign autocrats leveraging Trump properties to curry anti-American geopolitical favors (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and the betrayal of the Kurds comes to mind); to daily violations of both foreign and domestic restrictions in the Emoluments Clause (whereby Saudi Arabia and other billionaire bad actors from around the globe seek undue influence); to dragging around the Secret Service and the rest of his taxpayer-funded government entourage to juice his profits for his many hotels and golf courses; and on and on...
Trump, literally from birth all the way up to this morning when he woke up, is of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Now, compare him to Amtrak Joe, if you dare.
The more pertinent question for our fake democracy is: Why must our politicians be forced to play Wall Street's money game to run for higher office? By design, our representatives are enticed to represent the interest of the rich over the interests of the People, time and again. We are a broken nation and a broken people.
If we don't fix this big-money dilemma very, very soon, we will slip into full-fledged fascism. One glance at today's headlines of Trump's armed militias taking to the streets and threatening politicians and government workers who are simply trying to perform their civic duties in a free and fair election process -- the most secure in history -- should give major pause for even the most rabid of blind Republicans.
Other references:
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Trump’s biggest betrayal yet could come in the last days of his presidency
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Millions of government and GOP dollars have flowed to his properties
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Trump raised 5 times as much money from America’s top CEOs as Biden
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Trump earned $73 million in revenue from foreign business deals during his first two years in office
#8
That does not include the amount of free tv time, especially on Fox News that Trump received. The 2020 info is not compiled yet but some of 2016. The media wants money in politics because it makes a lot of money on the advertising. Thus Bernie was out.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/graphic-whos-the-mo...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammot...
https://television.gdeltproject.org/cgi-bin/iatv_campaign2016/iatv_campa...
#9
No doubt! Trump’s most valuable possession, is the mailing list of his supporters. Every quack, snake oil salesman on the planet would pay millions for access to the contact information of such a massive, gullible group of koolaid drinking shithead suckers and saps. The evangelical hucksters are no doubt green with envy.
#10
#11
As Trump and the Republican Party exhaust all judicial methods of overthrowing the Democratically elected Party. What will be the next step? Marshall Law? It has all ready been suggested. 39 days left.
#12
I guess that the Supreme Court did not understand the Loyalty requirement. 38 days left. What will happen in the next episode of The Lame Duck Narcissist President.
#13
Hah! "Fight on!"
Now that the Loser in Chief has lost again, the local maskless wonders are up in arms, itching for a fight, for civil war, for secession, for whateverthefck -- stayed tuned for the next episode of Looney Tunes.
With 19 Republican state attorneys general and 126 House Republicans backing Texas Attorney General and indicted serial criminal Ken Paxton's surreal and seditious SCOTUS lawsuit, these gun-toting white boys, traitors, and general all-around suckers and fools actually thought that this was the big one, a real slam-dunker, the ultimate libtard trigger.
And then the bubble popped, their heads exploded, and now they're back to being nothing but whiny little bitches again, playing soldiers all gussied up in ridiculous costumes, like a scene out of the Gangs of New York. Really scary stuff! And pretty funny.
Which shows to go ya that you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, and you damn sure can fool all the Trumpees all the time. So send more money to the Trump crime family and the losers' Lost Cause.
#14
Charlie Pride has died from Covid at 86. Last month he performed at the CMA's where he received the lifetime achievement award. Some were concerned that he should not attend an event that tried to not be a super spreader event. How can anybody assure that an indoor event is not a super spreader. We have got to stop spreading this virus. 3000+ a day die each day from this virus.
#15
Trump is many things, none of them good.
Physically, he is fat, ugly, lazy, and horribly out of shape. And to hide that puffy, embarrassing visage staring back at him in the mirror every morning, he wears fat suits, cakes on makeup, and styles his hair like a sissy (no offense to sissies), belying his fake he-man persona, fooling no one but himself. (No references needed but your own eyes.)
Intellectually, he has a low IQ with little or no reading comprehension, stubbornly clinging to preconceived notions with no relation to truth or reality, even when frustrated national security briefers desperately resort to simplistic, one-page presentations with lots of pictures. (Read the many whistleblower accounts.)
Morally, he is a serial liar and a completely self-absorbed bigot with zero empathy for the plight of other human beings, gleefully shit-canning those closest to him when they are deemed no longer useful in implementing his endless cons, or when they can no longer feed his enormous ego. (Read the many tell-all books by those who know him best, not the least of whom is his longtime "fixer," Michael Cohen.)
Businesswise, he is a habitual failure living on borrowed money and time, who has piled up six major bankruptcies while having stiffed local, state, and federal governments, banks, investors, contractors, and workers. (Read the many shocking exposés by seasoned investigative journalists who gleaned the public records.)
Legally, he is a white-collar criminal and tax dodger of the first order (Stay tuned for the many investigations coming down the pike when the office of the presidency will no longer protect his crooked ass.) By the way, the Supreme Court has already ruled that accepting a presidential pardon is an admission of guilt, waving your 5th Amendment right in testifying against other fellow perps involved in your crimes.
Governing, he is as clueless and inept as one could possibly imagine. (Read the many insider accounts by some of his closest advisors, or just read Bob Woodward's two books, Fear and Rage, which tells all you need to know about how unqualified for the job this goddamn fool actually is.)
(Or, if you can communicate with the dead, ask Trump's 300,000 COVID sacrificial lambs, victims of his craven and unscientific "herd immunity" program, which basically means that he was too damn lazy, stupid, and criminally negligent to do the job for which he was elected: to protect the American people.)
Emotionally, he is a petulant five-year-old constantly throwing crybaby tantrums and lashing out at the adults around him, a sore loser who can't face his inner realities. (Again, trust your own eyes.)
Mentally, he is a sadistic, malignant narcissist so far down the spectrum of pathologies as to be the very definition of a human monster. (Read the many analyses by qualified psychiatrists and psychologists, not the least of whom is Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist, professor at Yale University, and accomplished author, and his own niece, Dr. Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, businesswomen, and best-selling author.)
But the main thing about this cartoonish, yellowed-haired, orange-faced buffoon is that, by all accounts, he is one big fat LOOOOOOSER !!! And so is every single Republican dumb enough to still support him in spite of the reams of evidence staring them all in their stupid faces.
So let us count the ways Trump the Loser lost in just these last five weeks:
Here are all the losses Trump's campaign has faced since Election Day.
#16
And he has 34 more days of scorched earth rule. It is not over and he does not care what he does to the country.
#17
Mo Brooks and his fascist cohorts plan to fight the election to the very end by disrupting the formal Electoral College count on January 6. That should make Pence's head explode.
Trump is right; we are descending into third-world status, but it's he and his anti-democratic apparatchiks in the White House and Congress who are the most responsible.
And naturally, the ruling elite will get the first inoculations.
#18
Thom wants to stop funding Trump and the Republican Party. Hard to do when the so called Evangelicals lead the way.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jerry-falwell-jr-spent-heavily-135804216.html
Here we go! An Alternate Slate of Electors. Is this similar to Alternate Facts?
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/stephen-miller-alternate-elector-fox-frie...
#19
Bill Barr "resigns". Rats jumping off of a sinking ship.
#20
Deepspace, thank you for doing a sweet job of articulating Trump's failings, but when was the last time you heard the MSM talk about his Bill Cosby level of sexual predations?
#21
Good point. For the most part, probably because of so many other serious transgressions to cover, it does seem like Trump's long history of sexual abuse went down the MSM memory hole as if it wasn't a big deal for voters to consider. Although I suspect that most women, who were hugely instrumental in handing Biden his victory, would vociferously disagree.
At least Trump is still facing a criminal investigation by the Manhattan DA for paying off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal as illegal campaign contributions in 2016. And E Jean Carroll's defamation case is still active. Michael Cohen said that down through the years it was fairly routine to buy off and then bury the stories of many other victims, whom the public will probably never find out about.
Then there's the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga and his principle enabler, Ghislaine Maxwell -- a sordid story bound to shed more light on the subject in the not too distant future, one would expect. The authorities seem pretty damn serious about keeping her alive after Epstein's suspicious "suicide." Stay tuned.
#22
Damn D-space, you're on one hellva' roll, and IMO, a true list of CIVID-45's failings. The really sad part is, that so many Americans can't see him for what he really is, and isn't..
#23
P.S.---IMO, him and his sycophants will walk...
#24
*donors*
#25
for the ninth time: *martial*
#26
vetinla #23: I hope you're wrong; I fear you're right.
#27
Here's another version, with links...
#28
America's survival depends on bankrupting the Republican Party
It's time to defund the GOP, and there's precedent and strategy for the effort.The need to cut the party's access to both private and government money is seen in the reaction by some extremist Republicans to news like a New York State lawmaker's proposal to make vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory. Predictably, the far right is freaking out. "Freedom!" they scream as they run around maskless, assaulting their fellow citizens with potentially virus-laden breath.
Large parts of the Republican base now join conspiracists in the misguided belief that vaccine manufacturers are participating in mind-control experiments and that public health measures like masks are "un-American," while we're being sickened and dying from the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and death in the developed world.
Republicans on the Supreme Court even say the founders of our republic and the framers of the Constitution would never go along with preventing churches and synagogues from holding superspreader events during a pandemic, but, like so many things GOP, it's a lie.
In 1798, President John Adams signed the first public health care legislation - it was to pay for medical care and hospitalization not just for the Navy but also for civilian sailors. And both he and President George Washington had participated in quarantine events during epidemics in the summers of 1793 and 1798, and both promoted inoculation against smallpox.
From 1790 to 1800, Philadelphia was the nation's capital. When the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 recurred in 1798, that city's board of health, with no objections raised by President John Adams or any member of Congress, ordered a block-by-block evacuation of parts of Philadelphia.
Most signers of the Declaration and Constitution were still alive, and many were in Congress and on the Supreme Court. None opposed the lockdown. Churches not only couldn't meet; a few in the quarantine areas were closed down entirely for much of the year in America's capital city.
From their bans on teaching sex education and evolution in our schools, to denying climate change, to this latest campaign against public health, far-right Republicans' fight against science has damaged America's standing in the world and destroyed the lives of millions.
Thomas Paine, in his time, wrote about "The Age of Reason." Today we have "The Age of Intentional Republican Stupidity." And they don't just embrace it for themselves; they're hell-bent on imposing it on every American, from schoolchildren on up.
They have rigged elections by making it hard to vote, seditiously tried to overturn the 2020 election, promoted racial and religious bigotry and violence, destroyed our public school systems, gutted our unions, and rewritten our tax system to screw the middle class.
Since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have damaged America more in 40 years than our worst enemies could have dreamed of by other means.
These Republicans are not patriots; they're traitors to reason, science, education, human rights, democracy and now, unbelievably, public health. They're traitors to humanity itself.
The only way to deal with a death-dealing cult is to end it; thus, we must embark on a campaign to defund the Republican Party.
Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party, and actually pulled it off.
While the Republican Party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions. So Ronald Reagan, as part of his "Reagan Revolution," figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America's unions.
His first shot was to destroy PATCO, the air traffic controllers' union, and he did it in less than a week in August of 1981. He, along with Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court, then embarked on a campaign to eliminate unions from the American landscape, thus gutting the Democratic Party's ability to win elections.
It worked, and by 1992, American union membership, and union's ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party turned to giant corporations and billionaires to win that election year.
Reagan's plan not only kneecapped the Democratic Party for the next 40 years but also changed the party at its core, turning it from President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society party into Bill Clinton's corporate-friendly Democratic Leadership Council/New Democrats, now in bed with big banks, insurance companies, etc.
Defunding the Republican Party may even force it to start focusing on the needs of regular people rather than just billionaires and corporations, which only adds to the urgency of the job. There are just a few steps through the process, which include:
- End "Red State Welfare." Kentucky gets $2.41 for every dollar they send to Washington, D.C. Most other red states are similarly "taker" states, so let's fight for a law limiting states to no more than, say, $1.50 for every buck they sent to D.C. in tax revenues. Call it welfare reform!
- End corporate welfare that gets recycled to GOP politicians. This includes $700 billion a year to fossil fuel companies, and nearly $1 trillion a year we give to Big Pharma, as well as support for insurance companies (like subsidies for the "Medicare Advantage" scam) and "Big Ag."
- End corporate monopolies. Break up giant corporations and make America safe again for small businesses while rejuvenating local economies. From airlines to tech to banking and retail, giant monopolies rip off working-class Americans and use some of that money to fund the GOP.
- Bring back Eisenhower's 91 percent top tax rate, or at least something north of 50 percent. America's strongest economy was during the 30 years from 1950 to 1980, with a top tax rate of 91 percent to 74 percent. Progressive taxation on the super-wealthy was openly supported by Republican presidents like Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford. With that tax revenue, we built highways, schools and hospitals, and put men on the moon, while the best way CEOs could avoid the tax was to use the money to pay their workers better wages. Reagan cut that top rate to less than 30 percent, and the billionaires it produced now pour money into the GOP to keep it that way.
- Follow Europe's example and impose a wealth tax on great fortunes. Average Americans pay a wealth tax every year - the property tax on their largest store of wealth, their homes. Billionaires should pay a similar annual tax on their money bins.
- End campaign contributions from corporations, end super PACs, and limit billionaires' ability to skew our politics with their money. We did this in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals, but the Supreme Court blew it up. There are multiple ways around that, and the Democratic Party should make this job one.
These simple "Progressive Contract with America" steps, along with restoring the ability of American workers to unionize, will not only revive the Democratic Party, but also restore America to economic greatness and give us a far more honest political system.
-Thom
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Bring back Eisenhower's 91% top tax rate..
If they could only do ONE thing, it would be great if they could accomplish that!!
It helps us "barely making it" folks trememdously!