Tossing some politically pertinent notes out there as we gird ourselves for whatever trickery the frantic Putinists are going to try, desperate to save their hash..
== Wealth Tax? ==
In California we are inundated with adverts against Proposition 40, the “Wealth Tax,” touting a number of Democrats opposing it. While I am inclined toward yes – for reasons given below – it may be that this version itself is deeply flawed, hence some dem opposition. Certainly there WILL be some flight from the state by zillionaires… who will regret leaving the most creative and vibrant place on Earth.
Robert Reich – very smart and on our side, tho a bit to my left and needful of more imagination – offers the following:
“America’s oligarchs — the richest 0.00001% —together they hold the equivalent of 14% of U.S. GDP in wealth: roughly $4 trillion. At the peak of the first Gilded Age at the beginning of the 20th century, that same group of the population owned just 4% of the U.S. GDP in wealth. Billionaire wealth is undermining our democracy. Just look at what Elon Musk is doing. Other billionaires are also polluting our politics.”
...or else Karl Marx (whom the GI Billers drove into near extinction), will prove right after all. Nescient would-be feudal lords will keep pushing to kill the goose that laid all of their golden eggs, like kings of old or the 1850s plantation slavers, until fed-up modernists rebel and the zillionaires will win nothing but tumbrel rides.
I am with the GI Billers! And hence, we may be forced to innovate.
== Assuming America wins, in November ==
Even with Trump still in the White House, a Democratic Congress will rein in many outrages, e.g. by defending civil servants and science and commencing massive hearings, with a House that will hold at least FOUR TIMES as many hours in session as the terminally lazy/corrupt GOP majority under Mike Johnson... whose banishment to deserved obscurity will be one reason for explosions of joy.
Will Trump veto any and all legislation passed by a new Congress? Sure he will.
But there are work-arounds! Some of which have never been tried or even mentioned, elsewhere!
No, you will not be getting Constitutional Amendments! We see so many earnest proposals would reform weaknesses in the US system that were exploited by traitors. Alas, too many are politically impractical, like Amendments, or would waste our political capital unnecessarily. We need a to-do checklist of fixes that
(1) will sell well to most voters,
(2) that can pass quickly, almost the moment we get a good Congress… with some of them immune to vetoes!
And (3) that will PRAGMATICALLY reverse the treason-evisceration of the USA and ensure this never happens again.
Want to see how to do all of that? Here is the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms. And yes, there is plenty that even just a Democratic House can do, all by themselves!
(And no, I do not expect a single Democrat politician to show even a glimmer of the imagination it would take, to read and promote any of these**.)
Anyway, here is my top one, urging to House members and candidates to watch your backs! Up your security. Hire some of the top FBI guys who Kash Bestiality Patel fired, for being honest and skilled.
And speaking of Nazi tactics...
== A movie with important lessons ==
We watched the incredible 2025 film Nuremberg, based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. Very dramatic, fascinating and informative. A fine partner to the 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg, the old Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster classic. Amazing to see Göring portrayed as brilliant (and hugely evil) rather than the fat buffoon depicted by Chaplin and the Stooges and in all those World War II songs.
I would have written in some mention about how his Luftwaffe never kept a single promise that he made to Hitler. (That would've hurt.) And how Adolf would never let anyone truly respected get that high in the hierarchy. Still, Russell Crowe's portrayal was chillingly convincing. Michael Shannon conveyed so well an era when American leaders were of the highest caliber.
And Rami Malek's dire warning at the very end is what we need to bear in mind as we fight similar demons today. Malek, playing the psychiatrist who evaluated Göring after the war, is rejected as he warns that "there are people like the Nazis in every country in the world today."
== Responsibility and Presidential power ==
One issue of importance, does a U.S. president have completely free rein over the military as Commander in Chief? Are presidents free to order any and all actions against any ‘foe’, under any pretext?
...as related in this episode of The History Guy, concerning the 1858 Paraguay Incident, under President James Buchanan. Who was universally derided by historians as the USA’s worst president… until George W. Bush and Donald Trump came along, that is. Letting JB finally stop grave-spinning and rest.*
This is pertinent because even George W. Bush (the younger) went to Congress (with lies) to get force resolutions against Saddam Hussein. Though would-be king Trump sees no need for even a fig-leaf permission to order the finest men and women on the planet to bomb anything his whim demands.
One of my 35 pragmatic proposals to the next Democratic administration/Congress will be to rescind ALL prior ‘emergency declarations and restore in-future some role to Congress, as demanded in the Constitution.
See my proposed “Defend our Defenders Act.” It patches holes and flaws that were never exposed before, till a madman – leading a party of blackmailed cowards – ran amok, abusing every power that previous presidents mostly used with restraint.
(Several provisions are of special interest, like a way to allow GOP members of Congress to stand up to Trump, in some safety!)
*In my opinion, by far the worst president of the 20th Century was George H.W. Bush, the elder. This mess of a 21st Century is his doing.
** Senator Kim of New Jersey has been promoting one of my ideas (pretty much alone for years) that the INCREMENTAL step toward Medicare-for-all that will pass swiftly and pay for itself is MEDICARE FOR ALL CHILDREN. The ratchet would then be irreversible.
== Furthermore... ==
As we encounter more nonsense concocted in Kremlin basements aimed at splitting the Democratic Party, consider that mainstream Democrats won almost everything in recent elections except NYC and a midwest governor nomination.
Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom is uniting vast numbers across the party.
Consider that AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren & other pragmatic leftists helped Pelosi pass the 2021-22 miracle bills. (I bet you could not name one thing from those bills). Because ignorant sanctimony is a high and that's what splitters are in it for. Exactly like MAGAs.
See my earlier posting: The Threats We Face.
In truth, I like AOC and Bernie and other members of the sane and pragmatic left.
But the Democrat lifting hand from Bible in January 2029 must be a governor, so that any initial flubs will not be administrative ones. No learning curves. Fierce determination to restore the republic, yes! But also experience and skill.
13 comments:
I won't comment on the pros and cons of a local bill, but will note that New York found that billionaires threatened to depart for better tax havens more than they actually did when it came to it.
My life is packed with prop 40 ads. Mostly opposed. I expected that side to be well funded but I didn’t expect our liberal folks to split enough to join the No side. Planned Parenthood has endorsed NO on grounds that the sales pitch for it is a temporary patch.
I’ll be voting No.
I am likely to vote yes, especially if it is losing, because I want them scared into negotiating.
When I ready about Prop 40, I felt reminded of our Reconstruction Law of 1952. In short, at that time, the conservatives passend a law that taxed 50% - fifty ! - of the total wealth of all persons who owned one million Marks or more (approx. 8 Million in todays' money), payable in thirty rates per year.
In the end, most paid less, and through the post-war economic boom that was financed partly through the funds gained and the accumulated Inflation.
What differed then from Prop 40 now is that the money went to infrastructure and housing projects, not day-to-day running costs.
I assume that the fear of communist subversion or revolution and the responsibility of the owner class for their support of Hitler let them swallow it.
Economist Gabriel Zucman proposes a global tax rate of 2% for centibillionaires.
Centimillionaires, not just Centimillionaires.
To be honest I would say, go then. Go screw up somebody else's democracy. But I think the real need is to change company.. Finally recognize that companies are not people.
Gov. Newsom is a dangerous candidate that cannot be allowed to gain the Dem. nomination for POTUS. His actions regarding the WB / Paramount merger and AI regulation show very clearly that he is not to be trusted, never mind that his poor choice in former partners would also open him to blackmail. No serious reformer should consider him *at all* in a federal position. He is not to be trusted.
Other than that, I agree with most of the host's suggestions here with this caveat - the #1 job for a (hopeful) Democratic House is to start the process of impeachment for numerous DoJ and Judicial appointees.
Even if the Senate does not flip, the impeachment hearings for Patel / Blanche / Carr / Boutros / Judges of the 5th and 8th Circuit of Appeals / Alito / Thomas would reveal enough criminality to give a hypothetical Dem POTUS the political capital for mass prosecutions of the GOP for blatant corruption.
The rule of law must be re-established in the US, and House impeachment hearings are the path to it.
Dre Oger:
"Centimillionaires, not just Centimillionaires."
???
I suppose you mean "Centimillionaires, not just CentiBillionaires".
2nd matthew para was unusually cogent. First one ignores that Newsom is by far the only dem with the verbal ferocity needed. His scandal-free CA administrations run smoothly and his constraints on the left never breach respectful negotiation. Buttegieg is close in polemical skills but short on administrative ones and a reach for voter acceptance. Let the country get used to him as VP. Heck VP is where to train AOC for future greatness.
There's an SF short story rattling around in my head where an historian employed by Luna University is traversing Sol System trying to piece together the history of the ruined megastructures erected on Mars/Jovian moons/Ceres and other asteroids, including faces carved into planetoids and unfinished cities-cum-mortuaries, left behind by the trillionaires of the 22nd and 23 centuries: One of the main problem she encounters is that the record has been so corrupted by competing AIs and the lack of surviving, uncorrupted hardcopy that she has to go back to Earth to confirm, as a starting point, that there was never an Atlantis.
Pappenheimer
P.S. it's a hopeful story in that it presupposes we actually, as a species, survive feudalism/fascism in a nuclear age, expand into space on a permanent basis, AND still allow males to achieve high office.
By the way, someone on the last line argued to me that rumpT has average, not low IQ. I'd argue that whatever he's got now is less than what he had in his 'prime' (to use the word loosely*), but I will also quote a New Yorker:
"You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump."
- Fran Liebowitz
Pappenheimer
* another meaning of 'prime' is "A parry in classical fencing that is used generally by someone who is desperately and usually unsuccessfully trying to avoid losing a point", at least according R A Heinlein in his uneven but very fun novel, "Glory Road."
Culminating in my own 3 words, at bottom: "How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America is a 464-page investigative book by veteran journalist David Corn, published by Harper on September 15, 2026, that examines Vladimir Putin's decade-long covert campaign to subvert the United States and how Donald Trump and his allies aided that effort.
A Decade-Long Shadow War: The book details how Russian leadership ran secret operations to weaken American democracy and boost Donald Trump starting in 2016 and continuing through subsequent election cycles.
Complicity and Denials: Corn argues that Trump, the MAGA movement, and right-wing media acted as "useful idiots" or active participants in covering up and denying the Kremlin's interference. [2]
Collusion and Contacts: The narrative explores direct connections between Trump associates (such as Rudy Giuliani) and Russian intelligence operatives, as well as the political fallout surrounding these events.
See 1st comment for the image that says it al. And those 3 words are "Save us, Zelensky!"
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-russia-won-david-corn
Yes, damn auto-correct.
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