News and commentary for understanding and coping with the years ahead...
Turning universities into right-wing propaganda factories
The authoritarian parallels
This is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money.
In understanding media, Democrats are lost in time
All of the things that we think we know, we don’t know. So we have to start asking ourselves, Where do these people get their information? What do they trust? What do they not trust? And I’ve been calling around and really want to do this. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about this because I want to stoke interest in this. And sometimes you have an idea and you call 10 people. And five say, That’s a good idea, James. Three say, That’s okay. Two say, That’s bullshit. I’ve called 10 people and 10 people said, You’re damn right we need to do this.
This New Republic interview transcript is worth your time. (Podcast links are here.) Carville, as you probably know, is a long time eminence in Democratic circles, and he confesses to being astoundingly clueless about how Trump voters – especially, among them, young men – are getting their information. And he says Democrats need to wake the hell up and start participating in the newer media flow. He's wrong to say they're not participating at all, but they are several decades behind the Republicans – and while Democrats prefer to play fair, they are up against a cult that is willing to say or do anything to win. I just hope it's not too late.
Despite the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would ultimately go on to kill more than 1.2 million Americans and leave millions more suffering long COVID, Bhattacharya has never changed his position on lockdowns and other mitigations. His false and misleading statements about government efforts to curb the spread of the virus are too numerous to list here, though Bhattacharya has blamed “lockdowns” for all manner of ills, including possibly even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has also asserted that masks do not work and harm child development without an expertise on the matter and was an early advocate to reopen schools with no mitigation measures in place.
I believe the author of this fiery commentary overstates his case in several ways, but he's on the nose when it comes to the terrible quality of this Trump nominee for one of the most important public agencies in our government. Bhattacharya argued strongly for what amounted to "let them get infected" policy during the Trump administration's final year, the first year of the covid pandemic, and his work has been used as part of a concerted right-wing attack on America's public health agencies.
Now, it is completely fair to say that the CDC, FDA, and other agencies have not been even close to what they should have been in recent years. It seems likely that the extended, damaging school closings could have been much briefer, but only if we'd done what was needed with masking and ventilation; we didn't try, and still don't.
Then the Biden administration pretty much gave up paying even lip service to reducing covid infections, and the CDC has been a mess. Our public health and research agencies do do need some reform, but not right-wing dismantling and insane policies guaranteed to harm the nation in foreseeable ways. And while Bhattacharya and RFKjr and the rest of the Trump appointees have made a few reasonable points about public health (Kennedy is right about how bad ultra processed foods are for us, for example), those are overwhelmed by the dangerous garbage they're pushing otherwise.
Whether bird flu (which scares me a great deal) is the next pandemic or some other public health emergency arrives, you can be sure of one depressing thing: In the new Trump administration, don't look for serious help from the federal government. That should scare everyone.
Donald Trump’s transition team is planning for all political appointees to receive sweeping security clearances on the first day and only face FBI background checks after the incoming administration takes over the bureau and its own officials are installed in key positions, according to people familiar with the matter.
This is political corruption that relates to Trump world's endless financial corruption. Recall that the FBI and other security officials opposed granting clearances to a number of people during the first presidency – including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – but were overruled by the boss in the end. Recall, too, that Kushner is up to his eyeballs in sleazy dealings with foreign interests, not least the $3 billion "investment" from right-wing, government controlled Middle Eastern funds. There will be no delays this time. The boss' apparatchiks will control the "vetting" since it'll take place after they've taken over the agencies doing it.
[We] shared a view that equal opportunity should begin at birth and extreme “look-at-me” styles of living should be legal but not admirable. As a family, we have had everything we needed or simply liked, but we have not sought enjoyment from the fact that others craved what we had. It also has been a particular pleasure to me that so many early Berkshire shareholders have independently arrived at a similar view. They have saved – lived well – taken good care of their families – and by extended compounding of their savings passed along large, sometimes huge, sums back into society. Their “claim checks” are being widely distributed to others less lucky.
I've long believed that extreme wealth is a reflection of a diseased society, especially when the disparity in wealth is as extreme as it has become in America. We are moving into a right-wing oligarchy of such a vile nature as to make the days of the Gilded Age seem downright enlightened.
Buffett is one of a tiny number of the super-rich to be left-of-center politically, and has called for people in his bracket to be much more heavily taxed. His press release this week reflects his determination to see his massive wealth – around $150 billion (on paper) today – be distributed to good works and causes, and not hoarded by his descendants. All well and good, even admirable. (The idea of Elon Musk showing even a smidgen of this kind of societal responsibility is absurd.)
But as public policy, waiting for oligarchs to care about the rest of society is even more absurd. Our political class has been sucking up to the rich for so long that they've written off the only practical long-term remedy to the wealth chasm, one that would be of benefit to the larger nation and its people: steep inheritance taxes. Sure, exempt the first $5-10 million. But then levy a hard-nosed, progressive tax on the rest, so that after, say, $100 million the marginal tax rate is 90% – and go up from there to 99% over $1 billion. The heirs would still be obscenely wealthy, and we might have a government that could invest in our citizens' future – and actually pay its bills and invest in our future. I'd vote for a political party that pushed this as part of a strongly progressive platform.
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The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent
Walker Bragman
Hugo Lowell
