The "Deep State" Is A Myth

Following are selected links to information debunking the lie from conservatives that the "Deep State" within the US government is the major problem to eradicate:

Wikipedia on the "Deep State"

NPR on the "Deep State

Just Security on the "Deep State"

The Democratic Party And Economic Inequality

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, is one of the most prolific communicators of the truth about the source of economic inequality in the USA. Click on the links below for a 2-part in-depth expose of such, and how the Democratic Party has not been aggressive enough in challenging the lies of Republicans regarding who is responsible for it:

America's Four Stories (Part 1)

America's Four Stories (Part 2)

A summary:

"The Democrats’ weakest story has been the Rot at the Top. Democrats have been reluctant to condemn economic elites who have grown richer than ever and who have used their affluence to corrupt the political system.

"This should not be surprising. Since the 1980s, Democrats have been drinking at the same funding troughs as Republicans — big corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals. And as the Supreme Court opened the spigots of big money into politics, those troughs have become far larger, for both parties."

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"Bernie Sanders told this story about the real Rot at the Top, but other leading Democrats have been reluctant to tell it.

"The Democrats’ failure to tell this story has enabled Republican cultural populism to fill the void, offering Americans who were growing distrustful of the system an explanation for what had gone wrong and a set of villains to blame — immigrants, '“coastal elites,' 'woke'ism, the 'deep state,' transgendered people, 'communists,' 'socialists,' the 'Left,' Critical Race Theory, 'cat ladies,' and other bogeymen.

"But none of these is the real explanation. The real explanation, the real Rot at the Top, has been a new record concentration of wealth and power at the top — enough to corrupt our system of self-government."

Authoritarianism: Two Podcast Episodes To Help In Better Understanding

"Authoritarianism and autocracies take many forms. So how do you know it when you see it? Our guide to the erosion of choice, rights, truth and power is Anne Applebaum, author of several books including, most recently, Autocracy, Inc."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-is-authoritarianism/id1195657423?i=1000679860773

"We’re in strange times. In the U.S., we’re finding ourselves in a situation in which the possibility of genuine democratic retrenchment and some version of presidential authoritarian dictatorship is a real possibility. There’s a lot to consider as the liberal democracy we’ve become accustomed to could erode right before our eyes in the near future. Steve Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard and serves as the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Levitsky is also a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including, “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” which he co-authored with Daniel Ziblatt. He joins WITHpod to discuss entering into a new era, the uncertainty of this moment, the process by which a democracy might backslide into something that's less democratic and resisting the erosion."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-democratic-backsliding-happens-with-steve-levitsky/id1382983397?i=1000679858361 

Eisenhower Was Right

"President Dwight David Eisenhower, perhaps the last real Republican, had a 90 percent tax rate for the super-rich during his administration.

"Eisenhower explained it this way: The super-rich could avoid the high taxes by investing their money in things that make America stronger. If they wanted to avoid high taxes, he said they could invest in business expansions and higher employee wages. They could give a million or two to tax-exempt non-profits that feed, house, and clothe poor people of America, among other things.

"They did some of that, but the Eisenhower years generated enough taxes to launch and complete the labyrinth of interstate highways, the largest road project America had ever seen and is needed again."

Eisenhower Proved That Higher Tax Rates Could Work

It's Not A New Story

The USA just experienced a brutal "assassination" of the CEO of a major healthcare insurance corporation and there is no lack of conflicting responses to such. Much of the comments from social media are making jokes, fueled by legitimate anger over corporate greed in this area of our economy. While I abhor such responses, I understand what is fueling it. 

Click on this link for an article by my favorite American historian, which places this event in the context of other events in US history that were also motivated by corporate greed.

An Expose of Elon Musk

"No one better illustrates the sinister consequences of great wealth turned into unaccountable power than Elon Musk.

"Musk, the richest person in the world, is not only claiming presidential authority to fire federal workers, but he’s posting the identities of those whose jobs he wants to eliminate — with the clear intention that his followers harass and threaten them so they quit.

"Musk is utterly unaccountable. He has never been elected to anything, but he spent $120 million helping Trump become the president-elect and is now acting as if he’s Trump’s co-president, calling himself Trump’s 'First Buddy.'

"After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk turned it into a cesspool of disinformation and conspiracy theories and manipulated its algorithm to give himself 205 million followers, to whom he is now distributing treacherous lies.

"In recent days, Musk boosted posts on his website singling out the names and job titles of four federal employees working in climate policy and regulation who have done nothing other than hold titles Musk dislikes. All four targets are women."

Click on the link below for more:

Musk’s dangerous bullying

A Look At The US's Historical Battle Regarding Liberalism

"When Movement Conservatives convinced followers to redefine 'liberal' as an epithet rather than a reflection of the nation’s quest to defend the rights of individuals—which was quite deliberate—they undermined the central principle of the United States of America. In its place, they resurrected the ideology of the world the American Founders rejected, a world in which an impoverished majority suffers under the rule of a powerful few."

Click here for a perspective from my favorite American historian, Heather Cox Richardson.

Beware The Billionaires

"This is an ideology gaining in popularity amongst tech billionaires that the world is inevitably heading toward a collapse, and that instead of trying to prevent that collapse, we should rip off the band-aid as fast as possible to get to the better world on the other side. While there’s a cold logic to it, it’s a dangerous philosophy that ignores the incalculable human suffering that such a collapse would create."

Click on the link below for more about this real sub-terranean movement that is visible through Elon Musk and most of Trump's support:

Why Some Billionaires Are Actively Trying To Destroy The World

What Trump’s Win Says About American Society

"To make sense of the election, we must first understand the discontent that gave Donald Trump the victory. This is the theory of Harvard professor and political philosopher Michael Sandel. He joins the show to discuss the polarization that fueled Trump's campaign, and the failure of the Democrats to present themselves as the party of change."

Click this link for an interview with a philosopher/professor with an encompassing view of the overarching problem in US society today that has been simmering and growing for many decades.

Even In The Best Of Times, The Poor Have Always Been Neglected

"A Golden Age is a period of 'peace, prosperity, and happiness.' Early Greek and Roman poets used the phrase to describe how people lived in an almost idealized time and place. It is a point in history where art, science, and philosophy thrive, and where economic growth is unparalleled. But not everyone gets to enjoy that prosperity..."

Throughout known history, humanity has always ignored the needs of the poor. Memo to MAGA: the USA has never been great. Click on the link below for a history lesson on this fact:

What It Was Like To Be Poor Throughout History

Immigration: Democrats Have A Model For Reform

"New Democrats believe both parties need to work together to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We can smartly secure our border and create a modern immigration system that reflects our American values, creates a process for undocumented immigrants with long ties to the U.S. to earn citizenship, revamp our visa system and support U.S. businesses and farmers. Comprehensive immigration reform has the potential to reduce the deficit by over $900 billion and create hundreds of thousands of American jobs."

Click on this link for information regarding the group of 100 House Democrats (the New Democrat Coalition) who have been working for decades for practical solutions to immigration reform. MY QUESTION: why aren't programs like this by the Democrats being publicized more? It is just another example of poor media exposure of the good the Democrats are doing. 

Are You Blaming The Democrats? NO, Blame The Attack By Disinformation, And - - -

"Mehdi Hasan torched MAGA talking points and defended the Biden administration's economic record before offering a chilling warning of the future."

Click on this link for a defense of the Harris election efforts and a refutation of those who are not looking at the big picture: MAGA used disinformation from US and foreign sources to snow the majority of voters. Just how sad is that? The cure is critical/science-based thinking, beginning at an early age:

The REAL Leaders Of MAGA: Be Aware

"In this bonus, documentary-style episode of Outrage Overload, we explore the unsettling world of 'techno-libertarianism' and the powerful tech figures who are championing it. We sit down with David Troy, a tech entrepreneur and researcher, to discuss the visions of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others who advocate for dismantling traditional institutions in favor of a decentralized, digital future.What are the potential consequences of replacing governments with self-sovereign digital systems? How do these ideas mirror historical movements that sought to overthrow the state? Are these tech moguls’ intentions truly utopian, or do they have more self-serving goals?

"Join us as we examine the complex intersection of technology, politics, and power, and the potential risks these ideologies pose to our democracy and society as a whole."

Click on the link below for a podcast exposing the real power behind Trump and MAGA in general:

Tech Bro Apocalypse Dreams

Why The Political Split Based On A College Degree?

" - - - Over the past few decades, American society has experienced seismic changes. One of the trends we have seen is a rightward shift towards the Republican Party among voters without a four-year college degree and a pro-democratic center-left shift of voters who have a four-year college degree. There’s a lot to unpack about what has animated these changes. Matt Grossmann is the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and a professor of political science at Michigan State University. Dave Hopkins is a political scientist at Boston College. Grossmann and Hopkins are the co-authors of “Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics.” They join WITHpod to discuss the origin of these trends, the effects on both major parties, and more."

Click on the link below for a podcast delving into a phenomenon that effectively lost the election for Kamala Harris:

Polarized by Degrees

Anxiety And Elections

"Evan Osnos is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where his work spans everything from national politics to foreign affairs. Just days before the election, Osnos joins Preet to talk about the big questions in American political culture: What does patriotism mean in a divided country? How should we confront cruelty? And is there still room for empathy in our politics?"

Click on the link below for a thoughtful, evidence-based podcast on what is stressing and dividing the US:

Election Anxiety, Anyone?

How Kavanaugh Got On The Supreme Court Corruptly

"Rhode Island Senator and Supreme Court watchdog Sheldon Whitehouse recently dropped a bombshell investigation detailing the levels of corruption involved in Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process and how Donald Trump and his inner circle were at the roots of it all. Chris Williamson breaks it down on Rebel HQ"

Click on the link below for the details of the above, and just how corrupt the Supreme Court is:

WATCH Corrupt Supreme Court Justice's Dirty Secrets Come to Light

3rd Trimester Abortions: Rare And Needed

"Though third-trimester abortions are rare, they make up about 1% of abortions in the United States and are often the most stigmatized. They are legal in only a few states, and just a fraction of providers perform them.

"To better understand the real science behind abortions later in pregnancy, guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Dr. Katrina Kimport, professor of obstetrics, gynecology & reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco; and Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal and fetal medicine physician who specializes in high-risk pregnancy and complex abortion care, based in Salt Lake City, Utah."

Click on the link below for the details:

The Science Behind Third-Trimester Abortions

What Bezos and Musk really want from Trump - Robert Reich Oct 31

Elon Musk (worth $271 billion) and Jeff Bezos (worth $262 billion) — the richest and second-richest people on the planet — are now showing America why it’s dangerous to have great wealth concentrated in so few hands.

In August 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post for $250 million. On Friday, just as the Post was preparing to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Bezos stopped the paper from doing so.

Partly as a result, the Post has already lost 250,000 subscribers, or 10 percent of its subscriber base.

In October 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billon, turned it into X, and became its biggest user, with 202 million followers.

Musk has endorsed Trump — and weaponized the platform into a supporter of Trump, smeared Harris, and amplified rumors and conspiracy theories.

Independent analysts such as Edison Research said in March that X’s usage in the United States dropped 30 percent since last year. Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80 percent since Musk’s takeover.

Why have these two oligarchs been willing to take actions that cause so many of their customers to jump ship? What’s the connection between Bezos’s preventing the Post from endorsing Harris and Musk’s weaponizing X for Trump?

Here’s a hint:

Just hours after Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing Harris, executives of Blue Origin, Bezos’s private rocket company, met with Trump in Austin.

Although Blue Origin is running far behind Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos is the most likely serious challenger to Musk’s dominance in space because of his personal fortune and his billions of dollars in government contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense.

For years, Bezos has focused on beating Musk for the multibillion-dollar contracts to launch payloads and rockets. “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” Bezos said in 2016, according to the Post. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”

Musk’s company appears so far ahead in the competition that it won a contract to rescue astronauts stuck at the International Space Station.

But that could change. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been looking to unload their own joint-venture rocket company, United Launch Alliance (ULA), which has billions of dollars in government contracts, extensive infrastructure, and an experienced team.

Bezos’s Blue Origin is reportedly the favorite to take over ULA. Even the head of the U.S. Space Force’s purchases seems to be pushing for the two rocket companies to merge, telling an industry audience that “they need to scale” in order to meet an aggressive launch schedule.

ULA is still a major force in the space industry, competing for dozens of launches over the next four years, which can bring in billions more revenue. Combining with Blue Origin would make a lot of sense. The Wall Street Journal reports that Blue Origin has already submitted a bid to buy ULA.

If that’s the goal, Bezos’s biggest obstacle would be Trump, should Trump get back in the White House.

Trump has been out to get Bezos since 2017, when Trump first started blaming Bezos for poor coverage in The Washington Post — a grievance that has hurt Blue Origin.

In April 2019, then-Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff alerted Blue Origin officials to Bezos’s poor reputation in the White House, telling them that they have a “Washington Post problem.”

Trump also said he wanted to “screw Amazon” out of a $10 billion deal to provide cloud computing to the Pentagon, according to a memoir by his Defense Secretary James Mattis. (It’s since been reported that Oracle, led by Larry Ellison — Trump donor, Musk mentor, and Oracle founder, who ranks just behind Musk and Bezos as the third-richest person in America with an estimated $211.2 billion in wealth — had sought to sabotage the deal.)

So Bezos has been courting Trump. After Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet during an attempted assassination at a July campaign rally, prompting a Musk endorsement of the former president, Bezos called Trump to say how impressed he was that the candidate had raised his fist after coming under fire, according to a person familiar with that conversation.

Soon after Trump formally secured the Republican nomination, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy phoned Trump, introducing himself and outlining the company’s plans for the future. The call concluded with Trump suggesting that the company cut a large check for his presidential efforts, according to two people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount the private discussion. Trump told Jassy that he was going to win the election and that Amazon should help him because it would be in the company’s best interests.

In this sense, then, both Bezos’s refusal to allow The Washington Post to endorse Harris and Musk’s weaponizing X for Trump can be seen as moves in a proxy war for dominance in government contracting of spaceflight, where the ultimate prize will be hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars — thereby distending the fortunes of either Bezos or Musk.

But the casualty in this war is American democracy, for which neither Bezos nor Musk apparently has a scintilla of concern.

America is now in its second Gilded Age, in which a handful of supremely wealthy men are determining the nation’s future. We must not let them. Bezos should never have been able to purchase The Washington Post in the first place; his conflicting business interests should have prevented it.

Nor should Musk have been able to buy Twitter. Antitrust laws should have been used to break Twitter up, or the platform should be deemed a public utility.

Both Bezos and Musk are poster boys for the importance of a wealth tax, which must be enacted to prevent the grotesque accumulations of wealth that have allowed them to wield such extraordinary power.

When the smoke clears from this rancorous presidential campaign and Kamala Harris is president, she must rescue democracy from these and other oligarchs.

As the eminent jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said near the end of America’s first Gilded Age, “America has a choice. We can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy. But we cannot have both.”

- - - Subscribe here 

Heather Cox Richardson: from Letters from an American - October 30, 2024

On Friday, October 25, at a town hall held on his social media platform X, Elon Musk told the audience that if Trump wins, he expects to work in a Cabinet-level position to cut the federal government.

He told people to expect “temporary hardship” but that cuts would “ensure long-term prosperity.” At the Trump rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk said he plans to cut $2 trillion from the government. Economists point out that current discretionary spending in the budget is $1.7 trillion, meaning his promise would eliminate virtually all discretionary spending, which includes transportation, education, housing, and environmental programs.

Economists agree that Trump’s plans to place a high tariff wall around the U.S., replacing income taxes on high earners with tariffs paid for by middle-class Americans, and to deport as many as 20 million immigrants would crash the booming economy. Now Trump’s financial backer Musk is factoring in the loss of entire sectors of the government to the economy under Trump.  

Trump has promised to appoint Musk to be the government’s “chief efficiency officer.” “Everyone’s going to have to take a haircut.… We can’t be a wastrel.… We need to live honestly,” Musk said on Friday. Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny of CNBC point out that Musk’s SpaceX aerospace venture has received $19 billion from the U.S. government since 2008.

An X user wrote: “I]f Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit—there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…. Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

Musk commented: “Sounds about right[.]”

This exchange echoes the prescription of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose theories had done much to create the Great Crash of 1929, for restoring a healthy economy. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living

will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Mellon, at least, was reacting to an economic crisis thrust upon an administration. Musk is seeking to create one. 

Today the Commerce Department reported that from July through September, the nation’s economy grew at a solid 2.8%. Consumer spending is up, as is investment in business. The country added 254,000 jobs in September, and inflation has fallen back almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. 

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to be able to reduce inflation without creating a recession, but the Biden administration has managed to do so, producing what economists call a “soft landing,” rather like catching an egg on a plate. As Bryan Mena of CNN wrote today: “The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.” 

Both President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have called for reducing the deficit not by slashing the government, as Musk proposes, but by restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations. 

As part of the Republicans’ plan to take the country back to the era before the 1930s ushered in a government that regulated business and provided a basic social safety net, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expects to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. 

At a closed-door campaign event on Monday in Pennsylvania for a Republican House candidate, Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” “Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” 

Ending a campaign with a promise to crash a booming economy and end the Affordable Care Act, which ended insurance companies’ ability to reject people with preexisting conditions, is an unusual strategy.

A post from Trump last night and another this morning suggest his internal polls are worrying him. Last night he claimed there was cheating in Pennsylvania’s York and Lancaster counties. Today he posted: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” 

Trump appears to be setting up the argument he used in 2020, that he can lose only if he has been cheated. But it is increasingly apparent that the get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts of the Trump campaign have been weak. When Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and loyalist Michael Whatley became the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee in March 2024, they stopped the GOTV efforts underway and used the money instead for litigation. They outsourced GOTV efforts to super PACs, including Musk’s America PAC.

In Wired today, Jake Lahut reported that door-knockers for Musk’s PAC were driven around in the back of a U-Haul without seats and threatened with having to pay their own hotel bills if they didn’t meet high canvassing quotas. One of the canvassers told Lahut that they thought they were being hired to ask people who they would be voting for when they flew into Michigan, and was surprised to learn their actual role. The workers spoke to Lahut anonymously because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement (a practice the Biden administration has tried to stop).

Trump’s boast that he is responsible for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion is one of the reasons his support is soft. In addition to popular dislike of the idea that the state, rather than a woman and her doctor, should make decisions about her healthcare, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is now over two years old, and state examinations of maternal deaths are showing that women are dying from lack of reproductive healthcare. 

Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica reported today that at least two pregnant women have died in Texas when doctors delayed emergency care after a miscarriage until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The woman they highlighted today, Josseli Barnica, left behind a husband and a toddler. 

At a rally this evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump said his team had advised him to stop talking about how he was going to protect women by ending crime and making sure they don’t have to be “thinking about abortion.” But Trump, who has boasted of sexual assault and been found liable for it, did not stop there. He went on to say that he had told his advisors, “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.” 

The Trump campaign remains concerned about the damage caused by the extraordinarily racist, sexist, and violent Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden. Today the campaign seized on a misstatement President Biden made when condemning the statement from the Madison Square Garden event that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” They tried to turn the tables to suggest that Biden was calling Trump supporters garbage, although the president has always been very careful to focus his condemnation on Trump alone. 

In Wisconsin today, when he disembarked from his plane, Trump put on an orange reflective vest and had someone drive him around the tarmac in a garbage truck with TRUMP painted on the side. He complained about Biden to reporters from the cab of the truck but still refused to apologize for Sunday’s slur of Puerto Rico, saying he knew nothing about the comedian who appeared at his rally. 

This, too, was an unusual strategy. Like his visit to McDonalds, where he wore an apron, the image of Trump in a sanitation truck was likely intended to show him as a man of the people. But his power has always rested not in his promise to be one of the people, but rather to lead them. The pictures of him in a bright orange vest and unusually dark makeup are quite different from his usual portrayal of himself.

Indeed, media captured a video of Trump’s stunt, and it did not convey strength. MSNBC’s Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.” 

The Las Vegas Sun today ran an editorial that detailed Trump’s increasingly obvious mental lapses and concluded that Trump is “crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness.” It noted that Trump now depends “on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.” It noted that if Trump cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would fall to his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has suggested “he would subordinate constitutional principles for personal profit and power.”

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Trump's Tax Plan Was Harmful, Don't Accept Any New One

"The verdict is in: Trump’s tax scam was trickle-down economics on steroids."

Click the link below for a video from Robert Reich exposing Trump's economics:

Trump’s Tax Scam: Why Nothing Trickled Down