Category Archives: History and Politics

How a functioning democratic government functions

If you believe in a democratic society, one where the government works for the people who elected it, not the people who paid to rig it, but the people who consented to be governed by it and cast their votes, you take the job of governing more seriously then a minority party that insists on its right to rule everything.

If your goal is to destroy the administrative state, when you come to power you leave entire agencies defunded and understaffed, run by idiot loyalists, the stupidest in-laws of your most idiotic donor hangers-on get jobs running vast bureaucracies they have no experience with. It’s like those 25-year-old preppy assholes Dubya and Cheney put in charge of Iraq after they destroyed the civil society of Iraq. If your goal is to prove that government is the enemy, it’s very easy to make the government you control a despicable fucking enemy.

Take the IRS for example. For the tax year of 2016 I was told by my accountant that I owed zero tax but that I still technically had to file. A few years later I was forced to pay about $2,500 including two large fines of about $400 each, plus interest that was constantly being compounded. The accountant explained later that when the IRS calculates your tax they are not obliged to give you the standard deduction, and suddenly you owe some tax on an inflated income, which is then subject to penalties and interest.

My long calls to the IRS were unable to resolve this, in part, I learned after an eternity on hold and then on the phone and then on hold again, because the matter had been turned over to a private third party collection company, and, I was told, the IRS no longer had my fucking file. They gave me an 800 number for this private third party collection outfit, I repeated the number back to make sure I had it written down correctly, as was my habit during the years I worked as a lawyer. I called the number for the collection agency. It was a recording at a used car lot. Then I got a bill with another $400 fine on top of it and I finally went online fucking paid $2,500 more than I owed just to be done with these evil toxic incompetent assholes. There was of course no appeals process available.

Then there is a functioning government, where the IRS has its budget restored and comptent administrators in charge. I get a bill supposedly for hundreds in penalties unpaid in a previous year, I think it was 2017. The IRS waited a few years to send me any notice of this so-called debt, all penalties and interest, the tax had been paid in full. I was slow to pay the goddamn thing. In my recent mail I had a check from the IRS, it was a refund from 2019. The check was for $23. I thought that was pretty goddamned paltry, then I opened another letter from the IRS which told me that $443 owed had been deducted from my refund.

How much simpler, more efficient, sensible and humane is that? That’s how the government is supposed to work in a goddamned democracy, you don’t farm things out to fucking corrupt for-profit assholes to do the job badly and more expensively than the government which is designed to do these exact kinds of administrative jobs.

Vote Democrat. These Nazis are not a political party in a democracy anymore. They are, quite distinctly, Nazis. Don’t forget the Nazis didn’t start mass murdering until many years in. They first had to establish a fascist state that would make it possible. Don’t vote for Nazis, ever.

Forum shopping (and how Aileen Cannon shot to the top of the short list for SCOTUS)

Forum shopping is the process of looking for the courtroom where the judge (and jury, if needed) will be most hospitable to your claims.    Lawyers who represent the rare policeman facing criminal or civil trial for killing an unarmed Black kid try to avoid urban courts, particularly in the area of the killing; those juries tend to be skeptical of police arguments for why the unfortunate death had been inevitable and legally justifiable.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, Federalist Society member and federal judge for life, was appointed by F POTUS (“Individual One”) after being confirmed nine days after the election was brutally stolen from him by a vast conspiracy of radical left billionaires and a cabal of international socialists, communists and cannibal pedophiles.  There is a federal courthouse in the Southern District of Florida quite close to Mar-a-Lago.   There is one about 70 miles north, in Fort Pierce, and in that courthouse there is one federal judge:  Aileen Cannon.   Why roll the dice in West Palm Beach, where you might go before a George W. Bush appointed judge, when you can take the highway up to a courthouse where, it turns out (who knew?), there is only one federal judge in residence, loyal Aileen M. Cannon?

Cannon has done her damnedest for her benefactor, completing her legally dodgy 24 page order on a national holiday, to protect F POTUS against “reputational harm” and make sure every day of unwarranted delay his lawyers have demanded, in two fairly incoherent sets of legal papers, will be provided — in the interests of mindfulness.  She wrote her decision “mindful of the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances presented.”

Also mindful, of course, of putting herself at the center of national news and her name at the top of Leonard Leo’s list of future Supreme Court justices, as Lawrence O’Donnell points out:

Biden’s the FASCIST!!!

So saith Rupert Murdoch, a reactionary billionaire who ought to know.

That’s what fascists do, as everybody knows, you lock up your enemies on baseless charges, like innocently stealing classified government documents you have every right to keep in your desk drawer.

In other news, a Federalist Society judge, out of concern for reputational damage to F POTUS, (apparently his reputation for never being held accountable for anything), wrote this great howler in her labored legal decision on Labor Day.

Because, truly for historically great white men, very wealthy and powerful ones, you never know if a search warrant based on probable cause was legal or not under such extraordinary circumstances. The appearance of propriety you understand sometimes requires impropriety, like foregoing all ordinary legal procedures — such as waiting until you’re prosecuted to raise sketchy Fourth Amendment defenses. Federalist Society 101, baby. Smash your fucking enemies right in the fucking mouth.

Biden is the fascist who is criminalizing dissent, and his buddy Obama was a fascist and communist both. You figure it out, asshole.

F POTUS addresses MAGA/Q faithful

As federal lifetime appointee, Aileen Cannon, confirmation pushed by McConnell post-election loss, was getting learned legal advice on how to rule in the bizzarrely convoluted manner of Noemi Rao on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (in re Flynn, reversed 8-2 on appeal), with utter fealty to her celebrity benefactor, F POTUS addressed a campaign rally in the Keystone State and delivered these strong words.

Translated directly from the original German, no doubt. F POTUS had a book of the Führer’s speeches next to his bed when he was married to the woman he buried on his New Jersey golf course for a tax write-off. One suspects it must have been his favorite book, aside from, of course, the Art of the Deal.

Biden was wrong to qualify the word fascist when referring to F POTUS, his lockstep 50+ voting bloc in the Senate and the people roaring at Trumpie’s rally, there’s nothing semi about them. These guys and gals are proud to be following a guy who’s proud to be as strong and beloved as the Führer himself on his best day.

Except for the ones like Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Mark Meadows, brave Mike Pence and their ilk, shamelessly desperate for power, but also fearful of the kompromat F POTUS is apparently holding over some of them. Schadenfreude aside, I’d hate to picture the videos F POTUS has of Lindsey.

Getting out the vote 2022

Right before the early 2021 (January 5th, for those keeping score at home) runoff in Georgia for two US senate seats, I came across a great group of women called Tinicum Together, out of Pennsylvania, who organize nationwide targeted postcard writing campaigns to increase turnout in important elections.

I sent 100 postcards to registered Democrats in key districts in Georgia, urging them to vote for Warnock and Ossoff. It felt great to roll up my sleeves and finally be doing something that could bring a few more voters out to vote in that key election.

Send them an email at Tinicumtogether@gmail.com and they will send you a packet containing stamped. ready to mail postcards, the names and addresses of swing voters, and, this year, in the crucial case of Pennsylvania, an excellent concise script.

Newtie on Offense

Anger-stoking right wing icon Newt Gingrich, the first modern Speaker of the House to advocate calling political opponents enemies, and vicious, sick, haters, and popularized of the epithet RINO for non-extremist Republicans, is now being sought by the January 6th Committee in connection to his apparent role in stoking the Big Lie and giving aid and comfort to the planners of the, like totally spontaneous, unplanned January 6th riot to stop the certification of Biden’s victory.

The [J6 Committee’s] letter explained that the committee has learned that Gingrich was part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. He apparently exchanged emails with Trump’s advisors, including Jason Miller and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in which Gingrich provided “detailed input” on the scripting of television ads that deliberately pushed lies that the 2020 election was stolen. The ads encouraged people to pressure state officials to overturn the election.

Gingrich wrote: “The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.]… If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors.”

Gingrich was also apparently involved in the scheme to produce fake electors and did not let up even after the attack on the Capitol. That night, he emailed Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to pursue the plan. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-1-2022?r=74gv9&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Newt, bellicose piece of shit emeritus [1], fancies himself a historian now. The day the story broke that the J6 committee is looking for him to “voluntarily” testify, he did what he does best, went on the attack on FOX.

And thank goodness for that, he straightens out that the Biden DOJ is “the most corrupt Department of Justice in American history”, following presumably the least corrupt, Bill Barr’s dogged defense team for F POTUS and friends. THAT’S how you punch a hated enemy in the face!

Plus, Rupert Murdoch and Fox will not be distracted from the real news story by fake news, even if fucking Zelensky wouldn’t follow up, and do F POTUS a favor, though, and even while this historically corrupt DOJ is taking its goddamned time investigating Hunter. Keep your eye on the ball MAGA nation! Next up, Benghazi and trans teens in scandalous attire.

[1] although there’s apparently some controversy about Mitt Romney’s remark that speaker Gingrich “resigned in disgrace,” the facts don’t look particularly good for Newtie:

Gingrich himself, though reelected to the 106th Congress, did not take his seat for a third term as speaker. Instead, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois took the job.

Gingrich reimbursed U.S. taxpayers $300,000 for legal expenses and costs incurred by the investigation by the Select Committee on Ethics into his use of tax-exempt funds to promote Republican causes and lying about it to the committee.

Though the committee allowed him to hold onto his post, its vote marked the first time the House had disciplined a sitting speaker.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/24/politics/truth-squad-ex-speaker/index.html