Clear and Present Danger

Florida is officially a laboratory for fascism in the U.S.
There is a very specific reason why Gov. Ron DeSantis targeted African-American history for erasure

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 7, 2023 5:34AM (EST)

Ron DeSantis is not a “mini-Trump” or some other diminutive. He is much more dangerous. Donald Trump has no “ideology” beyond megalomania and a deep desire to be an American god king. By comparison, DeSantis is far more intelligent and devious; he is an ideological fascist and racial authoritarian.

In a recent essay at Raw Story, Thom Hartmann summarized the danger to American democracy and society embodied by DeSantis:

Historians and political observers have been predicting that America would get our very own Mussolini ever since the days of Barry Goldwater. And there’s been no shortage of candidates: bribe-taking Nixon; Central American fascist-loving Reagan; Gitmo torturing and war-lying Bush; and, of course, Trump.

But with Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.

DeSantis and other Republican fascists have proclaimed Florida to be a bastion of “freedom” and “liberty.” In reality, Florida is now a laboratory for fascism. As part of his authoritarian project, DeSantis is enforcing thought crime laws that forbid the teaching of AP African-American studies in high school and other courses and programs across Florida’s school system (including at the college and university level) that examine questions of power, race and systemic inequality. DeSantis and his agents recently declared that the AP African-American studies course was inappropriate and will not be taught in Florida’s schools because it has “no educational value” and is “indoctrinating” (white) young people. DeSantis and his regime’s thought crime attacks on African-American studies are Orwell’s “1984” meets “Birth of a Nation.”

The purpose of DeSantis’ thought crime laws is to intimidate and terrorize all teachers, educators, librarians, and others who are committed to education, critical thinking, and the truth in Florida (and beyond). In DeSantis’ Florida — and soon to be across “red state” America if he and the other fascist Republicans get their way — there will be censors who review books and other material for thought crimes and other “dangerous” ideas that are contrary to the interests of conservatives. These censors and party officials and their designated agents will also rewrite history – and reality itself – to fit the demands of the regime. The public will no longer be able to discern truth from lies and fantasies from facts and fiction. The subversion and destruction of reality, facts, and the truth are a precondition for, and one of the primary ways that fascist and other authoritarian regimes obtain and keep power.

DeSantis’ goal is to make America into a new Jim Crow Christofascist plutocracy. Donald Trump and Trumpism were just intermediate stops on that evil journey. ………..

(more)    https://www.salon.com/2023/02/07/florida-is-officially-a-laboratory-for-fascism-in-the-us/

COMMENT

It now appears the Jan 6 conspiracy was a plot involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy along the lines of Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary.

This would be followed, after the January 20th swearing-in of Trump for a second term, by a complete realignment of US foreign policy away from NATO and the EU and toward oligarchic, autocratic nations like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Hungary.

As the possibility of this traitorous plan becomes increasingly visible, the GOP, after a frantic two weeks of not knowing what to say or do, has finally settled on a response to Trump’s theft of classified information: “Hillary did the same thing, and she didn’t go to jail!” I heard the comparison made at least a half-dozen times this weekend on various political shows.

To read the full article, follow this link.

Speaking to a church audience, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) told the crowd to pray for Joe Biden: “May his days be few and another take his office.”

It isn’t the first time she’s made such a “prayer.” She’s been using the line “may his days be few” since 2022, when she spoke to the Charis Christian Center Family Camp Meeting in Colorado.

It once again caused an uproar among those on social media who saw the video.

“THIS is the self-proclaimed party of Jesus Christ,” tweeted political commentator Lindy Li. “This is the self-appointed party of Christianity SHAME ON YOU! This is why church pews are emptying at a ferocious rate. Why increasing numbers of Americans now say they are religiously unaffiliated. Christianity in America has devolved into a rabid tribe of Talibangelicals and gun-totin Y’all Qaeda fanatics.”

Others noted that her so-called “sermon” included her promoting her legislation to impeach the president and argued that bringing politics into church pews is yet another reason that churches should lose their tax-exempt status.

Another called it a federal crime to threaten the president, which Boebert has gotten away with in the past because she’s not asking activists to actively kill, but rather praying for death.

Or, for that matter, the 109 Democrats who were suckered into joining every single Republican in the House of Representatives to vote for a resolution saying that:

“Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America.”

The resolution leads up to that conclusion by quoting President Thomas Jefferson wildly out of context. Here’s what the resolution says:

“Whereas the author of the Declaration of Independence, President Thomas Jefferson, wrote, ‘To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.’”

The Republican authors of the resolution, however, neglected to include the context or the next sentence from Jefferson’s May 18, 1816 letter to Joseph Milligan about their combined efforts to translate A Treatise on Political Economy by French economist Destutt de Tracy.

Milligan and Jefferson were discussing Tracy’s call for a national sales tax (like what the GOP proposed last week), which both men opposed. Which is why the next sentence got right to the heart of the matter:

“If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra [sales] taxation violates it.”

Jefferson, in other words, was calling for an inheritance tax — rather than a sales tax — to fix “overgrown wealth” that was “dangerous to the state,” something the Republicans who drafted this resolution would certainly call socialism.

This entire bit of legislative theater, in fact, is preparation for the 2024 election and the GOP’s new plan to end “socialism” in America.

By socialism, of course, they don’t mean subsidies to the fossil fuel industry that made their billionaire donors rich.

They don’t mean the hundreds of billions we shovel at defense contractors every year for unnecessary boondoggles.

Nor do they mean farm supports dear to their rural voters.

They mean Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Mike Pence drew the battle lines last week around the same time House Republicans were forcing the vote on their anti-socialism screed:

“There are modest reforms in entitlements that can be done without disadvantaging anybody at the point of the need. I think the day could come when we could replace the New Deal with a Better Deal. Literally give younger Americans the ability to take a portion of their Social Security withholdings and put that into a private savings account.”

Republicans have been calling Social Security “socialism” ever since it was put into law on August 14, 1935. In part, this is because arguably it is: it’s a form of social insurance.

But the larger reason is that the GOP has been funded by morbidly rich banksters ever since the early 1920s, and those banksters would give nearly anything to have Social Security’s trillions in their banks instead of invested in treasuries.

Social Security isn’t a savings account: it’s insurance against poverty in old age.

And like all insurance policies, some people make out better than others. People who live a long life may take more out of it than they put in; people who die young leave behind much of their working life’s contributions.

That’s how insurance is supposed to work. It’s how your life and health insurance policies work.

But the GOP wants Americans to think of Social Security as a simple savings account, so they can move Social Security’s trillions from government control into the hands of Wall Street.

And that’s just the beginning. Republicans in Congress are still 100% down with the platform on which David Koch ran for vice president back in 1980:

— “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
— “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
— “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
— “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
— “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
— “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service.”
— “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”
— “We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”
— “As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”
— “We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”
— “We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
— “We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”
— “We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”
— “We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
— “We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”
— “We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”
— “We demand the return of America’s railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”
— “We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called “self-protection” equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”
— “We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
— “We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”
— “We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”
— “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”
— “We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”
— “We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”
— “We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
— “We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

The real target Republicans are gunning for, in other words, is — as Mike Pence admitted — the New Deal itself.

When FDR came into office in 1933, he began a fundamental transformation of the American government from one rooted in Laissez-faire to one rooted in democratic socialism.

It was so successful that Roosevelt was elected President of the United States four times in a row, serving from 1933 to his death in office in 1945.

While the American people loved Roosevelt’s New Deal democratic socialism — and still do — the morbidly rich have always opposed any programs that lift up average working people.

— They don’t want workers empowered to challenge their bosses through unions.

— They don’t want their tax dollars to go to help “moochers” and “takers” who weren’t born wealthy.

— They don’t want wealth broadly distributed across America because it might mean they can’t hoard as much as they want.

Almost as fascinating as Pence and the GOP’s efforts to privatize Social Security and “end socialism” are the media’s response to them.

Two weeks ago the GOP put forward a 30 percent national sales tax (ironically, just like Tracy was proposing in 1816). Last week the former Vice President and unannounced candidate for the White House, Mike Pence, openly called for privatizing Social Security.

But there was no mention of either on any of the Sunday “politics” shows that I saw. Instead, the day was filled with Republicans bashing President Biden for his great economy and failing to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon over populated areas.

Will Republican extremism and hate for the New Deal — programs that have become absolutely essential to our even having a robust middle class — ever become grist for the media mill? Will they actually expose to the American people and discuss these GOP plans?

I’m not holding my breath.

. . . they all are brown.

A neo-Nazi leader recently released from prison has been arrested again and accused of plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid with a woman he met while incarcerated. Brandon Russell, 27, and Sarah Clendaniel, 34, are expected to make their first appearance Monday in Baltimore federal court on a charge of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, which carries up to 20 years in prison.

“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel said on Jan. 29, according to the court record. She was speaking to a federal informant, who was having similar discussions with Russell.

According to prosecutors, their plan was to attack with gunfire five substations that serve the Baltimore area. The charges come after similar attacks on the power grid in North Carolina and Oregon that remain unsolved; the Department of Homeland Security recently warned that the United States is in a “heightened threat environment” and that critical infrastructure is among the “targets of potential violence.”

Clendaniel and Russell met while incarcerated at separate prisons, according to the court documents — Russell in federal custody for possessing bombmaking materials and Clendaniel in a Maryland facility for robbing convenience stores with a machete. “Going to prison was worth it because I might not have met you otherwise,” Russell said in one text.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/06/maryland-power-grid-neonazi-brandon-russell/

United States Congresswoman Majorire Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) lamented her life as a lawmaker in a recent episode of her podcast.

“The nature of this job – it keeps members of congress and senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time to be honest with you, that we don’t get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends, you know, all in our district, or maybe just be regular people because this job is so demanding, and it’s turned into practically year-round,” Greene said. “And for those of us in the House of Representatives, we have to run for Congress every two years. So you’re practically campaigning nearly the entire time that you’re here serving as a representative. So that’s just a couple of examples that I can give you that I believe is a recipe for disaster, and that’s how people just fall into this social club. I would call it a social club here in Washington, DC.”

Greene successfully ran for a second term in November 2022 and is reportedly yearning for the vice presidency in 2024.

“Now, for me, I have no interest in that. I really don’t. And I’ll tell you why,” she continued. “Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I’ve lost money since I’ve gotten here. I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it on the Internet or saw it on some news show about me. So it’s not a life that I think is, like, something that I enjoy because I don’t enjoy it. But I’m committed to this job because I believe in it.”

Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just announced — a story that has largely flown under the nation’s political radar — that they’ll consider pre-rigging the presidential election of 2024.

Here’s how one aspect of it could work out, if they go along with the GOP’s arguments that will be before the Court this October:

It’s November, 2024, and the presidential race between Biden and DeSantis has been tabulated by the states and called by the networks. Biden won 84,355,740 votes to DeSantis’ 77,366,412, clearly carrying the popular vote.

But the popular vote isn’t enough: George W. Bush lost to Al Gore by a half-million votes and Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes but both ended up in the White House. What matters is the Electoral College vote, and that looks good for Biden, too.

As CNN is reporting, the outcome is a virtual clone of the 2020 election: Biden carries the same states he did that year and DeSantis gets all the Trump states. It’s 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, a 74-vote Electoral College lead for Biden, at least as calculated by CNN and the rest of the media.  Biden is heading to the White House for another 4 years.

Until the announcement comes out of Georgia. Although Biden won the popular vote in Georgia, their legislature decided it can overrule the popular vote and just awarded the state’s 16 electoral votes to DeSantis instead of Biden.

An hour later we hear from five other states with Republican-controlled legislatures where Biden won the majority of the vote, just like he had in 2020: North Carolina (15 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10), Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20) and Arizona (11).

Each has followed Georgia’s lead and their legislatures have awarded their Electoral College votes — even though Biden won the popular vote in each state — to DeSantis.

Thus, a total of 88 Electoral College votes from those six states move from Biden to DeSantis, who’s declared the winner and will be sworn in on January 20, 2025.

Wolf Blitzer announces that DeSantis has won the election, and millions of people pour into the streets to protest. They’re met with a hail of bullets as Republican-affiliated militias have been rehearsing for this exact moment.

Just as happened when Pinochet’s militias shot into crowds as he took over Chile, Mussolini’s volunteer militia the Blackshirts killed civilians as he took over Italy, and Hitler’s volunteer Brownshirts did the same in Germany, their allies among the police refuse to intervene.

After a few thousand people lay dead in the streets of two dozen cities, the police begin to round up the surviving “instigators,” who are charged with seditious conspiracy for resisting the Republican legislatures of their states.

After he’s sworn in on January 20th, President DeSantis points to the ongoing demonstrations, declares a permanent state of emergency, and suspends future elections, just as Trump had repeatedly told the world he planned for 2020.

Sound far fetched?

Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just announced that one of the first cases they’ll decide next year could include whether that very scenario is constitutional or not. And at least 5 of the Republicans on this Court will almost certainly say that it is.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution lays out the process clearly, and it doesn’t even once mention the popular vote or the will of the people:

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress… [emphasis added]

“The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons … which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President…”

It’s not particularly ambiguous, even as clarified by the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

Neither mentions the will of the people, although the Electoral Count Act requires each state’s governor to certify the vote before passing it along to Washington, DC. And half of those states have Democratic governors.

Which brings us to the Supreme Court’s probable 2023 decision. As Robert Barnes wrote yesterday for The Washington Post:

“The Supreme Court on Thursday said it will consider what would be a radical change in the way federal elections are conducted, giving state legislatures sole authority to set the rules for contests even if their actions violated state constitutions and resulted in extreme partisan gerrymandering for congressional seats.”

While the main issue being debated in Moore v Harper, scheduled for a hearing this October, is a gerrymander that conflicts with North Carolina’s constitution, the issue at the core of the debate is what’s called the “Independent State Legislature Doctrine.”

It literally gives state legislatures the power to pre-rig or simply hand elections to the candidate of their choice.

As NPR notes:

“The independent state legislature theory was first invoked by three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices in the celebrated Bush v. Gore case that handed the 2000 election victory to George W. Bush. In that case, the three cited it to support the selection of a Republican slate of presidential electors.”

Those three were Rehnquist, Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, now the seniormost member of the Court. They wrote in their concurring opinion in Bush v Gore:

“The federal questions that ultimately emerged in this case are not substantial. Article II provides that “[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” … But as we indicated in our remand of the earlier case, in a Presidential election the clearly expressed intent of the legislature must prevail.”

That doctrine — the basis of John Eastman and Donald Trump’s effort to get states to submit multiple slates of electors — asserts that a plain reading of Article II and the 12th Amendment of the Constitution says that each state’s legislature has final say in which candidate gets their states’ Electoral College vote, governors and the will of the voters be damned.

Fully twenty-one years before Trump tried the same trick, David Barstow and Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on November 28, 2000 that Jeb and George W. Bush were discussing it:

“The president of Florida’s Senate said today that Gov. Jeb Bush had indicated his willingness to sign special legislation intended to award Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes to his brother Gov. George W. Bush of Texas even as the election results were being contested.”

Barstow and Sengupta added, 22 years ago:

“[T]alk of a special legislative session continued unabated here today as local Republicans fretted about the possibility that the justices on the Florida Supreme Court, all appointed by Democrats, might uphold the challenge by Vice President Al Gore [for a statewide recount], ultimately awarding him the state’s electoral votes.”

As I wrote eight months before the 2020 election, predicting that Trump would do what Bush considered trying twenty years earlier:

Thus, through simple brute force, if Trump, Fox News and Limbaugh, et al, were to loudly claim that there was “voter fraud” in any or all of those states and succeed in casting doubts about the integrity of an election that would put a Democrat in the White House, the manufactured conflict could be resolved [in the House] and the election given to Trump by one or more state legislatures as Florida threatened to do in 2000.

This has been a long time coming.

The Republicans point out that the Constitution says that it’s up to the states — “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” — to decide which presidential candidate gets their Electoral College votes.

But the Electoral Count Act requires a governor’s sign-off, and half those states have Democratic governors. Which has precedence, the Constitution or the Act?

If the Supreme Court says it’s the US Constitution rather than the Electoral Count Act, states’ constitutions, state laws, or the votes of their citizens, the scenario outlined above becomes not just possible but very likely. Republicans, answering to their rightwing billionaire donors rather than voters, play hardball and consistently push to the extremes regardless of pubic opinion.

After all, the Constitution only mentions the states’ legislatures — which are all Republican controlled — so the unwillingness of the Democratic governors of Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to sign off on the Electoral College votes becomes moot.

Under this circumstance DeSantis becomes president, the third Republican president in the 21st century, and also the third Republican President to have lost the popular vote election yet ended up in the White House.

This scenario isn’t just plausible: it’s probable.  GOP-controlled states are already changing their state laws to allow for it, and Republican strategists are gaming out which states have Republican legislatures willing to override the votes of their people to win the White House for the Republican candidate.

Those state legislators who still embrace Trump and this theory are getting the support of large pools of rightwing billionaires’ dark money.

As the highly respected conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig recently wrote:

“Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine … and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress’ own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.”

I take no satisfaction in having accurately predicted — in March of 2020 — how Trump and his buddies would try to steal the election in January of 2021. Or how the Supreme Court would blow up the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump’s January 6th effort failed because every contested state had laws on the books requiring all of their Electoral College votes to go to whichever candidate won the popular vote in the state.

That will not be the case in 2024.

As we are watching, the Supreme Court — in collaboration with state legislatures through activists like Ginny Thomas — are setting that election up right now in front of us in real time.