Sunday, September 17, 2023
The idea behind our democracy and those of the states is that people elected to office are good people who will do the right thing. This is often not true. In general, they will do whatever they have to to save their own political career regardless of what is right.
In Texas the Attorney General, Ken Paxton, was brought up on 16 charges of abusing his office. This came about because people who worked in that office were so concerned they blew the whistle on him. He fired those people. They sued and won a 3.5 million dollar case. He wanted the State if Texas to pay the fine. That’s what finally got his republican colleagues to bring impeachment charges. There are 30 state senators: 18 Republican and 12 Democrat. To impeach you need a 2/3 vote. That means the vote would have to be twenty to impeach and therefore 8 Republicans would have to “do the right thing.”
Two were willing to do so on a few of the 16 counts. They weren’t up for re-election. A rich right wing conservative political pac had promised to primary any senator who voted to impeach. Why that isn’t illegal I don’t know.
I wonder if Paxton felt like the guys who killed Emmett Till – guilty as sin but who cares?
While watching Virginia Tech’s football team lose to Rutgers I was shown three different Republican ads for candidates for President. The worst, and by worst I mean most poorly done was Donald Trump’s. It appeared to be done by a 7th grader as their first attempt at creating an ad for media class. But okay, what were the messages?
Donald Trump is going to stand up to the drug cartels. He’s going to build (or has built) the wall. He’s going to convict drug sellers and the cartels. Wait? Didn’t he promise to do that last time? Other than saying he was going to do it did he? Well,Steve Bannon started a build the wall fund after Don couldn’t get Mexico to pay. But he never used the money to build a wall. He got arrested on a Chinese billionaire’s yacht in Long Island Sound. The only reason he isn’t in jail is Don pardoned him. The worst part of the ad was Donald’s personal statement. He seemed to be reading queue cards and had never practiced reading what they said. Or maybe he just can’t read very well. Sounded like a second grader who was hauled up in front of the class to read out loud.
Then there was Nikki Haley. She’s going to stop China from making fentanyl and shipping it into this country. Okay, so Nikki is going after the makers and Donnie’s going after the distributors. Great. Question: why is the U.S. the only country with this problem? Ya know Europe has regulated this drug successfully, why can they do it and we can’t seem to do it? Oh wait. There’s a super rich family that got away with pushing this drug for years and stopping it from being more tightly regulated. Oh no. How did that happen?
Then there’s the Tim Scott ad. I forget what he’s going to do. Oh yes – values. Blah blah blah. That’s a hard case to make against Joe Biden, but he’s trying.
Meanwhile, the autoworkers are starting to strike. Their case is simple. The car manufacturers are back – big time. The bosses got 40% raises. The workers gave up a lot to save the industry and they want to have the life that their parents or grandparents had when they worked for the auto-industry.
It’s a slightly different case than what the writers in Hollywood are making. But essentially the big game being played here is “If we can just make the workers desperate enough they’ll have to work for whatever scraps we give them.” Some have even said as much.
I think it was Eugene Debs when he was negotiating with the bosses that would draw a circle – a pie. He’d show slices of the pie: some for labor some for manufacturers. He say the pie had gotten larger and all he wanted was his fair slice for the workers. Not a hard concept.
There’s a Facebook meme going around: GM made $22 billion last year, if they gave each of their 50,000 workers $80,000 they have only made $18 billion. Hum. Good point.
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