Big Companies, Conservatives behind Debt, U.S. Problems

All the people complaining about inflation—and blaming President Joe Biden—might consider a new study about the profiteering by corporations because conservatives support unfettered capitalism with no regulations. Two London-based think tanks show that much of the recent inflation in several countries came from corporate profits as big business, such as major oil and gas companies, boosted them during the pandemic and Russia’s attack on Ukraine. These profits, not limited to the commodities sector, rose at least 30 percent last year from 2019 while people suffered from soaring fuel, food, and housing costs. Some corporate executives admitted the high inflation was good for their business, also covering their hiked prices, because economists paid primary attention to the labor market.

In an analysis of 1,350 companies listed on stock markets, the study found profits rose 33 percent in U.S. companies—energy, mining, food, technology, telecommunications, banking, etc. ExxonMobil profits went from $18.9 billion pre-pandemic to $66.6 billion; Kraft Heinz from $333 million to $2.3 billion. The largest four food manufacturing firms had among the largest increases in profits. Only four companies—Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), Cargill, Bunge, and Dreyfus—control an estimated 70-90 percent of the world grain market and had “a dramatic rise in profits during 2021–2022” with their 255 percent increase in 2021. The DOJ has initiated a lawsuit indicating that almost the entire chicken, turkey, and pork industry is engaged in price-fixing.

In another attack on the Biden administration, the media has repeatedly published articles about the horrific shoplifting, but the National Retail Federation (NRF), top lobbying group for retail corporations, admits that its data about “organized retail crime” causing huge losses is wrong. Instead of 50 percent of the $94.5 billion in 2021 store merchandise losses, the loss is about 5 percent. Walgreens blamed its 2021 closure of five stores in the San Francisco on organized shoplifting when the shrink rate from shoplifting, theft, and fraud was 2.5 percent in the year’s first quarter. Attorney Alec Karakatsanis said that media outlets failed to critically examine retailers’ claims about shoplifting, and were “used as a tool by certain vested interests to gin up a lot of fear about this issue.”

If Republicans their way, taxpayers will be paying the oil and gas industry billions instead of reaping benefits themselves. Led by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), GOP members of the House Natural Resources Committee voted to advance a bill to force taxpayers to fund the cost of cleaning up oil and gas wells on federal lands instead of requiring the companies to clean up their own disasters. Her bill removes the mandate that corporations drilling on federal land post a bond covering abandonment of an exploration site, toxic chemicals leaks into the air and water, bankruptcies, or failure to securely plug wells. Passage of the bill would cost taxpayers between $2.9 billion and $17.7 billion; supporters on the committee have received at least $3.8 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Just one bill supporter, Garret Graves (R-LA), has been gifted with $850,945. In Boebert’s district, gas projects are taking millions of gallons of water.

So-called deficit hawks in the Senate who want to take benefits from taxpayers by reducing the U.S. debt are demanding more tax cuts for the rich and large corporations that have already added $10 trillion to the national debt. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told them:  

“If not for the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and then the Trump tax cuts, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely.”

George W. Bush’s fruitless wars in the Middle East also increased the national debt by $8 trillion. The GOP solution to pay for the costs of existing and new tax cuts for the wealthy and the unnecessary preemptive wars is  cutting Social Security and Medicare plus eliminating Medicaid. Whitehouse pointed out that “some billion-dollar corporations pay no income taxes at all.” Criticized for his concern about climate, he declared that “the next fiscal emergencies will be climate-related, and similarly disastrous for the federal budget, with cascading economy-wide ‘systemic risks.'” This year, the U.S. has suffered at least 23 extreme weathers disasters costing over $1 billion.

A U.S. Treasury report shows a 16.5 percent drop in the revenue compared to GDP with an annual deficit increase doubling from the previous year because of the GOP Bush and DDT tax cuts which cause 75 percent in the deficit and debt ratio. High interest payments on the debt, largely caused by the GOP fiscal instability, comprise half the remaining 25 percent. A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report predicted this outcome from DDT’s 2017 tax cuts: plummeting revenues and growing annual deficits with no economic growth to make up the difference. The GOP wants to make the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the problem while extending DDT tax cuts that add another $3.5 trillion to the national debt. More analysis is here.

After Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) released his ten-month hold on all military official confirmations, permitting 421 of them to be confirmed by voice vote, other far-right senators appear to be taking over with unreasonable holds. Despite Tuberville’s failure to accomplish anything by creating chaos in the military, J.D. Vance, who is not on the Judiciary Committee, has a blanket hold on all DOJ nominees, protesting federal investigations into DDT’s handling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) gave a reason for the holds:

“[Tuberville] got nothing out of it except bad publicity and a lot of contributions…. If you want to raise money, you act out of character and scream, shout, wave your arms—do something outrageous.”

Last summer, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) held all State Department nominees for two months until it released documents related to Covid research conducted in Wuhan.

Tuberville may have caved on almost all his holds because of GOP pressure. At a closed-door Senate GOP lunch, Dan Sullivan (R-AK) gave a 10-minute speech to get Tuberville to release the military official hostages and said he would whip votes from Republicans to temporarily change rules, removing Tuberville’s hold.

House Republicans have become more bizarre: James Comer, chair of the Oversight Committee, Hunter Biden was indicted by Special Counsel David Weiss on nine counts of failure to pay taxes and falsely claiming business-related deductions on personal expenses as for Hunter’s own protection from Comer’s investigation. Comer continued by saying that the “whole thing has been about a cover-up.”

And Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson announced he protected faces in the footage of the January 6 insurrection to protect [criminal] participants from being charged by the DOJ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the December 6 GOP presidential candidate debate, Ron DeSantis showed the opinions from millions of Republicans.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) is one of almost 200 people appearing on a list of potential witnesses from the Fulton County (GA) RICO case featuring DDT with 15 remaining co-defendants. Others are former VP Mike Pence, former aide to one of DDT’s chiefs of staff Mark Meadows, DDT’s ex-AG Bill Barr, DDT’s adviser Steve Bannon, and former DOJ officials Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue. The House January 6 insurrection investigative committee subpoenaed Perry because of his efforts to help DDT make Jeff Clark, an election denier, acting AG. Perry refused the subpoena, but the committee found that he tried to help DDT overturn the results of the election. This month, a document shows his part in challenging the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Election deniers weren’t always far-right. An original co-defendant in the RICO case who has pled guilty to charges, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, may have descended into a MAGA DDT follower after a mid-life crisis, according to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin who knew Chesebro well in law school. Chesebro was divorced in 2016, he made a fortune from crypto in 2014, and changed from being a Democrat to a right-wing activist in the year of his divorce. In 2020, he allegedly drafted a secret memo outlining how to steal the 2020 presidential election.

After four debates among their presidential candidates, the RNC is calling it quits. The 16-member internal body decided that future debates will be independently hosted by networks. ABC and CNN announced plans for debates before the Iowa caucus on January 15 and the New Hampshire primary which may be on January 23. The latter date is uncertain because the Democratic party tried to move the New Hampshire primary after the South Carolina primary on February 3.

Casey DeSantis, Ron DeSantis’ wife, decided to rig the Iowa’s election by calling on mothers and grandmothers around the U.S. to “descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus.” She added that “you do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus.” The state’s Republican Party, however, stated she was wrong, that out-of-state residents cannot take part in its nominating contest. Florida’s first lady later changed her position, Xeeting that “voting in the Iowa caucuses is limited to registered voters in Iowa.”

June 6, 2023 – Political News

A federal judge will allow the names of people cosigning Rep. George Santos’ (R-NY) $500,000 bond to be made public. Facing 13 criminal charges, Santos was released from jail before the trial because of the bond. The media asked to unseal the identities and relevant information which can now also be shared with the House Ethics Committee. Santos said he would go to jail rather than disclose his “confidential arrangements” for a bond. His next scheduled court appearance is June 30.

A Reagan-appointed judge rejected a request to block Washington state’s new law banning the sale of over 50 types of guns, including AR- and AK-style rifles. People who have them can continue to possess them. The ruling determined that the ban fits the long tradition in the U.S. of regulating dangerous weapons, including colonial-era bans on “trap guns,” long-bladed Bowie knives, and the Thompson submachine (aka Tommy) gun popular with gangsters after World War I.

Florida officials stay silent after a second plane of 20 migrants from Texas since last Friday landed in Sacramento, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to investigate the source of the flights with the possibility of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis responsible. The arrivals on both flights had documents indicating Florida’s involvement. The GOP legislators gave DeSantis $12 million to fly migrants never in Florida to blue states.

Selective in prosecuting people for what officials call voter fraud, DeSantis arrested 20 former felons who had been told they could vote for casting improper votes, turning their rehabilitated lives upside down. Yet last month, a GOP state attorney refused to prosecute six voter fraud cases in five GOP counties, including sex offenders, who voted in the 2020 general election while DeSantis assured the public that the other 20 former felons would be prosecuted by his special election crimes office.

GOP presidential candidates have been vigorously debating the RNC debates’ rules. Beyond opposition to the requirement that participation requires support of the primary winner, they are fighting about which network will host the debates. Unhappy with the Fox network not being 100 percent on his side, Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) refuses to debate on that network. DeSantis, however, wants Fox and won’t debate on either CNN or MSNBC because he thinks they are hostile to Republicans.

DeSantis has a reputation for being hostile to the press. Stories have circulated that his wife, former TV host Casey DeSantis, is working on a positive image for him, but he’s a slow learner. On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, a reporter asked DeSanti why he wasn’t taking questions from his voters, he said he was talking to “people” and snapped, “Are you blind?” In the past, he confined himself to Fox and conservative talk radio, but that tactic doesn’t work outside Florida in a presidential campaign.

Casey DeSantis may not be much more successful than her husband. Several articles pointed out how she’s appears to copy Jackie Kennedy’s fashions from the 60s, and she wore a leather jacket in the Iowa heat with the slogan “where woke goes to die” over a Florida map and alligator, reminiscent of Melania Trump’s jacket sporting “I don’t really care. Do you?” while her husband separated immigrant families at the border. DeSantis garb earned her the moniker “Walmart Melania.” The account Tea Pain tweeted:  

“Behind every Republican man, there’s a Republican woman selling out her sisterhood.”

Florida taxpayers are also paying millions of dollars for DeSantis’ culture (aka religious) wars. The GOP legislature gave him a blank check to attack anyone he wishes in retaliation for anything and anyone he doesn’t like—minorities, students, teachers, authors, Disney, etc. Six months ago, legal costs were at least $16.7 million and growing. DeSantis is paying almost $1,300 an hour in legal fees just searching into how Disney found a loophole blocking his plan to govern Disney World. A Washington, D.C. law firm charges $725 hourly to defend him against his “anti-woke” laws. The state authorized almost $2.8 million for legal services from just that one firm. Medicaid iBudget Florida, a waiver providing disabled Floridians with access to certain services, has a waitlist of more than 22,000 residents because the state underfunds the program at $2 million for the year, compared to the almost $20 million, or more, spent for DeSantis’ “anti-woke” needs.

Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, said DeSantis litigious behavior matches that of DDT, that they are cut “from the same cloth.” In talking about who is benefiting, Jarvis said, “DeSantis has been God’s gift to lawyers.”

Recognizing its current lack of leverage, the House Freedom Caucus has given up deposing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—for now—but 11 conservatives are sabotaging GOP leadership, much to their surprise, by voting against the advancement of two bills blocking prevention of gas stoves.  The 206-220 vote was the first time the House rejected a rule in 21 years. Scheduled for five minutes, the rule vote lasted almost an hour. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), one of the dissidents, also got into an argument with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) when he accused him of blocking his pistol stabilizing brace bill after Clyde opposed the rule on the debt ceiling bill.  

MAGAs have turned on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her devotion to McCarthy and her vote for his debt ceiling bill: they’re calling for her to be primaried by a real MAGA. Another of her offenses was opposition to releasing insurrection footage to the conspiracy-ridden media. DDT ally Laura Loomer, loonier than Greene, is threatening a move to Georgia to primary Greene from Florida where she repeatedly lost congressional primaries. In Greene’s comparing Steve Bannon turning on her with a divorce, she said:

“Steve and I aren’t getting back together. And if he keeps it up, I’ll take the house and kids. I hope you send it to Steve. Because I’m done.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is trying to intimidate academics studying misinformation by accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress right-wing speech. The House Judiciary Committee Chair is demanding records from Stanford University and threatens subpoenas because they withheld some disinformation complaints filed by students. Research includes falsehoods by DDT and other GOP politicians. Jordan claims that the government has suppressed legitimate vaccine risk theories and Covid origins.

Jordan also demands that AG Merrick Garland give him documents from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of DDT—the unredacted memo of authorization and all supporting documentation.  

In his determination to prove unsubstantiated rumors about President Joe Biden’s “bribery,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer still wants to pillory FBI Director Christopher Wray for not giving him a document, instead requiring Comer to read it in a confidential setting. Committee top Democrat Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asserted the secondhand information didn’t need further assessment after a team assigned by former DDT-appointed AG Bill Barr stated the accusation didn’t warrant followup. The paid “source” was reporting a conversation with someone else. The investigation, finding no criminal activity, was led by DDT-appointed former AG Scott Brady for Pennsylvania.  In a first against an FBI director, Comer plans to hold Wray in contempt if he won’t give him the document.

Comer’s next project is a probe into a supposed coverup of UFOs, aka Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. He claims to have a “whistleblower,” an intelligence officer claiming to have classified information about “retrieved intact and intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.”

Joseph Cuffari, responsible for the Secret Service’s mass deletion of texts including those surrounding the insurrection, declared he regularly deletes texts because he doesn’t consider them federal records. He added that he uses his government phone to “to conduct business” but “not federal business.” Intentional deletions of federal records violate the law.

According to Nikki Haley’s little-publicized CNN town hall on June 5, transgender issues form the centerpiece of her campaign. Asked to define “woke,” a Black term for social justice, the presidential candidate focused on “biological boys playing in girl sports” and linked it to one-third of teenage girls contemplating suicide last year—with no evidence. The report she cited didn’t list fear of transgenders as a factor but gave these reasons: more sleep deprivation, less face-to-face social interaction, societal polarization, pessimism about the future connected to global warming, and increasing availability of firearms. Of 73 million youth, only 46,000 may be transgender, 0.06 percent. Haley waffled by saying “we wonder,” but Glenn Kessler gave her four Pinocchios for her lie. 

Haley bewailed that “the national media” made the shooting at Mother Emanuel church, when a white supremacist killed nine Black people at a Bible study, “about race.” She did promise, however that she would not execute women who have abortions. Her home state of South Carolina puts women who have in prison, and attempts are being made to charge them with murder.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-NC) is the only current congressional member backing Haley for president, but he’s a devoted ally of DDT. Every time he stumps for Haley he praises DDT.

CNN’s town hall for Mike Pence is June 7.