ECP NetHappenings News Headlines Politics 9-5-23

ECP NetHappenings News Headlines Politics

Your weekly reminder that since the insurrection, corporate interests have given $84.1 million benefitting the 147 members who voted not to certify the election results. This week we’re spotlighting @Walmart, which has given $315,000 to benefit the Sedition Caucus. This week we’re spotlighting @Walmart, which has given $315,000 to benefit the Sedition Caucus.

Seriously, a jury could convict P01135809 on the basis of his televised admissions alone.

This is not getting enough attention.
MAGA Republicans in Wisconsin just ousted the state’s nonpartisan election chief ahead of the 2024 election. Spread this far and wide.

“A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” Senator Mitt Romney told McKay Coppins, author of a forthcoming Romney biography. That’s why they’re fine with Trump’s threat to “terminate” the Constitution if that’ll help him seize total power.

Every cable channel should be talking about the fact that Wisconsin Republicans just OUSTED the duly-appointed top election administration official in the state without any justification for doing so. This is how our democracy dies & everyone should be alarmed by this fascism.

With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways

“We will look back on this and wish more people had understood that Biden is our bulwark of democratic freedoms and the alternative is worse than most Americans can imagine” @ruthbenghiat Our media is failing us. Propaganda is winning. Please read this piece.

@RepRaskin Sep 14
Right-wing sugar daddies are bankrolling ethically challenged Supreme Court justices, but the GOP says the real crisis is when victims of toxic torts raise money to sue corporate wrongdoers.
Banana Republicans cover up the ethics crisis on the Supreme Court.

@tribelaw As Yale historian Tim Snyder explains, Putin’s echoing of Trump’s attack on his indictments says “Everyone is as bad as us, the rule of law is a joke everywhere, there is no freedom, no democracy, no justice, nothing to value but power.” That’s Trump’s basic message. Reject it!

To preemptively block a wealth tax on the ultrarich, a corporate dark money group is using top Democrats to lobby the Supreme Court. One insider includes former Obama admin lawyer [Burning Man 2023] Neal Katyal. The Obama admin’s fmr top lawyer & a senator-turned-lobbyist are helping a dark money group press SCOTUS to outlaw a wealth tax.

@Neal_Katyal previously defended Nestle in a child slavery case. @Neal_Katyal went from Obama’s Solicitor General to:
– defending Nestle in a child slavery case
– representing J&J as it tried to avoid cancer victims’ lawsuits
– helping a dark money org try to outlaw a billionaire wealth tax
– MSNBC mainstay

END STUDENT DEBT Starting in October, the largest debt collector in the country will be the Department of Education.

UAW STRIKE 
The CEO of General Motors just went on CNN and it went like this: REMEMBER “PERFORMANCE-BASED” WEASLE WORDS IS THEATRE
CEO’s get, usually, @ $500k in actual pay, then the rest of their millions is “other compensation” that either isn’t taxed, or is tax deferred (indefinitely). Just make it all taxable and watch how fast things change again. video “You’ve seen a 34 percent pay increase in your salary.
https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1702674235284676695

You make almost 30 million. Why should your workers not get the same type of pay increases that you’re getting leading the company?”

Love that her answer to this is “92% of my salary is performance based.” She means stock-based, which is due to the Clinton-era loophole avoiding taxation for exec comp. Paying execs mostly in stock distorts and is the hidden driver of buyback trends.

Rough calculation that GM has spent over $16B on stock buybacks since Barra became CEO in 2014.
https://ycharts.com/companies/GM/stock_buyback

Corporate media is paid a ton of ad money by the Big Three automakers.
If Journos write about the strike but don’t include this info they are spreading dishonest bullshit.

Right before pretending they can’t afford pay raises for @UAW workers, the Big 3 automakers authorized $5 BILLION of stock buybacks and reported $21 BILLION of profit in just six months.

Do you know how much CEO pay has skyrocketed since 1978?
Try 1,460%
Meanwhile, the $7.25/hr fed. minimum wage hasn’t budged in over a decade and the tipped min. wage has been $2.13/hr since 1991.

365-to-1: The CEO-worker pay ratio at Stellantis
362-to-1: The CEO-worker pay ratio at GM
281-to-1: The CEO-worker pay ratio at Ford

The Big Three CEOs keep pretending they can’t afford to pay workers fairly while they themselves are raking in millions off of workers’ labor.

Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician and I’ll show you a crook. -Harry Truman

Nancy Pelosi
Annual salary: $223,000
Net worth: $202 million

Mitch McConnell
Annual salary: $200,000
Net worth: $95 million

Chuck Schumer
Annual salary: $210,000
Net worth: $75 million

Elizabeth Warren
Annual salary: $193,000
Net worth: $73 million

Gov. Ron DeSantis is telling residents under 65 to not get the new Covid booster. #DeathSantis #DeSaster

Is Elon Musk helping Putin?
Senate investigating Elon Musk over cutting off Starlink satellite internet services to Ukraine during Ukrainian offensive strikes against Russia. Senator Jack Reed, chair of Senate Armed Services Committee, announced the probe.

The U.K. government has classified the Russian mercenary Wagner Group as a terrorist organization — meaning support for the group now carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

Behind “parental rights”—billionaires and bigotry  “the main funders of the “parents’ rights” movement are extreme right-wing groups. They include #ALEC, Donald Trump, Hillsdale College, The Cato Institute and others.”

Tourism setback? Visitors to popular Florida beach destination down 5 months in a row. Gee, I wonder why. Was it the malaria? The flesh eating bacteria? The dengue fever? The leprosy? The covid? Oh wait, maybe it was the nazis?

Living alone in Florida is expensive, a new report shows. It’s not worth it. Spend your money elsewhere.

A sickness known as hate. Not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ — but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don’t look for it in the Twilight Zone — look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether. ~Rod Serling

TikTok slapped with $368 million fine over child privacy violations
One of the most concerning revelations was that TikTok’s profile settings for child user accounts defaulted to public visibility, making all posted content visible to anyone, within and outside the platform.TikTok’s ‘Family Pairing’ feature, which was also under scrutiny, was also found to be faulty as it allowed non-child users who could not verify their status as parents or guardians to link their accounts with those of minors aged 16 and above.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/tiktok-slapped-with-368-million-fine-over-child-privacy-violations/

Fox News Rupert Murdoch secret Deal with Reagan, Cohn

WHY CAN’T WE GET RID OF FOX NEWS?

Both Cohn and Reagan got their starts in politics during the anti-communist purges in the 1950s, Cohn as Sen. Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel and Reagan as a witness against alleged communists in Hollywood.

#fake news, #Fox, #FoxNews, #Foxpropaganda, #media, #Murdoch, #Murdochmedia empire, New York Post, #propaganda, #Reagan, #Reagan Administration, Reagan transition team, #RogerStone, #RoyCohn, #Trump

1983 Roy Cohn helps install Maryanne Trump in New Jersey court
Sometime in the summer of 1983, Maryanne Trump Barry asks her brother Donald for a favor: see if Roy Cohn can pull President Reagan’s ear and nominate me for a federal judgeship.
Cohn makes a phone call to Attorney General Ed Meese, and Reagan calls Maryanne on September 13. Maryanne is on the U.S. District Court in New Jersey by the end of October, and Donald Trump has political influence in the state where he’s building casinos.

May 23, 2008 The Dirty Trickster
Campaign tips from the man who has done it all. Jeffrey Toobin

1/28/2015 How Roy Cohn Helped Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch, the global media mogul who is now a kingmaker in American politics, was brought into those power circles by the infamous lawyer/activist Roy Cohn who arranged Murdoch’s first Oval Office meeting with President Ronald Reagan in 1983, according to documents released by Reagan’s presidential library.
“I had one interest when Tom [Bolan] and I first brought Rupert Murdoch and Governor Reagan together — and that was that at least one major publisher in this country … would become and remain pro-Reagan,” Cohn wrote in a Jan. 27, 1983 letter to senior White House aides Edwin Meese, James Baker and Michael Deaver. “Mr. Murdoch has performed to the limit up through and including today.”

How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America

Rupert Murdoch, corporate media propaganda, and CIA covert ops December 28, 2015
Through Fox News and a vast media empire, Rupert Murdoch wields enormous political clout in the United States, but his entrée into the world of Washington power came from the notorious McCarthyite Roy Cohn who opened the door into Ronald Reagan’s Oval Office, reports Robert Parry.

How Roy Cohn Helped Rupert Murdoch January 28, 2015
Special Report: Through Fox News and a vast media empire, Rupert Murdoch wields enormous political clout in the United States, but his entrée into the world of Washington power came from the notorious McCarthyite Roy Cohn who opened the door into Ronald Reagan’s Oval Office, reports Robert Parry.
Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Ronald Reagan, Rodger Stone and Rupert Murdoch…and yes, all the way to Trump.

12/29/2017 Trump-Murdoch Lawyer-Mentor Roy Cohn’s Complaint To Reagan Admin Re Murdoch Newspaper Access To Reagan; Mentions Roger Stone-Bill Casey

2017 Netflix documentary GET ME ROGER STONE

 

Jeffrey Epstein, Roy Cohn & Donald Trump: The Back Story
July 28, 2019
Government by Blackmail: Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s Mentor and the Dark Secrets of the Reagan Era
Cohn was also the attorney and friend of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and, according to New York Magazine, “Whenever Roy wanted a story stopped, item put in, or story exploited, Roy called Murdoch;” and, after Murdoch bought the New York Post, Cohn “wielded the paper as his personal shiv.” According to the late journalist Robert Parry, the friendship between Murdoch and Cohn first began thanks to their mutual support for Israel.

August 18, 2019
Part 1—A History of Roger Stone’s Most Notorious Dirty Tricks
By Ali Adair
Donald Trump— Roger Stone— Paul Manafort—Roy Cohn

September 20, 2019
How Roy Cohn’s Shame Made Him – And Trump – Shameless

PJ Grisar

Jul 30, 2021 How Reagan and US agencies made Murdoch a king. His media assets were critical to the Reagan administration’s ‘public perception’ program aimed at winning support for an aggressive policy of ‘regime change’ in Central America.

Cohn’s own homosexuality became publicly known after he underwent treatment for AIDS in the 1980s, leading to his death August 2, 1986 from AIDS.