The One Big Beautiful Bill: Disinvesting in the Common Good

The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB), championed by Donald Trump and Republican leadership, is being marketed as a pro-growth, pro-taxpayer reform bill. In reality, it reflects a massive upward redistribution of wealth, a dramatic weakening of the federal government’s ability to function effectively, and a serious threat to the long-term health of the US economy. The bill’s impacts—financial, social, and institutional—should raise alarms for all Americans who value fiscal responsibility, equal opportunity, and economic sustainability.

Regressive Distributional Impacts

The most immediate and visible effect of the BBB is its regressive impact across income groups. Like the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) before it, the BBB extends and expands tax cuts that disproportionately benefit high-income earners and corporations. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Tax Policy Center, the top 10% of earners stand to gain thousands—sometimes hundreds of thousands—of dollars per year, while low-income households lose out due to deep cuts to safety-net programs.

 

CBO estimates that the lowest-20% of earners could lose approximately $1,600 annually, or nearly 4% of their disposable income. These losses stem not from tax increases, but from reduced access to Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and other federal supports. Meanwhile, high-income households benefit not only from the continuation of the Trump-era tax breaks, but also from weakened IRS enforcement, which makes tax avoidance easier for those with the means to exploit complexity.

Targeting the Most Vulnerable

Perhaps the most troubling feature of the BBB is its direct harm to society’s most vulnerable groups: the elderly, disabled, veterans, low-income families, and children. By stripping billions from Medicaid and nutrition assistance programs, the bill threatens health coverage for millions, while reducing food security and basic supports for families with children.

This is not speculative. The CBO projects that up to 11 million people could lose Medicaid coverage under the bill. Additional analyses show that repeal of the expanded Child Tax Credit could push hundreds of thousands of children back into poverty. For veterans who rely on means-tested VA or Medicaid services, the effects could be particularly harmful.

Undermining the IRS and Revenue Collection

The bill’s repeal of most of the IRS funding boost enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act is another serious blow—one that harms fiscal integrity and benefits wealthy tax avoiders. The Treasury Department had projected that investments in IRS enforcement would return $4 to $7 for every $1 spent, primarily by ensuring compliance among corporations and high-income filers. Rolling back these investments will likely cost the government $200–$280 billion in lost revenue over the next decade.

Weakening the IRS undermines the fairness and efficiency of our tax system. With fewer audits of complex returns and reduced capacity to pursue fraud, compliance will fall, and confidence in the system will erode. Meanwhile, honest wage-earners—whose taxes are automatically withheld—will shoulder a growing share of the burden.

Threat to Social Security and Long-Term Economic Stability

While the BBB does not directly cut Social Security, it adds $3–4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to CBO estimates. That debt will limit policymakers’ ability to shore up Social Security as it approaches insolvency—now projected between 2033 and 2035. The issue of Social Security solvency could be solved by a stroke of the pen; raise or eliminate the cap on earnings subject to social security taxes. 

If no action is taken, retirees will face automatic 20% benefit cuts. The BBB reduces the government’s fiscal capacity to prevent this outcome, while simultaneously making benefit reductions for younger and middle-income Americans more likely in the future. Moreover, the rising debt—already at $36.2 trillion—is being fueled not by public investment, but by tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy. As interest payments rise and economic growth slows, the government’s ability to respond to future crises—economic, environmental, military, or public health—will diminish.

Economic Risks: Short-Term Boost, Long-Term Drag

While some economic growth may follow from tax cuts and deregulation in the short run, the long-term effects are grim. The CBO and independent economists expect only modest and temporary GDP gains—on the order of 0.3–0.5%—not the transformational growth promised by proponents. Meanwhile, deficits remain high, investment is crowded out, and the bill’s structure favors buybacks and capital hoarding over job creation or productivity.

Indeed, the post-2017 TCJA years offer a cautionary tale: despite enormous corporate tax relief, job growth and wage increases were modest, and corporations overwhelmingly prioritized stock buybacks over new investment. There is no reason to expect a different outcome under BBB.

 

Looking at the big picture, what's perhaps most alarming is the bill’s effect on the cost of servicing the national debt. Interest payments already consume nearly 14% of federal outlays—more than we spend on children, housing, or transportation. With the BBB projected to add $3–4 trillion in new debt, CBO estimates hundreds of billions in added interest costs over the next decade. This money buys nothing—no new services, no benefits—only the privilege of paying bondholders. As interest consumes more of the federal budget, it will leave even less room for investment in the nation’s future and raise the political pressure to cut deeply into essential programs like Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ services.

Conclusion

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is not a pro-growth strategy—it is a policy of disinvestment from the whole of theAmerican people. It is a policy that abandons the idea of "a more perfect union." It is a policy that deepens inequality, hollows out public institutions, strips protections from the vulnerable, and mortgages the country’s future for the benefit of the wealthiest few. If passed, it would mark a retreat from the postwar consensus that prosperity should be broadly shared and that government has a role in safeguarding the common good. This bill disinvests in the common good.

Americans concerned with fairness, fiscal sanity, and long-term economic strength should see the BBB for what it is: a short-term political win for some, and a long-term crushing loss for the country.

 

Sources

CBO estimate of BBB impact on debt:
CBO Dynamic Score of Senate BBB, May 2025
 (Adds ~$3.9 trillion to debt by 2034)

Distributional impacts:
 Tax Policy Center, May 2025
 CBO analysis summary via Investopedia

Medicaid coverage losses:
[CBO and Kaiser Family Foundation, 2025]

IRS enforcement ROI:
 [U.S. Treasury Estimate, 2022] – $4 to $7 return per $1 invested.

Social Security insolvency projection:
[2024 Social Security Trustees Report] – Trust fund depletion between 2033 and 2035.

Interest as % of outlays:
[CRFB and CBO projections, 2024–2025] – Interest is ~14% of federal outlays in FY2024.

Thank you for your service

My wife and I are both Air Force veterans. We met and married in Bitburg, Germany, while assigned to the 36th TFW. I made the Air Force a career. My wife, an Air Force nurse, helped save my life, retired, and then raised our two boys.

I volunteered for Vietnam after my assignment to Bitburg. I did so because I had friends, guys like myself in their early twenties, putting their lives on the line to serve their country. News was coming back to us that some were KIA or MIA. I felt a need to serve, as they had, and to honor them in doing so.

As it turned out, the Air Force had other plans for me, and I didn’t end up going to Vietnam. I was assigned to the Pentagon instead. I was lucky. So many of my generation weren’t. They gave the “last full measure of devotion” to their country — those who died, and those who live afterward with the scars of their service forever etched in their psyche.

I had a good friend, 'Dan' (pseudonym), who was shot down and spent 6 years in the “Hanoi Hilton.” When the war was over, he transited Hawaii, where I was stationed at PACAF HQ. He had dinner with us. We had music playing. He asked me to turn it off. He’d been beaten so severely about the head, that what we heard as music was just a cacophony to him.

I haven’t the words to express my emotions when seeing Donald Trump’s disdain for my Brothers in Arms. He will never understand, “What's in it for them,” because for him sacrifice is a sucker’s bet. For Trump, there's always a way to get around an obligation, an oath, and even a law.

Several thousand protesters on the National Mall on Friday, March 14, included veterans, who rallied against the Trump administration's unilateral deep cuts to the federal government, including at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Trump's cuts to the VA and rollback of veterans healthcare is further evidence of his disdain for "service," a concept foreign to him.

In case you missed it, March 14 is abbreviated as 3/14, and Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, disqualifies anyone from holding office if they engaged in insurrection. Trump should have been disqualified, but a heavily conservative Supreme Court, even then held in low esteem, quelled at the thought of "disenfranchising voters" (Justice Kavanaugh's words), and on March 4, 2024, ruled that states could not disqualify Donald Trump.

So, here we are a year later, after more than seventy-thousand Americans (just under 50%) voted to install the Insurrectionist-in-Chief, victims to the whims of a man intent on creating a nation in his own image; selfish, mean-spirited, unpredictable, and destructive.

God Bless America.

How Critical Race Theory Became a Thing

Christopher Rufo

If you were surprised by the sudden rise of critical race theory as the latest object of outrage by the Republican Right, you weren’t alone. The CRT controversy seems to have sprouted like cheat grass from our carefully groomed lawns. However, the controversy is anything but grassroots. It’s the brainchild of a former Seattle City Council candidate, Christopher Rufo.

Mr. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and a former director at the Discovery Institute, which promotes “intelligent design,” and has called global warming, “a fraud.” Rufo currently acts as Contributing Editor for the Manhattan Institute’s quarterly publication, the City Journal.  

Rufo had become well known for the anti-progressive ideas he expressed in his 2018 Seattle City Council campaign, and in his white paper for the Discovery Institute, “The Politics of Ruinous Compassion,” in which he wrote of an “ideological war that’s currently being won by a loose alliance of four major power centers: the socialist intellectuals, the compassion brigades, the homeless-industrial complex, and the addiction evangelists.”

So, when in the Summer of 2020, a ‘right-thinking’ Seattle city employee participated in anti-bias training during a Zoom meeting, and sent copies to Rufo, the spurned candidate quickly recognized the opportunity for political WMD (weapon of mass disinformation). Using FOIA requests, Rufo started digging further, and found references to anti-racism books that pointed to academic scholarship of the 1990s by legal scholars, who “argued that the white supremacy of the past lived on in the laws and societal rules of the present.” They referred to their work as “critical race theory.”

______________________________

In her August 12, 2021, Perspectives on History, article Dr. Jacqueline Jones, referred to CRT as “an intellectual framework for understanding the many ways that governmental entities and private interests have put racial ideologies into practice in the form of laws, taxation policies, public works projects, regulatory guidelines, profit-making schemes, hiring preferences, and more.”

______________________________

Rufo quickly recognized critical race theory as something he could attribute to the “woke” culture, thereby painting, “stay woke,” as more than a black-activist catch phase; rather, it was the rallying cry for legions of “social justice” activists, which he saw attempting to reinvent American history not only to paint all Whites as racist, but to inculcate in them their inherent racism, shame them with it, and move them to make reparations, if not in monetary, then in policy forms.  

Rufo kept fleshing out his thesis, and by the time he appeared on Tucker Carlson he was ready with his thesis that the purveyors of “woke’ ideology planned to use critical race theory as the academically respectable underpinnings of curricula designed to indoctrinate America’s children through the K-12 school system. Rufo made it clear that he saw critical race theory as an existential threat to the Republic, and called upon then-president Trump, to “"immediately issue" an "executive order and stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology at its root.”

It’s widely known that former President Trump was at the time a devotee of the Fox menu of “news” and opinion (he has since jilted Fox for One America News Network). He was watching Tucker interview Rufo and the next thing the intrepid reporter knew  he was answering a call from Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Soon after that, Rufo was called to Washington D.C. to help draft an executive order limiting how contractors providing federal diversity seminars could talk about race.

Christopher Rufo is a committed, energetic, and ambitious conservative activist, and a prolific writer of invective, but he alone could not have brought about the explosion of outrage and coordinated assaults on the institutions of American education, which conservatives have long suspected of indoctrinating students in ‘wrong-headed,’ liberal thinking. Trump operatives in the White House clearly saw critical race theory as a promising way to distract Americans from Trump’s [first] impeachment, his disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and the lingering unease over his “very fine people on both sides” comment regarding the white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of the counter-protester, Heather Heyer.

White House operatives began working with and through the National Republican Committee, state Republican parties, and subsequently with quickly formed political action committees (PACs), such as the Education First Alliance in North Carolina (which offers “bootcamps” to train parents in how to fight against CRT), to raise the hackles of the Republican faithful and generate the energy needed to take back the House and Senate in 2022.

In my adopted home town of the Tri-Cities (population 244,000), in semi-arid, largely-conservative eastern Washington, the local paper, the Tri-City Herald, was so struck by the outpouring of grief and rage over the assault on their children by socialists wielding critical race theory that the Editorial Board felt compelled to publish an editorial in June stating that, “Contrary to a surge of misinformation online, there is no new law requiring Washington state public schools to adopt the controversial “critical race theory” curriculum.” According to the Board, parents in the Tri-Cities had already raised the issue to school boards, and the Herald had received letters to the editor expressing concern.

In the coming November 2nd local election Anti-CRT forces have chosen their leaders and they are running for city council and school board positions and their rallying cry is no masks, no mandates, no CRT, and no sex education [and by the way, no new taxes].

________________________________________________ 

“We have successfully frozen their brand — “critical race theory” — into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”

Christopher Rufo
_______________________________________________

Has the Bible ever been used in a more disingenuous and exploitative way?

President Donald Trump at Washington, D.C.’s historic St. John’s Episcopal Church

Minutes after announcing plans to mobilize the military to violently crack down on the millions of Americans who since last week have been demonstrating against police brutality, President Trump sauntered over to Washington, D.C.’s historic St. John’s Episcopal Church to have his picture taken with a Bible. His path was cleared by the tear-gassing of peaceful protesters.

The Right Rev Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, told the Washington Post: “I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.”
Trump’s message is at odds with the values of love and tolerance espoused by the church, Budde said, before describing the president’s visit as an opportunity to use the church, and a Bible, as a “backdrop.”

“Let me be clear, the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus,” she told CNN.

“We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others. And I just can’t believe what my eyes have seen,” she added.

“I don’t want President Trump speaking for St John’s. We so dissociate ourselves from the messages of this president,” she told the Washington Post. “We hold the teachings of our sacred texts to be so, so grounding to our lives and everything we do, and it is about love of neighbor and sacrificial love and justice.”

Other religious leaders echoed her comments. Father Edward Beck, a Catholic priest, tweeted: ‘“Has the Bible ever been used in a more disingenuous and exploitative way?”
 ___________________________________________
The Guardian, June 2, 2020
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SWOT Trump

SWOT Analysis for 2020 Presidential Election

Just a few of the possibilities for the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate

Democrats are known for being inclusive and are demonstrating that by giving a shout out (or shout at) a plethora of announced, emerging, probable, potential, or possible people who may or may not or who've already said they won't (Oprah), run for president in 2020. The other thing democrats are know for is "eating their own."

According to polling, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders stand together at the top of the polls. The anti-establishment Berniecrats are already fulminating that the establishment DNC will try to screw them again a la Hillary-2016, but with Biden assuming the mantle of middle of the road establishment democrat. Russia if your listening, here's where you put your oar in the water.

Meanwhile, according to Tara McGowan of the Hill, Trump is already winning 2020, and not just because he's busy inventing insulting nicknames for anyone foolish enough to challenge him for the title of Commander and Tweet. The Trump Campaign is prioritizing digital channels over traditional paid media and leveraging social media platforms to fire up Trump's base, as well as on acquiring voter data and building potential supporter lists. Brad Parscale, who many credit with Trump's 2016 success, is on board and leading the digital effort.

If you're on Twitter, you're hearing from @parscale.

Wouldn't it be interesting if democrats focused on how best to beat Donald Trump and not on how to beat the democratic establishment candidate, or the socialist candidate, or the corporate candidate? Well, that's what SWOT analysis helps with.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Let's outline a SWOT for Trump as if we're Trump's [very frank] Campaign Manager. Please add your SWOT items in the comments section.

STRENGTHS

Loyal base will stick with him no matter what
Has a cadre of single-issue voters on board who can be easily manipulated
Can travel all over U.S. on taxpayer dollar
Garners media by virtue of Office
Fox Network reliable channel to voters
Strong with rural voters
Electoral College favors him
Republicans hold 22 states (to Democrats 14) in which they hold all three positions in state government, facilitating efforts to strengthen voting regulations [i.e., further restrict voting rights]
Conservative judges on the SCOTUS have a 5 to 4 advantage (should voting irregularities go before the Court)
Strong economy
Can count on Russian help [again]

WEAKNESSES

Appeals to a narrow demographic
Often speaks without thinking and goes off message; lies compulsively
Needlessly alienates large swaths of people
Extremely limited attention span
Not likely to prepare seriously for debates
Has ethical lapses, e.g., emoluments
WH staff prone to leak potentially damaging material
Under investigation by special council and SDNY

OPPORTUNITIES

Further divide Democrats by manipulating existing factions
Have Trump seem to pivot to the middle, while moving to "socialist" drumbeat
Nominate another person to SCOTUS
Build strong base of support in Senate should Congress move to impeach
Work with local media (e.g., Sinclair Broadcasting) to publicize "atrocities" by undocumented immigrants
Use Executive Orders to appeal to conservative factions
Cement support of evangelicals, e.g., by focusing attention on faux abortion issues
Start an armed conflict (short of outright war)

THREATS

Mueller investigation shows collusion or obstruction
SDNY indicts Trump
Member of Trump family indicted (that idiot, Donald Jr!)
House passes bill to force Trump to release tax returns
Evidence arises showing Trump interfered in security clearance procedure
Enough Republicans in Congress turn against Trump to make impeachment a possibility
Russia does something stupid (e.g., invades Ukraine) and turns on Trump over sanctions
DPRK begins nuclear weapons testing
Market crash
Environmental disaster
Trump suffers serious health problem limiting ability to do rallies 
Democratic Party unites behind strong candidate with wide appeal

Add your ideas for the Trump SWOT and then consider the SWOT for a "generic" democratic candidate.

What I missed in assessing the Republican Strategy for Winning in 2016

In a piece I wrote in June 2016 titled, The GOP's Strategy for Winning Hearts and Minds, and the 2016 Election, I wrote that Republicans worked at winning the 2016 Presidential Election from the day Barack Obama won the 2008 election. That was accurate. Republicans turned 'loyal opposition' into outright obstructionism. Their thinking was that if nothing worked, if policies weren't promulgated, if laws weren't passed, if vacancies weren't filled, it would thwart Obama's "liberal agenda," and as a bonus, make Americans become disillusioned with government. When that happened, voters would be less likely to turn out for elections. That would favor Republicans, as it has historically, and as it did, ultimately putting the "Grand Old Party" back in control of both the House and the Senate.

But they needed to do more to win the Presidency

The RNC made it their mission to reach out to "low information, low propensity" registered Republicans, who made up some 35% of the Republican base and generally didn't vote. They made a concerted, heavily-funded get out the vote (GOTV) effort through direct, personal contact -- these folks didn't do social media. In my 2016 post I identified some of the organizations they reached out to on this. Click on these hyperlinks and be amazed.

UNIFIED PATRIOTS

REDSTATE

THE PRECINCTS PROJECT

US PRECINCT PROJECT

Uniting the Right Wing Base

The Republican strategy also involved uniting the right-wing base, which consisted of a plethora of single-issue factions (like the Democrats, actually), including:

National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), other gun groups, and militia organizations.

The Tea Party, which had split into the Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Express, and unaffiliated voters who call themselves Tea Partiers.

The 9-12 Project (an Ayn Rand sort of group with god thrown in for good measure). Their principles included, "Government cannot force me to be charitable."

Smart Girl Politics Action (SGPA) This organization began with the mission to "engage, educate, and empower conservative women to get involved in the political process." The RNC didn't think they'd have to do much to entice them into the fold, but they began to worry when Trump became the nominee. They needn't have worried. Trump won 53% of the vote of white women -- not Republican white women -- all white women voters. Digest that.

SarahPAC.com was Sarah Palin's personal money making venture designed to capitalize on what she termed "her historic endorsement of Donald Trump." Palin's fund-raising message to prospective donors was that she supported "anti-establishment" candidates, but the RNC wasn't particular. If they could latch on to Sarah's "momma grizzlies," they'd use their money and voter network and nominate who they damn well felt like nominating. Of course things didn't quite turn out the way they hoped.

Grassfire a very social media centric group, which the RNC used it to network with the organizations outlined above.

Evangelical Christians. In the 2014 midterm elections, white evangelicals or born-again Christians made up 26 percent of the electorate and 78% of them voted for Republican candidates. During the primaries, a plurality of self-identified white evangelicals voted for Trump (40%), while the majority split their votes between Ted Cruz (34%), Marco Rubio (11%), and John Kasich (10%). The RNC's challenge was to unify that voting block behind their presumptive nominee. It wasn't a problem once Trump promised to rollback the last half century of progress made on women's reproductive rights ("Two Corinthians" notwithstanding). Evangelicals continue to stand firmly with Trump, as I write about here.

The laying on of hands

AsaMom mission was, "to empower Moms and Moms at Heart in preserving our Constitution, country and children’s future." The RNC had to convince this voting block that Donald Trump was only kidding when he said it doesn't matter what the media said, "as long as you have a beautiful piece of ass with you." The Access Hollywood video surfaced later and the RNC thought, "Oh, shit," but once Trump explained that it was "only locker room talk" everything was okay.

Why the RNC got Donald Trump instead of JEB!

The problem the RNC had in leading up to the Republican 2016 Primaries and in then trying to unify the above groups, whose commonality was primarily angry disaffection, was that the RNC was the 'establishment' and it was peddling the same, tired establishment bullshit. In other words, they totally misjudged the give-a-shit basis for their audience's mood, which was poor-paying jobs, no jobs, shitty jobs, and Mexicans taking all the shitty jobs that they didn't want, but were unhappy to see said Mexicans making money at. But the elephant in the room was named 'Xenophobia' -- a fear that the white person's place atop the slag heap was in danger of toppling. So yeah, "Fuck you, RNC, we'll vote for an asshole, that'll teach you!" And voilà -- Donald Trump.

And then came Russia barreling down the Fulda Gap

Now this rather too-long piece is about my 2016 assessment of the Republican strategy for wining the election, not why Hillary Clinton lost -- there have been plenty of hand-wringing analyses of that. What I want to express is how embarrassed I am for missing what turned out to be a key ingredient in the Republican strategy, viz, Russia. I didn't see Russia coming. Did you?

Ultimately, our Intelligence agencies ferreted it out and not long after Trump's inauguration, their findings led to the Mueller investigation looking into whether the Trump Campaign and Trump himself had been colluding with Russia (remember, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing"?).

Is it too far fetched to think that the RNC itself was colluding with Russia. After all, the RNC watered down language in the Republican Platform supporting U.S. assistance to the Ukraine in its efforts to resist Russian interference in their internal affairs. And according to reports, the RNC was also penetrated by Russian hackers, but their data were not released. More recently, Republican lawmakers faced scorn when they decided to celebrate July 4th in Moscow. Did they have favors to return?

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) led the eight-member Republican delegation on a multi-day tour of Russia.

Donald Trump claims the Russia investigation is a "witch hunt." Well, a lot of witches have been rounded up. It will be interesting to see what the latest witch, Maria Butina, revealed about her contacts with the RNC and with her handler, Alexander Torshin when questioned by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and by Robert Mueller.

Scott Walker between Walker stood between Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin

h

We now know that Russia deployed active measures to influence the 2016 Election, and they did so to aid Donald Trump. There is growing evidence that members of the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia, with the latest revelation being that Paul Manafort shared campaign polling data with the Russians before the 2016 Election. Certainly this aided the Russians social media blitz. What we don't know for sure, and may never know, is how much Russia's interference impacted election results. Opinions?

Stop Waiting for Robert Mueller to Do Your Work

The 2020 election is just two more episodes of “March Madness” away, and I mean the college basketball tournament, not the debacle that poses as DC politics. In the meantime, left-leaning political operatives are conducting their own madness as various factions maneuver to place their preferred progressive on the Presidential Ballot. Not all, or even most of these groups are democrats. Some are decidedly not democrats, such as DemExit, which appears to be more a hashtag than a coherent organization.

We have to hope that the one coherent party with an opportunity to overthrow the wannabe dictator, Trump, can get its act together and unite like-minded progressives behind that imperative. Even if it does, there’s no guarantee Trump can be defeated in 2020.

Past experience shows that an incumbent president is re-elected 75% of the time. Democrats may feel that their impressive gains in the 2018 midterms will carryover to the 2020 Presidential election and sweep Trump out of office. But history has shown that there is very little correlation between a president’s first midterm election and their reelection bid. For example, Bill Clinton’s party lost 52 House seats in 1994 and Barack Obama’s party lost 63 House seats in 2010, yet both men garnered more than 330 Electoral Votes in 1996 and 2012, respectively.

Political analysts, licking their wounds after most predicted Hillary Clinton would wipe the floor with Donald Trump, have since explained to us why he won. Their verdict? It’s the rural voters. If that’s the case, what changes in 2020 to turn the red tide (given that we still have an Electoral College, and we will)?

Pollsters show Donald Trump retaining a dedicated cadre of supporters, no matter what the latest “blockbuster” reveal is about his repugnant behavior or his criminal exploits during or after his campaign. The best assessment I’ve found of what factions of society make up Trump’s base comes from Sean McElwee (@SeanMcElwee) in Data for Politics. Rural voters are just the tip of the cornstalk. It shouldn’t surprise you to find out that the real barnacles on the hull of our ship of state are white evangelicals. Being “born again” seems to equate to being born yesterday when it comes to believing and/or believing in Donald Trump. That demographic is no small thing when it comes to making Trump a one-term president. Evangelical voters account for 1 in 4 voters; roughly equivalent to the share of the electorate accounted for by people of color.

Laying on of Hands by the Clergy on the Chosen One

I’ve read the posts of many progressives who try to reason with evangelicals, arguing that their positions on many issues actually run counter to the teachings of Jesus. Forget about it! Evangelicals are a lot more practical, not to say hypocritical, than that. Donald Trump has embraced and actualized anti-choice rhetoric, selected Mike Pence as his Vice President, appointed culturally conservative Supreme Court justices, and promised to repeal RoeWade and the Johnson Amendment. His Administration recently negotiated the release of American Evangelical Pastor Andrew Brunson after two years of captivity in Turkish confinement, after which one televangelist said, “I love him so much I can hardly explain it.”

I haven’t seen a substantive plan for how the DNC plans to take on Trump in the 2020 election. Rather, I see a widening chasm forming over whether to run full socialist, or take over the right of center territory abandoned by Republicans when they veered hard right into Donald Trump’s fascism — in other words, to run a moderate and move left incrementally. So this could shape up as the socialists versus the incrementalists.

Lacking a unified platform, let alone the broad general outlines of a plan, the Democrats, the disaffected, the Dem Exits and Enters, the “Our Revolution,” and the “Resist” movements wait with fretful anticipation for Robert Mueller’s report, which they hope will put the stake through the heart of Trump’s presidency, if not Trump himself. But will it?

According to @MuellerSheWrote, writing in The Economist, "the report, when it eventually comes, will probably not be made public." William Barr's testimony during his confirmation hearings did nothing to assuage my fears that it won't be. @MuellerSheWrote went on to point out that, "The judgment on what that report means for the president will be political, rather than legal. It will rest on the views of Republicans in Congress. And many of them would rather not think about it."

So, my feeling is that since the president could not be removed by articles of impeachment unless around 20 Republican senators break with him, almost no matter what Mr Mueller may find, we may find Donald J Trump on the 2020 Ticket as the Republican nee Fascist nominee. Given that eventuality, I recommend we come up with the best damned plan for defeating him that the best damned minds in the progressive multiverse can devise.

In the meantime, my favorite really, really non-establishment candidate to go up against Trump so far is Vermin Supreme. Supreme has said that if elected President of the United States, he will pass a law requiring people to brush their teeth. Can’t argue with that.

Vermin Supreme

Resolution Censuring President Donald Trump

Rep Pramila Jayapal's (D-WA)

From CNN today, 8/16/2017:

"Three House Democrats drafted a resolution to formally censure President Donald Trump for saying Tuesday that "both sides" shared responsibility for the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, a young woman protesting hate groups, as well as injuring more than a dozen people.

Rep Jerry Nadler of New York, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington announced they planned to introduce the resolution when the House of Representatives has a brief "pro forma" session Friday. The House is currently on a five-week summer recess and members are not scheduled to be back in Washington until after Labor Day."

Here is Democratic Rep Pramila Jayapal's (WA-7) tweet linked to the resolution:

Now, we are introducing a measure to censure @realDonaldTrump. His latest comments fuel hatred. They are inexcusable and deeply un-American. pic.twitter.com/6LO8y6Kf3c

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) August 16, 2017

Call Rep Newhouse's office and urge that he support this resolution. Tell whoever answers the call that there aren't "many sides" to blame for the horror of Charlottesville. There's only one side. The side that supports Donald Trump, and vice versa. The side that spouts bigotry and hate. The side on which the White Supremacists and neo-Nazis reside. The slimy underbelly of the alt-Right movement to which Donald Trump panders. That side. That side's to blame. And he along with it.

His local office numbers are:

Tri-Cities: 509-713-7374
Yakima: 509-452-3243

Does that banner still wave?

Fox News, in its inimitable fashion, has pinpointed what Americans should be thinking about this Independence Day. In an article today headlined, “Stars, stripes, and suds: Where to drink this Independence Day,” the author, Katie Jackson, gleefully tells us that July 4th is “America’s biggest drinking day,” with guzzlers spending more than $1 billion for beer alone. Katie opines that, “Any bar worth its weight in margarita salt is hip to this spending trend, and goes out of its way to celebrate Independence Day.”

Well, I hate to throw cold water on Katie’s beer, but I won’t be so much celebrating Independence Day this year as reflecting on it’s meaning, and in my reflections wondering how we find ourselves with someone like Donald Trump as President, and how we can free ourselves from his deceitful, destructive, potentially disastrous rule.

It isn’t just the President’s rule that we must resist, of course, but also the agenda of a Republican Party that sees itself in charge of both houses of Congress, and dominant at the state level, with 33 governors and 32 republican-controlled legislatures — legislatures in which the GOP has majorities in both houses. Democrats and their progressive base find themselves in a deep hole, and the consequences have been rapid in developing, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act only the most egregious — I almost said “visible”— of those consequences.

As Richard R. Beeman has said, we have been so successful, “in building a powerful and cohesive democratic nation-state in post-Civil War America that most Americans today assume that principles of democracy and national harmony somehow naturally go hand-in-hand.” They don’t. We are beset by challenges internally and externally, seen and unseen, imminent and inevitable.

And all the while, we are ruled by a man with no moral compass, whose only objective is to “win” — win against his enemies, his critics, and his personal demons. His weapons of choice are insult, innuendo, threat, fear, and anger, and, like a terrorist, he wields them with disdain for any collateral damage he may cause.

This Independence Day we are fearful for our Republic. We do not accept Mr. Trump’s refusal to abide by the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, we do not accept Mr. Trump’s defaming of the FBI, we do not believe the Press is “the enemy of the American people,” we will not allow our personal voter records to be easily surrendered to an autocratic regime. We will resist, and in the end, we will, working together, overcome a tyrannical despot and keep our Republic.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Demand an Independent Investigation

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson's email (see below) urging us to sign his petition calling for a special prosecutor was distributed before the news that President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador last week. According to current and former U.S. officials, Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. So we can add that to our motivation for signing the petition.

But we must do more than that. First thing tomorrow call your Senators and your representative and demand a special prosecutor, or independent commission to launch a nonpartisan investigation. The next FBI head likely would not be seen as fairly pursuing the probe because he/she will have been directly appointed by Trump -- the man being investigated. Plus, they'd have to deal with the U.S. AG Jeff Sessions, who said he'd recuse himself from dealing with the FBI investigation, then had his deputy recommend firing Director Comey. Of course, Donald Trump said subsequently that he'd have fired Comey anyway, because of the Russia investigation, which was a hoax. You can't make this stuff up!

Call/Tweet Marie Cantwell: 202-224-3441, @SenatorCantwell
Call Patty Murray: 202-224-2621, @PattyMurray
Call Dan Newhouse, 202-225-5816, @RepNewhouse
(I know he's grieving, but you can convey the message to his staff)

Bob Ferguson's email follows:

Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is deeply troubling. Comey’s dismissal came just days after the FBI Director requested more resources for his independent criminal investigation into whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence our presidential election.

America’s institutions must be above partisan obstruction, and we deserve answers: Sign my petition for an independent special prosecutor to investigate the extent of Russian meddling – and any collusion by the Trump campaign.

I am calling for an independent special prosecutor, armed with full powers and resources, to ensure Americans are provided the truth, and any guilty parties are held accountable.
Are you as deeply troubled as I am?

If so, add your name right now to join my call for an independent special prosecutor to investigate.

Bob

A Redress of Grievances

Will Crow, VP of Act Yakima and protest organizer

I drove to Yakima to join a dozen or so people holding an “Accountability Protest” in Yakima today. Act Yakima organized the protest.

We stood on the corner holding our handmade signs seeking a “redress of grievances." It was a diverse group. The man on my left was a Vietnam veteran. He worried for survival of the Republic. The man on my right had his two young nephews with him. Their tee shirts promoted equality. I commented on a woman’s artistic sign showing a blond-haired shark eating Lady Liberty. A woman next to her leaned in and pronounced proudly, “I’m 72 years old!”

The reaction of motorists was mixed, with some thumbs up, some thumbs down, and some displaying other digits. One beat-up Hummer slowed, the window rolled down, and a man yelled, “You lost! Get over it!”

The lack of awareness in this reaction to what I hope are continuing protests is startling and distressing. Those of us protesting Donald Trump are doing so not because “We lost,” but because we were conned. Mr. Trump took an oath to, “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He is violating that oath. As a result, we all lose.

A great danger to our country

In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Donald Trump criticized as “fake news” organizations that publish anonymously sourced reports that reflect poorly on him. In a series of Twitter posts, he assailed the FBI as a "dangerously porous agency," condemning unauthorized revelations of classified information from within its ranks and calling for an immediate hunt for leakers.

Hours after the speech, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, barred journalists from The New York Times, CNN, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, and several other news organizations from attending his daily briefing, a highly unusual breach of relations between the White House and its press corps.

Mr. Trump’s barrage against the news media continued well into Friday night. “FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn’t tell the truth,” he wrote on Twitter shortly after 10 p.m., singling out The Times and CNN. “A great danger to our country.”

Retired Admiral Will McRaven spoke out on this calling Trump’s attack on the media “a threat to democracy." McRaven is currently a chancellor in the University of Texas system.

Trump seems to be trying to distract the public from FBI investigations into Trump's and his staff’s ties to Russia, as well as an unprecedented and prohibited attempt by Trump Chief of Staff Reince Preibus to have the FBI “knock down” the story.

In addition, Trump rejected his own Homeland Security report on his travel ban, again attacking the Intelligence Community.

In an ironic twist, CPAC audience members unknowingly waved Russian Flags with Trump’s name on them. Here’s the picture, just in case you thought this was “fake news.”

Trump supporters at CPAC waving Russian flags with Trump's name emblazoned in gold (of course).

So, given the state of affairs in the Administration, and geopolitical events of immense importance, what is the White House doing? Rescinding the rights of transgender people to use public bathrooms.

An Open Letter to the New Treasury Secretary

February 20, 2017

The Honorable Steven T. Mnuchin
Secretary of the Treasury
United States of America

Dear Mr. Secretary:

Reference is made to your letter, 2016 Form 1040, February 15, 2017

I’m seventy-nine years old and have never failed to submit a tax return, from the time I worked as a delivery boy in high school, through my two decades in the U.S. military, two decades working for a government laboratory in national security, right up until today, in my retirement.

I’ve willingly paid my taxes under 11 presidents; six republicans and five democrats. Like serving in the military, for me, paying taxes was a way of giving back to my country for the rights and privileges I enjoyed as a citizen of this great nation.

Now I am looking at the prospect come April 15th of paying taxes under another president, Donald J Trump. I have to tell you, Mr. Secretary, that for the first time ever, I hesitate to do so. Not for ideological reasons — although I strongly disagree with Mr. Trump’s ideology — and not because Mr. Trump avoided paying taxes for so many years. I hesitate because Mr. Trump refuses to make a clean break from his global business interests. Until he does so, he will unavoidably be violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Mr. Trump claimed that he eliminated potential trouble with emoluments by turning over operation of the business to his children. That argument is inane, but even if we believed that the President would not discuss Trump business dealings with “the kids,” as long as he continues to profit from his business empire—which he does whether or not he is nominally in charge, the possibility that foreign actors will attempt to affect his policies by frequenting his hotels, golf courses, resorts, and casinos, remains an issue of national concern.

Mr. Trump apparently feels that divestiture is too high a price to pay to be President of the United States, just as he felt it was “smart” not to pay taxes.

We might understand better the intricacies and entanglements of Mr. Trump’s business holdings and partners if we could examine his tax returns, but he has steadfastly refused to release them  — something every president has done since Gerald Ford.

So you see the reason for my hesitation to submit my tax return on April 15 — I can’t be sure that my tax dollars won’t be going to line the pockets of foreign actors whose business dealings with the President have curried his favor. Maybe Mr. Trump is right; maybe it isn’t smart to pay taxes. At least, not until we have a president willing to abide by the Constitution.

Thank you for your understanding.

Very Respectfully,

Richard Badalamente, LTC, USAF (Ret.)

Sustaining Democracy in the Term of Trump

From David Frum, The Atlantic , February 6, 2017

Protests can energize people and overawe governments. But it is the steady and often tedious work of organization that sustains democracy—and can change the world. Protests are useful mostly to the extent that they mobilize people to participate in the follow-up meetings to realize the protest’s goals. Collect names and addresses. Form Facebook groups. Keep in touch. Don’t argue: recruit. Meet in real space as well as online. Serve cake. Make your presence felt on your local elected officials not just once, but day after day, week in, week out. Make them feel that they could lose their individual seats if they do not heed you. They feel the pressure from lobbyists all the time…to succeed, you should be equally focused and persistent. And that requires above all: be motivated by hope, not outrage.

This is Not Normal

This is #NotNormal

It is not normal for a president to target investigations on states that didn’t vote for him (source). It is not normal to lie about which people are to blame for not winning the popular vote (source). A normal president accepts election results and, after winning, focuses on his or her leadership.

It is not normal for a president to ban a federal department from communicating with the public (source), to force them to hide data (source), nor pressure a department to lie on his behalf (source). A normal president welcomes information from government experts to assist in his or her leadership.

It is not normal to deny entry to legal residents with all required documents (source) nor invade their privacy (source). A normal president respects privacy and allows legal residents to travel freely.

Russian Hacking of the US 2016 Election

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov

According to an October 2016 article in the Guardian, the Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said that  Moscow had offered US officials an opportunity to hold joint talks on fighting cybercrime.

Now that the U.S. has formally accused Russia of hacking the 2016 Election in an effort to help Donald Trump, the offer appears to be off the table. We’ll have to see.

A Night for Monsters

Halloween night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Republican Presidential Candidate, Donald J. Trump, called for waterboarding and "much worse." He didn't specify who the enemy was, but alluded to the fight against ISIS, and to "hundreds of millions" of people flooding into the United States if Hillary Clinton is elected President.

According to CNN Politics, "Trump also stoked fears about undocumented immigrant crime, warning that continued illegal immigration would result 'in the loss of American lives,' even though undocumented immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than legal US residents."

We do have something to fear on this Halloween night, and every night for another nine days -- the monster that is Donald Trump.

False Equivalence Gone Wild

The Trump Campaign, and "The Donald" himself have complained forever about how biased the media is towards his candidacy. The facts speak to a different bias; one that results in voters believing they are voting for "the lesser of two evils." John Oliver, on Last Week Tonight addressed this. Watch it. Then read this Paul Krugman piece.

As a PCO, you need to be able to address this when doorbelling for our candidates, including Hillary Clinton. The prospect of a Donald Trump Presidency is frightening. Speak up, speak out, get out, and GET OUT THE VOTE!

Trump's Lies Require a Whole New Genre

Mark Twain is credited with popularizing the saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I wonder under what category of lies Twain would lump Donald Trump's lies. I imagine he'd have to come up with a whole new "genre" to accommodate Trump's epic litany of fabrications, frauds, fakery, and phantasmagoria.

Republicans have been surprisingly successful painting Hillary Clinton as “a liar,” while turning a blind eye to their candidate’s bizarre travels through fantasy land. I've asked myself, "Why?" and I've decided it's because no one really expects Donald Trump to tell the truth. Apparently Trump equates being truthful with being "political correct," and we know well what he thinks about political correctness.

It's troubling, scary really, to see Trump closing the gap in the presidential polls. Let's get busy people, and GOTV!

If you need help using VoteBuilder, contact John Christensen, Neil Norman, or Richard Badalamente. We can run you through the basics.

Trump in Everett, Washington

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is holding a rally at Everett’s Xfinity Arena beginning at 7 p.m tonight. Trump is also in town to gather cash at a fundraiser before the rally.

Let's use this event to spur donations to our own Democratic Party. Go to the Washington State Democratic Party website, or to the Hillary Victory Fund and show Donald Trump that our hearts and minds are with #loveNOThate.