'Anchor Babies' & Walls: Toxic GOP Debate Clouds Real Issues

Did you read Daniel Politi's Slate.com article about members of the crowd at Donald Trump's rally in Mobile, Alabama repeatedly yelling out "White power!" during his appearance on August 21st?

Other reporters in attendance at the Friday night event from other media outlets, including one from DailyKos, also heard the phrase yelled out multiple times during Trump's speech.


For the conservative-leaning readers who read this blog, audio of that phrase being yelled out was clearly caught on tape and posted on Youtube, click here and give it a listen if you suspect some kind of progressive-leftist media trickery. 

Many people on both sides of the political fence in this country have been wondering when the novelty of Donald Trump's toxic blend of reality TV showmanship, racist immigrant bashing and rambling substance-free speech is finally going to wear out - fortunately there are signs that the curtain is being pulled back to reveal just what the little man behind the control panel pulling the levers is really all about.     

How Trump's immigration policy would hurt the U.S. economy

Like the fact the fact that Trump's ludicrous proposal to round up and deport every illegal immigrant in the U.S. would come with an astronomical price tag and actually cost the economy $1.2 trillion in tax revenue and consumer spending.

George Stephanopoulos made media headlines today when he exposed the vacant reactionary rhetoric behind Trump's delusional anti-immigration policies during a live interview on ABC's "This Week" earlier this morning.

When repeatedly pressed for specifics, Trump couldn't explain how the estimated $400 to $600 billion needed to construct a wall thousands of miles across the southern border of the U.S. and arresting, processing and deporting millions of immigrants and their families would be paid for by American tax payers.

Trump's vague assurances that his magical "deal making" abilities will somehow miraculously solve any problems are starting to come off like some old carny huckster trying to peddle a miracle cure-all potion in a bottle.

It may earn him cheers from the conservative caucus voters in sparsely populated red states like Iowa in the short-run, but when held up to the scrutiny of facts and truth; it's exposed for what it is - total B.S. intended to distract voters from the real Republican agenda designed by the secretive conservative billionaire rainmakers like the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

That agenda ain't new either.

Another GOP legislator brought to you by ALEC

Remember when former Florida Republican state legislator Rachel Burgin (pictured left) introduced a resolution back in fall of 2011 calling on the federal government to reduce corporate taxes but forgot to delete the ALEC mission statement at the top of the document she copied word for word from the ALEC Website?

As Alex Seitz-Wald reported on ThinkProgress.org in 2012: 
 "As the government transparency group Common Cause reports, “Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph.” Apparently no one noticed until this week. While it’s no secret by now that conservative lawmakers in state capitals everywhere have used ALEC’s legislation to tear down environmental and labor regulations, curb voting rights, and coordinate a business-friendly agenda nationwide, it’s rare to see it on display so clearly."

Rachel must've skipped ALEC's "Substituting ALEC's Model Legislation For Your Own 101"
class.

In more recent days, the leading GOP candidates are further fracturing their divided party and alienating the Latino voter base they need to win the White House in 2016 by spending their time arguing about the right to use the inherently racist term "Anchor Baby" to describe the children of immigrants born in the U.S. as they trip over each other trying to "out-Trump" one another.

Bobby Jindal's mother was three months pregnant with him when his parents came to this country from India, so he's got no business calling anyone an 'Anchor Baby'.

Don't get me wrong, it's important for both mainstream and more independent media to call people like Trump out for exactly who they are, but my sense is that Trump has already been given huge amounts of free national media exposure when it's already common knowledge that his campaign, political platform and his candidacy are nothing more than a self-serving platform intended to increase his own brand.

Civilians searching rubble after Saudi air strikes in the Yemen capital of Sanaa

Sadly, with so much of our mainstream American media focus given over to the meaningless extremist conservative rantings and concocted policy debates of the leading Republican presidential candidates, it's unfortunate that far more important and substantive humanitarian issues are being pushed to the proverbial back burner.

Like the growing humanitarian crisis going on in Yemen right now.

The same Republican candidates who seized on intentionally-edited "sting" videos of Planned Parenthood employees discussing the costs of fetal tissue samples to pontificate on the sanctity of unborn fetuses (the same candidates calling for ACTUAL babies of immigrants to be deported...) seem remarkably silent on how they might address the children who actually are being killed as a result of a combination of months of relentless air strikes by the Saudi air force, and the disease, infection and hunger caused by Saudi blockades of Yemeni coastal ports that are preventing much-needed fuel, medical supplies and food from reaching the Yemeni people.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend you take some time to read Matthieu Aikin's gripping piece in Rolling Stone entitled, 'Yemen's Hidden War'.  

Aikin hired smugglers to get into Yemen where he spoke with the Shiite Houthi rebels who, back in March, seized control of this country of 27 million people located just below Saudi Arabia on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

He also toured cities and villages across the war-torn landscape of Yemen with locals and representatives from Doctors Without Borders; virtually the only humanitarian aid group left on the ground in Yemen to deal with the estimated 1.25 million civilians displaced as a result of the escalating war.

Over 3,700 Yemenis have been killed since this civil conflict with regional implications began; including for example, 19 civilians who were sitting in their vehicles in line to get desperately needed gasoline at a gas station in the city of Sadaa when a Saudi plane bombed the station, incinerating the people in their vehicles.

Results of civilian air strikes in village of Sabr [Photo - Reuters]

Or the village of Sabr located about 30 minutes outside Sadaa where a Saudi air strike on June 3rd destroyed eight houses and killed 51 civilians; 36 of them children - as Aikin reported, there were no actual Houthi rebels in the village.

To put those 3,700 deaths in perspective an estimated 2,996 people (including 19 hijackers) were killed in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

 Just think about the U.S. response to those deaths from 911.

After years of American involvement in the costly ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan it's understandable that U.S. citizens have grown weary of American involvement in the seemingly endless conflict gripping the middle east.

But as Aikin's Rolling Stone article illustrates, the complexities of the civil war crisis in Yemen are staggering; and also a direct result of the destabilization of power that took place in the mid-east region when the 2nd Bush administration decided to invade Iraq.

Surely if the mainstream American media was devoting even a fraction of the attention being given to a divisive self-serving charlatan like Donald Trump to the crisis in Yemen, it might help to push for wider demands to an end to Saudi air strikes on civilian targets, UN intervention to prevent a humanitarian crisis and the channeling of more charitable aid from Americans.

Americans who would be moved to give if they were made more aware of what's actually happening in what Aikin calls the "Hidden War".

For the time being, mainstream American media seems more interested in the endless cycle of toxic soundbites from a field of Republican presidential candidates who don't seem to be talking about the substantive difficult-to-solve issues affecting most Americans.

Typified by Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal cutting off state Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood clinics even though those clinics in Louisiana don't actually provide any abortion services to women.

An essentially meaningless gesture justified by a video that was recorded under false pretensions and intentionally edited to misrepresent what Planned Parenthood actually does that will simply make it harder for impoverished women in Louisiana to access basic health services like cancer screenings.

Or, to quote Shakespeare, "Sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Bob McDonnell Got Some Gifts, Eee-Eye-Eee-Eye Ohhhh

Bob McDonnell & wife Maureen; happier times (AP)

Former Virginia Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen had good reason to smile as they danced at his inauguration ball in Richmond back on the night of January 16, 2010 (pictured left).

They were riding the crest of a political wave that swept 29 Republican governors into office; including NJ Governor Chris Christie three days later on January 19th and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on November 3rd.

Democrats were humbled in the 2010 mid-term elections that saw the GOP capture 63 seats in the US House of Representatives to recapture the majority and also boost their Senate minority numbers by 6 as well; they captured 680 seats in state legislatures around the nation creating a number of "Super Majorities".

But as we know, a lot can happen in four years.

McDonnell and his wife appeared in Federal Court earlier today to face 14 counts of obstructing Federal investigators, conspiracy and fraud. The charges stem from at least $140,805 worth of gifts they received from Jonnie Williams, the wealthy CEO of a nutritional supplement company called Star Scientific.

This afternoon McDonnell was adamant about he and his wife's innocence: “We did not violate the law, and I will use every available resource and advocate I have for as long as it takes to fight these false allegations, and to prevail against this unjust overreach of the federal government.”

The embattled ex-Gov trying to curry sympathy with the right by characterizing the charges as some kind of infringement by the Federal Government is a pretty desperate ploy.

Frankly he's got some cojones accusing the Federal Government of "overreach" considering the gifts he and the former-First Lady of Virginia received from their pal Jonnie; including golf bags, golf shoes, an engraved Rolex watch, designer dresses, earrings, wallets, two iPhones, $15,000 worth of catering for the McDonnell's daughter's wedding and free trips on Williams' private plane.

The jaw-dropping list of goodies was summarized in a stunning document made public in the 45-page indictment - click here to take a look at the list of gifts for yourself. You think that's bad?

The Washington Post reports the McDonnells also had the gall to bill the state of Virginia for personal items like nasal spray, sunscreen and dog vitamins too. And don't think their buddy 'Ole Jonnie was in some kind of perpetual gift-giving mood for no reason either.

An excellent article on the Politico Website today by Alexander Burns and Elizabeth Titus details several specific instances when McDonnell used his political influence and the power of his office to do favors for Star Scientific immediately after some kind of lavish gift from Jonnie was received.

And so yet another once high-flying GOP governor once mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2016 falls under the cloud of scandal; even though McDonnell's gift grab pales in comparison to Bridge-Gate.

Speaking of which, even as Christie was sworn into office today and basically ignored the growing scandal surrounding his massive abuse of power during his speech, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer  isn't backing off an inch on her charges that Christie's Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief funds for Hoboken if Zimmer didn't back a massive redevelopment project on a three-acre site proposed by The Rockefeller Group.

Who did the Rockefeller Group hire as it's lobbyist? According to the NY Daily News, none other than former Christie cabinet officer Lori Grifa. The Daily News article also points out that The Rockefeller Group's law firm, Wolff & Samson is the law firm of (drum roll please) Port Authority Chairman David Samson - a Christie appointee.

Kim Guadagno was probably pushing the righteous indignation act just a little bit too hard the other day when she called Zimmer's accusation of political retribution "completely false" and "illogical".   

According to WNYC reporter Sarah Gonzalez, Zimmer fired back with a copy of a letter dated April 23, 2013 written to Governor Christie in which she objects to Sandy aid being contingent on her supporting the Rockefeller Group development proposal to counter charges from the Christie camp that Zimmer's charges against the Governor appeared out of nowhere.    

Seriously what is it with these Republican governors anyway? It's like the political power buzz of the 2010 elections and Tea Party fervor never wore off and they saw it as some kind of rubber-stamp edict from the voters who elected them to do whatever they pleased; even if it was ethically and legally reprehensible. 

How about Republican North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory? This state might as well have the flag of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) flying over the state capital, or they should just send Republican thugs out across the state with bats to beat the poor, working class and middle class citizens of the state into submission.

Journalist Bill Moyers has been doing some excellent coverage of ALEC on his television show and his Website. He reports that The Raleigh News & Observer reporter John Frank claims that 54 out of 170 state legislators in North Carolina are members of ALEC; including the Speaker of the House Thom Tillis; ALEC's 2011 "legislator of the year".

Governor McCrory's new legislative lobbyist? State ALEC chairman Fred Steen; himself a former state legislator.
 
No wonder North Carolina has passed some of the most draconian voter suppression laws since the Jim Crow Era and actually voted against the state accepting additional funds from the Federal Government to extend available unemployment benefits for those in the Tar Heel state still struggling to find work.

Not only are Republicans busy suppressing as many votes as they can, Think Progress.org reports that Governor McCrory is catching heat for leaving North Carolina's 12th Congressional district without an elected US Congressman representing them for more than a year.

According to the article by Josh Israel, Democratic Rep Mell Watt resigned his office on the first day of the legislative year to become director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Governor McCrory won't hold a special election until November 4th - meaning a Congressional district that stretches from Charlotte to Greensboro with over a million citizens, the majority of whom are minorities, will have no representative in the US Congress for 12 months.

Kudos to MSNBC's Chuck Todd for confronting McCrory last Wednesday on The Daily Rundown.

But confrontation isn't enough. The mainstream media, average citizens and the Justice Department have to come together to identify, address and stop this kind of contemptuous dismissal and denial of the Constitutional rights of citizens.

Par for the course for this Republican party - and a blight on the basic ideals of liberty, freedom and citizenship for our nation. Republicans just can't sell their extremist policies and rigid ideology to mainstream Americans, so they're determined to cut off access to the political process (and health care) for millions of Americans who don't vote Republican.

But have faith. In "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - And Divided a Country" a new unauthorized biography on Fox News chief Roger Ailes, one of the chief architects of this divisive form of political warfare, author Gabriel Sherman asserts that the Republican party has shackled itself to a rapidly shrinking base that's aging fast - and unable to connect with the more diverse, politically progressive, younger and more technologically savvy voter base that is becoming the majority in this nation.

Smarter more moderate Republicans like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Senator Lyndsey Graham and Arizona Senator John McCain know the numbers don't lie; but they sit quietly on the side of the room while the Tea Partiers dance. If the GOP couldn't pull it off with Mitt Romney in 2012 against Obama; it's probably not going to happen in 2016 either.

Not while the GOP is ruled by misogynists, zealots and reactionaries; and governed by an archaic  intolerance that's indigestible for the majority of Americans. 

For Republicans, the states have become the last bastion of this vicious brand of Conservatism.

But as we've seen by the actions of Republican Governors like Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Pat McCrory, they're starting to loose their grip on the pulse of the states as well as they increasingly operate not in the actual political arena - but in an abstract ideological vacuum where reason, dissent or debate are not tolerated.

By their own actions they have become the authors of their own epitaph; maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

The Supremes Keep Chipping Away

For some Americans, today's news about the Supreme Court ruling affirming the state of Michigan's right to ban the consideration of race as a factor in college admissions has unsettling consequences.

But for others, including no small number of black conservative Americans, the decision is a welcome one.

Regardless of your stance on the issue you can bet it's all high-fives and celebratory smiles over at the offices of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The broader efforts by ALEC to conceive of, draft and disseminate "sample" legislation models for state legislators in Republican-controlled states as a means to specifically target minority access to higher education, the voting process and even health care raises a lot of questions.

Part of what troubles me about today's ruling is that the Supreme Court has essentially ruled that individual states have a right to vote on public ballot initiatives that undermine Federal law shaped by previous Supreme Court decisions; in the case of today's ruling Federal remedies intended to ensure some sense of fairness in determining guidelines on access to higher education.

And let's be honest here, are the state ballot initiatives like Michigan's Proposal 2 really intended because it's been proven that American students now have equal access to higher education regardless of religion, race, nationality or sexual orientation and that there are no more discriminatory practices in college admissions?

Or is the Michigan college admissions mandate a reflection of a much deeper shift in the tone of this country fueled by a palpable undercurrent of resentment towards the presence of a two-term African American president in the White House?

Is the ruling on the mandate timed to polarize voters ahead of the upcoming mid-term elections?

And what's going to be the impact on minority high school students in Michigan who want to go to college but come from under-served school districts or less affluent surroundings?

Statistics from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) analysis of college enrollment rates for African-Americans and Hispanics after the passing of California Proposition 209 in 1996 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) offers some insight.

According to Wikipedia CCRI "amended the state constitution to prohibit state government institutions from considering race, sex and ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting and public education."

IPEDS data demonstrates that after Prop 209 was passed in 1996, enrollment for African-American students in California's 4-year public college system (CSU) declined by 15% and there was a 10.3% decline for Hispanic students. The enrollment drops were even more pronounced for California's university (UC) system; there was a 21.3% decline for African-American students and a 12.7% decline for Hispanics after Prop 209 was passed.

Some experts argued Prop 209 removed many students who were unprepared for college and hence was better overall for minority graduation rates. But I'm not an expert on affirmative action and the merits of CCRI can't simply be reduced to stats on minority enrollment at public colleges and universities.

Proposal 2 was passed seven years ago in Michigan and as the New York Times reports today, there has been a 25% decrease in the overall minority population of college students in the state even while the number of minorities who've reached the age to attend college is up.

But what's this going to mean to the people of Michigan? What does this mean for minority students who may grow up in economically disadvantaged circumstances and attend a sub-par public school but still want the chance to attend college?

The Supreme Court really ducked that question today. Justice Kennedy was of course eloquent in his reasoning in writing the majority opinion for the Court in which he stated (in part) the decision was not about the merits of affirmative action in college admissions, but rather that the Court did not have a Constitutional right to over-ride the will of an individual state mandate voted upon by the citizens of Michigan.

By doing so the Court gave a green light to ALEC and other deep-pocketed conservative groups like Americans For Prosperity and True The Vote to use the vast amounts of untraceable money they collect from groups and people who can remain totally anonymous to initiate more ballot initiatives sponsored by Republican state legislators - then in turn saturate local media with misleading commercials to encourage citizens to support these frequently disguised initiatives; thanks in no small part to the Supreme Court's rulings in the Citizens United case and of course much more recently McCutcheon v. FEC (Federal Election Commission).

In short, six members of the Supreme Court punked out on this one. They avoided their responsibility to weigh in on the Constitutional merits of affirmative action in the 21st century.

Like Pontious Pilate the 6-2 majority (Justice Kagan recused herself from the case) washed their hands of an important decision that was in their purview to make - cases like this are the very reasons we have a Supreme Court judiciary.

Instead, the Roberts Court left a matter of critical importance (equal access to higher education) up to the masses of Michigan's populace, who in the complex area of affirmative action, are arguably less informed by reason and an in-debt understanding of the issue, than they are ignited by passion generated around the perception of the issue.

A perception more often shaped by inflammatory rhetoric and misunderstanding than by qualified academics, balanced statistical analysis or history. Only time will tell how the decision to uphold Proposal 2 and its affect on access to higher education will impact the lives of people in Michigan; but in the meantime what happens to those students outside the majority who live in a single parent household in Detroit or Flint and dream of going to college?

On that the Supreme Court majority is far more ambiguous than they are about their own personal political leanings and how it affects the way they interpret the Constitution.

Are Republican State Legislators Taking Marching Orders from A.L.E.C?

If Republicans using their new-found majority-status in state legislatures around the US to broaden efforts to suppress voter rights, strip unions of their collective bargaining rights and cast public sector workers as the villains of economic recovery concerns you, then you should become familiar with the American Legislative Exchange Council.

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor William Cronon offers searing insight into the shadowy activist group and their not-so-behind-the-scenes influence on the recent string of conservative legislative efforts around the country in a must-read blog posted on March 15th.

The A.L.E.C was co-founded in 1973 by conservative icon Paul Weyrich, (pictured above) who used money from the Coors family to launch the Heritage Foundation and coined the term "Moral Majority". Though he died in 2008, his legacy is still being felt around the nation.

Case in point: 2010 efforts by Arizona Republican lawmaker's to pass a series of draconian anti-immigration laws thrust Governor Jan Brewer and the state's conservative legislature into the media spotlight last year. Based on the state's legacy, as in former Governor Evan Mecham canceling Arizona's observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a Federal holiday in 1986 (famously telling critics, "King doesn't deserve a holiday.") like many Americans, I simply assumed the efforts to marginalize illegal immigrants were driven by Arizona's conservative voter base.

According to Cronon''s blog however, the 2010 anti-immigration laws were actually drafted by the A.L.E.C. Which is funny given Republican's tendency to announce their initiatives as "the will of the American people." It's not.

In the March 18th New York Times, Richard A. Oppel reports that a consortium of Arizona business leaders led opposition resulting in five anti-immigration measures in the Arizona State Senate being rejected in the wake of the nationwide backlash against Arizona (thanks to Governor Brewer and State Senate President Russel Pearce) severely impacting revenue from tourism, state contracts and tax revenue.

Seeking to limit the power and scope of the Federal government is one thing; shifting that power to state legislatures who offer up laws drafted by a right-wing organization that envisions America as an Evangelist theocracy is something else entirely.

Kris Kobach's Ministry of Voter Suppression

Voter suppression czar, Republican Kris Kobach

In the cruel pantheon of the modern American Republican Party ideology, aside from a fetish-like obsession with lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest 1%, no idol is more worshiped than the suppression of the right to vote.

Content to abandon their supposed allegiance to Constitutional principles, many Republicans have now gone full tilt and embarked upon a crusade to aggressively block access to the ballot box on a nationwide scale.

No that long ago these reprehensible voter suppression tactics were generally engineered from the state level in those states with majority-Republican state legislatures and Republican governors mostly working off of scripts, media talking points and model legislation courtesy of our old friends at the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC).

Check out the Center for Media and Democracy's 'ALEC Exposed' Website to learn more about how ALEC helped Republican politicians lay the groundwork for massive voter suppression by enacting ludicrous, overly-burdensome voter ID laws in at least 37 different states following the 2010 mid-term elections.

To most Americans it's an affront to the basic principles of democracy, but as you've likely heard over the past week couple weeks, Republican efforts to target the voter rolls of the entire nation are now being orchestrated from the federal level - directly from the Trump administration.

As Madeline Conway reported yesterday in an article for Politico.com, written requests from the Presidential Advisory Commission On Election Integrity for individual states to provide detailed information including voter's full names, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, party affiliation, voting history since 2006, and information on felonies and military status, were met with widespread outrage - and not just from traditionally blue states either.

Mississippi Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann

After reviewing a copy of the letter sent from Trump' widely-panned commission, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said his response would be:

"They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." 

And he's a Republican from Mississippi.

As Chris Cillizza reported for CNN yesterday, at least 45 states have already refused to provide at least some of the information to the commission.


Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe got to the heart of the matter when he said in a statement:

"This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November. At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump's alternative election facts, and at worse is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression."
 
The blowback for the Trump administration's "voter integrity commission" and it's chief architect Kris Kobach has been swift, but what's really bizarre are their attempts to justify and defend it.

Despite serious pushback from dozens of secretaries of state and governors, Kobach simplistically dismissed the media's efforts to question the commission's motives "fake news."

And predictably, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that anyone who doesn't comply has something to hide.

What else can you expect from Republicans who know they can no longer win the mainstream American vote based on the issues?

Whether it's gerrymandering of political districts or voter suppression, they must cheat to win.

What real voter fraud looks like courtesy of Crosscheck

What's particularly troubling is that if you take some time and go back and read Greg Palast's meticulously-researched article "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters" published in Rolling Stone back in August of 2016 in the lead-up to the November elections, Trump's outrageous information request is really nothing more than a souped-up version of Kris Kobach's widely-condemned voter data collection system known as Crosscheck.

As Palast noted, based on the algorithms and search parameters within the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program as it's formally known, the program "disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters" by incorrectly listing certain ethnic-sounding last names as inherently suspicious.

Click the link above and read some of the flagrant ways in which thousands of mostly-minority Americans were improperly and unfairly "flagged" by Crosscheck and denied the right to vote.

It's truly Third-World authoritarian stuff, and this big data request by Trump's "commission" (ostensibly headed up by Kobach) is nothing more than an attempt to create a "Crosscheck 2.0" in time for the 2018 mid-term elections.

If you missed it, check out Ari Berman's profile of Kobach that was published in the New York Times Magazine back on June 13th.

Kobach is a genuinely dangerous individual, heading up a hyper-partisan "voter integrity commission made up of a cast right-wing zealots summoned up from the putrid depths of authoritarian bigotry.

Voter suppression zealot Hans Von Spakovsky

No member of Trump's "commission" embodies that more than the widely-reviled Hans Von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission who oversaw the division of the Justice Department that monitored voting rights during the Bush administration.

If there is a Creature From the Black Lagoon of Republican voter suppression, it's this guy.

His mission in life is clear:

Use arcane misinterpretation of data, racist and xenophobic fear-mongering and the flagrant manipulation of existing federal and state laws to prevent as many people of color, the elderly, students, legal immigrants and people with foreign-sounding names from participating in the voting process as possible.

If you're not familiar with this guy, take some time to read Leon Neyfakh's recent feature on Von Spakovsky published on Slate.com titled, "The Dark Prince Of Voter Fraud Alarmism Is Joining the Trump Administration".

Kris Kobach may be the evangelist of Republican voter suppression in America but Hans Von Spakovsky is arguably the high priest - a man who has literally spent years trying to make it harder for non-white people to vote in the name of mass voter fraud that simply does not exist.

Trump is far too self-obsessed, uninformed and shallow to realize the degree to which Kobach and Von Spakovsky are true believers in the Ministry of Voter Suppression.

He embraces them and their so-called commission only because he thinks it will help legitimize his continuing delusional fiction that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton because 3 to 5 million illegal aliens cast votes in the 2016 presidential election.

Make no mistake, men like Kobach and Von Spakovsky need Trump too in order to lend an air of credibility to the dark and arcane arts they practice - Trump's concocted unproven lies about fictional "busloads" of illegal aliens costing him the popular vote in 2016 are right up their alley.

And their "presence" in the White House under the guise of a presidential advisory board is indeed a boon to the likes of Trump policy advisors like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller - and proof positive that a cabal of white nationalists eager to create a 21st century version of Apartheid in America now runs the presidency.

Inside Professor Brownback's Laboratory & The Vilification of the Working Poor In America

Ready? Cut! Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

There are arguably some pretty crazy Republican governors in these United States, but you really have to admire Governor Sam Brownback's stubborn determination to turn the state of Kansas into an idealistic conservative Utopia; at any cost.

Earlier today he signed into law some of the most restrictive laws in the nation that severely limit how Kansas welfare recipients can spend their money.

That's right, the same governor who's ranted about "big government" and the intrusion of government authority has used the legislative power of the state government to mandate draconian restrictions on how Kansas families on welfare can spend their money.

According to an article on Aljazeera.com, the list of no-no's includes things like concerts, tattoo artists, psychics (yes psychics), cruise ships or movies.
 
But interestingly, as NPR reported today, the new Republican restrictions do NOT apply to firearms.

So Kansas welfare recipients can't use their money to take their kid to see a movie, but they can buy ammo; how Republican is THAT?

But wait, there's more. Remarkably, the restrictions also limit each ATM transaction of the debit card Kansas welfare recipients are issued to a mere $25. As the Aljazeera.com article notes, that essentially imposes a tax on welfare recipients given that most ATM's charge withdrawal fees, don't issue bills in $5 denominations and the majority of poor or lower middle-class Kansas welfare recipients often don't have access to normal banking services.

As an article posted on ThinkProgress.org reported, "Meanwhile, during debate over the bill state Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau (D) pointed out that many recipients need to withdraw hundreds of dollars some days in order to be able to pay rent." 

No one is going to argue that transitioning Americans off welfare in ways that will allow them to be self-sufficient is a bad thing, but the extreme nature of the Kansas welfare restrictions come off as  vindictive, petty and chiefly motivated by a desire to appease the fringe element that now holds the strings of the Republican party; thanks to ALEC, similar restrictions have been passed in 20 other states.

Kansas Action for Children CEO Shannon Cotsoradis

The Associated Press quoted Shannon Cotsoradis, president and CEO of the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children as saying of the new Kansas laws severely restricting how welfare recipients spend their money: "

It really seems to make a statement about how we feel about the poor."

These kinds of restrictions on how welfare recipients spend their money are disturbing on multiple levels.


They reinforce distorted perceptions of the working poor (most American adults on welfare work) as 2nd class citizens who need to be told how to spend their money.

But perhaps more disturbing is that these restrictions are essentially a retreaded version of the vilification of the poor used by the Reagan administration when he and his economic advisers ranted against "Welfare Queens" back in the 1980's, regurgitating simplistic stereotypes of poor African-American, Hispanic and whites and mocking populations of poorly-educated urban and rural residents geographically locked into impoverished neighborhoods through economic and racial discrimination and stuck in cycles of poverty.

When it comes down to it, is there a difference between an impoverished family that lives in North Philadelphia, rural Kentucky or on a reservation? These restrictions are economically discriminatory as much as they are racial or political; or based on other ethnic attributes.

Brownback has never hidden how he feels about the wealthiest and the poorest in the state of Kansas.

He made national headlines over the past couple years after his bold initiative to take advantage of his gubernatorial powers and an eager GOP-majority state legislature to use the state of Kansas as a working "laboratory" for executing fringe conservative ideas.

Aided by a former key Reagan administration economic adviser and representatives from groups including Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and yes, the Koch brothers, Brownback enacted a series of sweeping tax cuts affecting top earners and businesses.

How sweeping? Like a mad swordsman he slashed regulations and all but eliminated taxes on businesses in the state of Kansas while gifting wealthy Kansas citizens with unprecedented cuts in income taxes.

Conservatives drooled and fawned.

Here at last was a chance to validate the long-disproved "Trickle Down" economic theory long espoused by wishful Republicans as if it were some kind of magical elixir that could jump start the American economy and set the nation on a path to prosperity instead of the discredited political-economic philosophy credible economists have shown it to be. 

We've all heard the party line: slash taxes for the wealthy and business and they will pump that money back into the economy creating jobs and prosperity for all. But Brownback's "experiment" was a colossal failure that drained state revenue, stalled economic growth in Kansas to anemic levels, killed job growth and sent the state economy straight into the red.

Read op-ed writer Yael Abouhalkah's piece published in The Kansas City Star back on February 2nd of this year if you want to get a true picture of how Brownback's tax cuts have destroyed the Kansas economy.

Abouhalkkah quotes figures right from the Kansas Department of Revenue showing that in the first two years of Brownback's tax cuts starting in 2013, revenues from state income tax dropped by a staggering $713 million.

The remarkable thing is even after the state began slashing spending on essentials like public education, roads and public pensions in order to try and make up the difference - the people of Kansas re-elected Brownback to another term during the fall 2014 elections. 

If I were a political cartoonist, I'd sketch Brownback as a modern day Don Quixote sitting astride an elephant.

His checklist of destructive conservative policy initiatives is so bizarre and brazen, I'd bet a five-spot that he's eager to jump into that growing pool of "potential GOP presidential candidates" which seems to get stranger by the minute.

Take for example, the Republican party's "answer" to Hillary Clinton, "potential" presidential candidate Carly Fiorina - who's been dipping her toes into the presidential pool as well.

GOP presidential hopeful (?) Carly Fiorina

And yes, that's the same Carly Fiorina (pictured left) who spent over $22 million in a failed bid to unseat Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer back in 2010.

Earlier this evening Sarah Farris posted an interesting piece on TheHill.com.

According to the article, Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO, was quoted as saying that "Conservatives are 'winning' on abortion" at an event hosted by the conservative pro-life group known as the Susan B. Anthony List.

By any measure, that's a pretty astounding statement.

If stripping access to healthcare and cutting off access to breast cancer and other types of screening for millions of low-income women and making it harder for abortion clinics to operate through arcane laws enacted by Republican state legislators is what Fiorina meant by Republicans "winning" on abortion, then yeah, I guess she's "right."

But it's says a lot about today's GOP that Fiorina, who once led an enormous high tech company with thousands of employees, is now proudly trumpeting the trampling of women's rights as a credential for being president of a nation of over 300 million - more than half of whom are women.  

Maybe it's not surprising though. Fiorina earned a reputation at HP for being a "big picture" ideas-oriented executive who was adverse to compromise and reluctant to delegate authority; the latter two arguably being fairly important qualities of anyone who expects to be the chief executive in Washington, DC.   

For a couple of Republicans with little mainstream appeal who have their respective eyes on the GOP presidential nomination, Fiorina and Brownback are making an awful lot of conservative noise.

But to quote Shakespeare, "Sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Point of No Return? Republican's Environmental Agenda

EPA nominee Scott Pruitt addresses the 2014
Annual Meeting of ALEC (Yes, that ALEC)

Being somewhat superstitious by nature, it comes as something of a relief to have Friday the 13th off - even if it does mean I have to work on a chilly Saturday when we're expecting snow.

Tonight it's supposed to dip back down into the upper 20's here in central New Jersey, a far cry from yesterday when it got up into the lower 60's.

Last night I stepped out for a few beers at my local, as I stood outside in a short sleeve shirt admiring the exceptional brightness of January's full moon (also known as the Wolf Moon), I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that this is the last full moon under a rational president with actual experience as an elected leader.

It was, to say the least, a rather sobering thought that sent a chill down my spine.

Experiencing mild spring-like weather in the middle of January reminded me that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump's new pick to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, is on record as denying the scientific consensus that human activity affects global warming.

Pruitt, a former college baseball player whose professional resume includes stints as a lawyer, general managing partner of a AAA baseball team, state politician and attorney general, is not a scientist - so maybe he should read Jeff Goodell's interview with James Hansen, the former head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

As Goodell notes in his RS article, Hansen, one of the world's leading experts on climate change and the first scientist to present hard data that human activity related to the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the Earth's atmosphere, warns that mankind is dangerously close to a 'point of no return' unless massive systematic changes to how we govern ourselves, consume energy and appropriate resources can be enacted.

As Hansen observes, "We're close to that point of no return, Whether we've passed it or not, I don't know...We've passed it in the sense that some climate impacts are going to occur, but we have not necessarily hit the disastrous level, which would knock down global economies and leave us with an ungovernable planet. But we are close."

Seriously, what part of "ungovernable planet" do Republicans who deny climate change not get?

Chart tracking temperature changes as recorded by four
international science agencies including NASA & NOAA

According to studies of climate change research conducted by NASA (folks who actually ARE rocket scientists), "Multiple studies conducted in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97% or more of actively publishing scientists agree: Climate warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities." 


But Scott Pruitt disagrees with stuff like scientific research based on facts.

Pruitt was one of a group of Republican attorneys general from other states with Republican governors and majority-Republican legislatures that formed secretive alliances with some of the nation's biggest energy companies to challenge federal regulations that protect water, soil and air from pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and production.

As Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton reported in a New York Times article back in December, Pruitt is on record as saying, "Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connections to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged - in classrooms, public forums and the halls of Congress."

Actually, it's not a debate, but that's the mindset that this lackey of the fossil fuel industry and member of the American Legislative Exchange Council will bring to the EPA - nominated by a man who thinks climate change is a "hoax."

Clinton email Obsession? GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz

But it's not just the federal regulatory agencies that will be impacted by radical conservative ideology.

You can be certain that the Republican-majority 115th Congress is already at work chipping away at laws that protect environmental safety, or making it more difficult to hold those who commit environmental crimes accountable.

Increases in subsidies to oil and natural gas companies are almost a given.

Remember the crusading Republican Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee?

Same guy who did everything he could to theatrically draw out a Congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a personal server to store emails during the presidential campaign season?

Despite multiple Congressional investigations of the same issue for over a year, in addition to a lengthy and highly public FBI investigation that concluded that nothing illegal had taken place, Chaffetz recently announced that he will continue his dogged pursuit to further investigate Clinton's emails.

As CNN reported, Chaffetz said, "Just because there was a political election doesn't mean it goes away." 

But what's interesting about Chaffetz's apparently unquenchable thirst for the truth is that it magically (and for conservatives) conveniently seems to coincide with the broader partisan political needs of the Republican Party.

Republicans stopped investigating this?

Oh and speaking of thirst...

Just one day after the Trump transition team cancelled a planned December 15th press conference where the new PEOTUS would lay out a plan to sever his ties from his hundreds of businesses amid public outrage and media frenzy over his potential unprecedented conflicts of interest, Chaffetz quietly and quickly decided to end a Congressional investigation into the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.


Which of course was caused by Republican Governor Rick Snyder and other state Republican politicians and officials who stripped Flint citizens of the right to govern themselves by appointing an "emergency manager" for the city who ordered Flint's fresh water supply to be switched to the polluted Flint River.

Why?

As part of an effort to slash state spending on government in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy; fiscally irresponsible efforts which have proved disastrous in Kansas and were designed by none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Remember, the Flint water crisis resulted in people dying, and exposed thousands of Flint residents to toxic levels of lead poisoning - and it's still going on.

Republicans on Capitol Hill famously fought efforts to provide $600 million in federal funding to fix Flint's toxic water supply system before eventually approving $170 million in relief.

Flint residents still get drinking water like this

So Jason Chaffetz ended a House Oversight investigation into an environmental crime of monumental proportions that affected 100,000 people and is still happening now as you read these words.

But he's continuing a bogus partisan witch hunt over how Hillary Clinton stored her private email correspondence when she was Secretary of State over three years ago?

That, and the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA pretty much sums up the Republican stance on the environment in a nutshell and as hard as it is to imagine, James Hansen could be right.

The inauguration of Trump a week from today along with the clown car of kleptocrat cabinet picks he's bringing with him, coupled with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, plus a conservative-leaning Supreme Court doesn't bode well for our environment.

Should Trump follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and causes other large-scale fossil fuel burners like China and India to pull out, it could very well mark the beginning of the 'Point of no return' for our environment and the climate.

All in the name of narrow-minded political ideology and short-term financial profits for a small fraction of the Earth's population.

"Making America Great Again?" Not so much.

Inside the Republican Playbook

Alec Baldwin as Trump being visited by the ghost
of Michael Flynn on Saturday Night Live

Kudos to the staff writers of Saturday Night Live, last night's episode hosted by the talented Irish actress Saoirse (pronounced like 'sayer-shia') Ronan was pretty hysterical.

Ronan was really impressive (and earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination) in the critically-acclaimed and genuinely touching 2015 romantic drama Brooklyn, but she displayed a genuine natural talent and flair for comedy and improv on SNL that was impressive - not all actors have that gear.

The opening skit with Alec Baldwin returning to skewer Trump in a twisted political take on "A Christmas Carol", in which 45 is visited by a chained Michael Flynn as "the Ghost of Witness Flips" as well as former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton, must have had the real Trump seething.

The faux girl-group video performance of "Welcome to Hell" was a pretty brilliant use of biting social satire to highlight the shocking absurdities and prevalence of sexual misconduct in American society.

It certainly didn't hurt that U2 played two live songs either.

Like the millions of other people who tuned into SNL last night, I really needed a few good laughs for a change, and welcomed a light-hearted break from the mind-numbing cacophony of ethical corruption and devise politics that have become the hallmark of Republican politicians this week.

In Washington, Alabama and beyond.

Trump using a racist slur in front of members of
the Navajo Code Talkers in the White House

In what has by now become an intentional and calculated (albeit disturbing) media strategy by the White House, Trump once again made an overtly racist and inflammatory comment in an effort to shift media focus away from the growing fallout from the special counsel investigation as well as the absurdities of the Republican tax scam.

He decided to honor surviving members of the Navajo Code Talkers by setting up the podium in front of the portrait of the controversial 7th president of the United States, Andrew Jackson.

Don't think it was some kind of random coincidence that he used the occasion to (once again) derisively refer to Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" either.

An offensive racial slur that, according to a CBS News article lastTuesday, left families of the Navajo Code Talkers totally "dumbfounded" after Trump said it at a ceremony meant to honor Native American Marine Corps veterans .

Decorated heroes whose ability to use the Navajo language to send and receive indecipherable classified radio transmissions in combat were critical to American military victories against the Japanese Army in the Pacific during World War II.

Trump's use of the slur in front of the portrait of Jackson earned him widespread criticism.

An artistic rendering of the "Trail of Tears"

Remember when the unhinged, resident Republican fear-meister Rudy Giuliani described Trump's 2016 election victory as "One of the greatest victories for the people of American since Andrew Jackson." ?

In 'A People's History of the United States', historian Howard Zinn notes that, "Jackson was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history."

Jackson's decision to sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830 into law engineered the systematic ethnic cleansing of multiple Native American tribes from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River between 1830 and 1850.

A blight on the tapestry of American history commonly known as "The Trail of Tears" during which members of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee and Muscogee tribes were systematically removed from their lands and forcibly-marched hundreds of miles west in a brutal, mass forced-exodus that lead to the deaths of approximately 3,000 - 4,000 indigenous people along the way.

As in many examples of the displacement, enslavement or slaughter of indigenous peoples the real number will never be known.

But that portrait of Jackson was apparently a small but sketchy part of Republican efforts to ram through a "tax reform" bill which is essentially one of the largest transfers of wealth to the richest 1% and corporations in U.S. history.

One which will add a staggering $1.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years and eventually force serious cuts in bedrock social spending programs like Medicaid, it's hardly surprising Trump would try and use his own bigotry to shift media attention away from what Republican Senators are trying to do behind closed doors.

Good governance? Handwritten notes on a page of
the Republican tax bill

Trump, and the Republicans who hold legislative majorities in the House and Senate, are so desperate to produce some kind of measurable achievement (even one which will raise taxes on the poor and working and middle class), that they not only blocked Democratic Senator's requests to allow time for the nearly 500-page tax bill to actually be read and analyzed.

They're actually trying to hide what's in it from the American people.

The version Republicans brought to the floor late Friday night actually had hastily-scribbled and almost indecipherable handwritten notes scrawled on some of the pages concerning obscure provisions like modifications to s-corporations.

S-corps are just one of the sketchy ways the super-wealthy in America pay tax on their income at a rate far below the rate at which the average Joe or Jane pays tax on his or her job income.

As defined by Investopedia, S-corps "allow a corporation with 100 shareholders or less the benefit of incorporation while being taxed as a partnership. The (S) corporation can pass income directly to shareholders and avoid the double taxation that is inherent with the dividends of public companies."   

Like other experts, I sure can't decipher exactly what those notes (pictured above) mean, but you can bet some high paid lobbyist or corporate tax attorney wrote them to throw in a little something extra for America's struggling top earners.

Edgar Welch, the man who stormed Comet Ping
Pong in D.C. based on the fake Pizzagate story

So it's pretty clear that the timing of Trump's willingness to publicly use petty, divisive racist comments to stir up controversy is intended to keep members of the American public from focusing on the massive tax swindle Republicans are trying to pull off - as well as the special counsel investigation.

It's the reason he continually uses the words "fake news" over and over and over in order to sew distrust of fact and information among his supporters.

It's the same Russian counter-intelligence strategy that pro-Trump conservative organizations, big Republican donors and Russian operatives, who used technology and social media to turn a fake news story about Hillary Clinton being part of a pedophile ring that conducted satanic rituals in the basement of a family restaurant in Washington, D.C. called Comet Ping Pong, to stoke anti-Clinton sentiment to manipulate voters.

A bogus story re-tweeted millions of times by thousands of gullible Trump supporters including Michael Flynn, Jr. and comedian-actress Roseanne Barr - who Tweeted about it to her 400,000-plus followers on Twitter back in February.

If you get a chance, take some time to check out journalist Amanda Robb's in-depth analysis of the unfolding of the fake "Pizzagate" story, "Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal" published in the November 30th issue of Rolling Stone.

Inside the real Comet Ping Pong

As Robb notes, "The original Pizzagate Facebook post appeared on the evening of October 29th, 2016, a day after then-FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau would be reopening its investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state."

The story, which was stoked by kooky conspiracy theorists like Douglas Hagmann, Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince (the brother of secretary of education Betsy DeVos), and InfoWars host Alex Jones.

As Robb reported in her RS article, after Prince falsely accused the NYPD of investigating claims that the Clintons "went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein" during an interview on Breitbart Radio, an enraged Alex Jones seized on it as evidence and told his audience that "Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped" children.

Which would be funny if it hadn't prompted 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch to pack a loaded assault rifle and a handgun and drive from his home in North Carolina up to D.C. and walk into Comet Ping Pong to "self investigate" last December.

Fortunately there was no actual basement, no children being held prisoner and no one was hurt when he fired his gun - Welch was eventually taken into custody without incident - he was sentenced to four years in prison this past June.

And that's where he'll languish, a disturbed and gullible by-product of a fake internet conspiracy story that was a part of a massive international effort to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 elections, elect Trump president and undermine American's faith in democracy in the United States.

All with the help of members of the Trump campaign in violation of U.S. law.

Almost sounds like something out of an overly long Saturday Night Live skit, but it's straight out of the Republican playbook.

Pfizer's Irish Tax Dodge & 21st Century Conservative Ethics

Trump supporter grappling with a protester in VA (AP)

The headline-grabbing violence erupting between rival protesters at recent Donald Trump rallies serves as a harsh reminder that the current state of divisive American politics, much like the one-hour "Spring Forward" earlier this morning marking daylight savings time, is an extremely sharp double-edged sword that cuts in different ways.

For those like me who are definitely not "morning people", there's an immediate lingering sense of unfairness from having a precious 60 minutes of sleep snatched away.


But on the other hand there's that revitalizing feeling that comes from the increased light stretching into the early evenings, heralding summer's approach.

While the temperatures hovered in the low 60's today, the gray overcast skies over Hamilton, New Jersey and lack of sunlight or breeze combined to create a sense of stillness that reflects the mild sense of disorientation I felt waking up into the one-hour shift forward into daylight savings time.

It's not unlike the sense of disorientation that 21st century conservative ethics, ideology and politics have cast over the American landscape.

For example, a February 25th press release issued by the organization Americans For Tax Fairness detailed the efforts of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (maker of drugs like Viagra, Celebrex and Lipitor) to exploit gaping loopholes in the U.S. Tax Code by merging with a small pharmaceutical company based in Ireland called Allergan in a sketchy effort to avoid a staggering $35 billion in U.S. taxes by shifting it's base across the Atlantic to Ireland.

Please note that Americans For Tax Fairness is NOT to be confused with conservative anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform; the organization that created the notorious and fiscally irresponsible "No New Taxes" pledge that has been signed by hundreds of Republican politicians across the country.

Pfizer's move, a practice known as corporate inversion that enables American companies like Apple to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes, would shift it's taxable base to Ireland even though the global pharmaceutical giant would still be headquartered in New York.

As the executive director of Americans For Tax Fairness Frank Clemente observed in the AFTF press release:

"By dodging taxes while increasing prescription drug prices, Pfizer squeezes American families and communities from two sides at once. In the company's biggest insult to America yet, Pfizer's merger would allow it to go on enjoying all the benefits of being based here - everything from a publicly-educated workforce, to an excellent communications infrastructure, to a reliable patent system - without adequately paying to support them."

Pfizer certainly isn't the only U.S. company trying to use the avoidance of paying their fair share of taxes as a strategic move to increase profits.

But it's a reflection of the power lobbyists have to spend millions to influence the politicians who create these kinds of obscure tax loopholes for large corporations - the same politicians who view unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance programs, housing subsidies and even job training programs as "government waste".

Well over a 100,000 people have signed an online petition (you can too!) that will be delivered to the White House encouraging the President and Treasury Department to deny a massive pharmaceutical manufacturer like Pfizer the right to skip out on paying $35 billion in taxes by simply changing their address.

Tap water flows from tainted pipes in Flint, Michigan

Corporate tax inversion is just one troubling aspect of a Republican philosophy of further widening the wealth gap in this nation by shifting even more of the tax burden onto the middle-class and the working poor through the pursuit of destructive policies that place profits for corporations, big institutional investors, and wealthy individual investors over the collective interests of the nation and the average American.

The suppression of wage increases for average workers, or the reluctance of Republicans in Congress to authorize emergency funds for critical infrastructure repairs to the water system in Flint, Michigan are just two examples.

You can also see that divisive philosophy reflected in Republican efforts to manipulate energy policy in favor of fossil fuel producers by trying to suppress the ability of individual American home owners to have the right to choose to use solar power to save on energy costs.

Tim Dickinson's February 11th Rolling Stone article "The Dirty War On Solar Power"  chronicles the coordinated nation-wide effort of Republican lawmakers, extremist billionaire Republican rainmakers like the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - the activist conservative policy-making think tank they finance- to pressure state lawmakers in states like Nevada and Florida to re-write laws that impose steep rate hikes and unjustified fees on home owners who want to choose renewable energy sources like solar power.

Anti-solar Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott

Dickinson's article offers a glimpse into the power that investor-owned utilities wield over state politics and the Republican lawmakers who willingly write legislation (often drafted by ALEC) that puts up barriers to rooftop solar.

The very same politicians who rail about the excessive intrusion of state and federal government into commerce and private industry use government legislation on behalf of fossil fuel providers to stop average Americans from putting solar panels on their own roofs to draw power from the sun .

As Dickinson observes, Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott (pictured above) has personally accepted over $1 million of the $18 million in campaign contributions that the state's biggest power utilities have donated to state politicians in Florida since 2004.

Ironic that the biggest political donors in the Sunshine State are anti-solar power utilities that reap profits from the burning of fossil fuels.

There's something deeply troubling and distinctly un-American about Donald Trump encouraging riled-up supporters at his rallies to engage in outright thuggery against people protesting the hatred and bigotry he peddles; and his offering to pay the legal fees of those arrested for assault.

Just as the policies and ideology advocated by the 21st century Republican party are less about the common interests and "general welfare"of the American people than the enrichment of the privileged few.

A point that seems to elude the disenfranchised masses packing into arenas to listen to yet another billionaire who exploits their anger and frustration by telling them what's wrong with the country to obscure the fact that the Republican party and the unrestricted flow of Dark Money into the political system are the architects of the very circumstances that fuel their rage against those who actually have nothing to do with it.