Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, was the brains behind McCarthy

When Trump calls Democratic Socialists "communists," what's he talking about?

 

Why Is He Using the Communist Trump Card?

He's run out of other cards.

Robert Reich for Inequality.org

The cover of “Is This Tomorrow,” an anti-communist comic
book published in 1947, suggests the chaos and ruin
that would follow a communist takeover of the United
States. The publications reflected a fevered politics that
prevailed after World War II and through the 1950s.
(Image via Wikimedia Commons)

Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections, which is why he’s now talking about the “communist menace.”

He can’t talk about the economy, because prices continue to rise faster than wages, which means most Americans are getting poorer. He can’t talk about foreign policy, because his war in Iran has been a debacle, his tariffs are an utter failure, and he obviously hasn’t settled the war in Ukraine on “Day 1.” He can’t talk about immigration, because his raids and mass deportations have become so unpopular.

So, facing the midterm elections, what’s left?

He’s resorting to the oldest of right-wing tropes — accusing Democrats (especially a rising generation of new, young, vigorous Democratic politicians) of being commies.

He kicked off America’s 250th anniversary celebrations on Friday with a speech at Mount Rushmore extolling American culture and warning of a resurgence of the “communist menace.” With the granite faces of four of his predecessors behind him, Trump took aim at what he called “radicals” and “extremists.”

“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

Oh, please.

For years, Trump has been trying to scare Americans about progressive Dems who advocate Medicare for All, universal childcare, free public higher education, and higher taxes on the super-wealthy to pay for them (all of which the rising young Democrats are advocating).

But he hasn’t gotten anywhere because these initiatives are supported by most Americans.

So now he’s throwing the commie label at the wall and seeing if it sticks.

Communism was the scare word used by right-wingers after World Wars I and II to crack the whip on the left. It provoked witch hunts and ruined careers.

It made former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy a one-man bomb squad in the early 1950s, when he rid
iculed the “pitiful squealing” of “those egg-sucking phony liberals” who “would hold sacrosanct those Communists and queers,” and forced American citizens to “name names.”

McCarthyism was a by-product of the Republican Party’s postwar effort to eradicate the New Deal. The GOP had portrayed the midterm election of 1946 as a “battle between Republicanism and communism,” and the Republican National Committee chairman claimed that the federal bureaucracy was filled with “pink puppets.”

Southern segregationist Democrats joined in the red-baiting. Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, a Klansman who filibustered to block anti-lynching legislation, described multiracial labor unions’ advocacy for civil rights as the work of “northern communists.” 

Listen up, MAGA peasants

How to recognize antifa

Go MAGA!

Rhode Island Republicans red-bait new Senate President

RIGOP deploys MAGA-style McCarthy tactics to smear Senate President Valerie Lawson

By Will Collette

Let's deal with some key facts about the Rhode Island General Assembly. If you get elected, you'd better not quit your day job. The annual salary for Rhode Island legislators is $19,817. 

Unless you are retired or independently wealthy, everyone elected to the General Assembly has a real paying day job. Many are lawyers. Some are real estate agents, insurance brokers, teachers and cops. Some are health care providers. Some work in non-profits. Some are small business owners. Some make enough at their day jobs that they symbolically decline to take their salary.

A small number of legislators work for labor unions and, to hear it from the Republicans,  only they should be disqualified from serving. Because "socialist." Yeah, if you work for a union, you must be a commie.

As you can see from their statement above, the RIGOP is really upset that the Senate elected Valerie Lawson as new President of the Senate, replacing the recently deceased Dominick Ruggerio who was also a lifelong trade unionist. 

Lawson's crime in the eyes of the RIGOP is that she is also President of the National Education Association RI and doesn't plan to give up her day job. 

Rhode Island is a deep-blue state with a long and proud history of trade unionism with union membership rates among the highest in the nation. So why shouldn't trade unionists serve in the General Assembly alongside all those lawyers, bankers, small business owners, etc.?

The Rhode Island Ethics Commission routinely rules on legislators' compliance with state law, either by reviewing complaints or issuing advance advisory opinions. Whether you are a banker or a union organizer, the same rules apply.

If we want a legislature where members are unencumbered by their day jobs, make the General Assembly a full-time job with salary and benefits befitting, and rules barring outside employment of any kind.

I am sick of Republicans and MAGAnuts treating organized labor as if it was organized crime. That's no more logical or fair than considering all businesspeople to be bloodsuckers.

Choices (continued)

Governors of old Confederacy states declare war on the United Auto Workers

Goes to show how alive the plantation mentality is in the South

Is the South preparing itself for a second Civil War? The following statement was issued by the Republican Governors of Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. It speaks for itself.

Three days after this denunciation of unions, the UAW won an election at a big Volkswagen plant in Tennessee on April 19. 

President Joe Biden made this comment on the union's win:

"Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose."

 Here's the full statement by the Republican governors:

MONTGOMERY, APRIL 16, 2024– Governor Kay Ivey, along with the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, issued the following joint statement:

“We the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states. As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.

“The reality is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity. We have worked tirelessly on behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry. Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy – in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs. In America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch. No one wants to hear this, but it’s the ugly reality. We’ve seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation. And we are seeing it in the fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs. Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.

With Shutdown Averted, Is Social Security Safe? Nope!

Taxing the rich is the best way to preserve Social Security and Medicare 

JAMES ROOSEVELT JR., HENRY SCOTT WALLACE, JUNE HOPKINS, TOMLIN PERKINS COGGESHALL for Common Dreams

Let’s talk Social Security. The government shutdown was averted (temporarily), so that’s a good thing, right? Trump is promising not to touch it. Benefits are not threatened, right?

Wrong. Social Security has a bullseye on its back. As descendants of the New Deal leaders who created it, we recognize the warning signs, and need to shout the alarm.

The right-wing hard-liners who fired House Speaker Kevin McCarthy—without a  replacement in sight—are determined to balance the budget by reducing spending. The word “revenues” is an obscenity to them. And defense spending is sacred and untouchable.

But even if they completely eliminated every single non-defense discretionary program—from food stamps to the FBI to border protection—it wouldn’t be enough. It would add up to about $900 billion, or about 15% of total federal spending, which would fall far short of balancing the budget. So their deficit-cutting zeal must inevitably turn to what is called mandatory spending, most prominently the largest government program of all, Social Security.

Republican presidential candidates are increasingly emboldened to touch this deadly “third rail” of American politics. Nikki Haley mocked other candidates for promising not to touch Social Security. Ron DeSantis wants to “revamp” it. Mike Pence wants to privatize it, turning it over to Wall Street and adding trillions to the national debt—to replace the New Deal with a “better deal.”

And although former President Donald Trump now swears he would never harm a hair on Social Security’s head, his history renders such assurances hollow. He has previously suggested that a second Trump term would mean cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 

Let’s not forget that his hugest unachieved social policy goal at the end of his presidency was the complete termination of Social Security’s principal funding source, the payroll tax.

Red Scare or banana republic?

 

New GOP Agenda Proves These People Are Just Plain Nuts

When not attacking the Muppets, they've spent the year laying out plans to tax the poor and eliminate Social Security.

JIM HIGHTOWER by OtherWords

Let me say one word to you: Nuts.

Now, let me say one name to you: Ted Cruz.

They've become synonymous, with the Texas lawmaker perennially topping national lists of goofy, right-wing political goobers. Only, Ted can't rightly be called a lawmaker, for he's not a serious participant in that process, instead devoting his senatorship to political stunts and picking silly PR fights with a growing list of enemies.

Running out of people to attack, Ted has found another species for his vitriol: Fictional icons. He's been padding his right-wing credentials by going after Mr. Potato Head, Mickey and Pluto, and, believe it or not, the Muppets.

It’s Time to Nationalize the Fossil Fuel Industry

We've nationalized industries before

By Thom Hartmann for the Independent Media Institute

FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

If you want to trigger a conservative, just suggest nationalizing the US gas and oil industry. “Venezuela!” they’ll scream hysterically, perhaps adding a few, “Iran!” squeals. (Somehow, they always forget to yell about Norway…)

Within minutes they’ll be croaking about that time back in 2008 when Maxine Waters — a Black woman with power and therefore the most terrifying thing Republicans can imagine — threatened oil industry CEOs who were giving Congress deliberately deceptive and incomplete answers with “socializing… taking over and the government running all your companies.”

Immediately, Fox “News” was all over it, as were dozens of rightwing sites.  

In that, they’ve completely ignored (or never knew) the long American history of taking over industries during a time of national crisis.

Past Socialist plots

 

Lost in translation

 

It ends with a dark money whimper

The failed recall effort in North Kingstown

“How does the story end? With a dark money whimper,” writes Tom Sgouros. “Tuesday was the deadline for turning in signatures, and none were turned in at all. The word in town is that in the end Brimer and company had gathered fewer than 700 signatures, not even close to half the signatures they needed.”

By Tom Sgouros in UpRiseRI

The news you may not have heard on October 12 was about what didn’t happen, and how one of the most effective illusions in Rhode Island politics was pierced.

Some background: In August of this year, 50 North Kingstown citizens, led by Mary Brimer, Republican member of the Town Council, filed a petition to force a recall election against School Committee member Jennifer Lima, an outspoken advocate for diversity and equity in the schools.

Running on her experience founding Toward an Anti-racist North Kingstown (TANK), Lima got more votes in November 2020 than any other town candidate, which wasn’t bad for her first election.

But that didn’t stop a committed band of (mostly) Republicans from filing to recall her for “publicly stat[ing] an opinion that does not reflect the views of her constituents.” (This is a quote from their petition, which can be found here.)

According to the town charter, when presented with such a petition, the Board of Canvassers must respond with official signature sheets. The recall proponents then had 60 days to gather 3102 signatures to force an election. If recalled, Lima would have been replaced with one of the Republicans she beat last fall.

This was, of course, just a cynical move to undo an election Republicans could not win fairly. They calculated that they had a better chance in a low-turnout election of angry voters than in the general election.

So they began angering people to gather signatures, making up stupid lies about “critical race theory” and the wounded self-esteem of little children being taught they are all equal. And Marxism. Lima was described as radical, dangerous, and a communist puppeteer orchestrating all manner of evil from deep behind the scenes.

It was all laughable until the money showed up. Late in August, the Gaspee Project, an affiliate of Mike Stenhouse and his Center for Freedom and Apple Pie, decided that Lima was public enemy number one, and they focused statewide attention on her and North Kingstown.

Progress or socialism?

 

Socialism versus capitalism

Call the Fear Department

 

Socialism!!!