Crow, the billionaire heir to a real estate fortune, has said that he’s filled his property with these mementoes because he hates communism and fascism. Nonetheless, his collections caused an uproar back in 2015 when Marco Rubio attended a fundraiser at Crow’s house on the eve of Yom Kippur. Rubio’s critics thought the timing was inappropriate given, you know, the Hitler stuff.
“I still can’t get over the collection of Nazi memorabilia,” says one person who attended an event at Crow’s home a few years ago and asked to remain anonymous. “It would have been helpful to have someone explain the significance of all the items. Without that context, you sort of just gasp when you walk into the room.” One memorable aspect was the paintings: “something done by George W. Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler.” They also said it was “startling” and “strange” to see the dictator sculptures in the backyard.
So it’s not just Thomas but lots of Republicans hanging out with the rich heir to a real estate fortune who collects Nazi memorabilia. Cool, cool…
One party – the Democrats – has reduced the annual deficit while in the White House. While the other – the Republicans – have repeatedly since it rise on their watch.
Clinton got us to surplus. Trump had one of the worst fiscal track records of any President in our history. 4/ pic.twitter.com/J9IthkFjMY
Mandrake, have you ever hear of Central Bank Digital Currency?
That CRT-killin’ Mouse-foe, Florida Gov. Wokety-woke DeWoke, decided he was not fringy enough to appeal to the QAnon-fueled, pedophile-fightin’, MAGA primary voter. He’s rooted out another Deep State enemy with which to scare the bejeezus out of them. It got lost in the Trump indictment fallout this week until the other day.
In a speech this past weekend in Pennsylvania, DeSantis suggested that the real reason to fear the Fed is that central bankers are “colluding” with other (unnamed, presumably evil) communist-style elites to block your ability to buy gasoline and guns.
“They want the Fed to control a digital dollar,” he said. “Guess what’ll happen? They’re going to try to impose an ESG agenda through that. You go and use too much gas, they’re going to stop it. They’re not going to honor the transaction because you’ve already bought more than what they think. You wanna go buy a rifle, they’re going to say no, you have too many, too many of those, you can’t do it. So it’s ceding the power of our financial freedom to a central bank which does not have our interest at heart.”
DeSantis adds ESG (environmental, social, and governance) to CRT and DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) in his list of plots by the woke left to undermine Real Americans’ ™ personal freedoms.
But wait. Here comes CBDC:
You almost need an Alex Jones-style decoder ring to understand what DeSantis is talking about here. Let me attempt to translate.
DeSantis is referring to ongoing Fed discussions about whether to create a central bank digital currency, which would be an alternative means for conducting financial transactions that might complement cash and other forms of payment (so that those without bank accounts could still buy things online, for example). It’s a complicated and thorny set of issues, and ultimately the Fed hasn’t decided whether to issue a digital dollar, or what its parameters would even look like.
Holy moly, these DeSantis comments on the Fed are insane Don't get me wrong: Fed has made mistakes, is not immune to criticism. But according to DeSantis, the real problem is that Fed wants to create central bank digital currency so that it can help liberals take away your guns pic.twitter.com/1ogJHjvt8H
“Unlike, say, Bitcoin, this digital currency would be backed by the government, so it would not pose the same safety risks,” writes Timothy Noah at The New Republic. “DeSantis frames his opposition to sound like he opposes cryptocurrency, but CBDC is actually an effort to displace cryptocurrency with something more stable.”
There are upsides and downside, Noah explains. Besides being more stable, CBDC would be more traceable (bad for terrorists and criminals) and less exposed to bank runs (good for banks and you). But there are privacy worries. This is where DeSantis veers into Ripperland:
The Fed scheme DeSantis described in his remarks is sheer fantasy. He imagines that the Fed would use CBDCs to steer purchases in the direction of environmental protection, social justice, and corporate governance. There’s nothing in the CBDC plan that would enable the government to do that. Nor could it limit gasoline purchases or prevent anybody from buying a gun. We have entered the realm of John Birch Society–grade nuttery, akin to the Birchers’ claim in the 1950s that water fluoridation was a Communist plot to control American minds. Even Barry Goldwater tried to distance himself from the Birchers (unpersuasively) when he ran for president.
In the political culture that predated Donald Trump, a comment like DeSantis’s would end a presidential campaign for a few reasons. First, this rant is paranoid and unhinged. Second, bankers, who have a stake in this proposal receiving reasonable consideration, are a Republican constituency sitting on huge piles of cash. They may not be as Republican as they used to be, but Republicanism is still the prevailing religion in that sector, and these comments will hurt DeSantis with them. Third, in emitting this bizarre screed against CBDC, DeSantis is effectively running interference for the cryptocurrency industry, as disreputable a bunch as can be found in the financial marketplace. (See Bankman-Fried, Sam.) Fourth, it makes DeSantis sound like, well, General Jack D. Ripper expounding on fluoridation in Dr. Strangelove.
Florida’s white-rubber-booted answer to Barney Fife plans to nip this CBDC thing in the bud. DeSantis means to ban it in his state despite having no authority over what constitutes U.S. legal tender.
“DeSantis’s conspiratorial babble about the Fed was no rhetorical slip,” writes Noah, “and he isn’t going to get shut down by the Republican mainstream because there isn’t one anymore.”
Three sand cat kittens were born on Monday, February 6th, 2023 early in the morning at Binghamton, NY’s Ross Park Zoo. Kaya (mom) and Amal (dad) are a recommended breeding pair as per the sand cat Species Survival Plan. Kaya has been doing a great job taking care of the offspring!
Here are some sand cats in their native habitat:
It doesn’t look like a highly skilled killer, but that’s exactly what it is; the sand cat, which is the only felid found primarily in true desert. The sand cat (Felis margarita harrisoni) has a wide but apparently disjunct distribution through the deserts of northern Africa and southwest and central Asia. These gorgeous creatures are highly elusive and people rarely get to see them in the wild.
If you’d like to meet them, though, go out in the desert when the temperature is between 11 and 28 °C — that’s an ideal range for the sand cat. These felines also prefer a very dry, arid habitat with little vegetation, as well as flat or rolling terrains. If it gets too hot outside, the sand cat will retreat to burrows.
They’re extremely resilient, with thickly furred feet, and are adapted for both very high and very low temperatures. The long hairs growing between its toes create a cushion of fur over the foot pads which insulates from the very hot sand. They sometimes dig burrows in which they hide away from the extreme weather.
They don’t grow bigger than a house cat and their tails, which can be as long as half of the head-body length, features two or three rings and a black tip.
They can easily live in areas far away from water, and even though they drink water when they can, they get enough hydration just from their prey. This prey is usually small rodents, but occasionally the sand cat will hunt hares, birds, spiders, insects, and reptiles. And out here in the scorching desert, the sand cat is bound to face venomous snakes — luckily for the cat, it’s an expert snake-killer.
Clarence Thomas told a documentarian that he and Ginni are jes folks who like to vacation in an RV and hang around in Walmart parking lots. Lol:
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Stern have thoughts about this:
ProPublica’s scrupulously reported new piece on Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong luxury travel on the dime of a single GOP megadonor will probably not shock you at all. Sure, the dollar amounts spent are astronomical, and of course the justice failed to report any of it, and of course the megadonor insists that he and Thomas are dear old friends, so of course the superyacht and the flights on the Bombardier Global 5000 jet and the resorts are all perfectly benign. So while the details are shocking, the pattern here is hardly a new one. This is a longstanding ethics loophole that has been exploited by parties with political interests in cases before the court to curry favor in exchange for astonishing junkets and perks. It is allowed to happen.
We will doubtless spend a few news cycles expressing outrage that Harlan Crow has spent millions of dollars lavishing the Thomases with lux vacations and high-end travel and barely pretended to separate business and pleasure, giving half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas in 2011 (which funded her own $120,000 salary). But because the justices are left to police themselves and opt not to do so, we will turn to other matters in due time. Before the outrage dries up, however, it is worth zeroing in on two aspects of the ProPublica report that do have lasting legal implications. First, the same people who benefited from the lax status quo continue to fight against any meaningful reforms that might curb the justices’ gravy train. Second, the rules governing Thomas’ conduct over these years, while terribly insufficient, actually did require him to disclose at least some of these extravagant gifts. The fact that he ignored the rules anyway illustrates just how difficult it will be to force the justices to obey the law: Without the strong threat of enforcement, a putative public servant like Thomas will thumb his nose at the law.
If there is a single image that captures this seedy state of affairs, it is a painting of Thomas hanging out with Leonard Leo (Federalist Society co-chair and judicial power broker) and Mark Paoletta (who has served as chief counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence and general counsel of Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget). Both are political operatives, though Crow assures us that they would never dare talk about Thomas’ work. This image should be enough to shock anyone into taking action against the spigot of dark money that flows directly from billionaire donors into the court, its justices, and their spouses’ pockets. Continuing to live as though there is nothing to be done about any of this is a choice. We make it every day.
In addition to working in the Trump-Pence administration, Paoletta serves as the Thomases’ longtime fixer, attack dog, and booster. He represented Ginni Thomas when she spoke to the Jan 6. committee about her support for overturning the 2020 election. He also edited a biography of Clarence Thomas based on an almost comically obsequious documentary (in which he was also involved). So it should not be a surprise that Paoletta has also testified against any ethics reform measures for the Supreme Court, dismissing the reform movement as part of “the coordinated campaign by some Democrats and their allies in the corporate media to smear conservative Justices with the goal of delegitimizing the court.”
The lack of a binding ethics code for justices redounds to Paoletta’s benefit: ProPublica reports that he joined the Thomases on a trip through Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands on the Crows’ yacht. At the time, Paoletta was serving in the Trump administration, and was therefore subject to far stricter ethics rules than the justice; he told ProPublica that he reimbursed Crow for the trip, although he would not give a price tag. (It is an extraordinary feat for a public servant to be able to afford a private international yacht adventure; it also proves that even in government posts that actually have enforceable ethics rules, those rules may not be up to the job of policing corruption.)
This story is a perfect example, in miniature, of how Thomas’ network of benefactors ensure the justice’s billionaire lifestyle stays off the books. Paoletta testifies before Congress that ethics reforms are evil; Crow funds the Republican lawmakers who ensure ethics reforms don’t pass; and nobody knows the extent of Thomas’ unceasing stream of gifts until ProPublica reporters wrangle the details from yacht crews and flight records.
It was 2004 when the Los Angeles Times disclosed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted expensive gifts and private plane trips paid for by Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real estate investor and a prominent Republican donor.
The gifts included a Bible that once belonged to abolitionist Frederick Douglass — a gift Thomas valued at $19,000 — and a bust of Abraham Lincoln valued at $15,000.
“I just knew he was a fan of Frederick Douglass, and I saw that item come available at an auction and I bought it for him,” Crow explained at the time.
He also flew Thomas on his personal plane to Northern California to be his guest at the Bohemian Grove, which held all-male retreats for government and business leaders.
Thomas refused to comment on the article, but it had an impact: Thomas appears to have continued accepting free trips from his wealthy friend. But he stopped disclosing them.
He’s just “regular stock” — a lying Real American.
It isn’t the first time the right has denied elected representatives their seat. When they have the power they have no compunction about doing it. And it looks like we’re going to see more of it. Jeff Greenfield writes:
In the fevered nationalism of World War I, Congress refused to seat Socialist Victor Berger after he won a seat in 1918. He ran again in 1919 and won again, and Congress again refused to seat him. At the same time, the New York State Assembly expelled all five Socialists on general grounds of “disloyalty.”
The mood of the time was captured by the Assembly speaker, who thundered: “We are building by our action today a granite bulwark against all traitors within the boundaries of our republic. Our flag of the republic is whipping the breeze in defiance of enemies from without.”
A few decades later, a similar attempt to ban an elected legislator was rebuffed. Julian Bond, a key civil rights leader, had been elected to the Georgia House; but in 1966, the legislature voted by an overwhelming margin not to seat him on the grounds that he had opposed the war in Vietnam and expressed sympathy for draft resisters. But later that year, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bond’s First Amendment rights had been violated and ordered him seated. He served for more than 20 years in the Georgia House and then the state Senate.
The case of the two Tennessee Democrats involves neither criminal nor immoral conduct nor the mere statement of opinions. It involves conduct — encouraging demonstrations and bringing a bullhorn and posters to the state House floor — that violates the rules of the House. Still, the legislature has never imposed before so severe a penalty for rules violations, and over the past few years, a number of legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct.
Clearly, expelling these members is an explosive move and temporarily leaves their constituents no representation, at least until a special election is held; in fact, the state party is already raising money for the members to win back their seats.
Meanwhile, there’s another story playing out 600 miles to the north that highlights another, potentially even more consequential use of hard-ball legislative power.
While liberals were celebrating the election Tuesday of a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who will tip the court to the left, voters in the state’s 8th senatorial district were sending Republican Dan Knodl to Madison. That gives the GOP a Senate supermajority and with it, the power to remove key officials through impeachment — including judges. In late March, Knodl said he would “certainly consider” impeaching Janet Protasiewicz, the new state Supreme Court justice, though he was talking about her role as a county judge.
Would Wisconsin Republicans impeach a justice simply because they don’t like the court’s rulings? Well, there is nothing hypothetical about how the state’s GOP legislature has used its power against other branches of government.
In 2018, after Wisconsin voters elected a Democratic governor and attorney general, the legislature and the lame duck Republican governor, significantly cut back the power of both offices. And while it might be politically risky to remove a justice whom voters overwhelmingly elected, it’s not at all far-fetched to imagine that if the new liberal court majority strikes down the state’s gerrymandered legislative districts, that legislature would respond by trying to remove one or more justices from office. And there’s nothing hypothetical about other states — looking at you, North Carolina — where supermajority GOP legislatures have cut deeply into the power of the executive branch once Democrats won those posts.
In the coming weeks and months, the Nashville battle may well be just a footnote as legislatures exercise their powers over everything from the makeup and reach of the courts to the traditional powers of a governor, to the will of the voters who vote for ballot propositions. It’s another reminder that the most important elections of the 21st century happened in 2010 — when legislatures from one end of the country to the other turned red and began to reshape the politics of the nation.
Fortunately, many of these people are ignorant fools. It’s not impossible for the Democrats to fight this back. If they have the will to do it.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday promised a new round of action against Disney in his ongoing dispute with the entertainment giant, including looking at the taxes on Disney’s hotels and imposing tolls on roads that serve its theme parks.
The DeSantis administration is also examining if a recent agreement approved between a Central Florida board that had been controlled by Disney and the company runs afoul of the state’s growth laws, according to senior administration officials. One of those laws explicitly states that development agreements must be modified or revoked to comply with laws even if the law is passed after the agreement was executed.
“They are not superior to the people of Florida,” DeSantis said during an evening appearance at Hillsdale College, the conservative liberal arts college in Michigan. “So come hell or high water we’re going to make sure that policy of Florida carries the day. And so they can keep trying to do things. But ultimately we’re going to win on every single issue involving Disney I can tell you that.”
Disney “tried to pull a fast one on the way out the door,” DeSantis said earlier in the day during a breakfast hosted by the Midland County Republican Party of Michigan. “That story’s not over yet. Buckle up. There’s more coming down the pike,” he added.
The rapid escalation between Disney and DeSantis this week comes in the aftermath of a Central Florida governing board that had been controlled by Disney passing a series of agreements that ensured Disney would keep a large degree of power despite a new law passed in February that created a new board controlled by the governor.
The moves stunned the DeSantis administration and the governor’s hand-picked board, which has since hired lawyers to examine whether it should challenge the legality of the agreements
But his remarks on Thursday evening outlined that more immediate actions are pending. DeSantis also said that the new district he appointed would explore developing property it owns that is adjacent to Disney property. He also contended that the Florida Legislature was prepared to void the development agreement that had been approved by the outgoing board.
Disney representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But the company released a statement last week to media outlets stating that “all agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida Government in the Sunshine law.”
During a shareholders meeting earlier this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger called Florida’s actions retaliatory as well as “anti-business” and “anti-Florida.”
Raising hotel taxes in a state whose biggest industry is tourism — out of pique — seems a bit short-sighted. Florida isn’t the only place people can go on vacation…
DeSantis is trying to pretend like he’s a tough guy, but he’s really just a petulant asshole. I know that a large number of Republican voters relate to that but I don’t think it’s a winning image in a general election. Fighting with your state’s largest employer and biggest industry in order to make points with far right culture warriors explodes the myth that he’s a competent executive as well.
For as long as I can remember, Democrats have been on the defensive about enacting their agenda because it was assumed that it would engender a backlash among “the silent majority,” as former president Richard Nixon called it, or what modern Republicans call “Real America.” Reacting to the counter-culture of the 1960s and the massive social changes it engendered, the left wing of the Democratic Party was always admonished by the centrist and conservative wings not to go too far or too fast. The media even blithely asserted that “America is a conservative country” as if it were an act of God. This article of faith hobbled progress for a very long time and empowered the Reagan Revolution through the Tea Party and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
Nobody ever seemed to consider that enabling the right wing to become more and more extreme over the course of many years might engender a backlash of its own. It appears as if that time may have finally come — and it’s clear the Republican establishment doesn’t know what to do about it. The question is whether the Democratic establishment does either.
We started out the week with former president and current GOP presidential frontrunner being indicted in New York over the payments of hush money to conceal information that might have damaged his chances in the 2016 election. It’s a huge story but it’s not unanticipated nor is it the last prosecution Donald Trump is likely to face in the coming months. The most interesting aspect of it remains the fact that the Republican establishment is circling the wagons around him once again while Republican voters seem determined to push him to the nomination. This is despite the fact that he will be under indictment on felony charges in at least one case and probably more, proving once again that no amount of norm-busting, corruption or criminal behavior is a deal breaker with his cult. Trump has trained them to believe that it’s all an elaborate conspiracy against him.
But this week also showed that something else is afoot. Yes, Trump is a galvanizing force in Democratic politics going all the way back to the massive, global Women’s March in 2017. His grotesque behavior motivated millions of people, especially women, to organize and it paid off in every election since then. Donald Trump has been dragging the GOP down for years but they just can’t quit him. However, the party’s rapid descent into extremism is bigger than Trump and the backlash is continuing to show itself in ways that are shattering the status quo.
The swing state of Wisconsin has been a battleground for years with a polarized electorate that has had power swinging back and forth between the two parties with razor-thin margins. It was assumed that the high-stakes election this week for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be similarly tight. The future of the outrageous gerrymander that makes Republicans massively over-represented in the state legislature was at issue but, most importantly, abortion rights were front and center. Abortion has been illegal in the state since last June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and an archaic law banning abortion that had been on the books since 1849 was no longer moot. The hard right legislature and the conservative state Supreme Court wasn’t going to fix that.
The election turned on those two intersecting issues. Abortion rights and democracy were on the ballot with the first being denied as a result of the Republicans manipulating the map to un-democratically seize more power than the people voted for. The anti-abortion candidate (a Trumper, by the way) lost by 10 points, a miracle in that polarized electorate. With good organization by the state Democratic Party — which saw a huge uptick in 18-29-year-old voters, a big gender gap and even, surprisingly, inroads among white, non-college-educated voters — abortion rights and democracy advocacy carried the day.
Meanwhile in Chicago, just as in Los Angeles earlier, the progressive mayoral candidate won despite widespread expectations that the centrist “law and order” candidate would prevail as a result of right-wing fear-mongering about crime. (The head of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, a Trumper, threatened that 1,000 police officers would walk off the job if Brandon Johnson, the eventual winner, was elected.) The stale “law and order” handwringing didn’t work in 2022 and it didn’t work this week — and it’s yet another sign that the extremism of right-wing rhetoric and policies is turning off voters. Backlash.
And then there was the grotesque display we witnessed in Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday when the Republicans expelled two Black lawmakers, Justin Pierson and Justin Jones, for staging a protest for gun safety legislation on the floor of the House. Here’s an illustration of what took place: an odious, condescending comment delivered by a Republican House member who is clearly hard-pressed not to go full Bull Connor and address his colleague as “boy”:
Rep. @Justinjpearson: “You all heard that. How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?”
Jones: it's morally insane that a week after a mass shooting hit Nashville where I represent a part of Nashville, my colleagues on the other side are not passing common sense gun laws, they’re passing resolutions to expel the youngest Black members.. pic.twitter.com/XoirvM1CRZ
A third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson was also subject to expulsion but they came up short by one vote. Johnson knows exactly why this happened:
Question: Why were those two expelled and you weren't Johnson: Well, I think it's pretty clear. I'm a 60 year old white woman and they are two young black men pic.twitter.com/1OwJsrcsng
After six people, including three little children, were shot down in a Nashville school, citizens protested the state’s insanely loose gun laws that allowed the shooter to legally obtain firearms despite a history of mental illness. The anti-democratic Republicans (yes, Tennessee is ridiculously gerrymandered as well) essentially scoffed at their concerns, attacked their colleagues’ First Amendment rights and then showed the entire country in living color that they are unreconstructed racists on top of it by instituting the political death penalty against two Black legislators for a minor rules violation.
In this instance, we are seeing the burning issue of gun violence converge with the issue of democracy and systemic racism and while it hasn’t yet been fully demonstrated, the fact that the two ousted legislators are also quite young, as are most of the protesters, makes me think we are on the verge of seeing another backlash developing. Look at the age of the protesters:
“YOU BAN BOOKS, YOU BAN DRAG— KIDS ARE STILL IN BODY BAGS.”
— March For Our Lives ☮️🟧 (@AMarch4OurLives) April 6, 2023
This dispatch from a local Tennessee journalist suggests that some Republicans sense that too:
Privately, some Republicans express concern to me that these events are not only alienating independents, but also GOP women who don’t want their kids getting killed at school.
The GOP is an authoritarian, extremist political party that is out of the mainstream of American life. As NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez tweeted after the events in Nashville on Thursday:
Republicans may think they won today in Tennessee, but their fascism is only further radicalizing and awakening an earthquake of young people, both in the South and across the nation. If you thought youth organizing was strong, just wait for what’s coming,
Backlashes go both ways and this one is coming from the left. It’s about damned time.
While the world’s attention focused on Tennessee yesterday, the NC GOP took advantage of its new House majority (that’s another story) to pull draft bills out of drawers meant to attack disfavored minorities the way Tennessee legislators expelled two Black members on Thursday.
North Carolina Republican lawmakers filed several bills aimed at regulating transgender youth especially when it comes to participation in sports.
These bills are similar to ones GOP lawmakers pushed a couple years ago. While those bills failed, Republicans are hopeful their new supermajority — achieved by getting Mecklenburg Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham to switch parties — will be able to force the bills through.
There are two bills in the legislatures that would ban transgender athletes in some way. Legislation in the house and senate would require all sports teams be designated as male, female or co-ed based on their biological sex at birth.
It’s what the NC GOP does when attention is diverted or when SCOTUS lets them.
The problem is that North Carolina has already had its bathroom bill financial backlash. Now attention will focus on the actions of Tennessee’s GOP. Whack-a-mole politics works for Republicans.
Elie Mystal: "Tennessee has now given the entire country an object lesson in critical race theory better than any AP history course ever could have. Everybody sees it now. Everybody knows it now. Everybody gets exactly what is going on." https://t.co/RdYLvfum24pic.twitter.com/Bn9ov955qP
