RS Seminar- Economic Crisis: Fighting Oligarchy in Folsom.

RS Seminar- Economic Crisis: Fighting Oligarchy in Folsom.:   Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here with Bernie Sanders in Folsom RSVP today to say you'll join Bernie and AOC in Folsom on Tues...

36,000 Join Sanders and AOC in Los Angeles Today; Fight Oligarchy Tour

 This movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests; it's about class solidarity.

It is about the thousands of people who came out in Los Angeles today to stand together and say our lives deserve dignity and our work deserves respect.

We can either have extreme wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive—or we can have a fair economy that guarantees health care to all, for working people, along with a democracy and freedoms that uphold it.

Oligarchy or democracy, but we cannot have both. I've made my choice.

We must fight the oligarchy that has created this nightmare. And that is why I have never taken money from lobbyists or corporations, and it's why I never will.   AOC. 

Venue Change: Sanders and AOC in Folsom California

TPlease be advised that there is a venue change: we will now be at the Folsom Lake College Athletic Track in Folsom, CA.

Here's everything you need to know:

Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here with Bernie Sanders in Folsom
With Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Tuesday, April 15
3:30pm PDT Doors Open
6:00pm PDT Speaking Program Starts
Folsom Lake College Athletic Track

10 College Pkwy, Folsom, CA 95630 

Tariffs, Schmariffs

Tariffs, Schmariffs: Today on TAP: Trump rewards the real offshorers with trillions in tax cuts.

Trump tax give aways to the rich.

Bernie and AOC Coming to Auburn California- Tuesday.

Bernie’s coming to Auburn on Tuesday, April 15, and you’re invited! He’ll be speaking alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about how our movement can come together to take on the Oligarchy and demand a government that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few.

This is going to be a great event, and we’d love to see you there. So, can you make it? Here’s everything you need to know:

Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here with Bernie Sanders in Auburn
With Special Guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Tuesday, April 15
3:30pm PDT Doors Open
6:00pm PDT Speaking Program Starts
Gold Country Fairgrounds and Event Center

209 Fairgate Road, Auburn, CA 95603 

AOC and Oligarchy

I am here to remind you all: we are not powerless in this moment.

People are starting to put the pieces together, 

And that’s important, because the same billionaires that are taking a wrecking ball to our country specialize in getting working people to turn on one another.

I understand that this disdain for working people, by some of the most powerful people in this country, doesn’t just come from them not being raised right.

There’s a word for this kind of thing: corruption.

I understand what it feels like to watch all of this stack up. When the system is stacked against you, it’s hard to feel like anything you do matters.

I can tell you: when I was waitressing, and struggling to put food on the table, for a while there, I tried to keep my head down, work my shifts, and accept that this is just how things are.

But that’s no way to live.

The Resistance Shows Its Strength -Sacramento

 

Today, millions of Americans flooded the streets to demand an end to Trump’s authoritarian power grab. We expected hundreds of thousands. But at virtually every single event, the crowds eclipsed our estimates. And it’s not over -- people are still marching in some West Coast cities and heading to events in Alaska and Hawaii.  This is the largest day of protest since Trump retook office. And in many small towns and cities, activists are reporting the biggest protests their communities have ever seen as everyday people send a clear, unmistakable message to Trump and Musk: Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy.  There've been protests in red states, blue states, purple states, DC, and US territories. Outside the United States, too, with protesters showing solidarity in the UK, Portugal, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands. A glimpse of what we’re seeing at a few of the 1,300+ protests across the country:  Boston, MA For many, many more #HandsOff photos, check out our Instagram and Blueskyaccounts.  The Trump administration has spent its first 75 days in office trying to overwhelm us, to make us feel powerless, so that we will fall in line, accept the ransacking of our government, the raiding of our social safety net, and the dismantling of our democracy.  And too often, the response from our leaders and those in positions to resist has been abject cowardice. Compliance. Obeying in advance.  But not today. Today we've demonstrated a different path forward. We've modeled the courage and action that we want to see from our leaders, and showed all those who’ve been standing on the sidelines who share our values that they are not alone.  Even more important than the message we’ve sent to Trump, Musk, and MAGA is the signal we’re sending to those who agree with us but have spent the last few months feeling shaken, hopeless, and afraid: The fight for our democracy isn’t over -- it’s just getting going. And whoever they are, wherever they are, we need their voice to win. Today, hundreds of thousands of people attended their first protest of the new Trump era. Hundreds of millions more are going to see coverage of the events or hear about it from your social media posts and want to know how they can get involved. Our ask for you: Tell them. (And if you’re looking to step up your involvement, here’s how YOU can do that, too):  We are stronger when we organize together. Now is the moment for folks to join their local Indivisible group. Indivisible exists to support local organizing. If there’s a part of this country without an Indivisible group -- or if the nearest group isn’t being responsive -- anyone can start a new one. You don’t need to be an expert to get involved. But for anyone looking for a clear “how to” on fighting Trump’s authoritarian vision, we wrote the Indivisible Guide. With Congressional recess coming up and MAGA Republicans plotting to gut Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for the rich, where going to need a LOT more people showing up in their communities to say “hands off!” Anyone interested in joining this next fight can add their names here. Thank you to everyone who showed up today, hosted an event, or joined us online. This has been the culmination of a lot of hard work, but also the beginning of something much, much bigger.   In solidarity, Indivisible Team   Seeking photos from Sacramento.

Showing Up on April 5.

 

This Saturday is already going to be BIG, but we’re counting on everyone to grab some poster boards, some friends, and a few snacks so they can turn out to make it HISTORICALLY HUGE. The moment could not be bigger or more timely:

1️⃣ The crackdown on peaceful protest is coming. We all know Trump, Musk, and their MAGA enablers will come after peaceful protesters if they can carry on unopposed much longer. And when that crackdown comes, it needs to be alien, inexcusable, indefensible, and untenable.

We’re showing up on April 5 because, if we don’t, it will be so much harder to do so on May 5, June 5, or beyond. Tomorrow is when we set the tone that peaceful protests against this administration are widespread, unstoppable, and only getting bigger.

2️⃣ Our leaders and institutions won’t fight unless we demand it. If anyone expected the powers that be to save us from the fascistic Musk-Trump power grab, they’ve been proven very wrong, very quickly.

Too many institutions -- from law firms to academia to corporations and the media -- have chosen to meekly bow down to Trump and Musk’s demands. Too many congressional Democrats have chosen complicity over bold resistance.

Cory Booker made clear during his historic marathon speech on the Senate floor that he was responding to pressure from his constituents to do more.

The message we send Saturday is aimed at those who share our values as much as it is at Trump and Musk. Together, we’re demanding they do more and fight harder -- knowing that hundreds of thousands of their constituents have their backs if they do.

3️⃣ We have Elon Musk on the ropes. His approval rating is in the toilet. His bid to buy Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race failed spectacularly. And now Donald Trump’s privately admitting it may be time to show DOGE the door.

By peacefully protesting the Musk-Trump Coup and educating voters about its danger to their pocketbooks and our democracy, Indivisibles and our allies have turned Elon Musk into a political pariah everywhere outside the Oval Office -- and now it’s time to turn up the heat even further.

All Out for April 5 Demonstrations : Hands Off Protest

 Here are some ways you can take action.

• Sat, Apr 19 @ 1pm
  April 19 Protest Rally and March 1-3pm ›
• Sun, Apr 13 @ 2pm · INDIVISIBLE Sacramento
  A Pint of Politics and Doing Something Second Sundays ›
• Tue, Apr 15 @ 7pm · INDIVISIBLE Sacramento
  INDIVISIBLE Sacramento Monthly Meeting: APRIL 2025 ›
• Sat, Apr 5 @ 9am · INDIVISIBLE Sacramento
  Hands Off: Protest & Picnic at the Capitol ›
• Fri, Apr 4 @ 4pm · INDIVISIBLE Sacramento
  Freeway Overpass BANNER TEAMS! ›
• Sat, Apr 5 @ 11am · El Dorado Progressives - Indivisible El Dorado
  Sacramento 50501 / INDIVISIBLE Hands Off April 5 Capitol Picnic Protest ›

All times Pacific

Excellent guide. 

How to protest safely in Trump’s America

A friend sent me this. She's  worried about taking her daughter on Sat.

https://open.substack.com/pub/loricorbetmann/p/how-to-protest-safely-in-trumps-america?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

A Blueprint for Resisting Trump Education Cuts? Chicago Teachers Reach "...

Trump’s and MAGA’s Own Identity Politics: White, Preferably Racist

Trump’s and MAGA’s Own Identity Politics: White, Preferably Racist: Today on TAP: The ‘race-centered’ Smithsonian exhibits are bad, but there’s nothing race-centered in restoring Confederate statuary.

Trump Rule

 Sunday’s Bulwark essay by JVL – Jonathan V. Last: 

“America is ruled by a regime which is attempting to create a dictatorship. Part of its strategy is to maintain strategic ambiguity about the state of our democracy. They want to send strong signals to various institutions that democracy no longer exists and that the rule of law is now rule by law. The point of these signals is to demand submission to their autocratic rule and consolidate non-electoral power.

At the same time, this regime wants to maintain the plausibility that it might be overthrown via normal democratic processes. The point of this second signal is to keep the institutions (and people) which have not yet been subdued docile and deactivated. The strategic ambiguity about whether or not we live in an autocracy is designed to preserve maximum maneuverability for the regime until such time as they have full control and no longer need to maneuver.”

 

Huelga en General - General Strike (United Farm Workers Song)

Faculty Unions Sue Trump Administration to Protect Free Speech

NEW YORK– The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the AFT today sued the Trump administration on behalf of their members for unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence. While the Trump administration has been slashing funding since its first days in office, this move represents a stunning new tactic: using cuts as a cudgel to coerce a private institution to adopt restrictive speech codes and allow government control over teaching and learning.

The plaintiffs, who represent members of Columbia University faculty in both the humanities and sciences, allege that this coercive tactic not only undermines academic independence, but stops vital scientific research that contributes to the health and prosperity of all Americans. The terminated grants supported research on urgent issues, including Alzheimer’s disease prevention, fetal health in pregnant women, and cancer research.

The Trump administration’s unprecedented demands, and threats of similar actions against 60 universities, have created instability and a deep chilling effect on college campuses across the country.  Although the administration claims to be acting to combat antisemitism under its authority to prevent discrimination, it has completely disregarded the requirements of Title VI, the statute that provides it with that authority–requirements that exist to prevent the government from exercising too much unfettered control over funding recipients. According to the complaint, the cancellation of federal funds also violates the First Amendment, the separation of powers, and other constitutional provisions.

“The Trump administration’s threats and coercion at Columbia are part of a clear authoritarian playbook meant to crush academic freedom and critical research in American higher education. Faculty, students, and the American public will not stand for it. The repercussions extend far beyond the walls of the academy. Our constitutional rights, and the opportunity for our children and grandchildren to live in a democracy are on the line,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP.

“President Trump has taken a hatchet to American ingenuity, imagination and invention at Columbia to attack academic freedom and force compliance with his political views,” saidAFT President Randi Weingarten. “Let’s be clear: the administration should tackle legitimate issues of discrimination. But this modern-day McCarthyism is not just an illegal attack on our nation’s deeply held free speech and due process rights, it creates a chilling effect that hinders the pursuit of knowledge—the core purpose of our colleges and universities. Today, we reject this bullying and resolve to challenge the administration’s edicts until they are rescinded.”

“We’re seeing university leadership across the country failing to take any action to counter the Trump administration’s unlawful assault on academic freedom,” said Reinhold Martin, president of Columbia-AAUP and professor of architecture. “As faculty, we don’t have the luxury of inaction. The integrity of civic discourse and the freedoms that form the basis of a democratic society are under attack. We have to stand up.”

The complaint alleges that the Trump administration’s broad punitive tactics are indicative of an attempt to consolidate power over higher education broadly. According to the complaint, the administration is simultaneously threatening other universities with similar punishment in order to chill dissent on specific topics and speech with which the administration disagrees. Trump administration officials have spoken publicly about their plans to “bankrupt these universities” if they don’t “play ball.”

Universities have historically been engines of innovation in critical fields like technology, national security, and medical treatments. Cuts to that research will ultimately harm the health, prosperity and security of all Americans.

“Columbia is the testing ground for the Trump administration’s tactic to force universities to yield to its control,” said Orion Danjuma, counsel at Protect Democracy. “We are bringing this lawsuit to protect higher education from unlawful government censorship and political repression.”

The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York and names as defendants the government agencies that cut Columbia’s funding on March 7 and signed the March 13 letter to Columbia laying out the government's demands required to restore the funding, including the Department of Justice, Department of Education, Health and Human Services and General Services Administration. The plaintiffs are represented by Protect Democracy and Altshuler Berzon LLP.

The full complaint can be read here.

###

About the American Association of University Professors

 

Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Hold Rally in Denver

Cesar Chavez Day March

 

BREAKING: Bernie Sanders Excoriates Trump And Musk Over Cuts During Brut...

Chuck Summer Leads Some Democrats to "Obey in Advance"

  

Marc Cooper March 13, 2025. 

It is my distinct recollection that on Wednesday afternoon, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer defiantly announced he would be voting no on a Republican-written continuing resolution (CR) to continue federal funding for another 6 months. Meaning he was ready to see a government shut-down wholly provoked by MAGA.

“Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR,” Schumer said during a Senate floor speech. He, instead offered an “alternative” cr for 30 days that would forego all cuts and leave a month for negotiations.

“We should vote on that,” Schumer said. “I hope — I hope — our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.”

Haha.

That was yesterday. Today, he said he changed his mind and would be voting yes with the Republicans and that in turn gives the green light to other Democrats to follow suit and allow the MAGA bill to pass, avoiding a government shutdown that would take place midnight Friday.

The Republicans simply don’t have the 60 votes they need for passage and they need a minimum of 8 Democrats to bail them out. Schumer is now busy starting to carry the water, saving Trump and MAGA from owning their own self--provoked shutdown.

This is a moment of maximum Democratic leverage that they will not have again until the midterms and that is not a lock. It is a tragic, stupid and rather repugnant move.

We have to dip a bit into the weeds to fully comprehend the scale of this intentional fumble by Schumer and likely many other Democrats,

Last Tuesday the House narrowly passed its own funding bill that was strictly partisan. The bill increases Pentagon funding as it will for Trump’s failing mass deportation program.

But it also includes $13b in budget cuts for spending on social program including that includes disaster relief for California and a slash in funding for the National Instutute for Health. Other cuts will remove 57% of the funding for DOD research on cancer, kidney disease, and prostate cancer. Another $20 billion cut is targeted at the IRS which will cause a further fall in tax monies that could easily cost more than the $20b initial cut. While it does not place reductions ion medicare and medicaid, it will leave several other safety nets vulnerable, making life for the bottom half of the population ever more difficult. No surprise, it includes no cuts for the chainsaw DOGE machine.

Now Schumer and, privately, other Democrats say they will go along with the Republicans because a shut down could give Trump the power to decide what parts of the government stay open and which ones would not. They argue this would give the The Don too much power to dismantle the government as if anything so far has really stopped him. It’s a weak tea argument.

Schumer today defended his switch saying:

“There are no winners in a government shutdown,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “It’s not really a decision, it’s a Hobson’s choice: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.”

“For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is not a clean CR. It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he added. “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.”

If Chuck can change his mind, so can I. This is not weak tea. It’s a crock of Shinola.

It is true that, either way, Trump retains power to cut whatever he wants, What’s not true is if that in the case of a shutdown there would indeed be a loser — Donald Trump and MAGA,

MAGA controls the White House and majorities in both houses of congress. A shutdown would be THEIR problem. Of course Trump would blame the Democrats for the shutdown, That’s automatic. But you’d have to be a pea brain to not understand that the real responsibility would fall on the recklessness and hubris of the Republicans in congress and the babbling idiot in the White House

Also, a shut down would put enormous pressure on Trump to negotiate a settlement as many GOP House and even Senate reps whose particular districts and states wold be most hard hit and would have to pacify their roiled constituents. It would create a situation where, for once, the Democrats would hold the cards and Trumo & Co, would be the supplicants. 

Oh my, we certainly would not want Trump to be so humiliated, would we?

	Get more from The Coop Scoop in the Substack app

 

Robert Reich. 

The Democrats Must Vote Against the Republican bill. 

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-democrats-must-vote-against-the

 

Marc Cooper is a long time writer.  And, a survivor of the Pinochet coup in Chile of 1973.

In the name of neoliberal capitalism. 

U.S. Citizen child with brain cancer deported toda...

antiracismdsa: U.S. Citizen child with brain cancer deported toda...: https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/child-brain-cancer-deported-mexico-rcna196295  

Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."

 public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."

Jake Johnson

Mar 12, 2025

The Trump administration on Tuesday took a major step toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by firing roughly half of the agency's workforce, a decision that teachers' unions and other champions of public education said would have devastating consequences for the nation's school system. 

The department, now led by billionaire Linda McMahon, moved swiftly, terminating more than 1,300 federal workers on Tuesday including employees at the agency's student aid and civil rights offices. 

Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, pledged in a statement to "fight these draconian cuts." The union toldNPR minutes after the statement was issued that Smith, an attorney with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, was laid off. 

The Education Department said the mass staffing cuts would affect "nearly 50%" of the agency's workforce and that those impacted "will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st." 

In a press release, McMahon declared that the workforce cuts reflect the department's "commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers." 

But critics, including a union that represents more than 3 million education workers nationwide, said the firings underscore the Trump administration's commitment to gutting public education in the interest of billionaires pushing tax cuts and school privatization. 

"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. 

"The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections." 

"We will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece." 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that "denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it." 

"The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country," she continued. "This move will directly impact the 90% of students who attend public schools by denying them the resources they need to thrive. That's why Americans squarely oppose eliminating the Education Department. We are urging Congress—and the courts—to step in to ensure all students can maintain access to a high-quality public education." 

The Education Department purge came days after news broke that President Donald Trump was preparing an executive order aimed at completely shuttering the agency—a move that would legally require congressional approval. 

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said late Tuesday that the Education Department firings "are Project 2025 in action, and they have one goal—to make it easier for billionaires and anti-union extremists to give themselves massive tax breaks at the expense of working people." 

"Today's announcement from the Department of Education is just the beginning of what's to come," Saunders warned. "These layoffs threaten the well-being and educational opportunities for millions of children across the country and those seeking higher education. The dedicated public service workers at public schools, colleges, and universities deserve better. Elections may have consequences, but we will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece. We will keep speaking out and finding ways to fight back." 

 

https://www.commondreams.org/news/education-department-layoffs

Trump Attacks Public Education

Today, the Trump administration gutted 50% of the Education Department workforce, firing dedicated public servants who help ensure our nation’s students have access to the programs and resources that keep class sizes down and expand learning opportunities for students.   Please join us for an urgent town hall to discuss the Trump administration’s action and its other efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. We will discuss the impact on students and neighborhood public schools, as well as actions educators, parents, and community members can take.

Town Hall to Protect Our Students and Families Featuring  Becky Pringle  President  National Education Association  Randi Weingarten  President  American Federation of Teachers   T️hursday, March 13  8 p.m. EDT / 5 p.m. PDT  Zoom  Link upon registration  Take Action  ➤

This event will not be recorded.  All are welcome to join, but registration is limited. Please forward the invitation to anyone who you think would be interested in attending.  We hope to see you there,  The NEA EdAction Team

 

The Trump Depression

The Trump Depression: Donald Trump is on track to be the first president to deliberately engineer a severe depression.

Is Our Government on Drugs ? Elon Musk ?

 Is our government on Drugs ?

Elon’s K-hole…and ours

https://the.ink/p/this-is-your-government-on-drugs?

Psychedelics were supposed to open hearts and create connection and heal trauma. Jefferson Airplane vocalist Grace Slick even plotted to increase the peace by dosing Richard Nixon with LSD. So why is what may be our first psychedelic regime slashing government and spreading inhumanity?

Elon Musk has been open about his use of drugs at least since he lit up a blunt with Joe Rogan back in 2018. But most recently he’s been an advocate of the anaesthetic ketamine. He’s talked at length to Ronan Farrow and Don Lemon about his use of the drug as a treatment for depression (which is very legitimate), and he has waved off mounting concerns about abuse, despite reporting that alleges he’s also a recreational user. 

And that’s what raises red flags. Researcher Celia Morgan has pointed outthat ketamine can make regular users “distinctly dissociated in their day-to-day existence.” Musk has said repeatedly, after all, that his “mind is a storm.” But it was seeing Musk onstage at CPAC in dark glasses, barely able to string sentences together, and practicing questionable chainsaw safety, that had a lot of people asking:

Are these people high, man?

It’s an attractive explanation for the chaos. As Shayla Love wrote in The Atlantic this week:

Frequent, heavy recreational use—say, several times a week—has been linked to cognitive effects that last beyond the high, including impaired memory, delusional thinking, superstitious beliefs, and a sense of specialness and importance.

That sure rings a bell.

Now we’re not doctors, and would only ever offer a political diagnosis. So we suggest that our collective concern might be less about the direct effects of Musk’s drug use than about how he and other Trumpworld fixtures mix psychedelic adventurism — something we expect to be countercultural and progressive — with right-wing politics.

Share

But how surprised should we be?

After all, the psychedelic 1960s merged into the Me Decade of the 1970s and the greed-is-good 1980s (if you weren’t there, you can catch up by bingeing Family Ties). The anti-establishmentarian strain of hippie utopianism turned libertarian, and fed into the Californian Ideology — the market-fundamentalist techno-optimism that has made Silicon Valley the center of the financial world. It wasn’t the join-together sense of collective purpose that stuck, but the DIY anti-establishment spirit — and perhaps the drugs.

And psychedelics have their authoritarian history, too. Some early users saw LSD and psilocybin as tools by which elite researchers could unlock the secrets that could direct society to utopia. The CIA experimented with LSD as a truth serum. The Summer of Love was something of an afterthought.

The far right has brought those strains together under an all-encompassing and market-first faith in DIY self-invention. Some of Ketamine’s appeal right now has to do with its loose regulation and looser marketing, capitalizing on that spirit. Like others in the Trump orbit — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (himself a story of 1960s promise gone wrong), for instance — Musk is famously opposed to traditional medications for depression, namely SSRIs (like Prozac). Both men are on board with better living through chemistry, but not if the man sticks it to him. And as with so many far-right innovations, it’s a terrible, anti-social response to a real problem: you’re not paranoid — the pharma industry is out to get you! 

Musk’s positions aren’t so far from denouncing vaccines and embracing ivermectin, or giving kids cod liver oil (as Kennedy now advises) rather than vaccinating them against measles, or drinking raw milk, or belief in the curative power of raw water — all articles of faith on the far right.

Yes, think for yourself, question authority, by all means. But when you question everything, you’re sometimes left with nothing. And then you have to fill that gap. The problem with this particular K-hole is that we’re all at risk of falling in.

 

 

Trump and the Big Lie

The Big Lie

Bernie Sanders 

We are living in a pivotal moment in our country's history. And how we respond to this moment will impact not only our lives, but the lives of our kids and grandchildren. 

As you heard last night, President Trump has been very effective in creating a parallel universe. A set of ideas that either have no basis in reality, or are nowhere near the most important concerns of the American people. 

He does it through the concept of the BIG LIE, and boy did we hear that last night. He says something that is grossly false, says it over and over again, and has right-wing social media blast it out endless times until people believe it. 

The purpose of all of these lies is not just to push his hateful right-wing ideology. It is a masterful effort to deflect attention away from the most important issues facing the people of this country — issues Trump and his billionaire friends do not want to address because it is not in their financial interests to do so. 

Trump spoke for almost 100 minutes and he almost completely ignored the issues keeping working people up at night as they worry about how their families are going to survive during these tough times. 

100 minutes and he did not have one word to say about the economic realities facing 60 percent of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck. 

100 minutes and not one word to say about our broken, dysfunctional and expensive health care system that has left 80 million Americans uninsured or underinsured or why we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and 1 out of 4 Americans are unable to afford the medicine their doctors prescribe. 

100 minutes and not one word to say about the major housing crisis in America that has left 800,000 Americans who are homeless and the millions who spend more than half of their limited income on housing. 

100 minutes and not one word to say about the massive income and wealthy inequality that has 3 Americans owning more wealth than the bottom half of our society. 

100 minutes and not one word about a corrupt campaign finance system that allows a handful of billionaires to buy elections. 

100 minutes and not one word to say about the fact that our life expectancy is 4 years lower than other wealthy countries, and the bottom 50 percent of this country live on average 7 years shorter life than the top 1 percent. In other words, being poor in this country is a death sentence. 

100 minutes and not one word to say how we are going to address the planetary crisis of climate change. 

And the reason he had very little to say about the crises working families are facing is because he has no plan or desire to address them. Despite some of his rhetoric, Trump and his billionaire friends could not care any less about the concerns of the working people of this country. 

He did urge Congress to pass his big beautiful budget... 

But he left out the part that that budget would cut Medicaid by $880 billion. 

According to one estimate, it means up to 36 million Americans including millions of children would be thrown off the health care they gave. Think about it — we're talking about people who own their own spaceships who are trying to take away health care from millions of kids. It's a disgrace. 

A 100 minute speech, not one word about that. 

I guess he forgot... 

Friends, let me be direct: 

At this particular moment in history, despair is not an option. None of us have the privilege of hiding under the covers. Let us never forget that real change only happens when ordinary people stand up — by the millions — against oppression and injustice. 

I am going to do my part, and I need you with me. 

We just had two large and successful rallies in Iowa and Nebraska recently. Thousands of people turned out. 

This weekend, I'll be going to Michigan and Wisconsin where thousands more have already RSVP'd to attend those events. 

But that is not all. I'm going to continue running around the country talking to people about what Donald Trump is trying to do — and to talk about our vision for an agenda that works for the many and not just the few. 

We can win. We will win. But only if we go forward together. 

In solidarity, 

Bernie Sanders 

 

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