Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023

Sunny | Abandoned Rails | Sleeper Wave | Elder Home | Suicidal Thoughts | Damage Survey | Reco's Driver | Strategic Plan | Trinidad Panorama | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Win Streak | Another World | Susie Baker | Social Isolation | Promised Land | Induced Stupor | Last Thing | Biden 2024 | Bigfoot Lair | Ukraine | Road Building | Consensus Disorder | Sweet Sleep | Year 2033 | Arcata Trains | Federal Budget | Leaf Litter

PLEASANT WEATHER condition with a warming temperature trend through late this week, while the dry weather pattern is expected to persist into this weekend. Sneaker waves threat remain along the beaches through this evening. Troughiness pattern return this weekend through early next week, with rain and mountain snow possible as well as below normal temperature. (NWS)

THE SLEEPER WAVE

Editor:

Michael, our dog Radar and I, walked to Cooks Beach. We knew the waves were too high and too vicious to do our standard 40-plus minute walk on the sand. As always, we first went to the overlook.

We saw a family standing on an enormous log. Both children enjoyed leaving the log as if to dare the waves. Without thinking I yelled at the parents, “Get your kids away from the water!” Of course, they were unable to hear me.

I planned to walk down to plead my case with them, but up came the sleeper wave: The log moved out from under them. The children were submerged, and the father was hit up to his shoulder, the mother up to her neck.

I hysterically called 911 and Michael shortly followed. The children’s heads came bouncing up. Then it looked like all four scrambled to safe ground.

We both ended up speaking to a 911 dispatcher, both telling the same story. Each dispatcher asked if the family was injured, and we both said we would have to walk down the path to find out. Michael and Radar walked past me and found the intact family first. I couldn't stop crying, and the mother came up, hugged me and apologized for the fright.

The older, 9-year-old boy in a wetsuit was smiling and bragging that he was able to swim. I believe he had the adventure of his life, especially because he said he was hit over his head by the log.

The wonderful fire and rescue people, as always, arrived in good time and offered to examine everybody, but the adults just wanted to get back to their rental house and into warm clothes.

Alice Combs 

Gualala

THIS WEEKEND, OFFICERS PREVENTED a distraught person from committing suicide, who was threatening to jump off the Noyo Bridge. We are here for you. If you are depressed and having suicidal thoughts or know someone that is having suicidal thoughts, call us. Or call 9-1-1. Or call/text 9-8-8 (National Suicide Hotline). Or call RCS Crisis 1-855-838-0404. Just call. School counselors in the Fort Bragg Unified School District are ready to assist any student. It’s ok to not be ok, but please let someone know. (Fort Bragg Police Presser)

MENDO WANTS TO KNOW…

2022-2023 Winter Storms Damage Survey 

The County of Mendocino has begun the transition from response to recovery for the 2022-2023 Winter Storms event. 

The County is seeking assistance from the public to self-report damage resulting from the severe weather storms that occurred from December 2022 to January 2023.

This information will be used to assist the County in understanding the severity of the private property damage and request assistance from nonprofit, state, and federal partners.

The survey can be found here: surveymonkey.com/r/MendoWinterStormDamageSurvey

Please complete the survey by no later than close of business on Friday, February 3rd, 2023.

At this time FEMA has not authorized individual assistance to private property damaged by the winter storms.

As more recovery resources become available, we will publish the updates on the county’s social media below. 

Mendocino County Facebook page and Twitter feed.

WANNA BUY A STRATEGIC PLAN?

by Mark Scaramella

According to the grossly over-hyped draft of Mendo’s $100k-plus “ Mendocino County Strategic Plan 2022-2027,” (two years in the making and dated almost a year ago in May of 2022, but only now appearing on the Board’s agenda for Tuesday, January 23), the drafters, Supervisors Glenn McGourty and John Haschack, have “identified ambitious goals with specific objectives.” The County’s high-priced Sonoma County-based consultants “worked with Project Manager Anne Molgaard, Director of Public Health, and a Task Force comprised of six County employee leaders with knowledge of County government operations.” 

But Ms. Molgaard was abruptly terminated from her Public Health Directorship last fall without even an announcement, much less an explanation. 

One of the “ambitious goals” is: “An Effective County Government Organization.” And the “specific objectives” to achieve that goal include: 

“Define clear roles, responsibilities, and processes for government leadership:

• Make determinations about key roles for county governance, including the CEO/CAO and County elected officials. 

• Create operating agreements for how the Supervisors will work with one another and with the CAO/CEO, County elected officials, and Department Heads. 

• In collaboration, Supervisors, Department Heads, CAO/CEO, and other elected County leaders create a Code of Conduct that defines acceptable behavior and sets expectations for accountability.

• Create groupings of departments with similar functions and assign Supervisors as liaisons with the Department Heads from those groups to conduct regular meetings that promote healthy communication and greater cooperation across departments.

• Identify an organizational leader to work closely with Department Heads and CEO/CAO Office to guide the implementation of the strategic plan by establishing responsibilities, priorities, and annual budgets.”

Hmmm. 

Leaving aside the obvious lack of anything remotely specific in their list of “specific objectives” for the moment, this “Strategic Plan” was published in May of 2022 and we’re almost in February of 2023 and not one step has been taken along these obvious and simple lines. 

Perhaps that’s because the first candidate for “an organizational leader to work closely with Department Heads and CEO/CAO Office,” Ms. Molgaard, was fired and they don’t have any other staffers who are remotely in the category of “organizational leader.” 

The rest of the list is pretty pathetic too. They already have the equivalent of “operating agreements for how the Supervisors will work with one another (the Board’s Rules of Procedure). They already have a workplace guide which amounts to a Code of Conduct. And if the idea of assigning Supervisors to random groups of departments was so great, they could and should have done that already. 

But this is Mendo, so, like the rest of the useless gibberish in the “Strategic Plan,” all the costly plan does is collect the usual generic boilerplate so that they can tell their ever-shrinking fan base that they have a “strategic plan.” 

Our favorite “specific objective” is: “Redesign the hiring process to drastically reduce cycle time from open requisition to new employee start date.” 

Remember when they all wanted to do a hurry up hire of an Assistant Auditor-Controller Auditor Tax Collector because they all agreed that such a person would speed of the long-delayed closing of last year’s books? Even though they brought their Human Resource Manager in for grilling about how long it was taking to even get a job classification approved, they ended up with no action taken and no discussion of why it was taking so long. So if you believe they’ll ever do that (or any of the other “specific objectives,” we’ve got a nice copy of the Strategic Plan we’ll be happy to sell you for much less than the $100k-plus the County paid for it.

ED NOTES

THE RIGHTWING MEDIA jumps on every odd sexual development to make it seem as if gender-bending is prevalent, that gender bending is common in school curricula when it’s non-existent in curricula and a non-factor in the lives of all but a tiny sliver of Americans. There have been a couple of cases here in the outback, Mendocino County division, but for most of us “transitioning” is off our mind screens. The rightwing, though, seems terrified that this statistically non-existent phenomena is gaining ground, that your kid just might come home from school and announce he wants to be a girl, or the girl wants to become a boy.

THE LATEST EXAMPLE of this hysteria was in the news today when a Norway-based group, or a Norway-based group of practical jokers called Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance (TCMA) said they want Aretha Franklin’s famous song, “I Am A Woman” taken off Spotify and Apple Music because it suggests hostility for other expressions of female-ness as expressed by men who parody women by dressing like them.

NEW CAMPAIGN FOR YOUR OLD FRIEND: Pebbles Trippet

As of today, Pebbles is safe but in a temporary living situation & has a loving local community rallying around her. Her home is uninhabitable. Her health has deteriorated. One emergency after another has drained her savings. As a radical spirit, as independent as they come, residing off-grid for decades, she is now in need of assistance. Her property is in the process of being sold. Low-income senior benefits are being secured. But in the meantime, she needs funds for incidentals that are essential to remaining as independent as possible, like a cell phone & transportation. Possibly even an automobile or an uber account. Pebbles will soon also have her own patreon account, an online forum where folks can subscribe to support her while she shares her archives & future thoughts. While all of the above gets sorted out & set up, this gofundme is still needed for immediate support. Pebbles has dedicated her life and financial resources to helping others. In this spirit, we have dedicated time and resources of our own into helping a woman who has so little, yet deserves so much as a treasured elder of the cannabis community. We are asking you to join us wholeheartedly in donating what you have to offer. Please help us help Pebbles: gofundme.com/f/new-campaign-for-your-old-friend-pebbles-trippet

A bit more of herstory in Pebbles own words: "What I did was endure the consequences of my civil disobedience, rather than take an easy plea for felony transportation & get it over with squandering my opportunity, & eventually getting somewhere worth the effort, proving others could do the same. By losing at the trial court level, I actually gained: 1) the right to transport medicine you can legally possess, which became the 5th right in Prop 215 (left out of the original initiative). 2) the quantity standard which is the amount "reasonably related" to your medical condition, now known as the Trippet standard. The Court replaced the 6 plant limit numbers game with a legal standard patients were entitled to based on voter intent. In 2010, People v Kelly involved an AIDS patient prosecuted & convicted of growing 8 plants instead of 6, to which the CA Supreme Court replied: 'That's not what the voters intended.' Since I based my case on constitutional rights, the Court took it more seriously & commented, 'This is one of those rare times when both defense and prosecution agree,' affirming the Trippet standard in Kelly in 2010. Let this be a long view lesson. This process took 20 years (1990-2010) including appeals - with 10 prosecutions in 5 counties in 11 years. I prolonged my low income status as long as I could until I finally concluded with deteriorating health, that selling the land was the best option for maintaining my independence & using some of the $ to collaborate with viable community projects for the greater good. Most people don't know I worked hard for these results, without regrets. I wouldn't ask if I didn't have to but I know my limits and I've reached them."

I HOPE people will send a few bucks Pebs Trippet’s way to get her a secure place to live. I visited Pebs a few years ago at her place on the Navarro, about six miles from the river mouth on the south side of the river. My visit was in a summer month when semi-outdoor living among an amiable troupe of stoners has its charms, but an elderly Pebs living in a kind of modified tree stump in the rain and cold months would seem to be contra-indicated. Factor in a raging winter river whose flood waters lap at one’s door — “I can swim outtahere if I have to,” Pebs assured me during one big storm — and you’ve got your basic untenable living situation. I don’t want to see the old girl confined to some bars-on-the-window senior stalag, but she’s gotta be housed in a safe, warm situation. (Pebbles Trippet, Box 338, Albion, CA 95410)

WHAT’S UP WITH THE DA? The spectacularly rogue Ukiah cop, Kevin Murray, gets probation on convictions that would get your average Mendo tweeker-perp state prison time, then the DA tries to foist off the matter of defrocked Ukiah police chief, Noble Waidelich, on the state AG who promptly writes back to say, this is your case, Mr. DA, not a state matter. Waidelich is accused of extorting sex from a Ukiah woman while in uniform. Either he did or he didn’t. He said he didn’t, she said he did. Either prosecute him or don’t prosecute him. It’s unfair to her and to the accused to just leave it hanging. There’s also a pending sex charge or charges against fired Willits cop, Derek Hendry. That one’s also apparently in a suspiciously lengthy limbo. And the County of Mendo, always a big pay day for outside lawyers, rightly had to pay a nice sum to Amanda Carley for trying to destroy her reputation as a law enforcement officer. There seems to be a big bias against women going here, and an equivalently large bias for badged marauders, both biases centered in the DA’s office. 

LOVED this hed from the MCN chat line, suitable for a noir title: “Loose dog on nameless lane.”

SO, I turn my enfeebled attentions to a collection of short stories by Lorrie Moore, whose fiction I'm a big fan of. The story is called ‘Will’ about a show biz lady estranged from the biz and herself. This quote appears below the title: “How can I live my life without committing an act with a giant scissors?” The quote is from Joyce Carol Oates, whose fiction I'm not a fan of. I can't get past the quote because I don't think I know what it means in relation to Moore's story, but I think it means most of us wonder, after some bad experience, how we can go on without somehow obliterating that bad experience. Eleanor? Eleanor Cooney? White courtesy telephone, please.

FUNNY THING, THOUGH, as I scrolled back through my collection of crimes which I'd prefer to be excised from that long indictment that will be read off against me on Judgment Day, the one that popped up was trivial, perhaps my way of scissoring out my large-scale sins. So, there I am with my eccentric high school girl friend at Fisherman's Grotto Number 9 at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, 1957. I played weekend baseball on a high school all star team sponsored by the restaurant. I thought I'd show off to her what a big shot I was at that establishment, greeting the maitre’d with a jaunty, “How are ya, Gino?” which he failed to acknowledge. Anyway, we ordered crab louies, which were affordable in '57. As I, Mr. Suave, squeezed a slice of lemon on my salad, my unpredictable date yelled, “Watch it, goddammit. You almost got me in the eye!” Then she laughs. I assume now she only associated with me to enjoy the mortification I suffered at one or another of her deliberate provocations, and like some kind of masochist I continued to associate with her because in between mortifications we were compatible. We both liked the same things as the young pseuds we were — live theater, also then affordable; avant garde movies, which I tried to pretend I was interested in, including the totally fraudulent ‘Last Day at Marienbad,’ which almost put me off movies forever and, natch, books. A month or so after her major scene at the restaurant — unseemly public behavior was not on in '57 — we were up in the cheap seats at the precipitous Geary Theater when, after the show on our way down the stairs she screamed, “Vertigo! Get me out of here before I fall over the side!” Outside, she laughed and laughed. I suffered several more major embarrassments with her until I moved on to more sedate female company, but she pulled off a final bit of theatrics at the place I rented south of Market, then an area solid with SRO's. “I really want to see your place,” she said. Then, when we got there, “It's in this building?” She seemed incredulous. “Well, yeah,” I said. “Here it is. I like it. I've got a corner room overlooking the street, bathroom down the hall, fresh sheets once a week. I can walk everywhere I need to go. It's perfect.” Right there on the sidewalk she started to cry, not leaving it at a few tears but mixing in a kind of funereal death howl. “This is the most depressing place I've ever seen,” she finally sniffled. I laughed, and that was it. She walked off and I never saw or heard from her again.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, January 22, 2023

MICHAEL BROYLES, Stockton/Ukiah. DUI with priors.

MARKAS CAPSKIS, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, more than an ounce of pot.

CHRISTOPHER CARTER, Covelo. Suspended license, probation revocation.

JESUS DIAZ, Covelo. Reckless evasion.

VERNON DUGAN, Point Arena. Protective order violation.

LATIFAH GLOVER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

LIZBETH GONZALEZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear. 

JUAN MALAGON-RAMOS, Willits. 20. Domestic battery, DUI. (Booking Photo is a close up of a tattoo)

LILA LOPEZ, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

MATTHEW THOMPSON, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MEXICO: NEXT-TO-THE-LAST REFLECTIONS

by Jonah Raskin

Time after time I tell myself I won’t travel to Mexico again. But time after time I return to Mexico. Once it takes root it’s nearly impossible to detach. The attraction is that it’s another country, and another culture that never really changes, not deep down. Year after year, you can count on Mexico to be the same. There will always be beans, rice, tortillas, barking dogs at dusk, roosters crowing at dawn, men with guns riding on horseback, church bells clanging, and tourists from around the world. I will return to the States in two days. These are some of my last reflections. 

My two North American friends and I were the only two guests who spent the night in a luxury hotel in the hills about San Miguel Allende. We were the only people who ate breakfast in the hotel dining room, though yesterday we had lunch in Hecho En Mexico, a crowded restaurant near the center of the city where wealthy North Americans own million dollar homes and throw the economy off kilter. "It’s very expensive to live here," one taxi driver told me. He had lived in Florida, Colorado and California and had facts and figures for comparison. I have found that Mexican taxi drivers are usually reliable sources of information. They see and hear a great deal and have no axe to grind. I don’t expect long disquisitions, but simple answers to simple questions.

I have been to San Miguel before. The first time was in 1975 when I was with Abbie Hoffman who was wanted in the States on drug charges (cocaine) and his traveling companion Johanna Lawrenson, daughter of once well-know parents, her father a union organizer and her mother a writer for Vanity Fair famous for a story “Latins Make Lousy lovers.” Mexico can be a nifty place to hide out, and a nifty place to retire. Spaniards came here after Franco took over Spain, and Chileans after Pinochet was installed as dictator in Chile.

My friends have lived here for nearly two decades, not in San Miguel Allende but in nearby Guanajuato, famous for its underground tunnels and its petrified mummies. "GTO" as it’s often called is built in a ravine; to go anywhere you have to walk uphill or downhill on steep steps and along narrow alleys. It’s always an adventure. I’m always sure I’ll get lost. Occasionally, that has happened and my friends have had to rescue me. On the road from San Miguel back to GTO we drove on narrow mountain roads and passed a religious procession that seemed timeless and eternal, made up of men and women carrying banners with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. My friends tell me that churchgoers are mostly women. That could be. Yesterday, a Sunday, the streets in GTO were crowded with parents and children, walking, holding hands, shopping and enjoying the warm weather. Winter has come and gone. The rainy season is a ways off. Much of the land looks barren, though I saw irrigated farms, green fields and crops in the sun. Organic produce is available in the supermarkets. 

If you have money you can live as comfortably in GTO or San Miguel Allende as in Ukiah, Santa Rosa and San Francisco. Washington, D.C. and Sacramento seem like another world. Mexico has problems, sometimes all its own, though some of its problems, like the border, are also our problems. They will be solved together or not at all.

THE PLAGUE OF SOCIAL ISOLATION

The rupture of social bonds and loss of community, caused by the decades-long assault on the poor and working class and the ravages of the pandemic, have resulted in a dangerous social isolation.

by Chris Hedges

There is very little to recommend my old gym, other than the low monthly fee, where I worked out nearly every day from 2007 until the pandemic shut it down. The locker rooms were grimy with moldering carpets. There were brown rings around the basins and a thin blackish layer of slime, composed, I suspect, of dead skin, urine, hair, dust, dirt and assorted bacteria on the floor of the shower stalls. To step into the slime without flip flops was to take home athlete’s foot and toenail fungus, at the very least. The sauna in the locker room was reportedly listed on a gay pick-up app and attracted pairs of men looking for anonymous sexual encounters in clouds of steam. The gym management first tried to combat these liaisons by posting a sign on the door that read: “IT IS FORBIDDEN TO HAVE SEX IN THE SAUNA.” When this failed to slow the traffic in and out of the sauna, the door was removed and the sauna shut down. Robberies occurred in the early afternoon when the gym was nearly empty. One man would stand by the entrance of the locker room as a lookout while another quickly pried the hinges off the flimsy lockers and pocketed the wallets. The management was unsympathetic. They had posted signs not to leave valuables in the lockers. Theft was our problem.

The treadmills, stationary bikes and ellipticals would break down and be blocked off for weeks with a chain and sign that read: “Out of Service.” The weight room, located in the windowless basement, is where I spent most of my time. And this is where the only redeeming feature of the gym could be found — the community of regulars who, month after month, year after year, embedded themselves into my life. It’s true that none of us wanted to pay the exorbitant fees to join the fancy gyms, but we also found comfort in the familiarity of each other’s company. We were united not by politics, class, status, education or profession but by working out. I lifted with two men my age: John, who had played in the NFL for the Jets and the Colts, and Marc, who had played college basketball. As former competitive athletes, we accepted that our workouts at this stage were managed decay, but there was something reassuring about this dogged determination not to resign ourselves to decrepitude. Besides, when uttered by John or Marc in the weight room, the most banal advice and information became a revealed truth, frustrating my wife Eunice, who had often said the same thing months — or years — earlier.

Among our small band of regulars was Robert, a hairstylist who kept in shape, he said, because his boyfriend was older, and he was “the trophy wife.” Robert showed off his 30-inch waist and sleek, toned physique. One Halloween, he and his boyfriend went on a gay cruise where his costume was a thong and a feathered Native American war bonnet. “I looked fabulous,” he informed us. There was also a professional wrestler who was on the circuit in smaller cities like Wilmington and whose stage name was “The Mighty Vesuvius”; a deeply traumatized Iraq war vet whom we all kept at a distance and who once threatened a trainer who subsequently walked out of the gym and never returned; a police officer; a former Wall Street commodities trader who supported the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); Camillo, who had been a professional heavyweight boxer in Italy and who owned the restaurant next door to the gym; and my friend Boris who had once been homeless on the streets of Trenton, read Fyodor Dostoevsky in the original Russian and, while he held down a job, was attending Rutgers University part time to become a social worker. One afternoon, Camillo and I decided we would rekindle the glories of our boxing days by hammering the heavy bag without wearing the cotton wraps boxers coil around their hands before putting on gloves. This impulsive act of machismo left us with sprained wrists — not good for a cook or a writer.

Because you could join the gym for as low as $36 a month, the locker room served as a public bathroom and shower facility for undocumented workers and the unhoused. One portly man, who lived out of his car, came every morning to shave and shower. He cheerily subscribed to every bizarre right-wing conspiracy theory and held forth about them to anyone willing to listen. Where is he now? Has he found another community where he is accepted with all his quirks, where he can shower and shave, or has he been, like so many, cast completely adrift? He was already living on the edge of catastrophe.

The gym was run by a crime syndicate called the New York Sports Club. These business school wizards had perfected every technique for ripping off the lawyerless proletariat.  None of their scams would have worked at the high-priced gyms, the ones with spas, swimming pools, immaculate locker rooms, plush towels, masseuses and fresh juice bars, which charged over $100 a month. The members of these high-end gyms could hire attorneys. The syndicate determined, correctly, that most of us were defenseless. They were very creative in dreaming up ways to fleece us. They signed up members promising a low monthly fee and then, once they had the credit card on file, raised the fee without notice. This increase could be reversed if you showed up at the manager's office with your contract, but most people did not discover the increase for a few months. No one got refunds. When ordered to shut down their chain of gyms at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the syndicate continued to charge monthly dues to members and ignored cancellation requests. This January, the New York Attorney General Letitia James ordered the New York Sports Club to pay $110 to eligible club members who filed a complaint in New York after being  ripped off by the chain.

Gyms do not make their money from people who regularly attend. They make their money from personal training sessions and those who purchase memberships, come for a week or two as part of a New Year’s resolution or because they need to lose weight and get exercise, and then disappear. These ghost members retain their membership, probably out of guilt, with the vague notion of going back. Our gym had 2,000 members. Only 50 of us went daily.

There were often frustrated members at the front desk asking to revoke their membership, only to be told it was not within the authority of anyone at the front desk to deal with that issue. This had to be done through a customer service line where it was nearly impossible to speak to a human being. When you finally did get through to cancel, you had to pay for the next two months before termination kicked in. I fell for one of the syndicate's more ingenious scams. They promised, promised, promised that if an existing member paid $800, the price of the monthly membership would be locked in for life. A year later, they raised rates and told us the locked-in-for-life rate was no longer valid. When you are constantly on the receiving end of predatory corporate abuse, it is easy to understand the hatred for the politically correct, educated, privileged ruling class.

The only time we managed to strike back was when the syndicate decreed that the gym’s towel service would be abolished. This led to wholesale pilfering of the towel stock. I still have a few of these towels, which are incapable of wrapping around even a very thin torso and have the texture of sandpaper. I use them to clean the muddy paws of our dog.

A club manager or sales assistant usually lasted no more than six months in the job. This is because they were given high membership quotas they had to achieve every month. Once they had signed up their family, friends and former co-workers, once they had run out of new prospects, they were sent packing. One manager, who wore stiletto heels to the gym, hung on a bit longer by transferring lists of new members recruited by her sales staff to fulfill her own quota. I saw cashiered sales staff, whose new memberships had been appropriated by the manager, in tears. This manager mounted the only serious campaign to clean the gym, even giving the cleaning staff, who also rarely lasted more than a couple of months, toothbrushes to get the dirt out of the crevices of the exercise equipment. But then she too vanished. The gym fell back into its habitual state of filth and decay.

Today, the gym is gone. We had no advance notice. Trucks came and took away the equipment. Camillo’s restaurant closed and has not reopened. The deli across from the gym, owned by Bill, a former Marine and former professional kickboxer, where I would grab a coffee and chat with the staff in Spanish, before I worked out, is shuttered. Bleakness.

These ecosystems knit the social bonds that ground us to a community. They give us a sense of place, identity and worth. The economic dislocation of the past few decades, aggravated by the pandemic, have weakened or severed these bonds, leaving us disconnected, atomized, trapped in a debilitating anomie that fosters rage, despair, loneliness and fuels the epidemic of substance abuse, depression and suicidal ideation. Estranged from society, we become estranged from ourselves. This social isolation, exacerbated by social media, is a plague, leaving the vulnerable prey to groups and demagogues that promise a sense of belonging and purpose in return for loyalty to a dogmatic political or religious ideology. “The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness,” Hannah Arendt writes, “but his isolation and lack of normal social relations.” Social isolation is the lifeblood of totalitarian movements. There are many things I fear about the future, but this unmooring is one of the most ominous.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

One comment on this thread stated that we Americans still have too much to lose and will not react in a revolutionary manner. I agree. As long as Americans can still watch “The Voice” or their favorite celebrity game show, or download free porn, or watch the NFL or go eat disgusting hamburgers at McDonald’s, they won’t revolt. Things must get much worse before people awaken from their entertainment induced stupor. Unfortunately, we will need to lose everything before people have a reason to fight. I believe, anyway.

Last week a man drove his minivan through the front of an engineering business in my town. Plowed over a receptionist and killed her and then slammed into a man working at his desk on the other side of the wall. He didn’t die but got pretty banged up. The cause? A stroke. He drove across two lanes of traffic, through a parking lot, over a retaining wall and into the building. These things didn’t happen this regularly before.

BIDEN 2024 DECISION PITS THE PARTY’S ELITES AGAINST MOST DEMOCRATS

by Norman Solomon

Denial at the top of the Democratic Party about Joe Biden’s shaky footing for a re-election run in 2024 became more untenable over the weekend. As the New York Times reported, investigators “seized more than a half-dozen documents, some of them classified, at President Biden’s residence” in Delaware. The newspaper noted that “the remarkable search of a sitting president’s home by federal agents -- at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers -- dramatically escalated the legal and political situation for the president.”

Donald Trump’s obstructive refusal to cooperate with the federal investigation into the far more numerous classified documents in his possession stands in sharp contrast with Biden’s apparently full cooperation with the Justice Department. Yet Biden now faces a documents scandal that’s sure to fester for quite a while -- the average length of special counsel investigations has been upwards of 900 days -- and the impacts on his plans to seek re-election are unclear.

Meanwhile, here’s an assumption so routine that it passes as self-evident among power brokers and corporate-media journalists: Democratic voters are presumed to be mere spectators awaiting Biden’s decision on whether to seek a second term. Hidden in plain sight is a logical question that remains virtually off-limits to raise in standard political discourse: Why not ask them?

What a concept. Biden could actually seek guidance from the Democratic base -- the people who regularly turn out to vote for the party’s candidates, give millions of small-dollar donations and do priceless volunteer work in support of campaigns to defeat Republicans.

Biden’s decision on whether to run again should be seen as much more than just a matter of personal prerogative. Rather than treating it as such, Biden could put party and country first by recognizing that the essential Democratic task of defeating the Republican ticket in 2024 will require widespread enthusiasm from grassroots Democrats. Biden would be boosting the chances of beating the GOP by including those Democrats in the decision-making process as he weighs whether to officially declare his candidacy.

But there’s one overarching reason why the Biden White House has no interest in any such idea. The president doesn’t want to ask the question of loyal Democratic voters because he probably wouldn’t like the answer. His stance is clear: It’s my party and I’ll run if I want to.

A glimmer of that attitude showed through during a news conference shortly after the midterm election. Noting that “two-thirds of Americans in exit polls say that they don’t think you should run for re-election,” a reporter asked: “What is your message to them?” Biden’s reply: “Watch me.” Later, CNN and CNBC polls found that nearly 60 percent of Democrats didn’t want Biden to run again. Yet from all indications, he still intends to do just that.

Defying the wishes of most of the party’s voters could be spun as leadership, but a more fitting word is hubris. Whatever the characterization, it runs a serious risk of self-defeat. For instance, only wishful thinking leads to a belief that the Democratic presidential nominee next year can win without a strong turnout from those who represent the party’s bedrock base and its future -- the young.

Biden’s “watch me” attitude is especially out of whack in relation to youthful Democratic voters. A New York Times poll last summer found that a stunning 94 percent of them under age 30 said they didn’t want Biden to be the party’s nominee. Such a disconnect spells trouble if Biden does run. Too many young people might heed the “watch me” attitude by declining to volunteer or vote for Biden before he goes down to defeat.

In normal times, a president’s renomination has been his for the taking. But in this case, when most of the party’s supporters don’t want him to run, exercising raw intra-party leverage to get nominated would indicate a high degree of political narcissism. It’s hardly a good look or an auspicious path.

If he runs in 2024, Joe Biden would be the foremost symbol of the status quo -- not a good position to be in when faux populism will predictably be the name of the Republican game. In a poll last November, only 21 percent of registered voters told Hart Research that the country was “headed in the right direction” while 72 percent said it was “off on the wrong track.”

For the president, gaining the Democratic nomination next year would likely be much easier than winning the White House for a second time. If Biden is content to become the party’s nominee again while ignoring the majority of Democrats who don’t want him to run, he’ll be boosting the chances that a Republican will get to work in the Oval Office two years from now. To prevent such a catastrophe, grassroots Democrats will need to directly challenge the party elites who seem willing to whistle past the probable graveyard of Biden’s second-term hopes.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy." His next book, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine," will be published in June 2023 by The New Press.

UKRAINE, MONDAY, 23RD JANUARY

Germany said it would not fight Poland’s move to ship the German-made tanks, which Ukraine has said are essential to fighting off a Russian advance.

Poland steps in as pressure grows on Germany to supply Leopard tanks.

Zelensky vows action against corruption after a minister is fired for embezzlement.

Germany’s reluctance to send tanks to Ukraine stems from its history and politics.

Russian agents directed a militant group to mail bombs in Spain, U.S. officials say.

THE END OF REALITY CONSENSUS DISORDER

by James Kunstler

The big annual World Economic Forum meet-up concluded last week with a mighty “So, What?” as the world struggled with some success to get its mind right after years of relentless WEF-inspired psy-ops. Own nothing… eat bugs… great re-set… yeah, right. These days, fewer sovereign individuals believe der Schwabenklaus bullshit about the necessity of becoming menials for the “fittest 0.1 percent” of mankind who comprise the WEF’s cabal of elite “strategic partners.” News reports pegged the attendance in Davos this year at a shocking mere half of invitees. Did the absentees quail at the risk of all being together in the same auditorium (what with all those drones and missiles available on the black market)? Or could they not find enough unvaccinated pilots to fly their private jets?

By no strange coincidence, one of the WEF’s most sadistic leadership implants, PM Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, dropped out of office the same week, declaring she had “no gas left in the tank.” Old George Orwell had a pretty keen eye for the arc of history, but it never occurred to him that Big Brother would turn out to be Big Sister. Ms. Ardern was the one who said of her regime, “We will continue to be your single source of truth… Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth.” Polls indicated her party would get thrashed in this year’s parliamentary election. Next door in equally vaxxed-to-the-max Australia, the government had to confess last week that the country had more Covid-19 deaths in the first half of January this new year than in all of 2021.

Europe is starting to emerge from its Covid coma, France especially, where disgruntled masses marched in the streets last week, evincing growing disgust with WEF poodle Emmanuel Macron. Germany, not so much. Is it possible they really haven’t learned anything from what went on 1933-1945? Great Britain, a basket-case of Woke double-think and economic tribulation, is crumbling over excess all-causes mortality and a public health officialdom addicted to lying. British doctors are in revolt against the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the UK equivalent of the FDA.

A wake-up is underway in these sore-beset United States. It was no small thing, for instance, that former “vaccine” cheerleader, Scott Adams, the podcaster of the Dilbert comic strip fame, admitted pretty forthrightly that he was wrong about all that. “The thing that [the unvaxxed] don’t have to worry about is what I have to worry about: what happens with this vaccination five years from now? All my fancy analytics took me to a bad place.”

Elon Musk shocked the Twitterverse (and beyond) by confessing that he only took the vaxxes because international travel for business required it, and his second shot was a near-death experience (while his cousin developed myocarditis from it). Meanwhile, the UN issued a warning to him through a WEF mouthpiece, EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova: comply and regulate speech on the platform, or else….

“We have the rules which must be complied with and otherwise there will be sanctions. I think that the confidence has been weakened, and I had quite a high level of confidence when it comes to Twitter. I have to say that we worked with knowledgeable people, with layers, with sociologists, who understood that they have to behave in some decent way. Not to cause really big harm to society…” she said.”

Something tells me that Mr. Musk will invite these busybodies to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. As the Tweeter @BlackFlagExpat explained: “Musk can simply set up the server capacity outside of EU jurisdiction (UK, Andorra, Switz, Russia?) and move all data to those physical and virtual servers. Then lay off all European employees and stop paying rent on all leases.” Nice!

That old rats-from-a-sinking-ship feeling emanates from the hazy region where “Joe Biden” dwells. Chief of staff Ron Klain is handing over his duties to former Covid-19 “czar” Jeff Zients — who did such a swell job keeping Americans mis-and-disinformed through the heart of the “vaccine” campaign (January 2021 to April 2022). Every thread of the Covid-19 narrative promulgated by this ass, and the sachems of the CDC and FDA, are shredded, proved to be not only lies, but deadly lies. Every angle of Covid policy was wrong, and treasonously wrong. This is who will soon be, ostensibly, leading the country — since you can be sure that “JB” is not. Nobody will believe a word that Jeff Zients utters. The mainstream media is even turning against this coterie of evil nincompoops.

The sociopathic Political Left and its international managers have lost control of the ball in this game. They can insist on any sort of absurdity, but the people have stopped buying it. Resentment over all this is breaking out. Nobody wants any more boosters. The running dogs of official propaganda, such as Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, await their career executions. The years of Reality Consensus Disorder draw to a close. The counter-revolution finally begins.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

THE YEAR IS 2033. Elon Musk is no longer one of the richest people in the world, having haemorrhaged away his fortune trying to make Twitter profitable. Which, alas, hasn’t worked out too well: only 420 people are left on the platform. Everyone else was banned for not laughing at Musk’s increasingly desperate jokes. In other news, Pete Davidson is now dating Martha Stewart. Donald Trump is still threatening to run for president. And British tabloids are still churning out 100 articles a day about whether Meghan Markle eating lunch is an outrageous snub to the royal family.

— Arwa Mahdawi

FEDERAL BUDGET - 2023

by David Pollin

Republicans Promise To Shutdown Federal Government If Their Fiscal Demands Are Not Met

Republican Representatives in Washington DC have made it clear they intend to reduce our Nation’s Debt. Reducing this debt is clearly a needed goal. A group of them, being called ‘The Freedom Caucus’, have stated the debt is so excessive that they are willing to shut down the governments’ ability to make deficit spending payments on any payroll and/or bills due after the Federal Gov’t’s treasury funds run out of funds in August 2023. That debt reduction legislation needs to start now …not in the Spring or Summer of 2023.

The Federal Budget Is Paying For State Representatives In Washington DC and Their Staff and Perks

As the EXTREMELY less than Supreme Court has presented to the citizens, States and Federal Gov’t: State Governments need to be the deciders of issues for their States. Thus, it is important that the 50 States also accept ‘State Responsibilities’ for their Washington DC Officials and Staffs. It is time for a change as to how business in Washington DC has been done. Times have changed and at this time a review of the Federal Budget spending shows that the Federal Budget is taking fiscal responsibility for the individual States elected Politicians in Washington DC: for their payroll, staffing, and costs of operations for the States to achieve its particular needs. These costs are excessive to the Federal Treasury, fiscally irresponsible and wrong. Supporting each States’ costs is an excessive drain on the Federal Budget. The cost to give ‘State elected representatives’ Federal dollars for more than their ‘Office Space in Washington DC’ is wrong and a waste of the American Citizens Federal Taxes. Many of the ‘perks’ paid for by Federal Dollars are also insulting to hard working American families.

Federal Spending On What Are State Employees MUST END. This Needs To Be A Number One Priority! If Republicans Feel Federal Programs For Citizens Should Be Reduced… First End Federal Support For State Employees in Washington.

With the States, not the Federal Budget, paying their legislators and the overhead for their States legislators in Washington, who are there to pursue each States Interests, is a good start in reducing Federal deficit spending. Why are the citizens of Rhode Island paying bills for California, Texas, Florida, New York, etc. to be in Washington DC pursuing the interest of their individual States. Legislators pay is well above low-poverty levels. Yet the Affordable Care Act provides them with medical care benefits. [NPR.com]

It is sad that Airport parking costs are so high for citizens everywhere who pay these fees. Free parking is a perk for the State Senators and Representatives. They can work from home, take a ride service that they or their State Budget can pay for. However the States choose to support their politicians should be how the politicians are funded. The perks the Royalty ‘Congressional/Senate Pin’ gives these people must end. Reducing Federal spending on State employees MUST be a Number One Priority!

Republicans Reduce Corporate Taxes and Cause An Increase In the Federal Deficit

Our Representatives in Washington chose to reduce Corporate Taxes. That was a big influence on the budget deficit. Corporations have the highest positive balances in the banks than ever in the history or our nation. The costs of corporate oversight are also the highest ever. 

Many citizens are not able to pay their taxes. Fortunately, many homeless people do get some income from their social security payments that they made earlier in their lives, in a lesser than today payroll for work, in a different economic era. That gives them some food and personal necessities like the tents they live in! . . . in parks and freeway underpasses. 

Corporations and Wealth Funds have made vast amounts of economic support to legislators and candidates of their choosing. Often with the hope these ‘investments’ will be ‘appreciated’ as their donation recipients prepare legislation, like tax reductions – not increases. 

Many corporations have moved their operations (out sourced) to other, often 3^rd world countries, with few environmental laws, extremely low wages, no unions and smaller ‘donations’ and taxes to government representatives of those countries. 

Pandemic Closes World Economy

Oh my, a global pandemic came. Global sickness shut down nations, businesses, ports, shipping, access to resources, and led to shortages of goods to sell. Many Corporations answer to this devastation was to turn what products that were available into a ‘commodity’ to be sold to the highest paying purchaser. This was their need, to meet the economic expectations of investors – not Citizens. Many multimillion-dollar businesses took millions of dollars each in Federal Pandemic Aid… Creating vast millions of dollars of Federal charity to extremely wealthy businesses. They made profits on the work done by the workers they took Federal Pandemic Aid to pay. What a great dream come true: someone else pays their workers and they profit from the worker’s work

Why is it Un-American and Socialism to protect workers and citizens from ‘gouging prices’ and manipulation creating the economic bleeding of families. As families watch Wall Street values unrealistically soar. This corporate behavior often leaves the citizens angry at elected officials for NOT protecting them. Which could be seen as using the citizens to reject and want to change those who govern. A form of political manipulation. If you can’t get elected find ways to get those elected to get unelected. Frivolous failed recalls have cost citizens millions of dollars.

 Now the pandemic is slowly passing and we are getting our lives and work back. The pandemic caused ‘supply-chain’ problems are being examined (especially that many of those ‘Out-Sourced’ countries are still lost in fighting the pandemic). New plans are emerging. ‘Re-Sourcing’ seems to be the moving of manufacturing closer to America; and the best plan is ‘In-Sourcing’: moving industries back to America. Industries have stated that this is a good time to move back to the USA. They have stated that ‘with artificial intelligence, computers and robots they will be able to hire less people’. So it goes for the American Dream. So it goes for the economic future of your family. So it goes for the future for your children. So it goes for State and Federal tax revenue. Less employment, higher prices and less tax from unemployed citizens. Less taxes from Corporations. I have been in third world countries where citizens say they would love to work, but there are NO jobs. Is this the future for our country.

Some State Government Budgets Receive As Much As 1/3 of Their Budget Revenue From Federal Government

Current data of the 12 States most dependent on Federal Funding handouts: 8 are Republican. States that receive approximately 1/3 of their State budget from Federal funding are: (Republican) West Virginia, Mississippi, Alaska, Kentucky, Montana, Arizona, Louisiana, Wyoming;

4 are Democratic . . . 

New Mexico, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware.

Most other States receive 1/4, 1/5, and occasionally 1/6 funding in their budget from the Federal Treasury. 

Insisting no State should receive no more than 1/5 of Their Budget Revenue from the Federal Budget would greatly reduce Federal Budget expenditures and deficits.

Clearly many States Revenue Budgets are on FEDERAL WELFARE:

 ( State gets approx. % of their State Budget Revenue from the Federal Budget ) REPUBLICAN: Kentucky ( 1/3 ) Louisiana ( 1/3 ) West Virginia ( 1/3 ) Mississippi ( 1/3 ) Alaska ( 1/3 ) Montana ( 1/3 ) Alaska ( 1/3 ) Arizona (1/3 ) Wyoming ( 1/3 )

DEMOCRAT: New Mexico ( 1/3 ) Vermont ( 1/3 ) Rhode Island ( 1/3 ) Delaware ( 1/3 ) [Money Geek]

Republicans Want to Reduce Lifeline Payments to Citizens and Take Massive Payments For Themselves

Legislators keep attacking the giving of Social Security payments to elderly retired workers. Attacking Medicare to the elderly. They continuously try to end or limit ‘The Affordable Care Act’ (which they sarcastically call ‘Obama Care’). This helps give medical care to millions of citizens in EVERY STATE.

Many of these Republican politicians that want to defund citizens survival net programs are noted as members of the so-called Republican Freedom Caucus who have stated the defunding of citizens Safety Net Programs is one their demands. They have already stated there is no compromise on this and they intend to Shutdown the Federal Government’s Ability to Function if they don’t get their way. 

Many Are 2020 Election Deniers

Many of the 20 individual members of the ‘Republican Freedom Caucus’ are ‘2020 Election Deniers’. These 20 representatives come from: [Approximate % of State revenue coming from Federal Gov’t], (Total Number of Representatives / State) . . .

Georgia [1/5] (14); 1 caucus member, Arizona [1/3] (9); 3 caucus members Virginia [1/5] (11); 1 caucus member, Florida [1/5] (28); 3 caucus members Montana [1/3] (2); 1 caucus member South Carolina [1/4]; 1 caucus member Pennsylvania [1/4] (17); 1 caucus member Colorado [1/6] (8); 1 caucus member Tennessee [1/4] (9); 1 caucus member Oklahoma [1/4] (5); 1 caucus member Texas [1/5] (38); 3 caucus members North Carolina [1/5] (14); 1 caucus member Maryland [1/5] (8); 1 caucus member Illinois [1/6] (17). 1 caucus member

Senate payroll and expenses paid by the Federal Budget [and should be paid by the States]: $174,000 /year. With 7 main staffers averaging 150,000 - $180,000; 15 staff positions @ $50,000 – $185,000; President Pro Tempore $193,400; Majority Leader $193,400; There are 100 Senators . . . and 1Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico $193,400 [information from Congressional Research [and Wikipedia] 101 Office Payrolls coming out of the Federal Budget.

Congressional pay and expenses paid by the Federal Budget [and should be paid by States]: $174,000 /year. With approx. 4 main staffers receiving $100,000 - $178,000 /per year; 9 staff positions @ $47,000 - $90,000. Office Manager and Press Secretary not included here. 

(There are also some 20+ Committees with additional Staff not noted here). There is to be a Staff pay cap increase in 2023 as noted by Representative Pelosi in Dec. 2022.

There are 435 Congresspersons. [Encyclopedia Britannica] 435 State Representatives Office payrolls coming out of the Federal Budget. Even more unfair is the disparity of how many representatives each State has. Some States have 1 – 4 Representative Offices, while others States have 10, 15, 38 Representative Offices. This Federal payment to the political aspirations of each State . . . is excessively costly to the Federal Budget . . . and unfair that some States receive much more Federal donations than other States. (The number of Representatives from a State, is based on the State’ population. Largely populated States logically have more Representatives . . . And more State Taxes to pay for their Representation).

With all the political payroll payouts to themselves and their particular States the Federal Budget is being raped by politicians. 

Many American Citizens Do Not Have Health Insurance

Many Americans do not have Health Insurance Plans. While the Federal Politicians keep finding ways to increase their pay and perks. Federal Legislators in Washington DC get 75% of their Health Insurance Plan paid by the American public. Not the States that hired them. Republicans continuously try to defund and end American Citizens access to such Safety Net Programs. Wanting to reduce elder citizens funding in Medicare and Social Security, to mention just a few of the assaults to reduce citizen programs while they increase Legislators perks.

When politicians choose in their State to run for office in Washington DC, they clearly know they must travel to and from work from their States. It should be up to the States to fund the travel of their elected officials. These State workers can accept the same life they have legislated for citizens: A Tax Write Off! In todays world they can ‘work from home’ or an office in their State. They are not required to commute constantly. Washington Legislators do not work a full year for their pay and perks. There is also ‘Fact Finding’ travel around the Country and to other nations with citizen taxes paying for this expense. There should be no expense accounts for them from the Federal Budget for: Airfares, Hotel stays, Food, etc. If the States choose to give their elected Representatives that - it is their choice. 

A Multi-Tiered Business Tax System

Small businesses with fewer employees and profits should pay a lesser Tax Rate than massive Wall Street type Corporations which should have a higher full tax rate. Corporations and Funds that have vaster profiting should pay even higher tax rates. There should be no question what to do about businesses gouging citizens and the governments of States and our Nation. It should be a basic tax rate decision who qualifies for the highest tax rate.

Wealth Funds and Investors should pay an annual Inventory Tax on their holdings. The millions of people, funds, and government agencies holding stocks are the millions of investors who expect to gain income from those holdings. Most often the only way this gain can be achieved is: Refusing to pay workers a living wage; Raising prices for all citizens on the output of the business’ production; reducing costs – that often reduces product quality or quantity . . . consumers getting less for more costs. Thus the mass of low-income citizens are supporting Corporate and Investor Wealth. We are creating the next generations of Sick and Homeless Citizens.

Currently contract worker Corporations like Uber and Lyft are examples of the greedy Wealth Investors. The workers are economically devastated while investors needs are most important. To have these Employee Degrading Start Up Business Plans in the 21^st century is Appalling. These businesses provide the employees with no future. Many will go homeless and need State and Federal Aid to survive when they age. That should not be the goal of our society. People investing in these morally degrading businesses should be paying annual Inventory Tax for their holdings . . . to prepare for the human survival of these ‘low-wage contract employees’ lives in the future.

Reducing The Federal Debt Must Not Be A Partisan Issue

This Must Not Be A Partisan Issue, THIS IS AN EVERY CITIZEN ISSUE! 

We cannot trust politicians, who are beholden to wealth, to do this. There is no doubt many of these suggestions are very inconvenient Budget changes to the Washington DC status quo. But the Republicans want change. And, certainly change is needed. But their ‘change’ is to punish Citizens and Reward Themselves. Our Legislators have a NOT IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD ATTITUDE about Budget Reductions.

Everyone must decide if they and their community’s citizens are ‘cattle who are being feed too much’ . . . which many Republicans seem to think we are. Compared to many overpaid Washington Committees, Congressman and Senators . . . with their payroll and spending for them . . . being decided by them.

American Citizens Want To Remove the ‘Greed Net’ in Washington DC . . . Not the Citizens Safety Net

There is a desperate need to have Online Constituent Surveys and Voting on Issues. To give your State Voted for Employee Legislators in Washington DC your voice in determining the future of our Society. Passports and/or the REAL ID and/or a finger print scan to ensure identity security.

Not Accepting Measures That Are Aimed At Disrupting The Poor and Elderly 

Affordable housing does not exist and will not . . . Except for the Wealthy. More and more people are dropping out along the outer fringe of Society. All over the world People are being beaten and murdered for SPEAKING OUT. How are they so much more willing to Risk Their Lives to Stop Political GREED! Our refusing to get involved is turning our communities into Homeless Encampments.

Who are the Republican Politicians Who Are Demanding An Uncompromising Assault on Our Citizens Lives ? (Listed Above)

Taking A Further Look At Those Republican People; And the Places They Come From: Who Want To Reduce Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, Etc . . . 

Looking at the list of 20 Members of this Republican Caucus, (Endorsed by the current Speaker of the House), begins to reveal other issues these States and their Representatives have been changing in their States and would like to change in our Nation. 

A rise of new Jim Crow Laws Restricting Voting in their States, Restricting Truthful Education in Their States, Stacking the No Longer ‘Supreme Court’, Stacking the Federal Judiciary with over 270 newly Republican appointed Federal Judges. (This was achieved by Republicans continuously Blocking Federal Bench Judicial Appointments presented by Barack Obama – Not allowing him to do his Constitution Instilled Duty)! 

It looks like their Goal is not as much ‘A Balanced Budget’, but the Suppression of Peoples their States have Historically Suppressed, Degraded, Kept Uneducated, Unemployed, Hated and Enslaved. 

 I believe no Party’s Judicial appointment stacking of this Nations Courts will ‘control the minds and decisions’ of Justices appointed by any Party! I also believe the No Freedom Caucus Will try to pressure the Courts to rule by Party Line Decisions, as these new ‘Voter Suppression and Jim Crow’ laws are being challenged in the Courts. 

As Mr. Trump told Election Officials in Georgia . . . Just Change the Voter Tally and We Can Let the Courts Decide . . . Georgia Did Not Change the Tally.

Plan to make ‘July 4^th Freedom From Federal ‘Citizen Paid Into’ Federal Budget Abusees’ Day & Demonstrations . . . In Your State, County, Cities, Towns. 

Go to Washington DC and Demand Reducing Budget Spending by Reducing Corporate and Political Greed! Freedom Is At Stake . . . Our Lives Are At Stake!