Yesterday “Paul from Woodinville, WA” called into the show and asked, perhaps rhetorically, what the end goal of the GOP was for America. “What kind of a nation are they trying to create here?” Yesterday “Paul from Woodinville, WA” called into the show and asked, perhaps rhetorically, what the end goal of the GOP was for America. “What kind of a nation are they trying to create here?” he said.
The answer is straightforward. Today’s radical Republicans are trying to turn America into a Christianized version of something like Pakistan.
That nation’s version of the IRS has been so gutted — a main goal of Republicans here — that about half of all income taxes owed by wealthy people aren’t paid.
Pakistani police enforce religious law and you can be arrested for what a preacher calls blasphemy.
Ninety-four percent of the nation lives in relative poverty with incomes below US$10,000 per year, but the morbidly rich live palatial lifestyles and are largely immune from police or government oversight.
Here in America the GOP has moved us rapidly in the direction of Pakistan, gutting the American middle class and making the rich richer.
By cutting income taxes to the point where the average billionaire pays less than 3%, they’ve engineered a $50 trillion t***sfer of wealth over the past 42 years from working class folks into the money bins of the top 1 percent.
By gutting union rights both Republicans in Congress, four Republican presidents, and the Supreme Court have cut union membership in America by about two-thirds.
And by foisting the Dobbs decision (and Hobby Lobby and the gay-hating baker) on America, they’ve moved rapidly toward their goal of religious law — a Christian Sharia — being the ruling doctrine in this country.
Last June with Dobbs the Supreme Court empowered cops in America to police women based on religious doctrine, just like in Pakistan. Republican politicians in Red states are falling all over each other in a race to see who can most empower police to arrest and imprison women for having a******ns, traveling out of state to get an a******n, or even receiving a******n pills through the mail.
And now the Supreme Court is preparing to finish the job, by forcing government and employers to dance to the tune of preachers.
Rightwing justices on the Court just v**ed to allow arguments April 18th on a case that could force employers to bow to the demands and wishes of religious fanatics they have the misfortune to have hired.
In Groff v DeJoy, a former postal worker is claiming that as a Christian he can’t be fired for refusing to work Sundays, even though he knew when hired that may be required of him. He claims the Post Office — after extensive efforts to work around his unwillingness to show up on Sundays — engaged in religious discrimination by threatening his employment if he didn’t occasionally work on his sabbath.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from religious discrimination, but doesn’t clearly define what that means. How far should companies go? Should they hire extra people, for example, to fill in for employees who take off their sabbath day? Who go to church three times a week? Who are offended by other employees wearing a cross or Star of David jewelry?  
The Supreme Court clarified the issue in 1977 with their T***s World Airlines v Hardison decision, which concluded that companies must make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious concerns so long as the impact of those accommodations on the company and the workers’ peer employees were de minimis, Latin and legalese for “trivial.”
Soon, however, government and employers may have to jump to the tune of religious people in the workplace even when the consequences are difficult or expensive for the employers and/or fellow employees.
The Court may force the state to prioritize religion above normal business and governmental concerns, in other words.
Once this decision is rendered, if it goes the way observers expect, there will certainly be challenges to it coming from groups like the Satanic Temple, which convinced  an Oklahoma court to require that state to take down a Ten Commandments monument, has already been ruled is a “real” religion, and has 24 official chapters around the US.
Or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose members, a Massachusetts court has ruled, are legally entitled to sport their unique headwear (a colander) in official government ID photos.
Or Rastafarians, who may argue that marijuana is their sacramental herb and they should be allowed to work under its influence.
After all, the IRS has acknowledged all of these groups as legitimate religions by granting them tax-exempt status. While that may deprive the government and some communities of income and property taxes, it generally doesn’t hurt anybody.
The IRS notwithstanding, challenges like these will almost certainly be struck down by courts as being unserious.
But that’s a bad thing, because it means that our judicial system will have been hijacked by “serious, mainstream” religions to do their bidding. The only religious accommodations government and employers will be required to offer will be for members of the world’s “major” religions and their denominational offshoots.
And at that point, church and state in America — particularly fundamentalist Christian religion — will fully and legally have merged for the first time in our history. We will be closer to Pakistan than the nation we all recognize today.  
This is not the way the Founders of this country and the Framers of the Constitution envisioned things working out, as I document at length in my newest (July 2023) book in the Hidden History series, The Hidden History of American Democracy.
The Founders and Framers believed that secular democracy is a more powerful unifying force for a decent and peaceful civil society than any religion ever was or could be. Although most were spiritual in their own ways, and many were also openly religious, as students of history the Founders and Framers knew the damage that organized religion could do when it gained access to the reins of political power.
And, with the memory of the Salem Witch Trials and other religious atrocities still fresh in their minds, the Founders knew that those among the organized religions who sought to combine political power with their existing religious power would be unrelenting and could be deadly to democracy.
While our Founders were well schooled in the history of the Crusades they also knew from first-hand experience how oppressive religious men could be with even small amounts of political power.
The Puritans, for example, passed a law in Plymouth Colony in 1658 that said: he said.
The answer is straightforward. Today’s radical Republicans are trying to turn America into a Christianized version of something like Pakistan.
That nation’s version of the IRS has been so gutted — a main goal of Republicans here — that about half of all income taxes owed by wealthy people aren’t paid.
Pakistani police enforce religious law and you can be arrested for what a preacher calls blasphemy.
Ninety-four percent of the nation lives in relative poverty with incomes below US$10,000 per year, but the morbidly rich live palatial lifestyles and are largely immune from police or government oversight.
Here in America the GOP has moved us rapidly in the direction of Pakistan, gutting the American middle class and making the rich richer.
By cutting income taxes to the point where the average billionaire pays less than 3%, they’ve engineered a $50 trillion t***sfer of wealth over the past 42 years from working class folks into the money bins of the top 1 percent.
By gutting union rights both Republicans in Congress, four Republican presidents, and the Supreme Court have cut union membership in America by about two-thirds.
And by foisting the Dobbs decision (and Hobby Lobby and the gay-hating baker) on America, they’ve moved rapidly toward their goal of religious law — a Christian Sharia — being the ruling doctrine in this country.
Last June with Dobbs the Supreme Court empowered cops in America to police women based on religious doctrine, just like in Pakistan. Republican politicians in Red states are falling all over each other in a race to see who can most empower police to arrest and imprison women for having a******ns, traveling out of state to get an a******n, or even receiving a******n pills through the mail.
And now the Supreme Court is preparing to finish the job, by forcing government and employers to dance to the tune of preachers.
Rightwing justices on the Court just v**ed to allow arguments April 18th on a case that could force employers to bow to the demands and wishes of religious fanatics they have the misfortune to have hired.
In Groff v DeJoy, a former postal worker is claiming that as a Christian he can’t be fired for refusing to work Sundays, even though he knew when hired that may be required of him. He claims the Post Office — after extensive efforts to work around his unwillingness to show up on Sundays — engaged in religious discrimination by threatening his employment if he didn’t occasionally work on his sabbath.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from religious discrimination, but doesn’t clearly define what that means. How far should companies go? Should they hire extra people, for example, to fill in for employees who take off their sabbath day? Who go to church three times a week? Who are offended by other employees wearing a cross or Star of David jewelry?  
The Supreme Court clarified the issue in 1977 with their T***s World Airlines v Hardison decision, which concluded that companies must make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious concerns so long as the impact of those accommodations on the company and the workers’ peer employees were de minimis, Latin and legalese
Contd

You are an i***t. You complain that the rich don't pay their fair share because of a lack of IRS power. The IRS has proven time and again that they don't go after the rich, who can afford accountants and lawyers. They go after poor and middle class folks that cannot afford all the fancy-schmancy tricks of the wealthy. So your solution is to give more money and manpower to an agency whose preferred target are the people you claim are getting a bad deal. Kind of like your bulls**t gun control which operates on the principle that the way to stop crime is to disarm the victims.

You are an i***t. You complain that the rich don't pay their fair share because of a lack of IRS power. The IRS has proven time and again that they don't go after the rich, who can afford accountants and lawyers. They go after poor and middle class folks that cannot afford all the fancy-schmancy tricks of the wealthy. So your solution is to give more money and manpower to an agency whose preferred target are the people you claim are getting a bad deal. Kind of like your bulls**t gun control which operates on the principle that the way to stop crime is to disarm the victims.

Yesterday “Paul from Woodinville, WA” called into the show and asked, perhaps rhetorically, what the end goal of the GOP was for America. “What kind of a nation are they trying to create here?” Yesterday “Paul from Woodinville, WA” called into the show and asked, perhaps rhetorically, what the end goal of the GOP was for America. “What kind of a nation are they trying to create here?” he said.
The answer is straightforward. Today’s radical Republicans are trying to turn America into a Christianized version of something like Pakistan.
That nation’s version of the IRS has been so gutted — a main goal of Republicans here — that about half of all income taxes owed by wealthy people aren’t paid.
Pakistani police enforce religious law and you can be arrested for what a preacher calls blasphemy.
Ninety-four percent of the nation lives in relative poverty with incomes below US$10,000 per year, but the morbidly rich live palatial lifestyles and are largely immune from police or government oversight.
Here in America the GOP has moved us rapidly in the direction of Pakistan, gutting the American middle class and making the rich richer.
By cutting income taxes to the point where the average billionaire pays less than 3%, they’ve engineered a $50 trillion t***sfer of wealth over the past 42 years from working class folks into the money bins of the top 1 percent.
By gutting union rights both Republicans in Congress, four Republican presidents, and the Supreme Court have cut union membership in America by about two-thirds.
And by foisting the Dobbs decision (and Hobby Lobby and the gay-hating baker) on America, they’ve moved rapidly toward their goal of religious law — a Christian Sharia — being the ruling doctrine in this country.
Last June with Dobbs the Supreme Court empowered cops in America to police women based on religious doctrine, just like in Pakistan. Republican politicians in Red states are falling all over each other in a race to see who can most empower police to arrest and imprison women for having a******ns, traveling out of state to get an a******n, or even receiving a******n pills through the mail.
And now the Supreme Court is preparing to finish the job, by forcing government and employers to dance to the tune of preachers.
Rightwing justices on the Court just v**ed to allow arguments April 18th on a case that could force employers to bow to the demands and wishes of religious fanatics they have the misfortune to have hired.
In Groff v DeJoy, a former postal worker is claiming that as a Christian he can’t be fired for refusing to work Sundays, even though he knew when hired that may be required of him. He claims the Post Office — after extensive efforts to work around his unwillingness to show up on Sundays — engaged in religious discrimination by threatening his employment if he didn’t occasionally work on his sabbath.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from religious discrimination, but doesn’t clearly define what that means. How far should companies go? Should they hire extra people, for example, to fill in for employees who take off their sabbath day? Who go to church three times a week? Who are offended by other employees wearing a cross or Star of David jewelry?  
The Supreme Court clarified the issue in 1977 with their T***s World Airlines v Hardison decision, which concluded that companies must make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious concerns so long as the impact of those accommodations on the company and the workers’ peer employees were de minimis, Latin and legalese for “trivial.”
Soon, however, government and employers may have to jump to the tune of religious people in the workplace even when the consequences are difficult or expensive for the employers and/or fellow employees.
The Court may force the state to prioritize religion above normal business and governmental concerns, in other words.
Once this decision is rendered, if it goes the way observers expect, there will certainly be challenges to it coming from groups like the Satanic Temple, which convinced  an Oklahoma court to require that state to take down a Ten Commandments monument, has already been ruled is a “real” religion, and has 24 official chapters around the US.
Or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose members, a Massachusetts court has ruled, are legally entitled to sport their unique headwear (a colander) in official government ID photos.
Or Rastafarians, who may argue that marijuana is their sacramental herb and they should be allowed to work under its influence.
After all, the IRS has acknowledged all of these groups as legitimate religions by granting them tax-exempt status. While that may deprive the government and some communities of income and property taxes, it generally doesn’t hurt anybody.
The IRS notwithstanding, challenges like these will almost certainly be struck down by courts as being unserious.
But that’s a bad thing, because it means that our judicial system will have been hijacked by “serious, mainstream” religions to do their bidding. The only religious accommodations government and employers will be required to offer will be for members of the world’s “major” religions and their denominational offshoots.
And at that point, church and state in America — particularly fundamentalist Christian religion — will fully and legally have merged for the first time in our history. We will be closer to Pakistan than the nation we all recognize today.  
This is not the way the Founders of this country and the Framers of the Constitution envisioned things working out, as I document at length in my newest (July 2023) book in the Hidden History series, The Hidden History of American Democracy.
The Founders and Framers believed that secular democracy is a more powerful unifying force for a decent and peaceful civil society than any religion ever was or could be. Although most were spiritual in their own ways, and many were also openly religious, as students of history the Founders and Framers knew the damage that organized religion could do when it gained access to the reins of political power.
And, with the memory of the Salem Witch Trials and other religious atrocities still fresh in their minds, the Founders knew that those among the organized religions who sought to combine political power with their existing religious power would be unrelenting and could be deadly to democracy.
While our Founders were well schooled in the history of the Crusades they also knew from first-hand experience how oppressive religious men could be with even small amounts of political power.
The Puritans, for example, passed a law in Plymouth Colony in 1658 that said: he said.
The answer is straightforward. Today’s radical Republicans are trying to turn America into a Christianized version of something like Pakistan.
That nation’s version of the IRS has been so gutted — a main goal of Republicans here — that about half of all income taxes owed by wealthy people aren’t paid.
Pakistani police enforce religious law and you can be arrested for what a preacher calls blasphemy.
Ninety-four percent of the nation lives in relative poverty with incomes below US$10,000 per year, but the morbidly rich live palatial lifestyles and are largely immune from police or government oversight.
Here in America the GOP has moved us rapidly in the direction of Pakistan, gutting the American middle class and making the rich richer.
By cutting income taxes to the point where the average billionaire pays less than 3%, they’ve engineered a $50 trillion t***sfer of wealth over the past 42 years from working class folks into the money bins of the top 1 percent.
By gutting union rights both Republicans in Congress, four Republican presidents, and the Supreme Court have cut union membership in America by about two-thirds.
And by foisting the Dobbs decision (and Hobby Lobby and the gay-hating baker) on America, they’ve moved rapidly toward their goal of religious law — a Christian Sharia — being the ruling doctrine in this country.
Last June with Dobbs the Supreme Court empowered cops in America to police women based on religious doctrine, just like in Pakistan. Republican politicians in Red states are falling all over each other in a race to see who can most empower police to arrest and imprison women for having a******ns, traveling out of state to get an a******n, or even receiving a******n pills through the mail.
And now the Supreme Court is preparing to finish the job, by forcing government and employers to dance to the tune of preachers.
Rightwing justices on the Court just v**ed to allow arguments April 18th on a case that could force employers to bow to the demands and wishes of religious fanatics they have the misfortune to have hired.
In Groff v DeJoy, a former postal worker is claiming that as a Christian he can’t be fired for refusing to work Sundays, even though he knew when hired that may be required of him. He claims the Post Office — after extensive efforts to work around his unwillingness to show up on Sundays — engaged in religious discrimination by threatening his employment if he didn’t occasionally work on his sabbath.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from religious discrimination, but doesn’t clearly define what that means. How far should companies go? Should they hire extra people, for example, to fill in for employees who take off their sabbath day? Who go to church three times a week? Who are offended by other employees wearing a cross or Star of David jewelry?  
The Supreme Court clarified the issue in 1977 with their T***s World Airlines v Hardison decision, which concluded that companies must make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious concerns so long as the impact of those accommodations on the company and the workers’ peer employees were de minimis, Latin and legalese
Contd