Trump’s E******n-f***d Big Lie Assaults Everyone’s V****g Rights, Mandating Punitive Laws Against S******n
Robert Becker's picture
Robert Becker

V****g Rights
by Robert Becker | May 25, 2021 - 6:37am

Where’s the uproar against stunts that drive non-stop, d******e e******neering?

Aside from shredding confidence that e******ns work, rightwing “Stop the Steal” schemes have another perfidious end: to turn campaigning into perpetual e******neering where nothing is final and anything goes. Trivializing the integrity of clear winners, whom losers simply impugn as illegitimate thieves, will not only distort historic v****g patterns but create general aversion towards e******ns, thus politics. Why bother to v**e if even certified outcomes simply kick off months of ugly, war-like disputations?

Can e******ns work when deceitful losers yell fraud, then scoff at diverse judicial assessments that deny all evidence of improprieties? That’s not just arguing balls and strikes but adamantly refusing to leave the field after getting ejected. If c***ting by alleging c***ting succeeds, then e******ns will not serve their democratic goal: to legitimatize leadership so that representative government may then serve public interests. Either the majority rules or chaos reigns, as today’s calculated, rightwing, state v****g suppression mania makes all too clear.

Further, if the rebuffed majority doesn’t rule, won’t then an opportunistic minority seize power and commit mayhem to stay on top? So much for everyone’s v****g rights laws, let alone stopping state legislatures (or the House) from quashing certified e******ns. Majority rule is already diluted by the Senate make-up and the filibuster, the E*******l College, and noxious House gerrymandering. Turning e******n into extended free-for-alls makes that worse, prompting more alienation, disrespect for law and violent protests.

Beyond political penalties: the law

If Trumpers escape midterm punishment after lawlessly battering the last e******n, they will have t***sformed politics into legally-irreconcilable hostility. That defeats the entire justification for e******ns, marvelously switching from "talk, talk, talk" to firm decisions, then actions that foster democratic empowerment. Legitimacy depends on shifting from the mayhem of picking winners to the hard work of change – or all bets are off.

Thus, while Salon’s estimable Amanda Marcotte last week stressed how the media must hold liars to account, “There's only one way to stop Republicans from stealing the 2024 e******n,” her “only way” language falls short. Why not insist on an even more targeted, obvious solution – legislation? As with any other anti-social behavior, e******n sabotage is well within the authority of Congress – the first line against disruption to determine winners. When an e******n is confirmed, having survived legal challenges, that must stand as incontrovertible. Otherwise, brace for endless litigation and propaganda demanding inane re-dos, themselves then open to repeated perfidy. That’s why prompt candidate concessions, while not legally-bounding, work to unify, t***sforming hot e******neering into a cooler compromise phase. Politics as constant war immobilizes the entire system.

Legal punishments against the subversion of e******n results are not hard to imagine. First off, why not require that qualifying candidates must agree they will honor fully-tested results? Eligibility requirements now abound, and this threshold seems like a bottom-line minimum. Other binding, legal documents demand signatures to affirm commitments, whether signing a mortgage or making disclosures when selling a house – with clear liability for misrepresentation. Ditto, when getting a driver’s license or a passport, applying for a job or a credit card – again, with penalty for lying and betrayals. Any losing politician who denies the legitimacy of e******n outcomes should be summarily disqualified. Losing does not somehow grant whiners special, extra-legal leverage to disrupt.

Feet to the fire

Further, why not require approved candidates to post bonds to assure respect for rules? Serious or repeat offenders will face civil and criminal penalties, especially when abusing certified e******ns as “r****d,” “stolen” or “fraudulent.” Unrepentant offenders should be forever barred from federal office – thus eliminating the blatant contradiction of losers only honoring e******ns that award them victory. As judges hold wayward defendants in contempt for prejudicial disclosures during a trial, so laws should stop candidates from holding an e******n in contempt – simply because they got fewer v**es.

Today, though respectable journalists are calling out the Big Trump e******n **e, media pressure is insufficient. Ending e******n sabotage requires stringent laws and an independent commission to identify and punish miscreants. Since only the two national parties have tens of millions to spend on nefarious litigation, their liability bonds should by far surpass what minor parties need cough up. A $100+ million fine would discourage more sabotage by Republicans, with unlimited personal liability for the worst offenders.

Wh**ever any final disposition of the Anti-E******n Sabotage Law, putting an end to today’s democracy-k*****g Trump s******n is now a red, flashing light, putting the very credibility of the Constitution at stake. Laws can’t stop political slander or corrosive lying, but forcing candidates to accept losing is now an emergency necessity. As with the Constitutional flaws exposed in last year's impeachment (when president and Senate share parties), letting losers get away with crimes against the majority exposes a huge systemic vulnerability. What stops the next rogue from finding new ways to belittle e******n results as no more than jokes or phony gestures?

No waiver for co-conspirators

Plus, relentless co-conspirators who join in the assault against certified e******ns should share liabilities, with fines, indictments, even risk of losing office. Those who scorn e******ns should not benefit from outcomes. As officials declare oaths to the Constitution, all candidates must fully commit to e******n outcomes. Either firm, legal distinctions establish when e******ns are finale and e******n legitimacy begins, or there will no end to rightwing e******n nonsense.

There is nothing radical here, simply respect for fair, fraud-free e******ns, like 2020. In this light, alternatives to the suspect, undemocratic E*******l College – whether its elimination or ideas coming from FairV**e’s “National V**es” – are parallel tracks to insure the majority rules. Now, a theoretical 27% minority can determine a president and impose its will. Can any majority worth its salt tolerate such unrelenting, foundational blows to v****g? That the Trump crusade against l********e e******ns may fail politically, confirming its lust to sustian minority status, hardly removes the incentive to reform a gaping hole in v****g/e******n justice system. If a “loser” can offset his loss with lying bluster, then campaigning and e******ns are mere puppet shows – and our democracy is wounded forever.

by Thom Hartmann | May 24, 2021 - 6:15am

As we’re struggling to recover from Trump’s half-million unnecessary C***d deaths here in America, fighting to get a clear picture of how extensive the s******n was among Republicans in Congress around J****** 6th, and trying to pass legislation to ensure clean and safe e******ns and put the country back into shape, dark money, foreign oligarchs and rightwing media groups are hard at work tearing this nation apart.

And they’re having considerable success.

About 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to “do what is right” when polled during most of the last years of the Eisenhower 1950s administration and early years of Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s presidency.

In 2019, when the Pew Research Center released its most recent poll of public trust in the government, only 17 percent of Americans trusted their government. It’s so bad that throughout 2020 armed protesters showed up nationwide to protest the “tyranny” of having to wear masks during a p******c, and then stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the e******n, all cheered on by the then-President of the United States and multiple rightwing media outlets.

This is no accident; it’s the result of a five-decades-long campaign by some of America’s richest people to tear apart the governing fabric of our nation, formally kicked off by their man, Ronald Reagan, proudly proclaiming at his January 20, 1981, inauguration that, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Put yourself in the place of the heirs to a multimillion-dollar f****l f**l empire, a situation akin to the “heroic” brother and sister who inherited a railroad from their dad in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged:

If you don’t have to pay to dispose of cancer-causing byproducts from your refineries but can simply vent them into the air, and you make more money.
If you can cut wages and threaten employees because they don’t have a union, you make more money.
If you can run a pipeline across sacred Native American land atop a major national aquifer with minimal safety oversight, you make more money.
If you can hide your money from the IRS because the agency has had its budget slashed so badly that it can no longer do expensive audits of morbidly rich people, you can keep more of the money you’ve made.
If you can get the government to cut social programs and public education, thus lowering your taxes, you can keep more of the money you’ve made.
So how do you pull this off, when every one of these things hurts average Americans?

Easy. Just embark on a 50-year-long campaign, through think tanks, right-wing media, and massive PR efforts to convince average Americans that government is the cause of, not the solution to, their problems. Convince working-class Americans that gutting government is a good thing that will ultimately help them in some mystical, magical way through the incredible “invisible hand” of the marketplace.

Lewis Powell, a lawyer for Big Tobacco, launched the movement to do just this with his infamous memo in 1971, and billionaires have funded and promoted politicians who jump on board the “government is evil” bandwagon ever since.

And it’s largely worked, if the “trust in government” statistics compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958 are accurate.

Years ago I was up late one night watching, as I recall, Bloomberg News on a hotel TV. The American host was interviewing a very wealthy German businessman at a conference in Singapore.

Amidst questions about the business climate and the conference, the host asked the German businessman what tax rate he was “suffering under” in his home country. As I recall, the businessman said, “A bit over 60 percent, when everything is included.”

“How can you handle that?” asked the host, incredulous.

The German shrugged his shoulders and moved the conversation to another topic.

A few minutes later, the American reporter, still all wound up by the tax question, again asked the businessman how he could possibly live in a country with such a high tax rate on very wealthy and successful people. Again, the German deferred and changed the subject.

The reporter went for a third try. “Why don’t you lead a revolt against those high taxes?” he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American r*******n-making.

The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.

He stared at the man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, “I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country.”

There are a few wealthy Americans who understand this. But the billionaires and foreign oligarchs who fund the Republican Party and right-wing media think it’s perfectly fine to rip the financial and political guts out of their own nation and turn its people against each other if it makes them a few extra bucks.

They’ve funded and facilitated movements like the Tea Party and rightwing paramilitaries, media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart, and organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and ALEC. They throw piles of money at Republican politicians, so long as they never stray far from the “deregulate, cut, denigrate” line about American government. They sponsor climate denial to increase their own profits.

And over and over again, they’ve been successfully pulling this off for the past 50 years. The most recent example is the disaster we’re seeing in Arizona where the majority of Republicans in the Arizona Senate, totally owned by rightwing billionaires, went along with Trump and started a phony “audit” to further erode Americans’ faith in our government. Reaganism has become Trumpism, and it’s all pointing toward destroying faith in democracy in America just to make a buck.

Similarly, a Morning Consult poll about saving Americans from the C***d crisis a few months ago had this headline: “With Congressional Stimulus Fight Looming, 76% of V**ers Back $1.9 Trillion Plan, Including 60% of Republicans.” Yet every single billionaire-owned Republican in Congress opposed it, and now they’re opposing President Biden’s efforts to rebuild our infrastructure, both hard and soft.

As this nation recovers from a deadly p******c that — unnecessarily — k**led more than 500,000 of our fellow citizens, and struggles with rightwing h**e groups that are trying to provoke a second Civil War, let’s remember how this all came about.

And all for a few extra pieces of gold.

Slate Magazine and on-line progressive read, has now stated that Trump probably won Maricopa county and Arizona. I would agree with them wholeheartedly and now it's on to Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pa., and Nevada. In New Hampshire, the forensic v**e is showing that only 28% of Trumps v**es were actually counted and it looks like Trump carried New Hampshire as well. This is starting to snowball and it is even rumored that whistleblowers are coming forward to tell the t***h about this e******n s***l by the corrupt dems. This is much worse than Watergate and Demorat heads need to roll.