Republicans have for decades advanced this theory that if you give tax cuts to the wealthy (business owners), the wealth they โcreateโ would eventually trickles down to the middle and lower classโthe so-called โtrickle-downโ economic theory.
History however has proven time and time again that the trickle down economic theory never works as promised, and instead, only widens the gap between the rich and the poor. This topic came up in an interesting segment of MSNBCโs Morning Joe show (06/03/25), and as you can tell from the heavy reaction, Americans appear to have caught up to the trickle down lie, as Republicans yet again push the Big Beautiful Bill.
#BREAKING: Morning Mika citing a New Republic piece: "In the 34 years after 1946…The government was spending like crazy…building interstate highways, creating Medicare and Medicaid, expanding the welfare state…and yet, the debt remained under control. What changed afterโฆ pic.twitter.com/GtGQX7bDns
House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on CBSโ Face The Nation (05/25/25) to discuss among other things, the recent House passage of the Trump administrationโs budget billโdubbed โBig Beautiful Billโ. The Billโs fate now lies with the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.
#BREAKING: ๐ฅMargaret to @SpeakerJohnson : "You are eliminating subsidized federal student loans…$500 billion in clean energy subsidies…alongside that, you are carrying out about a trillion in reductions to Medicaid and food stamps…we looked at your home state and theโฆ pic.twitter.com/14q7WpquTz
Among the issues raising concerns with the budget bill, is that it is projected to increase the national debt significantly, something Republican lawmakers lamented throughout the Biden administration. The bill also makes significant cuts to Medicaid and food stamps(SNAP), programs crucial for working families generally, and specifically, the working poor.
Speaker Mike Johnsonโs Louisiana is one of the poorest states in the nation, so cuts to Medicaid and food stamps are bound to have relatively more disastrous effects on families there. Asked by host Margaret Brennan how he can justify pushing such cuts knowing full well that his state is one of the poorest in the nation, Speaker Johnson responded that all the bill cuts is waste, fraud and abuse.
It will be interesting to see how Speaker Johnson and other House Republicans use this excuse once their poor constituents start complaining about the cuts. Even more interesting, will be the way Republicans defend this tricky position as we approach the 2026 midterm elections.
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Ever since President Trump beat his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Democrats have been in disarray, struggling to find a compelling narrative with which to challenge the new Trump administration.
Corruption is slowly becoming the galvanizing issue that is uniting Democrats in their opposition to the Trump administration. My posts on X(formerly Twitter) referencing these corruption stories generate a lot of engagement(retweets, likes, comments) which supports my assertion that corruption is clearly a hot topic for Democrats as we approach the 2026 midterms. Below are examples of such posts.
#BREAKING: ๐ฅErin: "Now to our other big story tonight, the Trump family CASHING IN big time. President Trump's son @EricTrump is now arriving in Vietnam. In just hours, he'll be breaking ground on a $1.5 billion golf resort there…and while #EricTrump is in Vietnam receiving aโฆ pic.twitter.com/RHOxxzomE7
#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: "The eldest son of POTUS, @DonaldJTrumpJr, has made multiple trips to Serbia to try to shore up their very Trumpy president against [protests] that he resign…WHY…?? In the middle of the capital city of Serbia, there is a ruined building [neverโฆ pic.twitter.com/eNqhYcbdID
#BREAKING: Erudite Anne to Morning Mika: "He [Trump] has been involved in an industry, the real estate industry, that relied on secret Russian money coming through anonymous bank accounts buying anonymous properties in his businesses for many years. He's been dealing in thatโฆ pic.twitter.com/Hh8VAaXitW
Bombshell report on the 04/30/25 edition of the Rachel Maddow Show (citing the NY times) says that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is amassing massive amounts of people’s private data from various government agencies in an effort to create a central database that could potentially be used/abused to create “dossiers” of political opponents of President Trump.
Yours Truly captured part of Maddow’s commentary in the tweet below (X below if you like๐๐).
#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: "We know that @DOGE is NOT about saving money…the one thing they are CONSISTENTLY doing, and doing aggressively as possible…is that they are aggregating DATA…from what appears to be EVERY agency in the government…WHY are they doing that? Thisโฆ pic.twitter.com/Pi674Wddpi
NY Times’ Julia Angwin told host Maddow that this [dossier politics] is very common in authoritarian countries, especially China. She specifically said: “China is sort of the example that does this. They have these master files that they have on every citizen, everything that they’ve ever done, it’s called social credit score, and they use it to punish dissent.”
Importantly, and quite scaringly, Angwin says compared to other Western nations, America’s privacy laws are the worst equipped to dealing with the dangers of such a centralized database. She adds that our system was designed based on this notion that government officials will always be acting in good faith, and thus tread carefully re the private data of citizens.
If this reporting holds up, it looks like America is gearing up for the biggest civil liberties fight of her 400 year existence. I hate to be a Debbie Downer here, but given since the passage of the Patriot Act right after 09/11, we’ve witnessed increasing encroachments to our civil liberties, and privacy in particular.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, advances in technology have for all intents and purposes, rendered the 4thamendment moot. Consequently, there’s no privacy to defend. Congress has had numerous opportunities to deal with the problem, but abdicated at every turn. Too late to solve the problem now.๐คท.
I’ve been quite consistent about this issue. This was me ranting and raving about very issue way back in 2019๐ณ๐When some big time MSMer starts bandwagoning over the issue, make sure to remind them that Yours Truly was already crying about this in 2019โฆwhen MSM thought it was just another โconspiracy theoryโ.๐
Here's the question you NEVER hear posed/addressed by legal eagles on cable TV—With all this ๐๐#BigBrother#surveillance infiltrating EVERY ASPECT of our private lives, is the 4th amendment OBSOLETE?
On 03/04/25, President Donald Trump delivered the customary State of The Union address before a joint session of Congress. Per MSNBCโs Rachel Maddow, this was the longest State of The Union speech ever delivered by a U.S. president.
Moments after President Trumpโs address, Maddow delivered a blistering fact check to Trumpโs address
#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: "For the record, the worst inflation in this country was in 1980. For the record, the economy that he [Trump] was left by President Biden was not a catastrophy, it was literally the BEST economy in the world…For the record, social security is notโฆ pic.twitter.com/S9LxOhaoXu
Among the issues that Maddow fact checked President Trump on, was his assertion that he had spoken with the heads of U.S. auto manufacturers, and that they were happy with his proposed tariffs on the auto industry.
Maddow specifically said, “For the record, U.S. auto company CEOs are NOT psyched, and delighted, and sooo excited about Trump’s economic policies, including his tariffs.”
Less than 24 hours after Maddowโs fact check, news broke that the Trump administration was pausing itโs proposed tariffs on automakersโa tacit admission that the said CEOs had never expressed optimism about the proposed auto tariffs, as the president had indicated on his State of The Union address.
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In the 03/03/25 edition of MSNBC’ s Rachel Maddow Show, host Maddow pointed out the striking resemblance between how the U.S. dealt with Hitler’s assault on Europe, and the way the Trump administration is dealing with Putin’s current assault on Ukraine in particular, and Europe generally.
#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: "On 07/10/1940, the German Airforce started its large scale attack on our closest overseas ally, Great Britain…At that point Great Britain was the last man standing…in the way of total Nazi domination of western Europe…President Roosevelt sentโฆ pic.twitter.com/JOnRk1HbMi
Maddow pointed out that by July 1940, Great Britain was the only European country left standing after Hitler’s forces had practically run over every other European country.
Then U.S. President Roosevelt was doing everything in his power to assist the Brits against Hitler’s forces. But interestingly, there was no consensus in the U.S. that the we should be assisting the Brits, which is quite similar to what we hear today from some leading Republican voices re Ukraine.
One of the leading Republican voices against Roosevelt assisting the Brits, was a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, one Ernest Lundeen.
Senator Lundeen apparently argued that Britain did not deserve America’s aid because it was not “grateful enough” for America’s past assistance(World War I, etc). He also argued, much like Republicans are arguing today, that Britain and other European allies needed to dig into their own mineral resources and pay America for its assistance–again, the same argument we are hearing today from leading Republicans.
It later came out, however, that during the entire time Senator Lundeen had been making these otherwise reasonable arguments against aid to Britain (on fiscal grounds), he was actually being paid by Hitler’s Germany to make their case from his lofty perch as a U.S. Senator.
The $1 million question now is, who is Putin paying to make his case in the U.S. Congress or even from a loftier perch, which I’ll leave to your imagination? Only time will tell.
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U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appeared on CNNSOTU (022825) where he dropped a bombshell, telling host Dana Bash that the shouting match we recently witnessed at the White House between President Trump, his VP Vance, and the President of Ukraine, was not an anomaly, but rather, a conscious effort by Trump-Vance to steer America towards kleptocracy.
#BREAKING: Sen Murphy: "It is absolutely SHAMEFUL what is happening right now. The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin…"๐ณ pic.twitter.com/47YwD25K1o
The characterization by the mainstream media thus far, has been that the confrontation at the White House was just an unfortunate case of a good meeting gone badโsomething that happened out of happenstance.
What Sen Murphy is saying however, is markedly different, and that is, this was a pre-meditated, conscious effort by Trump-Vance to humiliate the President of Ukraine for the benefit of Vladimir Putin. Furthermore, Sen Murphy adds that this is part of their larger effort to align America with dictators around the world, so as to make it easier for them to transform America into a kleptocratic oligarchy like Russia.
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An interesting segment on the 02/10/25 edition of MSNBCโs Rachel Maddow Show revealed that the recent decision by the Trump administration to halt federal subsidies for EV charging stations directly benefits Elon Muskโs Tesla.
#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: "Did you notice the little announcement that the Trump admin has ordered a halt to all federal funding for electric vehicle(EV) chargers across the U.S… @elonmusk's company, #Tesla, already has the biggest private charging network in theโฆ pic.twitter.com/cYyivQUbpW
This is a glaring conflict of interest, which once again underscores the need for some congressional oversight regarding the work Musk and his DOGE are doing, ostensibly to identify and eliminate government waste and fraud.
Simply put, Congress needs to step in to ensure that Muskโs โwaste cuttingโ operations are not benefiting his private businesses.
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In one of his post election posts on X, President-Elect Donald Trump promised to “dismantle the Deep State.” This as you know, was a central theme of his presidential campaign so it should come as no surprise to anyone. The question now is whether he will actually deliver on this seemingly tall order that may play well on the campaign trail, but prove very difficult in terms of actually pulling it off.
Different people have different notions as to what the Deep State actually means, or whether it even exists, but the general consensus is that they are powerful but unelected bureaucrats, who control the levers of power behind the scenes, and span different administrations (both Democrat and Republican)–essentially a permanent unelected ruling class, who ruthlessly protect their power from “outsiders”–ambitious people they don’t approve of/like. They use the instruments of government(the ABC agencies we shall not name) to crush their perceived enemies.
Trump has cast himself as one of those outsiders, and he points to his endless criminal prosecutions as proof of the Deep State coming after him. He has repeatedly singled out the FBI as one of the key instruments of the Deep State that he wants hollowed out.
Whether or not the FBI has become an instrument of the Deep State as Trump alleges, is a question Yours Truly chooses to sidestep for now–way above my pay grade. What Yours Truly finds very encouraging about Trump’s proclamation however, is that during his 4 years, maybe, just maybe, we may achieve something I have begged and prayed for for quite a long time now, and that is, a Church-type Committee to look into the abuses of our intelligence agencies.
The last time we did an audit of our intelligence agencies was way back in the 1960s so reasonable people will agree that a fresh audit is way past due. A lot of “dirt” was uncovered in the previous audit (cointelpro being the main one) so smart money is that 70 years after that, there are bound to be some let’s just say, “interesting” new programs to be “unearthed”. I for one, would keep my eyes open for the notorious Targeted Individual program, which our intelligence agencies have categorically dismissed as a conspiracy theory. A Church-type committee would be the perfect venue to get to the bottom of this supposed “conspiracy theory”.
Yours Truly has long advocated for the enactment of a new Church-type commission to investigate the abuses of power by our intelligence agencies. Though President-Elect Trump doesn’t outrightly call for the creation of such a commission, reasonable people will agree that his recent post on X is the most serious attempt yet by a modern American president to rein in our out of control intel agencies, and for that, he deserves a lot of praise. Whether he will keep his promise is a different matter altogether.
President-Elect Trump is known to desire things/issues that cast him aside from other American presidents in terms of greatness. Well, 70 years later, historians are still talking about the historic Church Committee hearings, and the administration that was in charge then. If Trump pushes for a new Church-type committee during his four years, historians will also be talking favorably about his administration 100 years from now, especially if a lot of illegal government activity is uncovered.
President-Elect Trump should also know that a much overdue audit of our intelligence agencies is an issue that enjoys tremendous bipartisan support despite the media’s depiction of it as a partisan MAGA issue.
Interesting report on CNN News Central says (06/17/24) says that after weeks of treading carefully around the subject of former President Trump’s recent felony convictions, Team Biden has finally decided to take the gloves off, and make the convictions a key part of their 2024 campaign message.
Some, including Yours Truly, will translate this CNN report thus: “Team Biden has finally decided it wants to win the 2024 presidential election.” Make no mistake about it, this is Team Biden’s strongest message from now until the November election day, which will effectively boil down to a fight for independent voters.
CNN’s Sara Sidner(0:22): “Today, the Biden campaign escalating its attacks against Donald Trump with a new $50 million ad push rolling out in battleground states, taking on the former President’s character and felony convictions.”
Part of the ad says: “In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s been working…”
CNN’s Arlette Saenz(1:10): “This new ad is significant, as it marks the first time the Biden campaign is using former President Donald Trump’s legal woes in television advertisements…In this ad, they [Team Biden] are trying to frame this election as a choice between a convicted criminal who is looking out for himself, with President Biden who in his words, ‘works for the American people.’ This ad will run as part of a $50 million ad push in key battleground states…”
Bottom line folks, this is the best move Team Biden has made thus far, regarding the upcoming November 2024 presidential election. Simply put, if they preach this message steadily–the other guy is a convicted felon–Biden wins reelection easily, thanks in large part to the independent vote. It’s really that simple.
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