Blagojevich is Trump's Middle Finger

Trump's salute to the American people

Trump in many ways had the potential to be the best president in modern times. He had no allegiances with the Democratic or Republican Parties and no duty to serve them or their corporate masters. Trump could have pursued an agenda that served the interests of the American people and, having done so, he would have been a beloved president. But Trump has no vision and therefore could only continue on the path of grift and corruption that he had been following his entire adult life.

During the campaign, Trump promised to further an agenda that would serve the American people: to
'drain the swamp', to institute term limits for US Congress (within the first 100 days), to alter the 14th Amendment, to repeal the carried interest tax loophole, to end our foreign wars, to rebuild the country's crumbling infrastructure and to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with a better and more affordable health care system. All of these issues were forgotten or made worse--along with many others--once Trump became president and he instead became a tool of the Republican Party. Like Ronald McDonald selling crappy burgers for the McDonald's corporation, Trump is the clown who is shamelessly selling the crappiest Republican policies to the electorate. And those policies are more unhealthy for the American people than Mickey-D's burgers.


Trump's only real "accomplishment" so far has been appointing judges determined to be unqualified  by the American Bar Association to the federal bench. When a powerful corporation destroys your life or kills members of your family and you find that you are powerless to hold them accountable, you will understand the dangerousness of these extreme right-wing judges having control over our lives. You can research the infamous "frozen trucker" case in which the soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch argued that a company was justified in firing a truck driver because he did not stay with his broken-down rig, even though it was understood that the driver could have frozen to death had he done so.

By far, the worst of Trump's betrayals was his hollow promise to fix our broken election system. In his defense, he reversed his position on that campaign promise after he won the Republican primary and before the general election had taken place. People voted for him anyway. (I believe that Trump's reversal was a signal to the Republican Party and to all of the establishment politicians in Washington, DC that he would not upset the rigged system that they have created for themselves.) But who could consider themselves to be a patriot, knowing that our election system is broken and having the power to fix it when they simply choose not to? What's worse is that Trump and the Republican and Democratic Parties are actively working to undermine our democracy. Perhaps we should just kiss our democracy goodbye? Unless citizens find the courage and intelligence to protect our democracy from the assaults of politicians, it will not remain intact. Then we will never be able to get horrible politicians out of office.

Throughout the country, politicians are implementing new voting systems that are inadequate, faulty, hackable, subject to manipulation and  that lack transparency. (This is not at Donald Trump's direction, it is a manifestation of the rot in government that has been going on for decades, if not since the founding of the country.) Billions of tax dollars are being spent to introduce new voting machines that will never be able to verify a single voter's intent. Our election results will have to be taken completely on faith as there will be no way to determine if they are accurate or not.

Since our 2020 election is likely to occur while we are still fighting a pandemic, using the touchscreen voting devices that are being purchased will be extremely risky and could spread the disease. There will be a lot of people demanding vote-by-mail options. Do you know that when you mail in your ballot, the poll worker who receives it may be able to see your votes and they can determine that the signature on your ballot is fraudulent? Your vote can be thrown in the trash by a poll worker who is not an expert in handwriting and may have a bias regarding the outcome of the election. In most cases, when a person has their vote nullified, they will never even know that their vote was not counted.

There are a lot of things that need to be fixed with our election systems and processes but very few politicians are concerned with fixing the problems. It is up to citizens to rescue our democracy but we seem to be content with watching it erode away. Perhaps if Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity told their audiences that they should be concerned for our democracy, they would be. But the corporate media is not concerned about our democracy either. The most we get from them is reporting on election systems after they have failed and it is too late to do anything about it. If only we could find someone in a $3,000 suit with a television studio and a $300 haircut to deliver the message that our democracy is important, people might listen.

For all of Trump's talk about voter fraud, he himself committed voter fraud by registering and voting in the state of Florida, where he does not have a legal residence.

And while many politicians are actively working to undermine our democracy, that just isn't enough for Trump. He wants to relish in his broken promise to fix our elections by rubbing his lies in our faces.

Click the image for a more complete list

Rod Blagojevich was the Democratic governor of Illinois in 2008. He was caught trying to personally benefit from Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat after Obama won the presidency. It was a sick display of corruption for personal benefit and an assault on our democracy. Trump, being a bird of that feather naturally commuted Blagojevich sentence and he was released from prison six years early. Dinesh D'souza is another disgusting, corrupt political creature. D'souza, a right-wing political pundit and provocateur, manipulated campaign contributions--using strawman donors--in an attempt to evade campaign finance laws and donate more than the allowable limits to candidates; breaking the law to buy politicians and weaponize them against the interests of We the People. Trump pardoned D'souza. Both acts were a huge middle finger to US citizens, just like refusing to release his tax returns and refusing to divest from his company were. What other message could be intended???

Trump's middle finger was a clear signal to many people after he passed his tax overhaul scam as well. It was sold to the American people as a tax cut for the middle class that would not benefit the wealthy. In reality, those making more than $2 million per year stand to receive 83% of the tax benefits with only 47% of middle class workers seeing a decrease in their taxes. Following how the tax scam was negotiated was even more telling than seeing the results of it. It was decided in the beginning that the wealth limits for the inheritance tax would be doubled and  the tax subsidies for private jet owners would remain in place. The carried interest tax loophole that Trump promised to eliminate during the campaign also remained in the tax code, benefiting ultra-wealthy private equity executives.

After protecting all of the tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and eliminating some of their tax obligations, then the administration looked at how middle class Americans would be affected. The effect of the tax law could not impact revenues by more than $150 billion per year or it could not be passed under reconciliation, which requires just 50 votes, rather than 60 in the Senate. So the deductions that police officers, teachers and other workers could use were capped to prevent too much tax money being returned to working people.

The standard deduction amount was increased which eliminated the need for many people to itemize their deductions. That simplified tax filing for many people and may have won them over, even if they didn't save any money on their taxes or even if they had to pay a bit more.

The tax benefits for the middle class are also temporary. They will expire after eight years. The tax benefits for the ultra-wealthy and corporations are there forever.

The best way to sum up Trump's betrayal of the working class in our country is with the phrase "promises plus". Trump coined this phrase to publicly celebrate with his ruling class cronies the campaign promises that were implied during the campaign but that Trump could never have spoken out loud because it would have cost him votes and he would never have been elected. The preservation of the carried interest tax loophole and private jet tax deductions are "promises plus". Doubling the threshold on the inheritance tax is "promises plus". "Promises plus" is allowing corporations to dump more toxic chemicals in waterways so they will make more profits, even if it makes the people in the community sick. It's dropping more bombs and killing more innocent people so that the Department of Defense checks (our tax dollars) keep rolling in. It's locking up anyone law enforcement agencies can get their hands on so that the private prison facilities keep making billions in profit (our tax dollars). Attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement law and kicking 37 million people off their health care plans was an attempt at "promises plus" that luckily failed. Trump also failed to pass his initial budget that included deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, something he promised not to do during the campaign.

Trump has abandoned any pretense of furthering an agenda to benefit the American people. Will the American people ever demand that politicians work toward an agenda that serves our interests? Continuing to fight for the agendas that serve the ruling class isn't going to get us anywhere. But, I guess with the snide nicknames, ripped-up speeches and insults being hurled about, Washington, DC produces television as compelling as the sleaziest soap opera. What could better placate a society raised on reality TV?

AFTERWARD

If you do not know what an overvote is, or what an undervote is, or a spoiled ballot or if you don't know what caging lists or purge lists are, then it is imperative that you learn these terms and make sure they are not tactics being used to rig elections in your state. If you know that some of our electronic voting machines are made by white collar criminals and foreigners, that some still run on Windows 95 or that they are manufactured in countries who do not care about US elections, or worse, would enjoy tampering with our elections, I would hope that you find these issues to be of upmost priority to address. And the vast majority of your fellow citizens will agree with you on what measures should be taken. This is the reason why the ruling class never tells us to worry about our elections. They do not want the American people standing together to fix the real problems facing our country.

If you want to know about how politicians are stealing our democracy, read any of Greg Palast's books, especially "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (or watch the documentary with the same title), listen to the Bradcast and read the Bradblog and follow attorney and citizen activist Jennifer Cohen on Twitter (@jennycohn1).

We should all be demanding hand-marked paper ballots that are hand-counted in a process that can be overseen by the public. Anything less is an erosion of our democracy. Why should we stand for it? Write to your secretary of state, governor and state legislators to demand the gold standard of voting systems: paper.

We should also be demanding the right to cast multiple votes. People should be allowed to vote for any candidate that is acceptable to them. The two-party system resists this because it would prevent them from holding citizens over a barrel and forcing them to vote for a lesser-of-two-evils candidate, who will continue to serve the oligarchy at the expense of the American people.

If We the People focus on an agenda that serves our interests, we could reclaim our birthright: a country of our own. And we would finally have independence and autonomy.

Happy Fourth of July!