Lonestarblue
Lonestarblue's JournalForget petty bribes, 'state capture' is corruption so deep it is shaping the rules of democracy itself
I think this article describes where we are as a nation today. As the writer says in describing the difference between the rot of corruption through extortion and petty bribes and state capture, “But there is a deeper, more dangerous form of rot – state capture.” After reading this article, I believe we are well into corruption AS the system, and this includes at least five of the MAGAs on the Supreme Court. I don’t know about Barrett yet. The paragraphs below are from the end of the article.
“Escaping state capture – domestic or transnational – requires more than transparency reforms or ethics codes. Those are sticking plasters on a cancer. Real change demands independent judiciaries, fearless investigative journalism, and a civil society prepared to fight entrenched power. As evidenced by youth movements across Africa and Asia, meaningful change can sometimes necessitate extraordinary measures: widespread protest or the involvement of the international community.
Recent global protests hint at the potential for grassroots movements to challenge entrenched narratives. They are reminders that democratic renewal rarely comes from the top – it is forced from below, by citizens, youths and students – those who refuse to accept that their governments are bought and sold.
State capture is the most dangerous mutation of corruption: corruption that governs, corruption that legislates, corruption that silences. It is the enemy not just of clean government but of democracy itself.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/nov/04/state-capture-corruption-democracy
Where do babies come from? Robert F Kennedy Jr doesn't seem to know
I just had to post this article because it highlights the utter ignorance of many in the Republican Party. The article cites Kennedy, who demonstrated his ignorance at a cabinet meeting last week, as well as several Republican legislators who proved their ignorance simply by speaking. Evidently, Republicans have never heard the old adage that "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt.”
“In a shocking development, however, it seems that Kennedy – an anti-vaxxer who says his brain was partly eaten by a parasitic worm – may not know what he’s talking about. During a cabinet meeting last Thursday, Kennedy reasserted unproven claims that taking the common painkiller acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol or paracetamol, while pregnant causes autism. Doubters of this theory, he said, were motivated by Trump derangement syndrome. To underscore his point, he referenced a TikTok video he’d seen of a pregnant woman “gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta”.
Foetuses, of course, develop in the uterus, not the placenta. It’s possible, if we are being generous, that Kennedy misspoke. Then again, he would hardly be the first US politician to make it clear he knows nothing about the female bodies he is so keen to legislate, would he?”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/15/where-do-babies-come-from-robert-f-kennedy-jr-doesnt-seem-to-know
Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here's how
Interesting idea for blue states to form a new group to create a governing document that calls attention to how Trump is destroying Constitutional law.
“We could consider the kind of political theatre that Americans created from 1768 to 1776 to resist Britain’s growing crackdown. Instead of employing their creaky legislative bodies, they opted for new forms of resistance, non-importation committees, even a first continental congress with no apparent legitimacy or precedent.
However weak, those acts of political theater led to formal independence. After the war, American leaders held a convention – nominally to amend the Articles of Confederation with a unanimous vote by every state. Instead, the framers worked in secret, replaced the articles altogether, and changed the process for amending the new constitution to a three quarters vote.
The Trump presidency is a colossal setback to that constitution and its norms, but it is also an opportunity to change those norms for the better. Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body – an embryonic constitutional convention – that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control.
The constitution already provides some authority for doing so.“
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/blue-states-democrats-trump
To defeat the Texas gerrymander, Democrats need to go nuclear
Excellent opinion piece in WaPo this morning. I hope Democratic leaders heed its suggestions to finally fight Republicans on their terms instead of simply complaining. Just fighting Trump is not enough. This opinion rightly suggest that state leaders band together to institute policies that hurt Republican states. The idea f mutual deterrence versus mutual destruction is good.
“During the decades-long nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Soviet Union, leaders on both sides relied on a state of mutually assured destruction to keep the two countries from stumbling into an apocalyptic war.
There are two strategic concepts from that era that apply well to Democrats today: counterforce and countervalue.
Counterforce posits that the best way to deter an opponent is to credibly threaten the use of one’s own nuclear capability to strike at the opponent’s nuclear forces. In the context of today’s redistricting wars, that means neutralizing the weapons Republicans are using — directly, surgically and proportionally — within the sandbox of redistricting, like we’re seeing from New York and California. They gerrymander their big red state; we gerrymander our big blue state.”
Snip
“It’s good that Democratic leaders are trying to leverage counterforce deterrence on redistricting. But, if New York, California and other blue states want to deter red state aggression more comprehensively, they also need to consider the grislier logic of countervalue.
In our domestic context, it means using the full weight of blue states’ market power, cultural influence and legal authority to raise the stakes of Republican red state aggression. That means making it harder for corporations to operate in states that obliterate fair elections. It means using their economic might to impose regulatory and economic costs that bite hard enough to make the constituents of even the most insulated legislator feel the pain. In other words, it means countering red state aggression with potential actions that go beyond reciprocity and may impose disproportionate costs.“
https://wapo.st/3J6Sanx
To defeat Trump, the left must learn from him
Interesting article. We indeed do need to do a better job of communicating to voters, but we also need a clear, simple message that resonates with voters by connecting to their lives. As this writer notes, pro-democracy forces need to “Take off the gloves. Show your teeth, take no prisoners.” Too much of our current leadership seem to be stuck back in the decade when Obama won. We’re a different country now.
“We can learn from Trump the importance of telling a simple, understandable story and sticking to it. Pro-democracy forces need to pick a message and repeat it again and again to drive it home. There is surely no one in America who has not heard the phrase Make America Great Again and does not associate Maga with Trump. We can learn to appeal to national pride and drive home that national greatness requires addressing the daily experiences of ordinary Americans in language of the kind they use.
Snip
We can learn from the president that political success requires building a movement and not being trapped by the norms and conventions of existing political organizations. Remember Trump has gotten to where he is not by being an acolyte of Republican orthodoxy but by being a heretic.
In the age of loneliness, pro-democracy forces need to give people the sense that they are caught up in a great cause.
We can learn from the president that if the pro-democracy movement is to succeed, it needs to offer its own version of constitutional reform. Stop talking about preserving the system and start talking about changing it in ways that will make government responsive and connect it to the lives that people live.“
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/20/to-defeat-trump-the-left-must-learn-from-him
Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced
It seems clear that Netanyahu is planning to take over all of Gaza by killing or expelling all Palestinians. No one seems willing to even try to stop his genocide. Where are the countries sanctioning Israel with heavy economic penalties? Where are the voices of world leaders against genocide? Where are the leaders of Arab neighbors calmly watching Israel murder fellow Muslims? The silence is deafening.
“As Bartov said, despite the lack of coverage, the systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Indeed, the Israeli military is so desperate for extra bulldozers that, over the last couple of months, there have been ads for bulldozer drivers to help demolish Gaza posted on Facebook – some apparently offering as much as 3,000 shekels ($882) a day for the work. I found around a dozen of these ads on Meta since the end of May, many of them on a public Facebook page for bulldozer operators. Meanwhile a Haaretz article from this week looking into the outsourcing of bulldozer drivers found that they are paid per building: 2,500 shekels for the demolition of a small building, 5,000 shekels for a large building.
“The idea that the bulldozer has become a major article of genocide and warfare is quite new,” says Neve Gordon, a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London. “What is happening in Gaza is not a building here or there being demolished; it’s the destruction of whole villages and towns.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/09/bulldzoer-gaza-genocide-idf-meta
Democrats Need to Understand That Opinions on Israel Are Changing Fast
I think this piece in the NYT reflects where we are as a political party today. It’s mostly about changing views of Israel, but it also focuses on why Democratic voters are disillusioned with our leadership today. A majority of Democratic voters want to condition military aid on Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians. Our leadership professes full support for Israel with no conditions, which is just one reason for voters feeling that leaders are ignoring them. From the article:
“Only one in three Democrats now view Israel favorably, according to Gallup. That makes Israel significantly less popular than Cuba, and only slightly more popular than China. Despite this, the party’s most powerful figures — from the minority leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries to many of the Democrats likely to run for president in 2028 — oppose conditioning U.S. military support on Israel’s willingness to uphold human rights. This places them in clear conflict with their party’s base.
Support of Israel isn’t the primary reason that, according to Reuters, 62 percent of Democrats want new leaders. What seems to anger grass roots Democrats most is their party’s inability to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box and stand up to him as president. But unquestioned support for Israel has become, for many, a symbol of the timidity and inauthenticity of party elites — and that leaves them vulnerable to political insurgents who don’t compromise the values of equality and anti-discrimination. That’s how Mr. Mamdani connected his support for Palestinian freedom to his broader message. “This is a politics of consistency,” he told Politico in April. “And it’s a politics that refuses to equivocate, no matter whom it applies to. That every single person deserves a dignified life.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/opinion/zohran-mamdani-democrats-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UU8.ZTQG.e0PIoWD_Kolk&smid=url-share
Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database
Good article about how DOGE and Palantir are creating a mega-database of all our most private data for both surveillance and control. Ostensibly, this is about voter fraud. The reality is far more sinister. Palantir has long accumulated data for the DoD and we have no idea what they collect or how it is used, but now the company has moved into the civilian sphere creating a mega-database with information that should not be shared with a secretive, private company working with a dictator like Trump to track and monetize our data for his warped purposes. Some Palantir employees have even gone public with their concerns that Palantir even has access to this data. I can only imagine all the negative uses for such a database accessible by an evil administration.
“The rollout of the citizenship database, which is an upgraded version of an existing network of data sources, comes after the New York Times reported that software firm Palantir was selected to help develop a “mega-database” for the Trump administration.
In a letter to the company, 10 Democratic lawmakers said the database, which would collect the tax and other personal information on all Americans in a single repository, would potentially be a violation of federal law.
“The unprecedented possibility of a searchable ‘mega-database’ of tax returns and other data that will potentially be shared with or accessed by other federal agencies is a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump’s administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans,” the letter reads.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/trump-citizenship-database
Here's what the Democrats can learn from Zohran Mamdani
An interesting article on Mamdani. I didn’t know that some other cities are contemplating the city-owned grocery. His appeal to younger voters should have the traditionalists in the Democratic Party taking note. We do not need the same old tired election messages of the past, we need to reassure younger voters that they have a future.
“Mamdani’s ideas are not pie-in-the-sky. The rent guidelines board, appointed by the mayor, voted 0% increases on some leases in 2015, 2016, and on all leases in 2020, during the pandemic. Democratic mayor Bill De Blasio got universal pre-kindergarten staffed, funded, and full almost immediately upon election in 2014.
Chicago and Atlanta may be moving ahead with municipal groceries. A 2023 pilot program waiving fares on five New York bus routes was largely successful, and its failures can inform the next attempt.”
How would Mamdani pay for all this? Impose a 2% tax on the top 1%–residents earning more than $1m annually; and raise the top corporate tax rate to match neighboring New Jersey’s, to 11.5% from 7.25%.
Snip
“Their [young people] jobs are precarious, their credit cards overcharged. They have no health insurance and wonder if they’ll ever retire their student debt. They come from mixed immigration status families and imagine middle age on a broiling planet. And they are the young voters who turned out overwhelmingly for a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. If the Democrats want the same results, they need to offer these voters, who personify America’s troubled working and middle classes, a progressive vision.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/01/democrats-zohran-mamdani
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/belarus-democracy-lukashenko.html
A somewhat depressing read but important because Trump is doing some of the same things as Lukashenko to cement his dictatorial power. Trump is just getting started with taking control and setting up his police state to quash dissent, but I have no doubt that he intends to be president for life.
“ In hindsight, 2020 was a turning point. The regime sensed the danger of the moment and the ensuing crackdown was violent and swift. Tens of thousands of people were arrested, a local human rights group estimates that there are more than 1,000 political prisoners, and, according to U.N. estimates, more than 300,000 people have left the country in the time since.
I am one of them. I had been a commercial photographer, mostly weddings, until 2020. But in 2020 I decided to start documenting the election campaign and, after the elections, the protests. I don’t think I missed a single major Sunday protest in 2020. By the end of that year there was the sense that things were closing in. The following July I was detained, which felt like a warning. I left soon after for an artist’s residency in Poland and have been postponing my return ever since.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/belarus-democracy-lukashenko.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU8.2PiP.GV3HGN0aCp4R&smid=url-share
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