How We Take Back the Supreme Court

Where do you see yourself in 2060? What about your kids or grandkids? Will Donald Trump be affecting your life even then?

Here’s why he might be.

This November, the future of the Supreme Court is on the ballot.

Trump appointed three justices in his first term — more than any president since Ronald Reagan. And thanks to them, Trump was able to get rid of Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, and gun safety laws — even after he left office.

If Trump is reelected, 76-year-old Justice Clarence Thomas and 74-year-old Justice Samuel Alito could retire, giving Trump a chance to appoint a fourth and fifth justice. That’s five out of nine justices. Trump would be the first president in more than a half century to appoint a majority of the Supreme Court.

And not just a “conservative” majority — but a MAGA majority that would work in lockstep with an authoritarian president.

Several other justices are also getting up there. Chief Justice John Roberts will turn 70 in 2025, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be 71. So it’s possible that Trump could even appoint a sixth (or even a seventh) justice.

If Trump sticks with appointing justices in their 40s, as he did with Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, his justices could dominate the court past the year 2060 — or longer if he appoints even younger justices.

In the court’s latest term, the extremists now dominating the bench made it harder to combat racial gerrymandering. They limited the power of federal agencies to implement health, safety, and environmental regulations. They ruled that homeless people can be punished for being homeless. They gave the greenlight for state and local politicians to accept bribes for past actions. And I didn’t even mention how the court granted presidents the power of kings by giving them broad immunity from prosecution.

All of this because one man, Donald Trump, was elected in 2016. If he’s reelected in 2024, just imagine the damage a MAGA supermajority Supreme Court could unleash.

Your remaining reproductive freedoms, marriage equality, gun reform, climate change policy, and what’s left of the Voting Rights Act…

Wherever you imagine yourself and your family forty years from now, you will still be feeling the effects of this year’s election.

(Source: youtube.com)

How Trump Killed Every Business He Touched

Trump’s entire candidacy is based on a lie.

TRUMP: I’m really a good businessman. I’m so good at business.

Not true. Trump is a business failure. Almost every business he’s touched, he’s driven into the ground.

RUBIO: You ever heard of Trump Steaks?

TRUMP: Trump Steaks are the greatest steaks, and I mean that in every sense of the word!

RUBIO: You ever heard of Trump Vodka?

TRUMP: It’s a smooth vodka. It’s a great-tasting vodka.

RUBIO: All of these companies that he’s ruined!

It’s true! Trump had a failed board game…

TRUMP: My new game is Trump the Game.

…a failed bicycle race called the “Tour de Trump”…

TRUMP: I think this is an event that can be tremendous in the future. And it can really rival the Tour de France.

…a failed football team.

TRUMP: It’s gonna stay strong. It’s gonna stay strong for a long time.

Trump decided it was a good idea to start a mortgage company in 2006.

TRUMP: It’s a great time to start a mortgage company.

That failed in less than two years. Let’s see, what else was there?

JOHN OLIVER: Trump Magazine, which folded, Trump World Magazine, which also folded…

ROMNEY: Whatever happened to Trump Airlines?

Oh! That was a good one! One of his planes had a crash landing within the first two months, which he insisted was “the most beautiful landing you’ve ever seen.” The business failed within three years.

Trump has even managed to bankrupt multiple casinos. How do you lose money running a casino?

There’s an old joke that the easiest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one. And that’s exactly what Trump did. Multiple analyses show that if Trump had simply invested his multi-million-dollar inheritance in an index fund and didn’t touch it, he’d be a lot richer than he is now. Think about that. His entire life’s work has been less successful than if he’d done nothing.

And when he was president, Trump ran the country like he ran his failed businesses. He added $8.4 trillion to the national debt — largely through his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.

Trump has managed to survive every one of his business failures by leaving other people on the hook — leaving workers unpaid and shafting his investors.

The whole idea that Trump is good at business was a carefully-crafted illusion — concocted for a reality TV show. And like a lot of reality TV shows, we’ve come to learn it was all show, and no reality.

The only business Trump has been successful at is conning people. Now he’s trying to do it again. Don’t fall for it.

Trump’s Tax Scam: Why Nothing Trickled Down 

The Trump tax cuts were a YUGE scam.

But this November we have a chance to end this trickle-down hoax once and for all.

Donald Trump’s biggest legislative achievement (if you want to even call it that) was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The law permanently slashed corporate taxes and temporarily cut income tax rates mostly for rich individuals through the year 2025. The results were worse than I could have imagined.

Trump and his officials claimed the tax cuts would lead to corporations hiring more workers and would “very conservatively” lead to a $4,000 boost in household incomes.

What actually happened in the years since?

In AT&T’s case, the company saw its overall federal tax bill drop by 81%. It spent 31 times more on dividends and stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders than it paid it in taxes. Meanwhile, it slashed over 40,000 jobs.

That was par for the course with Trump’s tax cuts.

Like AT&T, America’s biggest corporations didn’t use their tax savings to increase productivity or reward workers. Instead, they increased their stock buybacks and dividends.

Many of them, including AT&T, even ended up paying their executives more in some years than what they paid Uncle Sam.    

Those executives (along with other high earners) then got to keep more of their earnings because Trump’s tax cuts for individuals were heavily skewed toward the rich. The lowest earners? They got squat.

And many middle-income families saw their taxes go up.

And those supposed $4,000 raises, did you get one?

The bottom line is that Trump’s tax law fueled a massive transfer of wealth into the hands of the rich and powerful. Corporate profits have skyrocketed. U.S. billionaire wealth has more than DOUBLED since 2018.

The tax cuts have also added $2 trillion to the national debt so far, but that hasn’t stopped Trump and the so-called “party of fiscal responsibility” from doubling down on renewing them.

If Trump is reelected and Republicans take control of Congress, they’re planning to renew the expiring tax cuts for individuals that primarily benefited the rich. This would cost $4.6 trillion over the next decade, more than double the cost of the original tax cuts.

Trump has also threatened to lower the corporate tax rate even further from 21% to 15% — which would cost another $1 trillion.

It’s trickle-down economics on steroids.

All of this would cause the federal deficit and debt to soar — which Republicans will then use as an excuse to cut spending on government programs the rest of us rely on.

But the Democrats have their own tax plan. We can make it a reality this November. What would it do? Just the opposite of Trump’s tax plan.

ONE: It would increase taxes on wealthy individuals with incomes in excess of $400,000 a year, while cutting taxes for lower-income Americans.

TWO: It would make billionaires pay at least 25 percent of their incomes in taxes, still leaving them with plenty left over.

THREE: It would raise the corporate income tax to 28 percent, which is about what it was in 1990.

LASTLY, it would quadruple the tax on stock buybacks to get corporations to invest more of their earnings in workers’ wages and productivity instead of windfalls for investors.

So the real choice is between the Republicans’ plan to make the rich much richer, and the Democrats’ plan to make the rich pay their fair share and provide what Americans need.

Which do you want?

(Source: youtube.com)

5 Ways Trump Would Blow up the Economy

If Donald Trump wins in November, he’ll make inflation explode.

That’s what 16 Nobel-winning economists are telling us. Here are 5 ways Trump has proposed blowing up the U.S. economy.

#1: Trump’s crazy tariff plan

Trump seems genuinely confused about what tariffs are and who pays tariffs.

Tariffs are not paid by the other country. They’re paid by the American importer, with the cost typically passed onto American consumers, as even Fox Business pundits have to admit.

Now, targeted tariffs on specific products can give American-made goods an edge over imports, but there’s no strategy behind the tidal wave of tariffs Trump is proposing.

He’s talking about making you pay a 60% or more tax on everything imported from China and a 10% tax on everything imported from anywhere else. This would cost the average family an estimated $2,500 extra per year.

And this is a regressive tax, taking a higher percentage of the paychecks of the working class and the poor than out of the incomes of the wealthy.

#2 Trump’s monopoly plans

If you’ve watched our other videos, you know corporate consolidation is one of the biggest drivers of inflation. When there are fewer competitors, corporations can raise prices without worrying about losing customers to a cheaper competitor. Trump and the MAGA team want to make this worse.

Project 2025 specifically seeks to fast-track airline mergers.

And as part of Trump’s efforts to solicit campaign donations from Big Oil executives, he’s suggested fast-tracking oil mergers. This would let them pump up your gas prices.

And speaking of gas prices, let’s talk about…

#3 Trump’s energy price hikes

Trump’s promising to kill the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy incentives and fuel efficiency standards. This means you’ll be spending more on fuel because your car will need more gas and your appliances will use more electricity.

#4 Trump would make your money worthless — I’m sorry, worth less.

The American economy is strong right now compared to other nations’, so the American dollar is worth more vs. the Euro, the Yen, or other major currencies. At a moment when Americans are worried about how far their dollar goes, most people would call that a good thing.

But Trump and his economic advisers are reportedly so obsessed with trade deficits that they’re looking for ways to devalue the dollar.

This might help big corporations that export products but it would also raise import prices and overheat a U.S. economy already running hot.

#5 Trump’s deportation plan.

Trump would decimate the American workforce — and he’s bragging about it.

Putting aside the horrific moral consequences, this would make the whole economy collapse.

There are more than a million undocumented laborers in construction, over a million undocumented farm workers, and about a million undocumented food service workers. What do you think will happen to the price of food and housing if these workers are suddenly deported? Prices will explode.

Trump has no understanding of the economy. That’s why he’s driven so many businesses into the ground. He’s even driven casinos into the ground. How do you lose money running a casino?

But since Trump doesn’t understand the economy, listen to the people who do — the 16 Nobel economists who say Trump’s economic plans would be an inflation bomb.

(Source: youtube.com)

Is Trump Lying or Just Losing It?

Trump is now the oldest presidential candidate ever nominated by a major party.

I’m not a young man, but I’m a little younger than Trump — and hopefully doing better in the noggin!

Trump has confused President Biden with Obama so many times, he had to put a statement claiming it was intentional.

He confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

Before picking him as his running mate, he called JD Vance “JD Mandel.”

During recent legal proceedings, Trump was unable to distinguish E. Jean Caroll — the woman a jury conclude he raped — from his ex-wife Marla Maples.

Trump rambles about windmills killing whales, and whether it’s better to be electrocuted or eaten by a shark. He used his convention speech to praise Hannibal Lecter! What?

If your father or grandfather behaved like Trump, you would be taking away the car keys, not handing him the nuclear codes.

And Trump still insists the 2020 election was “stolen” by a vast conspiracy, even though his own lawyers, his Justice Department, and his attorney general told him it wasn’t true. Is Trump lying? Or does he simply have no grasp of reality?

Trump has a family history of dementia. And the most telling evidence that he may be succumbing to it is his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering his entire campaign.

Before President Biden ended his campaign, the media were obsessed with questioning his physical and mental fitness — and not without reason. When will they focus on Trump’s age and mental decline with the same fervor?

(Source: youtube.com)

10 Worst Things About The Trump Presidency

Donald Trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever. But some people now seem to be suffering from amnesia.

Let me jog your memory. Here are 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency — in no particular order.

#1. Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.

#2. Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is…

#3. Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of…

#4. Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.

#5. Trump said there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

I’m halfway to ten. If you think I’m missing something big, leave it in the comments.

#6. Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who helped orchestrate the Jan 6 Capitol attack.

#7. Trump’s not wrong when he says…

TRUMP: I got rid of Roe v. Wade.

It is entirely because of Trump’s judicial appointments that 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age now lives in states with abortion bans.

#8. One of Trump’s Supreme Court justices was Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

#9. Trump’s White House interfered in the FBI’s investigation of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults.

And now: #10. Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office. The criminally false business filings he got convicted for in New York? All of them were committed while he was president.

I’m sorry, did I say the 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency? I meant 15.

#11. Trump’s failed pandemic response is estimated to have led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. By the time Trump left office, roughly 3,000 Americans were dying of covid every day. That’s a 9/11-scale mass casualty event every single day. How did Trump screw up so badly?

#12. Trump’s White House discarded the pandemic response playbook that had been assembled by the Obama administration.

#13. Trump disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team.

#14. Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of covid, saying it was no worse than the flu or that it would go away on its own.

But behind closed doors, Trump admitted he knew covid was deadly.

#15. Trump promoted fake covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and even injecting people with disinfectants.

After Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks, poison control centers received a spike in emergency calls.

That’s fifteen things. Should I keep going? Ok, I’ll keep going. The 20 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.

#16. Trump presided over a net loss of 2.9 million American jobs — the worst recorded jobs numbers of any U.S. president in history.

#17. Trump profited off the presidency, making an estimated $160 million from foreign countries while he was president.

#18. Trump also billed the Secret Service over $1 million for the privilege of staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protected him. That’s your money!

#19. Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when he didn’t get funding for his border wall, which he said Mexico was going to pay for.  

#20. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.

You didn’t really think I was stopping at 20, did you? We’re going to 25 —

#21. Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the border, with no plan to ever reunite them, putting babies in cages.

#22. The Muslim Ban. Yes, Trump really did try to ban Muslims from entering the country.

#23. Trump sparked international outrage by moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem while closing the U.S. mission to Palestine.

#24. Trump tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with drafting a potential Middle East “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input.

#25. And finally, Trump recognized Israel’s occupation of the Goh-lahn Heights, which is considered illegal under international law.

So there you have it, folks: The 25 Worst — Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did I mention the impeachments? We’ve got to do the impeachments. Let’s go to 30.

#26. Trump broke the law by trying to withhold nearly $400 million of U.S. aid for Ukraine in an effort to extort a personal political favor from Ukraine’s Pres. Zelensky. Trump wanted Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into the Bidens. Delaying this aid to Ukraine weakened Ukraine and strengthened Russia.

#27. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.

#28. To cover up the scheme, Trump ordered the White House and State Department to defy congressional subpoenas.

#29. For these reasons, on December 18, 2019, Trump became the third U.S. president to be impeached. He was charged with Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.

#30. Even while he was being investigated for trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump publicly called for China to interfere in the election.

So those are the 30 Worst Things —

I’ll go to 35.

#31. Long before Election Day, Trump started making false claims that the election would be rigged.

#32. After losing, Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, even though his own inner circle, including his campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his own Justice Department and attorney general told him it was not.

#33. Trump kept telling his Big Lie even after more than 60 legal challenges to the election were struck down in court, many by Trump-appointed judges.

#34. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to falsely claim that the election “was corrupt.”

#35. Trump and his allies used threats to pressure state leaders in Arizona and Georgia to falsify the election results.

We may go to 40.

#36. When none of the previous schemes worked, Trump and his allies produced fake electoral votes cast by fake electors in multiple swing states. His former White House chief of staff and Rudy Giuliani are among the many members of his inner circle who have been criminally indicted for this scheme.

#37. Trump tried to bully Vice President Pence into obstructing the certification of the election.

#38. Trump invited a mob to the Capitol on Jan 6 with his “be there, will be wild” tweet.

#39. Sworn testimony alleges that when Trump was warned that members of the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal detectors to be taken down.

#40. Knowing the crowd had deadly weapons, he ordered them to go to the Capitol and…

TRUMP: …fight like hell.

#41 — Yes, yes, I know, bear with me.

Trump betrayed his oath to defend the nation by doing nothing to stop the Jan 6 violence. Instead, according to witness testimony, he sat and watched TV for hours.

#42. On January 13, 2021, Trump became the only president ever to be impeached twice. This time he was charged with incitement of insurrection. It was a bipartisan vote.

#43. The majority of senators — 57 out of 100 — voted to convict Trump, including 7 Republican senators.

So that’s the two impeachments and the Big Lie, but wait, we haven’t dealt with Russia, right? So we’re going to 50.

#44. In a likely obstruction of justice, Trump pressured then FBI Director James Comey to stop the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. This was documented in the Mueller report.

#45. When Comey didn’t bend to Trump’s will, Trump fired him.

#46. Trump tried to shut down the Mueller investigation by ordering White House Counsel Don McGann to fire Mueller. McGann refused because that would be criminal obstruction of justice.

#47. When news got out that Trump tried to fire Mueller, Trump repeatedly told McGann to lie — to Mueller, to press, to public — and even create a false document to conceal Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller.

#48. Trump ordered his staff not to turn over emails showing Don Jr. had set up a meeting at Trump Tower before the 2016 election with representatives of the Russian government.

#49. Trump convinced Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and Cohen served prison time for lying to Congress.

#50. Trump was not charged for criminal obstruction of justice because it’s the Justice Department’s policy not to indict a sitting president, but more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter declaring there was more than enough evidence to prosecute Trump.

So those are the 50 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency. Now I could go on…

And I will! The 75 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.

#51. Trump said he’d hire only the best people, but…

His campaign chair was convicted of multiple crimes.

So was one of his closest associates.

His deputy campaign chair pleaded guilty to crimes.

So did his personal lawyer

His National Security Adviser

The Chief Financial Officer of his business

A campaign foreign policy adviser

And one of his campaign fundraisers.

They all committed crimes, and Trump pardoned most of them.

#52. Trump said he’d drain the Washington swamp. But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than any administration in history

#53. Trump intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner top-secret clearance after he was denied over concerns about foreign influence.

#54. Trump hosted a Russian Foreign Minister to the Oval Office, where Trump revealed top-secret intelligence.

Oh, and Trump’s economic policies!

#55 Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise? Of course not! Nobody did!

#56. Trump vowed to protect American jobs, but offshoring increased and manufacturing fell.

#57. Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they became a running joke.

#58. Trump said he would be “the voice” of American workers, but he filled the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union flacks who made it harder for workers to unionize.

#59. Trump’s Labor Department made it easier for bosses to get out of paying workers overtime, which cheated 8 million workers of extra pay.

#60. Trump repeatedly suggested he might serve more than two terms in violation of the Constitution — and continues to do so.

#61. Trump called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries.

#62. Trump tried to terminate DACA, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Luckily this was struck down by the courts.

#63. Trump called climate change a “hoax.”

#64. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

#65. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections.

#66. Every budget Trump proposed included cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

#67. Trump tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have resulted in 20 million Americans losing insurance. And striking down the ACA’s protections for the roughly 130 million people with pre-existing conditions could have driven up their insurance premiums or led to a loss of coverage.

#68. Trump made it easier for employers to remove birth control coverage from insurance plans.

#69. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of people lacking health insurance had risen by 3 million.

#70. Trump lied. Constantly. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.

#71. Trump allegedly took hundreds of classified documents on his way out of the White House, reportedly including nuclear secrets, which he then left unsecured in various parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a bathroom. He was even caught on tape showing them off to people.

#72. Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.

#73. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.

#74. Trump suggested withholding federal aid for California wildfire recovery and said the solution was to “clean” the “floors” of the forest.

#75. Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, placing Iran on a path to developing nuclear weapons.

Honestly, there’s so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s brutal dictator to publicly denigrating a Gold Star military widow and making her cry, to the way he attacked journalists, to late night tweet binges.

Look, I can understand why a lot of people want to block all of this out of their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.

And we sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.

Why Big Money Supports Trump 

Fascism backed by Big Money is one of the most dangerous of all political alliances.

We saw it in 1930s Germany, when industrial giants bailed out a cash-strapped Nazi party right before Hitler’s election, thinking that Hitler would protect their money and power.

We are seeing something similar now. Earlier this year, the GOP was running out of money. So Trump turned to his wealthy backers for help. Many super-rich donors who once criticized Trump for stoking the violence of January 6 have since had a change of heart, deciding their profits are worth more than our democracy.

Trump has promised them that if elected, he’ll extend his 2017 tax cuts that went mainly to the wealthy beyond 2025 when they’re scheduled to expire, and hinting at even more.

He promised oil executives he would scrap regulations favoring electric vehicles and wind energy if they would give his campaign one billion dollars.

The Trump White House is for sale, and the wealthy are buying. 50 billionaire families gave at least $600 million in political donations as of May, with over two thirds going to support GOP candidates and conservative causes.

Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, who also controls and manipulates one of the world’s largest communications platforms, has committed to spending millions of dollars to elect Trump.

In previous videos, I’ve highlighted alarming similarities between fascist regimes of the past and Trumpism. The alignment of American billionaires with Trump’s anti-democracy movement is one of the most dangerous parallels.

The billionaires want the rest of us to fight each other so we don’t look up and see where all the wealth and power have gone, so we don’t join together and raise taxes on the super-rich to finance childcare, better schools, our health care system, and everything else we need.

They fear democracy because there are far more of us than there are of them.

We need to see through their fear tactics and vote in overwhelming numbers this November.

We can learn from history and spot the danger. We are not doomed to repeat it.

(Source: youtube.com)

Here’s Why Prices Are Still High

Americans feel like they’re still being price-gouged, even as inflation has come down. In many ways they’re right.

If we take a closer look at a few of the biggest drivers of inflation, we’ll see that some corporations are still using their power and shady techniques to keep prices high while they rake in record profits.

Let’s start with rent. In another video, I’ve told you how Wall Street investors are infiltrating the housing market by buying up hundreds of thousands of homes and rental properties.These corporate landlords then jack up rents on their units by hundreds of dollars every year.

In the first quarter of 2024, the six largest corporate landlords in America saw their collective profits climb by nearly $300 million thanks to rent increases. They’re raking it in while spending nearly a third of those profits on stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders.

Each of these corporations is using a software company called RealPage, which allegedly allows them to collude with each other to fix rental prices. RealPage’s technology is used to price 16 million apartments nationwide.

What about gas prices?

In 2022, the top five Big Oil companies collectively made nearly $200 billion in profits, double the prior year. Then they spent $100 billion on stock buybacks and dividends. 2023 was another banner year for Big Oil. While you continued to pay through the nose at the pump, corporations like Chevron “returned more cash to shareholders and produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history,” according to its CEO.

According to recent findings from the Federal Trade Commission, a major Big Oil executive allegedly colluded with OPEC in recent years to artificially cut supply and drive up prices across the industry. By one estimate, that price-fixing scheme resulted in a windfall of $205 billion in excess profits — which cost each American consumer an average of more than $2,000 a year.

That’s more than $2,000 Americans could have spent on groceries. But of course groceries are another burden on our pocket books.

Americans have been paying an arm and a leg in particular for beef, pork, and poultry. Meat producers don’t need to worry about competitors with lower prices because four companies control the bulk of all meat processing in America. This has helped each of those companies siphon more money from you while raking in record profits over the past few years.

And the biggest meat producers use a high-tech pricing tool from a data company called Agri Stats that allegedly allowed them to share information and coordinate price hikes.

None of these price increases has anything to do with government spending or pandemic relief checks from four years ago, despite what you might hear. And workers aren’t to blame, either. After decades of stagnant wages, workers have finally seen modest pay bumps. But this pales in comparison to corporate profits, which are at record highs.

The problem is too much corporate power. And the solution is to crack down on corporations profiteering at your expense.

The Department of Justice under President Biden is investigating RealPage’s facilitation of rental price-fixing and launched a massive antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats. And Biden’s Federal Trade Commission is suing to block the megamerger of Kroger and Albertsons that would send food prices through the roof.

House Democrats are investigating Big Oil for price fixing, based on the FTC’s damning report. Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to crack down on price-gouging.

Of course much more needs to be done.

Americans are struggling to get by while corporations are raking it in.

We need to keep tackling corporate power.

(Source: youtube.com)

Project 2025: The MAGA Plan to Take Your Freedom 

A second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first — in part because of something called Project 2025, a plan to extend Trump’s grip into every part of your life.

Trump’s gross incompetence in his first term wasn’t all bad. It kept some of his most extreme goals out of reach. That’s why his inner circle, including more than 20 officials from his first term, have written a step-by-step playbook to make a second term brutally efficient.

At nearly a thousand pages, it’s longer than most Stephen King novels, and a lot scarier. The Associated Press wasn’t kidding when they called it “a plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision,”

Project 2025 is a road map to ban abortion, give greedy corporate oligarchs everything they want, and strip Americans of our most basic freedoms — all without needing any support from Congress.

There’s more to it than I can get into, but here are three things I want you to know.

#1 How would Project 2025 work?

Every nonpartisan government agency would be turned into an arm of the MAGA agenda.

Some of the worst things Trump reportedly tried to do as president — like having the military  shoot protesters or seize voting machines to overturn the election  — were only stopped because sensible leaders in the military or the professional civil service refused to go along with it.

In a second term, there would be no sensible leaders in the military or professional civil service because Trump would fire anyone more loyal to the Constitution than to him.

Trump started the process in October 2020 with an executive order that would have let him fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA henchmen. I’m talking about traditionally non-political positions, like scientists at scientific agencies and accountants at the IRS.

Trump could not act on the executive order then because he lost the election. If he wins now, he’s pledged to pick up where he left off and go further…

TRUMP: …making every executive branch employee fireable by the President of the United States.

#2 Project 2025 is about controlling Americans’ lives & bodies

Restricting abortion is such a big part of Project 2025 that the word “abortion” appears 198 times in the plan.

Trump largely made good on his campaign promise to ban abortion.

Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court justices, 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age live in states with abortion bans. Project 2025 would make that even worse, without needing new laws from Congress.

Page 458 of the playbook calls for a MAGA-controlled FDA to reject medical science and reverse approval of the medications used in 63% of all abortions, effectively banning them.

Page 455 plans “abortion surveillance” and the creation of a registry that could put people who cross state lines to get an abortion at risk of prosecution.

Another way around Congress is to enforce arcane laws that are still technically on the books. Page 562 plans for a MAGA-controlled Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873, which bans the mailing of “anything designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” This could be used to block the shipment of any medications or medical instruments needed for abortions.

But Project 2025’s control of American families goes even further. It plans for government agencies to define life as beginning at conception — a position at odds with the process used for in vitro fertilization.

Page 451 declares that “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” thereby stigmatizing single parents, same-sex couples, unmarried coparents, and childless couples.

Project 2025 even takes a stand against adoption, declaring on p. 489 that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

#3 Project 2025 would turn America into a police state.

Maybe you live in a blue city or state, where you think plans like arresting teachers and librarians over banned books (which is on p. 5) could never happen. Well, guess again.

Trump has said one of the big things he’d do differently in a second term is override mayors and governors to take over local law enforcement.

Page 553 lays out how to do this, and even plans for Trump’s Justice Department to prosecute district attorneys he disagrees with.

Immigration enforcement is to be conducted like a war, with the military deployed within the U.S., and millions of undocumented immigrants rounded up and placed into newly constructed holding camps. This is outlined starting on p. 139.

Members of the Project 2025 team also reportedly told the Washington Post about plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against anti-Trump protests.

There is much more to Project 2025. There are more than a hundred pages of anti-environmental policies that would help Trump make good on what he reportedly promised to do for oil executives if they contribute a billion dollars to his reelection. It would make drilling and mining a top national priority while killing clean energy projects, barring the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, and replacing all government climate scientists with climate deniers.

There are even cartoonishly cruel plans like slaughtering wild horses. Yes, that’s really in there on p. 528.

I thought I understood the stakes of this election, but reading this plan… Well, it gave me chills. If Trump gets the chance to put this plan into place, he will. The country it would turn America into would be hard for any of us to recognize.

(Source: youtube.com)

JD Vance Is a Working Class Phony

J.D. Vance wants to con America into believing he’s some “working class hero.” 

Baloney!

He worked for a law firm that lobbied for Purdue Pharma — the company that pleaded guilty to three felonies for its role in creating America’s opioid crisis.

He’s a former venture capitalist who benefited from tax loopholes designed for the super-rich.

He won his Senate seat thanks to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who spent $15 million on Vance’s Senate campaign.

He visited a picket line for a photo op, but opposed legislation to protect workers’ rights to organize.

He weakened his own railway safety bill at the request of rail and chemical lobbyists.

He opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, which has unleashed a wave of investment in American manufacturing and created over 300,000 clean energy jobs so far.

J.D. Vance isn’t a “populist.” He’s a phony.

He doesn’t give a fig about workers.

(Source: youtube.com)