November 1, 2020

  • The Progressive Lens Non-Quarterly Round-up: July-October 2020

    Trump Era Days 1,259 - 1,381

     

    What was reported?

    • Jobs Numbers reported in July (4.8 million jobs revived in June and 11.1% unemployment), August (1,763,000 jobs “created” in July as unemployment fell to 10.2%), September (1,370,000 jobs added in August as unemployment fell to 8.4%), and October (661,000 jobs restored in September while unemployment fell to 7.9%). The second quarter of 2020 saw the worst ever 2nd Quarter in American history with a drop of 32.9% due to the pandemic. Then, the economy grew at a record-breaking 33.1% in the third quarter, though a third of the economy which was damaged by the pandemic remained harmed despite this. Amidst the pandemic, WalMart announced that they would experiment the concept of self-checkout only shopping at one of their popular stores in Arkansas.
    • A study revealed that police brutality and apparent racism are byproducts of systemically engrained beliefs, and this corrupt culture is not helped by the fact that many judges even seem to be able to commit crimes with impunity.
    • A group of scientists returned to Germany after being intentionally stuck in the Arctic for a year and warned that the Arctic Ocean is “dying”.
    • President Trump – who expressed his belief that white people are killed by police more often than people of color - issued an executive order banning all federal agencies – as well as federal contractors - from hosting or participating in “racial sensitivity” or “diversity” training; calling it “divisive” and “anti-American propaganda”. Instead, the President called for and later implemented a program aimed at American students to be indoctrinated via a “patriotic” education agenda which “teaches American exceptionalism” and which downplays the role of racism in our history.
    • While the country was mired in chaos between the virus and the riots Trump was delivering a number of significant policy objectives ranging from tougher immigration rules to winding back environmental and financial regulations.
    • Before a public backlash led him to rescind it, President Trump had issued an executive order which ended the “Stars and Stripes” publication which serves American military personnel.
    • The Extremist Right Win government of Poland announced that they would exit the European treaty prohibiting violence against women.
    • A record number of Americans reportedly decided to renounce their citizenship in the first half of 2020.
    • White supremacists were repeatedly caught on camera trying to incite the riots of 2020.
    • Trump initially signed off on a rule that instructed all foreign students to leave the country if their schools became completely virtual but he was later compelled to rescind such.
    • ICE used torture to force Cameroonian asylum seekers to sign their own deportation papers in the weeks close to the election with anticipation that Trump might lose.
    • Republican U.S, Senator Tom Cotton called slavery a “necessary evil” while expressing his disdain for an educational project meant to highlight the evils of racism and how it connects with our history.
    • President Trump threatened to veto a bill which would raise the pay of troops all because it was set to change military base names from those honoring Confederate soldiers.
    • Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos – who comes from the private online charter school, K-12 – reportedly used the pandemic emergency funds appropriated to her department to fund a promotion of nationalizing private educational voucher programs.
    • While signing an executive order which defers payroll taxes funding Social Security and Medicare, Trump promised that he would permanently cut the payroll taxes if he is reelected.
    • The United States Postal Service Headquarters sent out emails to Post Office managers demanding that they not reconnect any disconnected mail sorting machines. This was sent almost immediately after the corrupt Postmaster said publicly that he didn’t want it to seem like the Postal Service was trying to slow down mail for the election. Additionally, the Postmaster General oversaw a so-called “Massacre” wherein top executives were purged alongside over two dozen officials.
    • Trump’s aides contacted the Governor of South Dakota to find out about the process of adding presidents to Mount Rushmore.
    • A Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Report – notably approved by the Republican Majority – found that Trump had lied to Mueller about discussing the hacked emails with Stone and that the claim of Ukraine election interference originated with Russian Intelligence Agencies.
    • President Trump encouraged voters to cast a vote twice. First by mail and then in person if their first vote has not yet been registered. Note: this is illegal.
    • Answering the President’s call for his supporters to “watch” the vote take place, the extremist, armed rightwing “Oath Keepers” pledged to have a presence at the polls on Election Day “to protect voters”, saying that they don’t trust the police to protect people.
    • Trump told his supporters that they will not “stand for” losing the election, and that they will only have a “peaceful transition” of power if there isn’t any “cheating” (by the standards Trump has established based on his baseless claims of attempted fraud). His campaign is also reportedly contemplating means by which to circumvent the election, including one such plan which involves having Republican-dominated state governments choose their electors regardless of the popular vote in each state. Trump also told a crowd that he may even “sign an executive order” which effectively prohibits Biden from becoming president.
    • Trump nominee to replace Ginsburg on the Court – Amy Barrett – refused to say whether Trump could delay the election unilaterally as president; which he has signaled in the past his intent to do. He also later speculated to his supporters that ballots could be added suspiciously during delays in vote counts.
    • Trump publicly pressured Attorney General William Barr to launch a probe into Former Vice President Biden and his son Hunter inspired by an unconfirmed report by the New York Post which claimed that Hunter used his connections to arrange a meeting between Ukrainians and Biden. Especially important is that fact that Trump pointed to the nearing election as a reason for the pressure to act.
    • Ohio Republicans launched a fight over the number of ballot drop off boxes permitted per county. After Democratic-rich Cuyahoga County announced that they would allow up to six libraries to serve as Ballot Drop-Off points, the Republican Secretary of State LaRose fired back, saying that only one box was permitted per county in the interest of fairness. One Republican State Representative – named Nino Vitale – insisted that Ohioans stop getting tested for the virus.
    • Republicans in Pennsylvania created a legislative committee geared towards investigating suspected fraud in the coming election. Some fear that it could open the door to the Legislative Republicans there deciding that the popular vote doesn’t matter in the state and awarding the state’s electoral votes to Trump anyway.
    • It was revealed by a BBC report that the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network had uncovered a massive money laundering scheme involving trillions of dollars from criminal networks and a number of major banks were implicated.
    • Trump’s Education Secretary – Betsy DeVos – informed state leaders that the Trump Administration will be forcing students to risk exposure to the virus in order to take the standardized tests.
    • After Trump got off the phone with Jewish lawmakers he is reported to have expressed anti-Semitic thoughts out loud, including a comment wherein he said that “Jews are only in it for themselves” and that they supposedly are more loyal to their religion than their own country.
    • High ranking military officials are seriously contemplating what to do if Trump tries to abuse the use of the military in between Election Day and Inauguration Day.
    • The Trump Administration withdrew America from participating in planning for global distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine and said that it will assess all future participation with the WHO on a “case by case basis” provided that “America’s interests” are put first. Instead of playing a role in the WHO – from which Trump started to withdraw us -, Trump’s Administration has decided to take an “America First” approach. Also, the detailed data about the Coronavirus kept for public viewing online as provided by the CDC disappeared when Trump moved management of the virus to the Health and Human Services Department from the CDC.
    • Trump started attacking leading health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci once the doctor started disagreeing with him publicly.
    • Trump’s press secretary intentionally lied about the American coronavirus mortality rate, claiming ours was the lowest in the world.
    • Despite a law passed earlier in the year which guarantees that every test for COVID-19 is free, health insurance companies have been exploiting every loophole they can find in order to force patients to pay for it.
    • President Trump has charged his campaign over $2 Million for rent, food, and other services through his businesses. He has also charged the Republican Party for services.
    • Protesters arrested in Portland were given an ultimatum; stop protesting or stay in jail.
    • George W. Bush’s former White House legal counsel – John Yoo, who wrote the memo justifying the use of torture – has noted that he has advised the Trump Administration on how Supreme Court rulings in the past (particularly the one allowing Obama to ignore Immigration Law via DACA) could be exploited by Trump to grant him vast powers to circumvent the will of Congress on a wide variety of issues.
    • Documents came out from the Justice Department which showed that Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his Deputy Rod Rosenstein felt that a child’s age shouldn’t preclude immigrant detentions and that they had expressed a sentiment which held that if someone crossing the border seeking asylum or a better life cared about a child’s health then they shouldn’t bring their children here “illegally”.
    • Trump rejected a disaster declaration request for the history making California forest fires in September.
    • Following the sudden death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as well as Republican Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell promising to allow a vote on her replacement before the election, Trump named far-right nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett – who condemned Obama in 2016 for naming Garland to replace Scalia in a presidential election year and who was once a “handmaid” in a religious organization called “People of Praise” which opposes abortions and sees men as the “ordained” leaders of the family - to fill the seat, proclaiming that Barrett will uphold the “Second Amendment”, among other Conservative principles. This is especially important when considering that Trump has suggested that he believes the election will end up being decided by the Supreme Court and that this was his reason for wanting to push through Bader’s replacement. It is also relevant to note that the President is currently asking the Supreme Court to permit him to block people from following or interacting with him on social media.
    • The Supreme Court ruled that the Electoral College must honor the will of the states.
    • Judge Barrett – Trump’s nominee – once ruled as a Judge on the 7th Court of Appeals that the “n word” being used in the workplace doesn’t suffice as proof of a hostile work environment. She also refused to tell the Senate whether or not she believes that EVERY PRESIDENT should commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
    • Justices Thomas and Alito signaled their willingness to overturn the 2015 decision to legalize same sex marriage when they jointly issued a statement condemning that ruling as being oppressive to religious expression.
    • The Trump Administration – through the Secretary of Labor, late-Justice Scalia’s son – has proposed a set of rule changes to deregulate private equity firms (which are otherwise known as “vulture capital” firms) as well as massive private retirement insurance in addition to creating restrictions on retirement investments with a relatively progressive agenda.
    • The Trump Campaign intentionally misled the public with images of pro-democracy protests from Ukraine in 2014 and trying to pass those images off as proof of anti-police violence from this year.
    • Bitter about the activism of Generation Z and Millennials on TikTok, Trump threatened to ban the app.
    • Senate Republicans – at the request of President Trump – tried to insert almost two billion dollars of funding for a new FBI building into the second stimulus proposal.
    • Trump’s Administration tried to end the Census count early, blaming the pandemic and posing the risk of a severely inaccurate count. The Supreme Court authorized this early conclusion on October 15th. As a result, large population centers like Franklin County, Ohio had partial counts completed.
    • After 17 year old shooter Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two people and injured another with his gun a memo was distributed amongst officials in the Department of Homeland Security directing them to make supportive comments about Kyle, suggesting that he was defending small businesses.
    • Police in Pearland, Texas had reportedly authorized federal agents to kill people attending George Floyd’s funeral in the event that unrest broke out.
    • The Defense Department took money appropriated for combating the virus through the CARES Act and used that money to pay for new military equipment not related to the pandemic. Trump also prevented the Postal Service from implementing a plan to distributed five face masks per American household back in April. Some in the Post Office have begun to openly worry about mail delivery being intentionally slowed down. Trump himself seemed to hint that the entire assault on the post office was an effort to stifle the ability of the postal service to process millions of absentee ballots, even suggesting that he somehow has the power to use an executive order to block the ballots. Compounding the crisis, Trump’s rhetoric about the ballots contributed to polls showing the most of his supporters would not trust the election if it was decided by mail-in ballots.
    • President Trump – who started ignoring Dr. Fauci and expresses that he thinks we have more cases because we test more and that we should do half the testing we do now and who ordered hospitals to ignore the CDC - blocked the CDC from testifying before Congress about reopening schools – probably fearing that they would contradict his own position on making schools reopen -, claiming that the CDC needed to focus solely on dealing with the virus. The White House later went on to claim that they defeated the virus.
    • Trump has reportedly surrounded himself for quite some time with major criminals; including people involved with the mafia, Putin’s government, human trafficking, and some money laundering. More often than not, these arrangements have proven to be very lucrative for Trump, even if his partners didn’t wind up so lucky.
    • The Trump Administration signaled their support for designating teachers as “critical infrastructure workers”, which means that they should keep going to work even if they are exposed to the virus.
    • The Trump Administration imposed major budget cuts on the Postal Service to make it more inefficient and the result has led to complaints of citizens going days without receiving mail, dead animals stuck in the logjam, and rotting food in the centers for mail distribution.
    • In 2018, when the Homeland Security Secretary dragged her feet on separating kids, fascist team member Stephen Miller led a Cabinet vote which overwhelmingly approved the decision to separate kids from their families despite a 2017 pilot program of separation in El Paso which produced evidence of problems caused by the policy. The goal was to scare immigrants away and Miller claimed that the future of the country was at stake.
    • Trump appointed a former Campaign official – Michael Caputo – to be the Health and Human Services Spokesman, and he has gone out of his way to try and suppress the spread of coronavirus information from the CDC by adding caveats and forcing compromises on the reports all to preserve Trump’s optimistic messaging.
    • The Department of Homeland Security – through an effort spearheaded by Ken Cuccinelli – has been pressured by Trump officials to downplay the threat posed by white supremacists.
    • Trump curiously signed an executive order banning offshore oil drilling – reversing his previous position – just over 50 days before the election.
    • ICE paid a contractor to detain migrant women, and that contractor used its position to force countless women to have hysterectomies.
    • Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill passed by the Republican Legislature which grants legal immunity for institutions reopening. The goal is to shield them from lawsuits spawned by exposure to the virus.
    • Despite the severity of the pandemic and the crisis it has caused for democracy, the Republican-controlled Controlling Board rejected Secretary of State LaRose’s attempt at offering prepaid postage for absentee ballots. They did this after removing a Republican State Senator named Jay Hottinger from the Board who was vocally signaling support for the Secretary of State’s proposal.
    • The President – during an interview with Fox – appeared to approve of the use of “extrajudicial” killing of citizens as “retribution” for perceived criminal acts. This support is very similar to the actions of authoritarian regimes suppressing the right to dissent.
    • Trump’s use of a secret force of unidentified federal agents “proactively” arresting protesters and speeding off in unmarked vehicles was called “Operation Diligent Valor”. This use of federal agents to crush protests sent numerous political experts into panic mode. These agents even fired upon journalists despite a U.S. District Judge ordering all authorities to leave the press alone. Trump even threatened to send a lot more of these secretive federal agents to other Democratic-run major cities. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf proclaimed that he didn’t need an invitation from State or Local leaders to dispatch the agents to address the protesters he demonizes as “anarchists”.
    • After trying to get the Justice Department to serve as Trump’s personal legal defense in a defamation lawsuit against an assault victim. Attorney General Barr attacked federal prosecutors for coming after Trump and claimed that the economic lockdowns in response to the pandemic are comparable to slavery.
    • President Trump suggested – ONCE AGAIN – that he is entitled to a third term as well as a second. One of his justifications for such is that he was “spied on”. He also refused - again, after having initially avoiding to commit to accepting a loss back in the summer – to promise that there will be a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. He said, instead, that we should “get rid of the ballots” and that “there won’t be a transfer” only a “continuation”. He also kept insisting that he will only lose if there is a “rigged” election and that it may take “months” or “years” to know the election results. Trump’s lifelong fixer-lawyer Michael Cohen wrote in a memoir that Trump “will never leave peacefully”.
    • President Trump has been exploiting a loophole in the appointment process to avoid fighting with the Senate in order to fill the Pentagon by purging people who he finds disloyal and replacing them with people who are loyal to him by means of standards set by the Vacancies Act which allows for vacancies to be filled by people serving in other departments, people employed by a department for 90 days or more as well as paid at a certain level, and the “first assistant”.
    • After Trump commuted his sentence, Roger Stone, who has had Donald Trump’s ear as a deeply loyal supporter since the 1980s openly advocated that Trump “declare martial law” and “seize power” if Biden wins the election.
    • The Defense Department briefly pondered using the “Active Denial System” or “Heat Ray” as a method of crowd control at the height of the riots over the summer as it was reportedly used in Iraq.
    • With Trump threatening to “review” federal funding aimed at helping local governments affected by the riots, Attorney General Barr designated Portland, Seattle, and New York City as “anarchist jurisdictions”.
    • Trump avoided the opportunity to condemn white supremacists at the first 2020 Presidential Debate and instead said that something had to be done about ANTIFA as well as signaling to the white supremacist group called the “proud boys”, telling them to “stand by”.
    • President Trump was recorded by Bob Woodward back in March saying that he was aware that the virus was serious and that he enjoyed downplaying the severity thereof.
    • Health Insurance companies doubled their profits in a recent quarter-fiscal year in light of the pandemic.
    • Texas health officials removed thousands of cases of COVID from their confirmed database because of the method used to test those cases. This is despite the fact that the method in question is seen as legitimate by the CDC.
    • When President Trump was interviewed about the cases of COVID in the United States and how our country has the seventh highest mortality rate on Earth, Trump became combative, congratulated himself on his “Wall” for such supposedly keeping the spread down and he ultimately said of the death toll: “it is what it is”.
    • Just as Congress and the President’s team were nearing a deal on a second stimulus package, President Trump issued a directive via Twitter which proclaimed that all negotiations would be halted until after the election.
    • Even though President Trump was recovering from COVID-19 and Vice President Pence was exposed to such, Pence initially opposed the idea of a plexi-glass divider between himself and Senator Harris at the Vice Presidential debate.
    • The fascist President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro – tested positive for the coronavirus after having downplayed it.
    • Trump prematurely left Walter Reed after being admitted for coronavirus – as well as being treated with a steroid called dexamethasone - and then he took to Twitter to urge people to not fear the virus.
    • Trump promoted a Nazi-era theory called “Horserace theory” which is the foundation of eugenics.
    • Trump’s Interior Secretary signed off on a directive which paved the way for leasing out parts of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration.
    • A new book by Trump’s former Deputy Campaign Manager – Rick Gates – tells about how Trump wanted his daughter Ivanka to be his running-mate in 2016.
    • Senate Republicans were in a rush trying to get back on vacation after a few weeks in September following a brief return from another lengthy vacation without even trying to help the American people during the pandemic.
    • Thousands of Trump’s loyal followers were left to freeze in the rain in Nebraska after one of his campaign events.
    • In tearing apart the meritocracy, Trump signed an executive order which reclassifies a significant number of federal workers into a new category called “Schedule F” which would permit appointed agency heads to hire and fire workers at will.
    • Trump’s Son-in-Law and leading advisor Jared Kushner stated – out loud - that Trump’s polices would effectively help people of color who “want to help themselves”.
    • The Conservative Supreme Court – which only got more conservative after the partisan confirmation of Barrett - blocked citizens from participating in a pandemic-safe approach to voting called “curbside voting”.
    • A whistleblower from the Department of Homeland Security – a former top intelligence official at that department name Brian Murphy – noted that he was instructed by the Trump Administration to suppress information regarding Russian interference because it “makes the president look bad”. It also came out that the former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen felt that she had to create a “shadow” department because the President was not taking the threat seriously.
    • Days before the election, a Justice Department official told the media that a criminal probe launched in 2019 into Hunter Biden’s activities was still active.
    • President Trump again suggested that Biden and Obama committed treason in response to chants from his supporters to “lock them up!”

     

     

    Tonight’s Conclusion

    I decided to abandon the Quarterly Roundup just this one time so as to bring you as much of the up-to-date insanity of the Fascist Regime in power under Trump as I could on the eve of the 2020 Presidential Election. I will be posting a live update here on Xanga (something I haven’t done since the 2012 Presidential Election), preceded by my prediction of the outcome based on the conditions of the race at the time. Stay tuned.

     

     

    #NotMeUs #OurRevolution #TheResistance #ImpeachTrump #ClimateCrisis

     

    Purchase my manifesto, “The Pillars of Unitism”.

     

     

    Until next time…

     

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