How Republicans’ Latest Effort To Repeal Obamacare Would Devastate Millions

  By Simon Haeder The Conversationn (9/19/17) At the end of July, the nation held its collective breath as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) looked poised to achieve his most formidable parliamentary accomplishment: the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act. But Republican hopes were dashed by one of their own, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cast the deciding vote that appeared to decisively derail the multi-year effort. McCain called to return to “regular order,” to work through committees, to bring in and listen to experts, to be open and transparent, and perhaps most importantly, to at least listen to both parties….


Trump Health Secretary Tom “Whatever” Price Thinks Medicaid Is Wasteful, But Not Lavish Private Flights

    By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (9/20/17) Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price once remarked that “tough choices” must be made to reduce “waste” in government spending. Apparently, in Price’s mind, frequent and lavish private flights don’t qualify as wasteful spending, but programs that provide life-saving healthcare to millions of Americans do. According to a Politico report Tuesday, Price “last week took private jets on five separate flights for official business, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars more than commercial travel.” Based on sample flight rates, the cost for Price to fly commercial would have been somewhere between…


Russia Monitor: Parsing The Fetid Pieces Of Trumpworld

  By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/21/17) Dear Fellow Readers, Trump. Russia. Collusion. Start working on the definition of ‘collusion’, and be ready for political hair-splitting because we are that close. You decide which of these events make the stronger case but let’s consider frmer Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s status and the sale of ads to Russia by Facebook supporting the Trump campaign. Talking Points Memo reporter Allegra Kirtland writes on How The FISA Order Against Manafort Could Spell Big Trouble For Trumpworld TPM has done a good job of bringing together two important breaking news stories from…


True Freedom Is Choosing Our Lawmakers

  By Dennis Brault The Commoner Call (9/21/17) I would like to thank Dale Schulz, former republican State Senator, who addressed the Vernon County board on the reasons we need Fair Map redistricting reform. I would also like to thank the 386 Vernon County residents who signed the Fair Maps petition and those who gathered signatures for it. Your voices were heard. One September 19th the Vernon County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the Fair Maps resolution, becoming the 29th county to do so. This sent the message to Madison that we want Fair Map redistricting reform legislation passed before…


Worker Notes: Unions, American Exceptionalism, White Supremacy, And The Well-Trod Road To Hell

  By Tom Crofton CounterPunch (9/13/17) A case can be made that the most direct path to prosperity for working families as a whole is one that has a collective basis creating benchmark standards for wages, conditions, and benefits; where energy otherwise spent on infighting and backstabbing among workers over compensation is harnessed into a common effort. The concept of creating a floor beneath which no one can go is at the heart of union organizing. The energy released from successful agreement to cooperate can go beyond worker compensation and build emotional solidarity among workers.  It can be used to…


Former Sierra Club Leader Carl Pope With A Creative & Hopeful Message On Climate Breakdown

  West Minster Town Hall Forum (9/19/17) Carl Pope is the former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club and a veteran leader in the environmental movement. He is now a senior climate advisor to former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and the principal advisor at Inside Straight Strategies, where he focuses on the links between sustainability and economic development. A graduate of Harvard College, he is the author of three books, including Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet, which he co-authored with Michael Bloomberg. He was a founder of the BlueGreen Alliance…


Collecting His Pay! After Failing To Prosecute Bankers, Obama Cashes In With Wall $400k Street Speeches

    By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (9/18/17) Less than a year has passed since he departed from the White House, and former President Barack Obama has already joined the “well trod and well paid” Wall Street speaking circuit, a decision many argued will negatively impact the Democratic Party’s credibility as it attempts to fashion a message around taking on corporate monopolies, tackling income inequality, and loosening the insurance industry’s control over the American healthcare system. According to a Bloomberg report published Monday, Obama has in the last month delivered two speeches to massive financial firms—Northern Trust Corp and the Carlyle Group—for around $400,000 a pop, and…


Facebook Enabled Advertisers To Reach ‘Jew Haters’

  By  Julia Angwin, Madeleine Varner & Ariana Tobin ProPublica (9/14/17) Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you. Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’” To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in…


Is Internet Freedom A Tool For Democracy Or Mind-Numbing Distracting Tool For Authoritarians?

www.thecommonercall.org   By Elizabeth Stoycheff & Eric C. Nesbit The Conversation (7/20/17) The irony of internet freedom was on full display shortly after midnight July 16 in Turkey when President Erdogan used FaceTime and independent TV news to call for public resistance against the military coup that aimed to depose him. In response, thousands of citizens took to the streets and aided the government in beating back the coup. The military plotters had taken over state TV. In this digital age they apparently didn’t realize television was no longer sufficient to ensure control over the message. This story may appear like a triumphant example of the internet…


Dark Diagnosis & Scary Prognosis: Donald Trump Is A “sociopath” And “a very sick individual”

    By Chauncey Devega Salon (9/12/17) The president of the United States is a global celebrity whose every action is endlessly commented upon and dissected for meaning by the news media, foreign powers (both friends and foes alike) and the public. In the age of television and now the internet, there are hundreds of thousands of hours of video and audio footage of every president widely available. There are also rumors and leaks from within the White House and other branches of government that can help paint a picture of a given president’s moods, desires, thoughts and other behavior….


Russia Monitor: From Natural Disaster To National Disaster

  By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/18/7) Dear Fellow Readers, Irma missed Miami but slammed the Keys. The neighbors were happy but it’s hard to feel good about any of it. Miami is mostly back to normal though a few houses in this part of Miami are still without power. No air conditioning reminded me of the ‘good ole days’ – I’m not really sure what that is or was, but we didn’t have air conditioning then either. As I get ready to head from Miami back to the real world I’ll offer a quick update and stick with…


Demand Your Right To Vote In ‘Fair Map’ Elections

Give your Vernon County board supervisor a call. Tell him/her to vote for the nonpartisan Fair Maps resolution on September 19. Find your county board supervisor– link below: http://www.vernoncounty.org/BOS/index.htm   And while you’re making calls, dial up Lee Nerison (608) 266-3534 Lee needs to hear from you. Tell Lee to sign on as a cosponsor for AB44 and help make nonpartisan, Fair Maps elections a possibility. Tell Lee Fair Maps preserve the sanctity of “one person—one vote.” Tell Lee you’re grateful for his support of nonpartisan redistricting reform for Fair Map elections!   Cheeseheads of all political stripes agree, it’s…


Daily Dose: Why Are Trump’s Lies So Effective – And Democratic Efforts To Counter Them So Ineffective?

www.frame4future.com By Scott Wittkopf Frame4Future.com (9/12/17) The fact checkers have been all over Donald Trump since before he officially announced his candidacy. The New York Times even has an entire online page that documents every “outright lie” he told since taking the oath of office. According to Politifact, nearly 60% of Trump’s statements fact-checked by the media organization have been some level of false. Contrary to what some media commentators have suggested, Trump does not lie because he thinks people are stupid. He lies because he knows that it will strengthen his message. He also knows that his opponents are currently incapable of providing an effective counter to…


Hoo-Ray! National Security Head Issues Bold New Anti-Leak Plan, Which Quickly Leaks

  By Abbey Zimet Common Dreams (9/14/17) Fed up with the “staggering” number of leaks from an uncommonly fractured White House, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has issued a sweeping new call for government-wide training to prevent unauthorized disclosure of both classified and some unclassified information – disclosure, he declared, that “causes harm to our Nation and shakes the confidence of the American people.” With Trump’s White House marked by impressively persistent leaks at every level, McMaster upped the ante by aiming at leakers not just within intelligence agencies but in every department. Requesting “Provision of Training on Unauthorized Disclosures,” he argued,…



Buzz Kill: Climate Change Threatens Coffee-Pollinating Bees

  By Marlene Cimons Nexus Media (9/11/17) The best coffee grows in the mountains, where it is cool. It needs low temperatures to thrive, which is why growers often put shade trees in their fields. But the mountains are getting hotter. And the higher you go, the less room there is to grow coffee. This is one reason scientists predict coffee will suffer in a changing climate. New research suggests the fate of coffee may be worse than previously thought. Earlier projections underestimated the effects of climate change, specifically in Latin America, and failed to consider the consequences for coffee-pollinating bees, according…


The Thankless Task Of Being Michael Moore: Liberals Have Completely Misread Trump By Dismissing Him As An Idiot

By Jessica Pressler Vulture (9/6/17) You’d think that by now They would have stopped giving Michael Moore such a hard time. Everything he portended in Roger & Me, his 1989 film about the impact of the closing of General Motors plants on his hometown of Flint, Michigan, and everything he has been banging on about for 30 years since — outsourcing, automation, corporate hegemony, moral and political corruption, elite apathy and greed, the decimation of the middle class, angry white people, the fear and loathing of the far right — all of it has come home to roost, in the form of a very…


Chris Hedges: As The Seas Rise, Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls

  By Chris Hedges TruthDig (9/10/17) How many times will we rebuild Florida’s cities, Houston, coastal New Jersey, New Orleans and other population centers ravaged by storms lethally intensified by global warming? At what point, surveying the devastation and knowing more is inevitable, will we walk away, leaving behind vast coastal dead zones? Will we retreat even further into magical thinkingto cope with the fury we have unleashed from the natural world? Or will we respond rationally and radically alter our relationship to this earth that gives us life? Civilizations over the past 6,000 years have unfailingly squandered their futures through…


Lawmakers Should Never Choose Their Voters

Call Lee Nerison (608) 266-3534 Have you made your call to Rep. Lee Nerison yet? He needs to hear from you. Tell Lee to sign on as a cosponsor for AB44 and help make nonpartisan, Fair Maps elections a possibility. Tell Lee Fair Maps preserve the sanctity of “one person—one vote.” Cheeseheads of all political strips agree, it’s time for Fair Maps! Call Jen Shilling (800)385-3385. Tell Jen to sign on as a cosponsor for SB13. Tell Jen Fair Maps help ensure our freedom to choose our representatives. Tell them you support nonpartisan redistricting reform for fair map elections! And…


Rallying Behind Bernie’s Health Care Bill, Warren Declares: ‘Everyone Covered, No One Goes Broke’

  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (9/13/7) Flanked by nurses, doctors, activists, business leaders, and 16 of his Democratic colleagues, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday unveiled the Medicare for All Act of 2017, which proposes a “rational” transition away from the current for-profit system toward a single-payer program that guarantees healthcare to all Americans. In speech after speech during Wednesday’s event, nurses told harrowing stories detailing the massive human costs of providing healthcare only to those patients who can afford it. Melissa Johnson, RN, an oncology nurse with the California Nurses Association, said: “This system is killing too many of my…


Thomas Frank – Hillary’s Book Has A Clear, Bold Message: Don’t Blame Me!

  By Thomas Frank The Guardian (9/12/17) ow do you lose the presidency to a man like Donald Trump? He was the most unpopular presidential candidate of all time, compounding blunder with blunder and heaping gaffe upon gaffe. Keeping him from the Oval Office should have been the single-minded mission of the Democratic party. And it should have been easy for them. Instead they lost, and now their 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton comes before us to account for this monumental failure, to tell us What Happened. Unfortunately, her new book is less an effort to explain than it is to explain away. No…


It’s Official: Veteran Government Watchdog & Reformer Mike McCabe Is Running For Governor

“Now is not the time for same old, same old. I’m running to shake up and transform the political system and get our government working for all of us and not just the wealthy and well-connected.” – Mike McCabe From the Clark County farm where he grew up, veteran government watchdog and democracy reform advocate Mike McCabe  announced Tuesday he is running for governor to shake up and transform Wisconsin’s corrupted political system. “Wisconsin is up to its eyeballs in problems. Same goes for our country as a whole. The problems grow out of political and economic inequality. Our society…


George Lakoff: Why Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech

  By George Lakoff GeorgeLakoff.com (9/8/17) Freedom in a free society is supposed to be for all. Therefore, freedom rules out imposing on the freedom of others. You are free to walk down the street, but not to keep others from doing so. The imposition on the freedom of others can come in overt, immediate physical form — thugs coming to attack with weapons. Violence may be a kind of expression, but it certainly is not “free speech.” Like violence, hate speech can also be a physical imposition on the freedom of others. That is because language has a psychological…


Scientists Warn Climate Breakdown May Wipe Out A Third Of World’s Parasites, With Disastrous Ripple Effects

  Democracy Now! (9/11/17) As the United States continues to deal with unprecedented floods and hurricanes, a new study has revealed climate change is also driving the mass extinction of parasites that are critical to natural ecosystems, and could add to the planet’s sixth great mass extinction event that’s currently underway. The report in the journal Science Advances warns that about a third of all parasite species could go extinct by 2070 due to human activity. The loss of species of lice, fleas and worms could have profound ripple effects on the environment and might pave the way for new…


Rohingya Genocide Result Of Deadly Combination Of Western Corporatism, Oil Politics & Saudi Wahhabis

  By Chris Kanthan Nation of Change (9/10/17) The humanitarian crisis in Myanmar is harrowing, with more than 150,000 Muslims having to flee the country in the recent months. The stories of persecution and ethnic cleansing are very troubling, although sporadic conflicts between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar have existed for many decades. While the mainstream media is focusing exclusively on the religious context of this story, they are completely missing – or deliberately avoiding – the potential roles of oil/gas pipelines, geopolitical U.S.-China tug of war, and Saudi Arabia’s subversive influence in that region. Let’s start with the obvious…



How To Help Our Fellow Citizens Caught In Hurricane Irma

Fake Logic   By Jenny Marienau 350.org (9/9/17) Texas and Louisiana have barely begun recovering from Harvey. Now Hurricane Irma is whipping through the Caribbean and barreling towards the Florida coast, with Hurricane Jose following closely behind it. Some of you might have loved ones in the path of Hurricane Irma, or know those who have already been hit by the hurricane. Our thoughts are with them. This is a crucial moment to support the people impacted — here are two places where you can donate: Support grassroots organizations in Florida working to help communities recover and rebuild. Or donate…


VIDEO Interview With Author Thomas Frank: Liberal Elite Doesn’t Care Much About Inequality

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (9/11/17) Political observer and author Thomas Frank (What’s The Matter With Kansas? and Listen Liberal) was interviewed recently by Real News anchor Paul Jay for a fascinating look at just what the hell is wrong with the bumbling Democratic party. In his most recent book Listen Liberal Frank documented the party’s long, slippery slide from being the champion of labor and the middle and lower classes to a protector and promoter of Wall Street greed and Silicon Valley entitlement. Frank argues that the slide from relevance of the party to average Americans…


Daily Dose: The Dream Act Is About Our Morals & Beliefs As A Nation & People

www.frame4future.com   By Scott Wittkopf Frame For The Future (9/6/17) It’s time for our representatives in Congress to choose a side – a moral side, not a partisan side. After all, politics are moral. And the outcome of the debate on The Dream Act will say a lot about who we are as a people and society. Progressives and Democrats would do well to make the debate about what we value and believe. It would be a mistake to make the Democratic argument based on statistics, policy that favors one group of people over another, or about “job creation” – because none of…


Conned: State Republicans Shelled Out $4 Million Of Your Money For Tiny Airport For Republican Mega-Donor’s Golf Course

  By Noor Al-Siai The Raw Story (9/8/17) While the rest of Wisconsin’s road infrastructure “crumbled,” state Republicans quietly approved $4 million in repairs to a tiny airport near a golf course owned by a Republican “mega-donor.” According to the Associated Press, Sand Valley Golf Resort developer Michael Keiser donated $25,000 to the state’s  Republican Party earlier this year. Soon after, the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee approved the $4 million repairs to the golf resort’s diminutive airport. The report also said that the donation came “three weeks after Gov. Scott Walker (R) released his budget without funding for Wisconsin Rapids’ Alexander Field [airport].” “It…


Russia Monitor: Enough Threads To Knit A Straight Jacket

  By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/13/17) Dear Fellow Readers, Irma is headed to the west coast of Florida and not Miami, my prayers go out to everyone in the Keys and on the west coast. Miami may have dodged another bullet or at least a direct hit. Today (Sunday) is the big day for South Florida so we’ll see. There have always been multiple threads to Trump-Russia. Donnie Jr. and Facebook bring more validation to the main three:  Trump-Russia collusion;  Trump obstruction of justice; and Trump-Russian manipulation of the election. On Thursday Donnie Jr. sat for five hours…


‘Straight Out Of The Handmaid’s Tale’: Insiders Claim CIA Director Pompeo Is Converting Intel Agency Into Christian Hotbed

  By Tom Boggioni The Raw Story (9/10/17) ccording to an investigation by Foreign Policy into changes in the intelligence community under President Donald Trump, the CIA has set aside plans to diversify and has become more white and more Christian under new director Mike Pompeo. Noting the Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas,  is a self-professed evangelical, the report states that the new director once claimed, Islamist terrorists will “continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior is truly the…


New Yorker Podcast: After Charlottesville, The Limits of Free Speech In America

By David Remnick The New Yorker When is speech no longer just speech? David Remnick speaks with the author of a new and sympathetic book about Antifa, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a legal analyst for Slate, to look at how leftist protests at Berkeley, right-wing violence in Charlottesville, and open-carry laws around the country are testing the traditional liberal consensus on freedom of expression. Also, Jenny Slate reads a story about a magical time of unfettered creativity and zero productivity, before the Internet. What Was It Like Before the Internet? The Antifa Handbook Long a…


How Bad Could Things Get? We Are On The Dark Edge Of Official Violence

By Todd Gitlin Bill Moyers and Company (8/8/17) “This country is going so far to the right you’re not going to recognize it.” Those memorable words were uttered by Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, who proved to be off by almost 50 years. But he and other Nixon cronies, however premature in their timetables, were establishing precedents for today’s worst case scenarios. We have to ask: Which elements of the state-sponsored violence of the ’60s and early ’70s are ready for revival and renewal? What new wrinkles in constitutional crisis might be in the works? Just how far to the…


Toppling A Racist, Lying (Cardboard) Sessions

(Common Dreams) By Abbey Zimet Common Dreams (9/7/17) Tuesday’s news on DACA outraged on so many levels. There was the “disruptive wanton fuckery we can accurately call evil” that was the mindlessly cruel act itself, which rescinded protections for 800,000 law-abiding, hard-working American Dreamers, destroying millions of lives while costing the country an estimated $460 billion. With no rational case to be made, there was Jeff Sessions – called by his cowardly Trumpmaster to perform the dirty deed – spewing nativist lies, racist dog-whistles lurking behind each one: The guy who works for the guy who pardoned Joe Arpaio pontificated about “the…


As School Year Starts Teachers, Parents & Students Face Full Scale Assault On Public Education

By Phyllis Steele World Socialist Web Site (9/5/17) Nearly 50 million public school students are starting the new school year, along with three million teachers and well over a million librarians, therapists, aides, school bus drivers and other support staff. Like every year, schools open with the hope and expectation that by the end of the year, students will emerge more whole and bettered prepared for the future. There is a general sense of optimism that the dedication and hard work of educators and school employees will contribute to a healthier and more generous society. This conviction, however, repeatedly collides…


Harvey, Hell, High Water & Hypocrisy

  By John Atcheson Common Dreams (9/4/17) Katrina, Sandy, Harvey. Three record-breaking storms in a dozen years. Harvey is a 1,000 year storm, Sandy had the largest diameter of any hurricane on record to strike the US, and Katrina had the largest storm surge ever recorded. [Add to the total Hurricane Irma, now surging toward Florida. – Ed.] Meanwhile, the fire map for California covers the entire state, and for much of August, British Columbia’s record-breaking wildfire season blanketed the entire northwestern portion of the US and Canada with a dense, impenetrable layer of smoke and haze. Driving through western North Dakota, Montana, Idaho…


Russia Monitor: All Kinds Of Hurricanes Headed Toward National Disaster Trump

By Dan Peak The Commoner Call (9/7/17) Dear Fellow Readers, From Miami and waiting for Hurricane Irma. Speaking of Irma – which I believe to be real in spite of international meteorological expert Rush Limbaugh’s assurances to the otherwise – is just one of a whole freight train of record breaking storms heading Trump’s way. Hurricane Irma Just Slammed Into Trump’s Caribbean Estate — And Is Headed Toward His Florida Properties I take no pleasure in this but Trump’s property on St. Martin may have taken quite a hit. And Mar-A-Lago, his resort in West Palm Beach, is currently on target…


Russ Feingold: Trump’s Voter Suppression Must Be Defeated. Here’s One Thing We Can Do

  By Russ Feingold The Guardian (9/5/17) So much news in the US recently has been upsetting, and rarely uplifting; but the champions of voting rights have reasons to be both aghast at recent headlines and encouraged by them. On the one hand, the Trump-Pence “election integrity” commission’s every move continues to underscore concerns that it is driving at 90mph towards national voter suppression. Then there is the sudden decision by Donald Trump and attorney general Jeff Session’s Department of Justice to support purging voter rolls in Ohio. It’s enough to make voters feel like they have a target on their…


Bernie Releases Blueprint For GOP Demise

    By Scott Galindez Reader Supporter News (9/5/17) “If there was ever a time in history for a generation to be bold and to think big, to stand up and to fight back, now is that time.”  – Bernie Sanders   That statement is on the inside cover of Bernie Sanders’ new book, “Guide to a Political Revolution.” Bernie dedicates the book to the younger generation: “You are in many ways the most progressive generation in the history of our country. You have opposed racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and oligarchy. You understand that greed and the grotesque level of…