Ignore the cranks and crackpots: check with your health-care provider

by Tom Maertens

If Donald Trump has his way, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be the next secretary of Health and Human Services, the umbrella organization for health care agencies such as the CDC, FDA, NIH, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and others.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, a pro-Trump paper, editorialized that “The overriding rule of medicine is: First, do no harm,” adding that “We’re certain installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services breaks this rule.”

Kennedy has a long history of vaccine denial and outspoken ignorance. Among other things, he has asserted that COVID-19 was created to target Caucasian and Black people.

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British physician, fabricated research that purported to show that the preservative in the mumps/measles/rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism.

He succeeded in getting the fake study published, with 12 collaborators, in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal.

Investigations by the Sunday Times and the British Medical Journal found that Wakefield committed deliberate fraud for financial gain; he had created a competing vaccine.

The British General Medical Council, which registers doctors in the UK, found that Wakefield had acted “dishonestly, irresponsibly, unethically, and callously.” The Lancet retracted the paper as “utterly false” and Wakefield was struck off the British Medical Registry.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and many subsequent studies have found no link between vaccines and autism; they show that the benefits of vaccinations outweigh any risk.

Small groups of “anti-vaxxers” have nonetheless made large groups of people sick. Recent outbreaks of measles and other preventable diseases in the U.S. have started among clusters of vaccine refusers.

The measles vaccine alone has saved an estimated 120 million lives worldwide. There were an estimated 10.3 million cases of measles in 2023, a 20% increase from 2022, according to new estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The WHO said anti-vaccine sentiment is a major cause of the increase, and is responsible for 108,000 deaths.

No vaccine has been more consequential than the smallpox vaccine. Hundreds of millions of people died from smallpox throughout history, more than in all world wars combined. Smallpox destroyed many American Indian tribes and killed more Aztecs and Incas than Spanish conquistadores did.

Even the Black Death (bubonic plague) did not kill as many people. The plague still kills about 600 people per year, but there is a vaccine, and it is treatable with antibiotics.

Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence (Wikipedia).

In 1967, the World Health Organization announced a global campaign to eliminate smallpox. At that time, there were still 10-15 million active cases worldwide, resulting in two million deaths per year and hundreds of thousands blinded or disfigured.

I worked for WHO’s Smallpox Eradication program in Africa, in one of the last countries in the world with endemic smallpox, vaccinating rural tribesmen.

Even there, we encountered vaccine resistance and received occasional threats because of lies spread by anti-vaxxers.

Some 465 million people in 27 countries were vaccinated by the program As a result, naturally occurring smallpox was eliminated by October 1977, at an estimated cost of $100 million.

The current Global Polio Eradication Initiative is one of the largest international public health efforts in history. Polio cases have decreased by over 99 percent since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases in 125 countries to 22 reported cases in 2017.

According to the CDC, the chickenpox vaccine prevents more than 3.5 million cases of varicella, 9,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths every year.

CDC estimates that since 2010, flu-related deaths in the United States ranged from a low of 12,000 to 51,000. The flu virus can change its genetic make-up rapidly, even during the course of a single season. Experts believe this was the cause for the high death rate; the vaccine is formulated months ahead of the flu season. Past versions, such the “Spanish Flu” (H1N1) of 1918/19 may have killed 50 million people worldwide, more than died in World War I.

Vaccines are modern miracles and one of the reasons why life expectancy is increasing. Maurice Hilleman developed 40 vaccines during his lifetime. Eight of them are believed to have saved 129 million lives; he is credited with saving more lives than anyone in history.

The New York Post concluded about its interview with RFK Jr.: “We came out thinking he’s nuts on a lot of fronts.”

Ignore the cranks and crackpots: check with your health-care provider.

Tom Maertens held several science and technology positions in the U.S. government, including minister-counselor for environment, science, and technology at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he had oversight responsibility for a $300 million per year science program with the Russian government. 

America: Have you lost your mind?

THE ANSWER IS YES!

Dear America:

Hi, it's Canada. Just thought I'd drop you a line to catch up. I know we haven't corresponded in a while and I just wanted to check in and make sure you hadn't, you know, completely lost your mind.

Because, golly, I have to tell you, it sure looks that way from here.

We're all pretty darned worried about you up here, pal. You don't seem at all yourself lately. For starters, I know you're only 240 years old but you might want to think about setting up an eye exam. You seem to be losing your vision. And I've never seen you so grumpy. Is this some kind of weird, middle-aged crisis or something?

And what's with all the hate? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, pal, but have you been tested for Dementia? You're like a different guy all of a sudden. Maybe it's Alzheimers?

You know, your memory does seem pretty sketchy lately. You're telling me you have no recollection of all of those immigrants who built you? All those people you welcomed with… how did you put it again? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ? Man, I gotta tell you, pal, that was some inspired stuff. And that Constitution of yours?

Wow. You were on your game back then, dude.

So, what the Hell, exactly, is going on these days? I don't know if you've noticed but you've got a guy in the race for president who we wouldn't trust running a chip truck. I mean, he's nothing more than a bully with bad hair. And you're about to hand him the keys again? Dude, you used to despise guys like him. Remember when we all got together and tuned up that German moron? You were awesome then. And the rest of us, well, we kinda looked up to you. Now, jeeze, I don't know.

Look, we grew up together. I'm probably your best friend. Heck, our yards are right beside each other. And I understand we've had our ups and downs... I mean, I know you're still steamed about us burning your capital and handing you your ass at hockey every time you turn around and our beer is way better than yours and your health care system blows, but still... We're buds, right? Who totally had your back during that Iraq WMD snafu?

So, I'm telling you, as your friend... love you bro, but you re being a tool.

You're better than this. Remember who you used to be and, come Election day...fix it.

Love and Poutine,

Canada

— Durham resident Neil Crone, actor, comic, and writer

Russian mafia state reaches into U.S.

by Tom Maertens

Several weeks have gone by and there have been no press notices that Yevgeny Prigozhin has “fallen” out of a high rise window. Instead, the Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin, along with 35 of his top commanders, held a three-hour meeting at the Kremlin on June 29.

That doesn’t mean nothing will happen to him: Prigozhin has demonstrated Putin’s weakness, causing him enormous embarrassment.

To refresh, Prigozhin led a private army on behalf of Russia in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine. One day he set off from Ukraine for Moscow with 25,000 well-trained, well-armed troops. His announced intention initially was to settle scores with the Russian Minister of Defense and the chief of the general staff for failing to supply his troops in Ukraine as promised.

Then he decided to challenge Putin, too.

Having crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, he got within 130 miles of Moscow and then wimped out.

The likely explanation for this is that he expected Russian military units to join him. There were no public announcements that we know of by military leaders or units, which meant that 25,000 troops were not as impressive as first appeared to “Putin’s chef,” the guy who started out selling hot dogs in Red Square.

One likely supporter was Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the head of Russia’s air force; he hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny. Western intelligence agencies have specifically mentioned him as a potential backer of Prigozhin’s rebellion, which may not be good for his long-term survival.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the country’s domestic security service detained several high-ranking military officers, including Gen. Surovikin. His deputy, Col. Gen. Andrey Yudin, and the deputy head of military intelligence, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alexeyev, also were detained but later released. They have been suspended from duty, their movements have been restricted and they are under observation, the paper reported.

The crisis was settled by Putin’s fellow dictator, the president of Belarus and a purported friend of Prigozhin, Alexander Lukashenko, who negotiated with Prigozhin by cellphone.

As the Russian American journalist Julia Ioffe put it, Prigozhin is a torturer, a murderer, and a fascist. She could have added, just like Putin and Lukashenko.

Putin and Lukashenko are allies of sorts, which is to say, Lukashenko is Putin’s puppet. In fact, Putin recently transferred nuclear weapons to Belarus and has transferred offensive weapons to bases in Belarus to use against Ukraine.

One of the consequences of Putin’s war in Ukraine, is that two long-time neutrals, Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO. Turkish president Erdogan initially opposed Sweden’s entry because it has allowed the Kurdish opposition to operate on Swedish soil. After extensive negotiations, and probably some quiet “grease,” he’s now prepared to accept Sweden’s entry into NATO.

That will bring the alliance to 32 members and double its border with Russia.

Another consequence is that young Russians are fleeing the country. Polling by the Levada Center in the summer of 2021, indicated that 48% of Russians 18 to 24 years old wanted to emigrate permanently, a desire shared by almost a third of those 25 to 39. CNN reported earlier this year that nearly 22,000 Russians have tried to enter the U.S. since Putin’s war draft.

When Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, he endorsed Russian intelligence connections with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they served his personal interests. Multiple sources make clear that Putin and the FSB/KGB essentially control the Russian mob.

It was Yeltsin who said that “Russia is the biggest mafia state in the world, the superpower of crime that is devouring the state from top to bottom.” A mafia state with nukes.

There are implications for the U.S. as well. The Guardian uncovered elaborate ties between the Trump family and Russian money laundering in New York real estate a few years ago. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/24/jared-kushner-new-york-russia-money-laundering).

In addition, according to investigative journalist Craig Unger in The New Republic, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties over the past three decades.

USA Today reported that “the president (Trump) and his companies have been linked to at least 10 wealthy former Soviet businessmen with alleged ties to criminal organizations or money laundering.”

If Trump is not in prison, he will be the Republican nominee and Russia will back him once again with disinformation, hacking, false front operations and other means.

Tom Maertens worked on Soviet and then Russia issues for many years from Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Moscow, the state department, the U.S. Senate and the White House. 

Ukrainian defeat of Russia would have modest cost for the West

by Tom Maertens

Ukraine has come a long way since I visited the country as part of a U.S. government delegation in 1992.

That was following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine and the other republics had just become independent. Each of them set up its own barebones ministry of defense and began forming a national army.

In Ukraine, the ministry was a rundown former barracks with a handful of bare lightbulbs dangling over empty corridors. The entire staff consisted of three people — the minister, his driver and a clerk. But that was 50% larger than the ministry staff in Belarus, as we later discovered. There the entire staff consisted of two people — the minister and his driver.

From that inauspicious beginning, Ukraine is now a serious candidate for admission to NATO. The secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said recently that all NATO members have agreed Ukraine will eventually join, and the former secretary general, Anders Rasmussen, advocated security assurances and a path to membership.

At present more than 50 countries are providing aid to Ukraine. NATO members are considering informal security guarantees such as those given to Israel. Stoltenberg also suggested that NATO members may send troops in the interim.

NATO foreign ministers recently issued a statement expressing confidence that Ukraine’s NATO membership would “greatly contribute to the Alliance’s security and would help the Russian society to finally get rid of the imperial dreams.”

To refresh, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic officially joined NATO in March 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined in 2004.

Despite warnings from Putin that arming Ukraine would lead to world war, Biden recently approved another $300 million military aid package for Ukraine. It includes munitions to bolster Ukraine’s air defense capabilities against Russian assaults, including munitions for Patriot missile batteries as well as Avenger and Stinger air defense systems, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-armor rounds, unguided Zuni aircraft rockets, night vision goggles, about 30 million rounds of small arms ammunition and an undisclosed amount of other artillery rounds.

Counting the latest aid, the United States has committed more than $37.6 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24, 2022.

Moscow has followed a much different path than Kiev since the breakup of the Soviet Union, from open cooperation to hostile confrontation.

Biden’s decision last month to help Ukraine obtain F-16 fighter jets crossed another Russian red line that Vladimir Putin has said would transform the war and draw Washington and Moscow into direct conflict.

Most Americans are unaware that the United States provided $28 billion in aid to Russia between 1992 and 2005 — according to the Congressional Research Service — for economic support and to fulfill various arms control obligations undertaken by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. That included dismantling or destroying military equipment and securing “loose nukes” to keep them away from terrorists and nuclear blackmailers.

As a result, Moscow gave us access to some of its most sensitive facilities. I visited several nuclear weapons storage sites to assess what type of assistance Russia would need. I recall two sites (near Murmansk and near Vladivostok) that had nothing more than wooden doors and simple padlocks — essentially no security at all.

With U.S. assistance, Russia destroyed 2,531 missiles, and decommissioned more than 1,300 WMD delivery systems (silos, mobile launchers, submarines, and strategic bombers); it also destroyed chemical and biological weapons.

Ukraine’s share of the Soviet arsenal included 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads and thousands of tactical nukes. Under pressure from the United States and others, Ukraine transferred all nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation by 1996, in return for reactor fuel for peaceful uses and security assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Russia signed several agreements committing in writing to respecting Ukraine’s borders, which Moscow has violated repeatedly.

A study by the Center for European Policy Analysis found that congressionally approved funds to support Ukraine last year amounted to 5.6 percent of U.S. defense spending, while resulting in a significant degrading of Russia’s military with no “boots on the ground.”

That assistance has enabled Ukraine to destroy almost half of Russia’s conventional military power, including some 2,000 tanks and armored vehicles and killing or wounding around 200,000 Russian troops, according to The New York Times. Other estimates are much higher, which would threaten the stability of Putin’s regime. Some analysts contend that with enough weaponry, Ukraine could defeat Russia, a strategic victory for the West at very modest cost.

Tom Maertens had oversight responsibility for nuclear, chemical and biological issues in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and in the White House. 

Community must act now to zero net carbon

by Louis Schwartzkopf, Ph.D.

Kudos to The Mankato Free Press for its May 16 editorial, in which it notes that the extreme weather in our region and the country this spring is another indication that our climate is changing and exhorts our policymakers to pick up the pace in fighting climate change.

Climate change isn’t going away. The biggest driver is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, the more violent and erratic our weather will be. Once the carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, it stays there for centuries, until natural processes pull it out. This means that the weird weather we are having is already baked in for a long time to come and will only get worse, until we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

There is some good news on this front. In January the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency submitted its biennial report tracking Minnesota’s greenhouse gas emissions to the Legislature. The report shows a decline in emissions across all sectors of the economy of 23% from 2005 to 2020. It also shows that Minnesota is on track to meet its reduction goal of 30% by 2025.

This decline is due primarily to emissions reductions in the electricity generation sector of the economy. Since 2005, emissions from this sector have dropped by 54%, largely by shifting the production of electricity from coal to wind and solar.

Over half the electricity we use in Minnesota today comes from carbon-free sources. Building on this success, the Legislature this session passed the “100% clean electricity by 2040” bill, which became law upon the governor’s signature. This law requires all utilities in Minnesota to meet the 100% goal.

Despite these advances, we still have a long way to go. Climate scientists tell us that we have to cut our emissions in half by 2030 and reduce them to zero by 2050 to reduce the worst effects of climate change. A strategy is taking shape nationally for the next steps: electrify everything.

At the same time that the utilities are moving down the path to 100% clean electricity, we must electrify the transportation sector by replacing gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and trucks with electric vehicles, and electrify residential and commercial buildings by replacing furnaces and boilers with heat pumps. Heat pumps efficiently heat buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer.

The challenge is that electrification means we’ll need more electricity. Buildings will need to be made energy efficient, and the grid will have to be bolstered and made more resilient.

What can we do in the Greater Mankato area?

First, we must educate ourselves about electrification and the clean energy transition and be open to change. A good place to start is to watch the hour-long NOVA program "Chasing Carbon Zero", which shows how electrification is currently being deployed in the United States to get to net carbon zero.

Second, community leaders must come together and plan how best to move the deployment of electric vehicles and heat pumps. The envisioning project Greater Mankato 2040 is a good place to start.

Third, Mankato and other cities in the region must plan the infrastructure for electric vehicle charging stations and set up policies promoting heat pumps. Additional city staff will be necessary for this work, and city councils will need to support funding for them.

This will be a huge undertaking, but we have no choice. We should look at electrification, efficiency and infrastructure as an enormous opportunity for area businesses and workers that will directly benefit the local economy.

Failure to act condemns our children and grandchildren to life on an increasingly inhospitable Earth of excess heat and catastrophic weather events for centuries to come. We owe it to them to move with all deliberate speed.

We have 27 years — a generation — to reach the 2050 goal. It’s time to proceed down the path of electrification. With persistence, money and resources we can do this. But we need to start now.

Louis Schwartzkopf is a retired physics professor, a member of the executive board of the Southcentral Minnesota Clean Energy Council and the author of the Citywide Greenhouse Gas Inventory referenced on the Sustainability page of the city of Mankato website.

Trump would attempt to overthrow government again

by Tom Maertens

Based on current polls, Donald Trump will likely be the GOP nominee for president. He would be the most corrupt and dangerous candidate ever.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump attempted to nullify the election and stay in power. He tried to overthrow the government by fomenting the Capitol insurrection, by replacing the real electors with fraudulent electors, by browbeating Georgia officials Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensburger into claiming the election was fraudulent and to “find” 11,000 votes.

He set up the Willard Hotel “war room,” led by Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon and John Eastman, to coordinate the insurrection, and to encourage swing state officials to block some vote reports.

Over 1,000 people have been criminally charged for participating in that insurrection. Almost 500 have been convicted, including several far right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Canada labeled the Proud Boys a “terrorist entity” in 2021. The group replied in court that they were “Trump’s Army” and that he directed them to show up for Jan. 6.

The Jan. 6 committee recommended that the Justice department prosecute Trump on four charges: aiding an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to make a false statement.

As for false statements, the Washington Post database shows that Trump told 30,573 lies while in office. He piled many more lies on top of those at his recent town hall, including the Big Lie about the 2020 election being “rigged.”

He also has a long list of convictions against him: The Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million after conviction for 17 felonies, including tax fraud. Its former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to five months in prison. Can there be any doubt that Trump was part of the fraud?

He was fined $25 million for his Trump University fraud, was fined $10 million for 106 violations of anti-money laundering rules at his Taj Mahal casino and fined $2 million for defrauding eight children’s charities.

Four government investigations — by Robert Mueller, by the U.S. intelligence community, by the Senate Intelligence Committee and by the House Intelligence Committee — found that Russia aided Trump in the 2016 election.

Trump also attempted to blackmail the president of Ukraine by withholding U.S. assistance approved by Congress in order to frame Joe Biden.

Most ominous of all, the former head of Russian counterintelligence, KGB General Oleg Kalugin, now a U.S. resident, told Investigative journalist Craig Unger (“House of Trump,” “House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia”) that Trump was one of 300 assets and agents that Russia recruited in the United States. He told Unger that Trump was probably compromised during his 1987 and 1994 trips to Russia.

Unger got a second former KGB spy to confirm on the record that Russian intelligence had been working with Trump for decades. Earlier this year, Trump repeated an earlier statement that he trusted Putin over his own director of national intelligence and used the occasion to describe members of the U.S. intelligence community as “lowlifes.”

Four former CIA directors have publicly asserted that they believe Trump is a Russian agent, and retired Admiral Bill McRaven, who led the raid on bin Laden, has written “our Republic is under attack from the president.”

Trump’s former national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster said that Trump was “aiding and abetting” Putin’s efforts to sow doubt about the American electoral system.

Trump is currently under indictment on 34 felony charges. He was just convicted of sexual abuse and defamation; he has been accused of sexual assault by 26 women, three of whom were 14 or 13 at the time.

This is credible: when the convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, the press reported that his address book had 14 phone numbers for Trump; in addition, we know that Trump and Epstein held a “private” party with 28 young girls at Mar-a-Lago.

Based on the public record, Trump is a pedophile and serial sex offender, a career criminal, a traitor and a seditionist. And that’s before Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis even announce charges.

He’s supported by the sedition party; 147 Republican legislators supported Trump’s efforts to overthrow the government on Jan. 6. Six of them subsequently asked Trump for a pardon.

If he is elected, he will attempt to overthrow the government again, and the Republican Party will support him again.

Tom Maertens worked in the White House under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Criminalizing books? In the U.S.?

DeSantis’s anti-Woke warriors don’t want students to know.

by Tom Maertens

Ron DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” in Florida prohibits teaching eight specific subjects or issues, including slavery or systemic racism. It also bans books, mostly by Black authors, about past actions that might cause distress, guilt or anguish to other students.

Over 100 books have been banned statewide, including by such authors as Nobel Prize/Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison. No book can be in a classroom that is not on the state-approved list and reviewed by a “certified media specialist” — Ron DeSantis’s thought police.

To comply with those restrictions, a publisher removed references to Rosa Parks’ race in a draft of its textbook, The New York Times reported, and removed references to race in a lesson on the Civil War. Slavery? What’s that?

And what about “separate but equal” schools which were the subject of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling? What was Jim Crow, and why were the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts enacted? And why was six-year-old Ruby Bridges escorted into New Orleans’ all-white William Franz grammar school under federal protection?

There was an Underground Railroad heading south long before there was one heading north. That’s because slavery was abolished in Florida in 1693 by the Spanish, which made it a haven for runaway slaves.

In 1738, those fugitives established Fort Mose near St. Augustine, the site of the first free Black community in what became the United States; it is now a state park. They fought on the tribesmen’s side during the three Seminole Wars against the white settlers and their slaveholder allies.

Among the 566 Native American tribes recognized by the United States government, the Seminoles are the only tribe which was never conquered, never surrendered and never signed a peace treaty.

In 1815, the British-formed Corps of Colonial Marines, comprised largely of fugitive slaves, established a fort overlooking the Apalachicola River, variously referred to as “Negro Fort,” “African Fort,” and other names. It is now in the National Register of Historic Places as Prospect Bluff Historic Site, part of Apalachicola National Forest.

DeSantis’s anti-Woke warriors don’t want students to know.

In January, Florida banned the teaching of AP African American studies because it dealt with several topics on DeSantis’s banned list.

The Washington Post reported that two school districts in Florida have warned teachers to hide all books to avoid felony charges until they know how DeSantis’s new book ban will be enforced. A spokeswoman from the Florida Department of Education told the Post that a teacher could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for distributing “harmful materials” to minors.

An addition to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill would require immediate removal of any books targeted for objection; one objection is sufficient to ban a book.

Vero Beach just banned Anne Frank’s illustrated diary. One member of the right-wing “Moms for Liberty” orchestrated the removal of 20 Jodi Picoult novels from school libraries in Martin County.

In Clay County, 102 books have been removed at the request of one individual. That same person said that he had a list of 3,600 additional titles of concern. In an ironic turnabout, someone objected to DeSantis’s new book.

Recently a Tallahassee principal was forced to resign after parents complained that Michelangelo’s statue of David is ‘pornographic’ and shouldn’t have been shown to a sixth grade art history class.

Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reports that DeSantis is expanding the “Don’t Say Gay” law to prohibit classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity up to grade 12.

DeSantis wants to change libel laws so that jurors have a “presumption of malice” against journalists he claims have printed inaccurate information based on anonymous sources.

He and his Brown Shirts now want to make it a felony, punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment, for anyone to have an undocumented immigrant in their home or vehicle, according to The New Republic.

In April 2021, DeSantis got an “anti-riot bill” passed that grants civil immunity to people who drive their cars into protesters blocking a road. That bill also makes it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison to destroy historical monuments, such as Confederate statutes. He has also signed a permitless concealed carry law, apparently thinking Florida needs to thin the herd.

Republicans are criminalizing education: only in Florida is a teacher in danger of being charged with a felony for possession of a schoolbook; as The Guardian expressed it, “Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ — it’s fascism.”

Tom Maertens taught at the high school and college levels in Ethiopia and Minnesota.

FOX serves as propaganda arm

by Tom Maertens 

"Fox is a hostile media platform. It has damaged our democracy and the people’s trust in government more than any foreign adversary. It promotes fake news in order to make Murdoch more money. Nothing less than a large financial judgment, including punitive damages, would persuade Fox to change its ways."

Anyone who still believes Fox News is “Fair and Balanced” hasn’t been following the lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. In fact, it’s not a news network at all, but a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and Trump campaign that spreads lies as part of its business strategy.

We have this on good authority: the CEO Rupert Murdoch admitted in a recording obtained by The New York Times that the fraud claims by the Trump camp were bogus — “really crazy stuff.” In a separate deposition, he said Fox repeats the lies for the money. A 92-year-old multibillionaire is still obsessed with money. Is he planning to take it with him? Murdoch also revealed private information about Joe Biden’s planned campaign ads on Fox.

In addition, Dominion has obtained thousands of internal emails and text messages from Fox employees through discovery proceedings as part of its $1.6 billion defamation suit, including from prominent fabricators Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, on the sister Fox Business network, were similarly implicated in the charade, as were some of Trump’s lawyers. Dobbs has been fired.

A Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, was singled out by several Fox personalities as “nuts” for her absurd claims about vote fraud. Tucker Carlson, in an e-mail, said “Sidney Powell is a “lying fing b.”

Fox continued to invite her on regularly, even after finding out that one of her principal sources was a woman who claimed to talk to the wind, and who volunteered in a memo that the wind tells her that she’s a ghost, though she doesn’t believe it. She also claims to have been decapitated in a car accident decades ago but is still walking the earth.

Laura Ingraham said in writing “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy (Giuliani),” whom she separately described as an “idiot.”

Fox was panicked that viewers were leaving them for farther-right alternatives such as Newsmax or One America News. That led to decisions inside Fox to continue peddling lies that almost everyone at Fox acknowledged in emails were false, but which people inside the network thought they had to repeat or they would lose their audience.

They had created a far-right monster which they had to continue feeding. Murdoch admitted in his deposition that Fox News had failed to do enough to prevent its personalities from pushing lies about the election.

That belief led Murdoch to order the firing of a senior Fox News manager, Bill Sammon, for projecting — correctly — that Biden had won the election in Arizona, a call that had angered Trump and his followers. In the corrupt world of Fox News, Sammon, who had called every election correctly over 12 years at Fox, was fired for being right.

If a jury concludes from the messages, including the 3,600 messages from Dominion to Fox, that it knew what they were putting on the air was false, and displayed actual malice in continuing to broadcast them, it could award Dominion substantial financial damages, and could levy punitive damages which might bankrupt the network.

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asserted to NPR last year that Fox News has played, by far, the largest single part in the polarization of American politics, in the “amplification of political hatred.” He added: “I would challenge anyone ... to nominate which individual alive today has done more to undermine American democracy than (former Australian citizen) Rupert Murdoch.”

It was Murdoch’s Fox that amplified Trump’s lies. Among them, Trump was the single largest promoter of lies about COVID, according to Cornell University researchers, who analyzed 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic.

Subsequent events have demonstrated again that it is easier to con people than to make them understand they have been conned. It’s worth recalling that Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll some time back found that people who watched or listened to no news at all were better informed than those who watched Fox.

A University of Chicago survey in September 2021, found that 21 million Americans believe Biden is “illegitimate” and Trump should be restored by violence. They didn’t arrive at this conclusion by talking to the wind.

Turnbull is right: Fox is a hostile media platform. It has damaged our democracy and the people’s trust in government more than any foreign adversary. It promotes fake news in order to make Murdoch more money. Nothing less than a large financial judgment, including punitive damages, would persuade Fox to change its ways.

Tom Maertens served in the White House under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Republicans promoting extremism

by Tom Maertens

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is oblivious to irony. In her rebuttal to the State of the Union, she said the choice now is between “normal and crazy.”

That was after Republicans were seen jumping up and down on the House floor and shouting insults at Biden.

This is the party that promotes a “deep state” conspiracy, that elected a pathological liar as president who attempted to overthrow the government, and who demanded that the Constitution be terminated to restore him to power. He is now facing four criminal investigations.

Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine General, related how Trump was “far more limited, petty, immoral, and incurious and, frankly stupid than he could ever have imagined...”

It runs in the party. Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows claimed that Italian satellites flipped the vote count during the 2020 election to help Biden. As bizarre as that is, a Republican Attorney General, Bill Barr, traveled to Italy with his judicial henchman and co-conspirator, John Durham, to question the Italian government about that claim.

Trump had his acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, call his Italian counterpart and ask him to investigate. Instead, the Italians revealed another potential financial crime by Trump, which Barr deep-sixed.

They elected people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who publicly advocated executing high-ranking democrats in 2018 and 2019, and another, Paul Gosar who was removed from a committee for posting an animated video that depicted him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another member of Congress. His six siblings want him removed from Congress: “I consider him a traitor to this country. I consider him a traitor to his family,” Dave Gosar said.

Taylor Greene has claimed a Jewish space laser started the Camp Fire in 2018, that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that school massacres were staged with crisis actors, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could be handled with a “bullet to the head.” Additionally, she was featured speaker at a white supremacist event where her fellow speakers praised Hitler and called for Fauci to be hanged.

Attendees chanted “Putin, Putin” while Russian bombs were dropping on Ukraine. Greene also claimed during a congressional hearing that an elementary school in Illinois had received $5.1 billion in COVID-19 federal relief funding to develop a critical race theory curriculum.

Then there is Lauren Boebert … Sarah Palin without the smarts … and George Santos, a classic sociopath.

The Department of Homeland Security identifies American extremist violence, particularly among white-supremacist groups, as the country’s “most persistent and lethal threat.”

That describes the violent Trump cult that participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection, including the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, neo-Nazis, and the Three Percenters; FBI Director Wray recently described such groups as domestic terrorists.

Trump has even met with avowed anti-Semite and neo-Nazi, Nick Fuentes, along with vocal anti-Semite (Kan)Ye West. Such actions may have encouraged violence by the far right which has been behind recent attacks on electrical facilities.

DHS reports that there have been at least nine such attacks in the last three months, which left thousands without electricity.

The Anti-Defamation League has obtained the membership list of the far-right Oathkeepers; they found 373 members in law enforcement organizations around the country, including 12 chiefs of police and 13 sheriffs. This is neo-Nazi infiltration of our law enforcement.

This is the party that has decided to obstruct raising the debt ceiling, despite the disastrous consequences of defaulting on the debt. Republicans raised the debt ceiling three times under Trump without objection or hostage-taking.

A clause in the Fourteenth Amendment essentially says that the feds cannot renege on debts, meaning the cap, which is based on a statute, could be declared unconstitutional.

The language is so sweeping — public debt “shall not be questioned” — that it seems to prohibit repudiation of the debt and require on-time payment in full.

Also, Article I, Section 10 says: “States shall not impair the obligation of contracts” — i.e., the public debt, which triggering a default would do. Because Article I forbids the states from defaulting by legislative fiat, it is unthinkable to believe that Congress might do the same thing — and even worse, to do it as a matter of whim.

Their only other “policy” is to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop, a right-wing obsession.

Beyond these issues, the Republican Party supports voter suppression, gerrymandering, and Christian nationalism. They want to control women’s bodies, cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and cut taxes on the wealthy; it’s a party dominated by seditionists, misfits, dimwits and culture warriors.

Tom Maertens served in the White House under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Jan. 6 leaves indictments, pardons, prosecutions in its wake

by Tom Maertens

It’s been two years since ex-President Donald Trump’s coup attempt of Jan. 6.

At least 978 people have been arrested for their role in the insurrection, more than 484 have pleaded guilty or had their cases adjudicated, and 40 more were convicted by juries, including several far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

The longest sentence so far is 10 years for an off-duty New York City police officer.

The committee found that rightwing anti-government extremism created the conditions that gave rise to the Jan. 6 attack and noted that “White supremacists and Confederate-sympathizers were among the first rioters to enter the U.S. Capitol.”

The committee concluded unanimously that there was only one person responsible: Donald Trump. The panel noted that he coordinated a conspiracy on multiple levels, pressuring states, federal officials and lawmakers to overturn his defeat, and inspired a violent mob of supporters to attack the Capitol and interrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s win.

“The Select Committee estimates that in the two months between the November election and the Jan. 6 insurrection, President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either state legislators or state or local election administrators, to overturn state election results,” just as Trump did with Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The panel recommended that the justice department prosecute Trump on four charges: aiding an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to make a false statement.

That referral places additional pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Trump. Garland has already appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, who appears to be moving rapidly.

Separate from the Jan. 6 charges, Trump is also facing state charges in Georgia. A Fulton County grand jury has wrapped up its investigation; attorney Andrew Weissman has written that it is likely the Georgia grand jury has found probable cause to charge Trump in its report.

Trump is also facing three possible federal charges for retaining classified government documents at Mar A Lago: obstruction of justice, criminal handling of government records, and violation of the Espionage Act.

The evidence revealed a coordinated effort by Trump and his allies to seize a second term. Despite the insurrection, 139 Republican House members, including Kevin McCarthy, voted against certifying Joe Biden’s electoral win. Eight Republican Congressmen requested pardons from Trump for their actions on Jan. 6: Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosart, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Mo Brooks.

This is the sedition caucus and you can be sure that there is negative information about them in the Jan. 6 files they are now trying to take control of.

The committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, collected more than 1 million documents and held 10 public hearings.

Despite that, more than two years after the election, Trump is still lying about the outcome. He lost 61 court cases, including at least 22 of them in front of judges he appointed, but is still claiming the election was “stolen.”

The committee recommended that Congress consider barring the former president from ever holding public office again as a result of his role inciting the insurrection.

We also know that Trump considered blanket pardons for all the insurrectionists — “patriots,” he calls them.

He now says that if he is re-elected to the White House, he will proceed with the blanket pardons.

That clearly contradicts claims by the Trump cult that the insurrection was caused by antifa; Trump would never pardon them.

There is strong evidence of witness tampering by lawyers that the Trump camp paid to represent White House employees, such as Cassidy Hutchinson; she testified under oath that her Trump-supplied lawyer urged her to pretend she did not remember some facts, and that Trump supporters tried to influence her testimony with job offers.

The committee found that John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were instrumental in the planning and execution of Trump’s attempt to overthrow his reelection loss, and, along with Mark Meadows, had direct roles in organizing the scheme to replace the rightful delegates to the Electoral College with fake electors.

They now face criminal charges and disciplinary action by state bar committees.

One of the consequences of the event was to bring about changes to the Electoral Vote Count Act to make clear that the role of the vice president is purely ceremonial; that he has no ability to change any submissions by the various states, which was the reason for the insurrection.

Tom Maertens served in the White House under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 

Trump followers became losers

By Tom Maertens

After another failed election, will Republicans figure out that ex-president Donald Trump is a loser?

Most of the high-profile candidates he endorsed, principally election deniers, lost. He has further damaged his “brand” by publicly calling for the Constitution to be “terminated” and the election rerun. He later asserted that the press made that claim up, but it was in writing on his Truth Social site. His response was typical: “Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit,” he said. “And if they lose, I should not be blamed at all, OK.” (CNBC)

One more Democratic senator will make Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer’s life a lot easier, giving Democrats the chairmanship of the Senate committees and subpoena power and facilitating the confirmation process.

The losers included Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz. In Michigan, it included Trump’s gubernatorial candidate, Tudor Dixon and her secretary of state candidate, Kristina Karama, as Democrats, led by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ran the table.

Trump’s candidates in Arizona, Kari Lake for governor and Blake Masters for the Senate, lost to Katie Hobbs and Mark Kelly respectively. Lake is following the Trump playbook of claiming a rigged election.

Among the most dangerous of his candidates was Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who traveled to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 6 insurrection and virtually promised to “fix” the next election by appointing a secretary of state who would follow his instructions. He lost the governor’s race to former Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

Don Bolduc lost to Sen. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire; he repeated the crackpot story that kids were being told they could identify as anthropomorphic cats and use litter boxes in school.

Trump cost Republicans the two Georgia Senate seats in 2020 when he told his followers not to vote because the election was “rigged.” Not surprisingly, two Democrats were elected to the U.S. Senate; one, Raphael Warnock, in a special election fill out the remaining two years of retiring Senator Johnny Isakson’s term.

The latest loser is Herschel Walker in Georgia who lost to Warnock in the general election for a full six-year term. Walker had played for Trump in the defunct U.S. Football League, and asserted that Trump begged him to run for months.

Walker had multiple millstones around his neck: a track record of violence against women, several unclaimed children, and a number of women who claimed he pressured them to have abortions while he was running on an anti-abortion platform.

Like Trump, he appears to be a compulsive liar — although, to refresh, the Washington Post data base contains 30,573 lies that Trump told in his four years in the White House, making Walker look like an amateur.

Like Trump, Walker has made multiple easily disproven fabrications, which The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact checked: Walker never owned the largest upholstery company in the country, or, in fact, any upholstery company at all; he did not graduate in the top 1% of his class at the University of Georgia, and has not graduated from Georgia or any other university; he did not attend the FBI academy and was never an FBI agent or a cop as he has claimed.

Rather he was given an honorary deputy badge from the Cobb County police. He falsely claimed to have founded at least two veterans charities.

The New York Times attempted to verify his claims that he made contributions to many other charities; none of the charities he named has any recollection of him donating anything. He also claimed his grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee, but his mother wouldn’t confirm that.

Trump’s cult following is mostly impervious to unpleasant facts, however, including the bizarre comments Walker made about his preference for being a werewolf rather than a vampire.

On the “bad news” front, the Jan. 6 committee is sending criminal referrals to the Department of Justice; odds are high that Trump’s name will be among them. But that’s only the beginning of his problems, some of which were detailed in a My View of Nov. 14.

Since then, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed career prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into Trump’s retaining government documents at Mar-a-Lago, and investigate parts of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Adding to Trump’s peril, an appeals court has overruled the court order appointing a special master to curate those classified documents, which was principally a delaying tactic by Trump.

Smith has already issued subpoenas to officials in Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan over their efforts to convene fake slates of electors to certify Trump’s “victory” in the last election.

Tom Maertens served in the White House under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Trump faces multiple indictments

by Tom Maertens

New evidence continues to emerge of criminal activity by Donald Trump and his circle.

The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in June and found many classified documents including at least 100 that were labeled Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence (TS/SCI); such seizures have been prosecuted as felonies in the past. A former government employee, Reality Winner, served five years in prison for leaking one document with only a medium-level Secret classification.

In another case, N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump and his three eldest children of dozens of instances of financial fraud and is seeking a civil penalty of at least $250 million. She also made a criminal referral to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who has already obtained two indictments — of the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, who has agreed to testify against the Trump Org, which is potentially disastrous for Trump.

In addition, James asked the court to ban Trump and his children from ever running a company based in the state again. Trump was previously ordered to pay more than $2 million in damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing charitable funds. The settlement also dissolved the Trump Foundation under court supervision.

Another federal investigation is examining the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which FBI Director Wray labeled a domestic terrorist attack. One hundred forty-seven Republican legislators voted to endorse Trump’s coup attempt, and counterfeit slates of state electors from several swing states were falsely certified and sent in for the Jan. 6 electoral vote count.

Some of those fake electors are under subpoena and could face criminal charges, depending on individual state’s laws. For example, all 16 fake electors and as many as 100 other participants in the sham elector scheme in Georgia have received letters from the Fulton County district attorney informing them that they are targets of a Special Grand Jury and face possible criminal charges.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars any officials who have taken an oath of office to defend the government from reelection if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government — or have “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog group, successfully challenged an official in New Mexico in September. A judge in that state ruled that Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin be removed from office, characterizing the attack on the U.S. Capitol as an insurrection and deciding that Griffin’s participation in it disqualified him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

According to CREW, “There is compelling evidence that Donald J. Trump may have personally committed up to eight criminal offenses while campaigning for president and during the first year of his presidency. The potential offenses include violations of laws regulating campaign contributions and their disclosure, making false records and statements, and a conspiracy to defraud (or to violate the laws of) the United States.”

Trump is also facing an ongoing investigation from the prosecutor in Fulton County for pressuring Georgia officials to override the state’s popular vote for president in 2020. Remember Trump’s infamous call to Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: "I just want to find 11,780 votes”? Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes. A number of Trump allies are being subpoenaed as part of a state criminal investigation into interference with the 2020 election, including Trump’s sometime lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Trump has also been deposed in a defamation lawsuit by writer E. Jean Carroll, one of 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual assault. She alleges he raped her, and then defamed her by calling her a liar.

Trump is preparing to run in 2024, probably in hopes that the tradition of not prosecuting a presidential candidate will protect him. But Merrick Garland is considering appointing a non-partisan special counsel who would continue the investigation regardless.

Additionally, Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist and former senior government official has been granted “use immunity” in exchange for testimony against Trump. He can’t be prosecuted for any crimes he reveals, but he can’t plead the Fifth in order to refuse answering questions under oath. It’s a strong indication that an indictment against Trump will be forthcoming.

Any hopes Trump had for congressional Republicans protecting him are also much diminished, based on his endorsement record in the mid-term. “Republicans are waking up to the fact that (Trump) is a net negative for their fortunes,” Republican strategist Liam Donovan said.

Tom Maertens served in the White House under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.