Bits n’ pieces from east, west and beyond
East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact.
A recent sampling, with an emphasis on recent or scantily-covered election material:
Pro-Trump mega-donor and billionaire Elon Musk has had secretive and “regular contact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin since 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported. NASA wants an investigation, saying that’s a concern for the Dept. of Defense, NASA and intelligence agencies; Musk has business contracts with several U.S. Departments.
Meanwhile the BBC says Musk is being sued by Philadelphia prosecutors for his $1 million lottery-for-votes scheme.
Musk has registered two new companies in Texas, Bloomberg wrote: United States of America Inc. and Group America LLC. Filing details were scant; in light of Project 2025 the names were ominous.
Trump has distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, an anti-democracy take-over written by Trump-affiliated political entities. But his former director of Office Management and Budget, Russell Vought, told undercover reporters “Trump is “very supportive of what we do.”
Republicans have asked the Supreme Court to disenfranchise thousands of Pennsylvania voters. Vox said that could change the outcome of the presidential election results.
From the “what would our Founders say” file: NPR and other media report Trump has made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish his “enemies.” That list has included donors.
Trump’s campaign has not signed onto a White House transition plan should he win, The Lever reported. The plan, which gets underway three months prior to inauguration, includes ethics rules.
Since 1961 human-caused climate warming has reduced global agricultural production by 21%, according to research published in Nature Climate Change. By 2030 Donald Trump’s anti-environment plans, if he’s elected, would increase U.S. emissions by four billion metric tons, more than the annual emissions of the EU and Japan, according to Carbon Brief.
Donald Trump’s “concept of a plan” for replacing the Affordable Care Act was revealed in a Meet the Press interview with his VP pick, The Washington Post reported: eliminate ACA protections for pre-existing conditions and create “risk pools.”
The Post relayed that younger people could choose a cheap plan with marginal coverage for serious illness; premiums for people in high-risk categories would be so high many would drop insurance coverage, causing a health insurance system failure.
In Newsweek ER physician and health care leader Dr. Rob Davidson noted that under Barack Obama’s presidency the number of uninsured declined every year. Under Trump 2.3 million more people were uninsured, causing “thousands of deaths.”
Trump facilitated that by cutting funding for ACA enrollment, eliminating the individual health insurance mandate penalty (which drove up costs), taking moves that raised insurance premiums, and approving “junk” insurance plans equated to “no insurance at all.”
Before Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly stated Trump is a fascist, an ABC News poll found half of Americans already agreed. Eight percent of them continue to support Trump anyway.
If anger, vulgarity, crude insults, racism, hate speech and “dangerous threats” resonate, Trump made it clear at his recent Madison Square Garden rally that he is the choice for president. Event speaker and radio commentator Sid Rosenberg called the event “a Nazi rally.”
Historians noted the Madison Square Garden choice appeared deliberate: it was a 1939 Nazi rally site; those Nazis promised to “restore America to true Americans.” Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller told rally-goers “America is for Americans and Americans only,” borrowing from Hitler: “Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”
Some Republicans reacted to Trump’s MSG event with “dismay and horror,” The Atlantic said.
Recent headlines: Trump praised China’s president for controlling citizens with an “iron fist.”
Blast from the past: In 2004 Donald Trump told CNN “It just seems that the economy does better under Democrats than Republicans.” He went on to say there have been good economic times under some Republican presidents, but “we’ve had some pretty bad disasters under the Republicans.”
And another another blast: After becoming president in 2017, Trump initiated a $1.5 trillion tax cut, one of the nation’s largest ever. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said the cut resulted in the bottom 20% of earners having a $120 tax cut. The top one-percenters, averaged a $48,000 cut. Trump’s cuts expanded the deficit, making it the largest in over two decades.
And another: In 1945 the War Dept. printed the pamphlet “FASCISM!” for Army personnel battling Hitler’s fascism. It said: fascism “thrives on indifference and ignorance,” and people who hate rather than think; it’s government by the few for the few, and gains control by pitting groups against each other; it’s anti-democracy but feigns democracy; people are to obey; women are primarily breeders; fascism’s force maintains power; rules change when fascist rulers wish; and power is held with fear, hate propaganda and false promises of security.
The pamphlet warned about past fascists in the U.S., such as the KKK and Silver Shirts. And it noted “we once laughed off Hitler as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” Trump has demonized antifa, an anti-fascist group.