[mpen-dayton] FW: "Right to work is the wrong solution for Ohio" & "Bernie Sanders' BRILLIANT Response To Trump's Speech To Congress" and more
FYI. Best, Munsup
P.S. Please reply back to me with ‘unsubscribe’ added to the subject line if you no longer want to receive my e-Newsletters. The convenient link to unsubscribe is no longer available due to security reasons to protect my email servers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- FW: NYT Today's Headline: Trump Embraces 'Enemy of the People,' a Phrase With a Fraught History
- FW: Rudy Fichtenbaum: Right to work is the wrong solution for Ohio
- FW: HR 676 Reintroduced!
- FW: The 5 Jobs Robots Will Take First
- FW: what do you think this is??
- FW: Stop Trump All Ways
- FW: MUST VIEW: Bernie Sanders' BRILLIANT Response To Trump's Speech To Congress
- Years into Obamacare, health insurance is still a prime reason people hold on to their jobs — LinkedIn survey
- FW: TAKE ACTION: Protect and Defend our Voting Rights
- FW: Robert Mercer - the greatest threat to American Democracy living today
- FW: WINNABLE: Getting Bannon off the NSC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: NYTimes.com
Subject: NYT Today's Headline: Trump Embraces 'Enemy of the People,' a Phrase With a Fraught History
Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’
a Phrase With a Fraught HistoryFEB. 26, 2017
President Trump on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md.
Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
MOSCOW — The phrase was too toxic even for Nikita Khrushchev, a war-hardened veteran communist not known for squeamishness. As leader of the Soviet Union, he demanded an end to the use of the term “enemy of the people” because “it eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight.”
“The formula ‘enemy of the people,’” Mr. Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, “was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.
It is difficult to know if President Trump is aware of the historic resonance of the term, a label generally associated with despotic communist governments rather than democracies. But his decision to unleash the terminology has left some historians scratching their heads. Why would the elected leader of a democratic nation embrace a label that, after the death of Stalin, even the Soviet Union found to be too freighted with sinister connotations?
Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Mr. Khrushchev and a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, said the phrase was “shocking to hear in a non-Soviet, moreover non-Stalinist setting.” Her great-grandfather, she said, “of course also used Soviet slogans and ideological idioms but still tried to stay away from sweeping denunciations of whole segments of the Soviet population.”
Continue reading the main story
The Trump White House
Stories about President Trump’s administration.
- Philip Bilden, Nominee for Secretary of the Navy, Withdraws FEB 26
- Protesters Gather to Support the Press, From Fox News to The New York Times FEB 26
- Trump to Ask for Sharp Increases in Military Spending, Officials Say FEB 26
- Trump’s Soft Spot for Dreamers Alienates Immigration Hard-Liners FEB 26
- With Voters Riled Up, Both Parties Aim to Channel the Fury FEB 26
In Mr. Trump’s case, however, he is branding as enemies a segment of the American population — specifically representatives of what he calls the “fake news” media, including The New York Times.
He has used the phrase more than once, including Friday during an attack on the news media at a conservative gathering in which he said that some reporters were making up unnamed sources to attack him.
“A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people because they have no sources — they just make it up,” the president said, adding that the label applied only to “dishonest” reporters and editors. Hours later, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, barred journalists from several news organizations, including The Times, from attending a briefing in his office.
By using the phrase and placing himself in such infamous company, at least in his choice of vocabulary to attack his critics, Mr. Trump has demonstrated, Ms. Khrushcheva said, that the language of “autocracy, of state nationalism is always the same regardless of the country, and no nation is exempt.” She added that, in all likelihood, Mr. Trump had not read Lenin, Stalin or Mao Zedong, but the “formulas of insult, humiliation, domination, branding, enemy-forming and name calling are always the same.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The phrase “enemy of the people” first entered the political lexicon in 1789, with the French Revolution. The revolutionaries initially used it as a slogan that was hurled willy-nilly at anybody who opposed them. But, as resistance to the revolution mounted, the term acquired a far more lethal and legalistic meaning with the adoption of a 1794 law that set up a revolutionary tribunal “to punish enemies of the people” and codified political crimes punishable by death. These included “spreading false news to divide or trouble the people.”
The concept resurfaced in a more benign form nearly a century later in “An Enemy of the People,” an 1882 play by the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen about an idealistic whistle-blower in a small town at odds with the authorities and locals who, to protect the economy, want to suppress information about water contamination. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 returned the term to the blood-drenched dramas of the French Revolution, with Lenin declaring in Pravda that the Jacobin terror against “enemies of the people” was “instructive” and needed to be revived, so as to rid the Russian people of “landowners and capitalists as a class.”
Stalin, who took over as Soviet leader upon Lenin’s death in 1924, drastically expanded the scope of those branded as “enemies of the people,” targeting not only capitalists but also dedicated communists who had worked alongside Lenin for years, but whom Stalin viewed as rivals.
“In essence, it was a label that meant death. It meant you were subhuman and entirely expendable,” said Mitchell A. Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “This is the connotation for anyone who lived in the Soviet Union or knows anything about the Soviet Union, which Donald Trump obviously doesn’t — or he doesn’t care.”
He said that it was hard to figure out whether Mr. Trump was aware of the resonance of the phrase or simply used it because “he knows it riles up people who have a certain degree of knowledge.”
“He is only alienating them, and they are the people he wants to alienate anyway,” Mr. Orenstein continued. “His base sees comparisons with Stalin as just more evidence of the liberal mainstream media going haywire.”
Moreover, by using such a loaded term in such a cavalier fashion, the president “is in the process of rendering it meaningless,” Mr. Orenstein said. “It becomes just na-na-na-na-na,” he added, because nobody really thinks Mr. Trump will bring back the guillotine.
Philip Short, a British author who has written biographies of Mao and Cambodia’s genocidal leader Pol Pot, said Mr. Trump delighted in “shaking things up, and this kind of language does just that.”
“We try to analyze it from an establishment point of view, but this leads nowhere,” he added. “I don’t know if Trump has ever read Stalin, but if he wants to destabilize people, he is doing it perfectly.”
William Taubman, the author of a biography of Khrushchev and emeritus professor of political science at Amherst College, said it was “shocking” that Mr. Trump would revive a term that had fallen into disrepute in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death in 1953. “It was so omnipresent, freighted and devastating in its use under Stalin that nobody wanted to touch it,” he said. “I have never heard it used in Russia except in reference to history and in jokes.”
Ms. Khrushcheva said Mr. Trump had “been using a lot of this kind of political-ideological branding” favored by revolutionary leaders, deploying terms like “liberal sympathizer” and “language about gloom and doom in America that is much more forcefully negative than that even used by the Russians.”
He has also gone one step further than Chinese and Khmer Rouge communists in Cambodia, who generally preferred homegrown insults to those imported from the Soviet Union.
Mr. Short, the Mao and Pol Pot biographer, said Chinese and Cambodian communists, all fiercely nationalistic, rarely if ever used “enemy of the people” in domestic political struggles because it was an alien import. Instead, Pol Pot attacked enemies as “ugly microbes” who would “rot society, rot the party and rot the country from within,” while Maoists coined insults like “the stinking ninth category” to denounce experts and intellectuals.
Mao, Mr. Short said, “used Chinese expressions and spoke like a Chinese, not a Russian.”
“He did not use the Soviet jargon much,” Mr. Short said. “But Mr. Trump does, which is extraordinary.”
Mao did on occasion use “enemy of the people,” but he directed it not at his domestic foes but at the United States, declaring in 1964 that “U.S. imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of the people of the entire world.”
“Politicians normally use phrases that resonate with their own people,” Mr. Short said. “Mao and Pol Pot did not just regurgitate Stalinist terms. What is extraordinary about Trump is that he has taken up a Stalinist phrase that is entirely alien to American political culture.”
Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting from Washington.
From: Rudy Fichtenbaum; Professor Emeritus of Economics at Wright State University
Subject: Rudy Fichtenbaum: Right to work is the wrong solution for Ohio
Rudy Fichtenbaum: Right to work is the wrong solution for Ohio
Monday Posted Jan 23, 2017 at 5:00 AM
With Kentucky becoming the nation's 27th right-to-work state, it's more important than ever that people understand that right-to-work is wrong for Ohio.
Ohio is nearly surrounded by a right-to-work-is-wrong desert; states where the middle class has been decimated.
Those who favor right-to-work-is-wrong argue that average job growth is greater. Averages can be deceiving. If I have $2 million and you have nothing, on average, we are both millionaires. Proponents correlate average job growth with right-to-work-is-wrong status. But like averages, correlations can also be misleading. For example, a recent study found that average job growth was higher in states whose names start with N-Z than states whose names start with A-M. But no one believes that changing the name of a state will spur job growth.
If one looks at the 20 states with the highest job growth, 10 were free-bargaining states and 10 were right-to-work-is-wrong states.
In right-to-work-is-wrong states, workers make less money and are less likely to have retirement benefits and employer-sponsored health insurance. It's a power and money grab by the rich. Wages in right-to-work-is-wrong states are $1,500 per year less than in free-bargaining states. This wage cut would cause a loss of more than 8,000 jobs in Ohio, having a huge impact our local communities. There would be less money for our local schools and fewer dollars to spend supporting local businesses.
Rudy Fichtenbaum: Right to work is the wrong solution for Rudy Fichtenbaum: Right to work is the wrong solution for Ohio Ohio
Deaths on the job are also much higher in right-to-work-is-wrong states. In fact, right-to-work-iswrong states are so unsafe that death rates on the job are 36 percent higher. That's because workers lose their voices and their ability to stand up for themselves and their own safety.
Here's the thing, voters have never passed right-to-work-is-wrong. Like in Kentucky, right-towork-is-wrong has always been rammed through statehouses by extreme lawmakers and signed by governors in the dead of the night. The people don't support right-to-work-is-wrong because they see right through it. When was the last time millionaires and billionaires spent millions of dollars to give workers more rights and freedom on the job? Never. They want to divide workers so they can have complete control over the workplace.
Plus, right-to-work-is-wrong is not a job creator. There is absolutely no evidence that proves reducing wages, benefits and safety creates any jobs. It's a fallacy and a myth when extreme lawmakers say businesses consider right-to-work-is-wrong in their relocation decisions. It's never even on their radar. Employers are looking for qualified and dedicated employees, good neighborhoods and high quality of life.
Right-to-work-is-wrong divides workers. No one is required to join a union and unions have to represent everyone on the job regardless of their status. However, right-to-work-is-wrong allows some workers to be free-riders, paying nothing but still receiving union representation. This weakens unions because it weakens their ability to fight for workers, and that hurts all of us.
Ohio would be smart to not go right-to-work-is-wrong because our workers will want to continue to work here. And our workers will be better trained, more professional, safer and more dedicated.
Businesses are always in search of high-quality employees. And by rejecting right-to-work-iswrong, we can continue to foster a large pool of qualified workers. That's what helps companies and economies grow.
Understand that the chances of your family being killed or hurt on the job is lower. Your income will be higher, and you'll help us spur more economic development. You'll be able to afford your neighbors' goods and services and your neighbors will be able to afford your goods and services.
Right-to-work-is-wrong is wrong for Ohio. Wrong for working and middle-class families. Wrong for all of us.
From: SPAN Ohio
Subject: HR 676 Reintroduced!
HR 676 Reintroduced!
Congressman John Conyers of Michigan has reintroduced HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. We are pleased to see three Ohio members of Congress represented in the 51 original sponsors: Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Rep. Joyce Beatty and Rep. Tim Ryan. If these are your representatives in Congress, do take the time to thank them. Congressional staffers don’t get a lot of calls like that and you just might make their day.
Where’s Marcia?
The three co-sponsors of the bill are all Democrats, but they don’t make up the entire Democratic delegation from Ohio. Missing is Marcia Fudge. Marcia has been missing for quite some time now. She was a co-sponsor prior to the enactment of the ACA but dropped out when the ACA was passed. Now is the time for Marcia to return to the fold, but she needs some encouragement.
If you are a constituent of Marcia Fudge’s, please let her know that you want her to co-sponsor this bill. The number for her Washington DC office is 202-225-7032.
Other Members of Congress
Should you call your Republican member of Congress about HR 676? Absolutely! Whether they support it or not, they need to hear from you. One of the reasons we don’t have bipartisan support is because we shy away from contacting them. They need to know where you stand on the issues as well. Be inclusive of them and always work to lead them in the right direction. Call the switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them who your representative is. If you don’t know, they’ll figure it out for you!
Toll Free Numbers for Congress
We’ve been asked to provide a toll-free number for members of Congress. Unfortunately, unless the individual member of Congress provides a toll-free number, there is no specific toll free number for contacting members of Congress. Occasionally, you will see a toll-free number and it will work, for a time. Those numbers are sponsored by organizations that are conducting a specific campaign and the numbers are good for the duration of the campaign, but afterward go away. We hesitate to provide the one recently given to us because it may no longer be any good.
SPAN Action
SPAN Activists were busy in the past two weeks making presentations at almost all of the January 15th actions as well as those last weekend. Many thanks for those who represented SPAN so well in Dayton, Cincinnati, Toledo, Cleveland, Kent, Columbus and Athens.
State Council Meeting
SPAN State Council will meet on February 4th at the Unitarian Church in Columbus, 93 W. Weisheimer Road. The meeting will start at 10:00 am and go to 1:00 pm. At that time, there will be a short break to get some lunch followed by a workshop from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm on Effective Messaging. Those wishing to participate are encouraged to read George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” but there is no requirement.
All are welcome to attend both the meeting and the workshop.
Save the Date – State Conference on April 29th!
The annual SPAN State Conference will take place on April 29th at the Quest Business and Conference Center, 8405 Pulsar Place, Columbus. We have a very exciting program for you, leading off with Greg Coleridge on the corporate takeover of healthcare – is it a symptom of a sick healthcare system or a sick democracy?
Registration will be opening soon. In an effort to cut costs, we will only mail registration forms to those without email addresses. Those with an email address will receive instructions on how to download the registration form from our website. Watch for the email announcing it!
From: Sang Kang
Subject: The 5 Jobs Robots Will Take First
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-jobs-robots-take-first-shelly-palmer?trk=eml-email_feed_ecosystem_digest_01-hero-0-null&midToken=AQHKfUzijAibcA&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=1n9EYbG01pw7E1
From: Andrew Tierman
Subject: what do you think this is??
?white power hand signals broadcast from white house?!
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/21/1636419/-Yes-Trump-s-Aide-Really-Did-Throw-White-Power-Sign?detail=email&link_id=1&can_id=bcc3c8fa6fec6bd434303fbc1c0639be&source=email-yes-trumps-aide-really-did-throw-white-power-sign-4&email_referrer=yes-trumps-aide-really-did-throw-white-power-sign-4&email_subject=yes-trumps-aide-really-did-throw-white-power-sign
From: Larry
Subject: Stop Trump All Ways
From: tbacane
Subject: FW: MUST VIEW: Bernie Sanders' BRILLIANT Response To Trump's Speech To Congress
Senator Sanders is absolutely right and hopefully more senators of both parties will begin to speak out against Trump and his lies and double speak. Please share the Senator's response with your contacts.
Bernie Sanders' BRILLIANT Response To Trump's Speech To Congress - YouTube (or https://youtu.be/8eK-5ivYb3o)
Bernie Sanders isn't buying what Donald Trump is selling. In his response to the President's first speech before Congress, Sanders calls out Trump for going back on his campaign promises, lying about corporate tax rates, and continues his push for a single-payer healthcare system.
Reflect this video on your Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/gsolq4w
Reflect this video on your Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/h59e7ap
Reflect on Facebook http://on.fb.me/1Oi1dbH
Reflect on Twitter http://twitter.com/ReflectorVideo
Ralph Nader on Trump’s Speech to Congress - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECECWTW6VTw
Ralph Nader tells Paul Jay that Trump’s attack on the EPA and regulatory agencies will be a disaste
From: LinkedIn
Subject: Years into Obamacare, health insurance is still a prime reason people hold on to their jobs — LinkedIn survey
Years into Obamacare, health insurance is still a prime reason
people hold on to their jobs — LinkedIn survey
Beth Kutscher, News Editor - Healthcare at LinkedIn
From: Jeanette Senecal; League of Women Voters
Subject: TAKE ACTION: Protect and Defend our Voting Rights
Together, through our votes, we take control over what happens to our families and communities.
But voting rights across the country are under attack – join with fellow voters and pledge to honor and protect our constitutional right to vote.
Voting brings us together as Americans – it is the one time when we are all equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, young or old, liberal or conservative; elections are our opportunity to have a say in America’s future. A lot is at stake in every election – by voting, we’re taking control and impacting the issues and policies that will be debated and affect our daily lives.
It is critical that we ensure every American can cast a vote and have it counted. Our democracy’s future is on the line – pledge to protect voting rights.
Rooted in the movement that secured the right to vote for women, the League of Women Voters has always been committed to registering and turning out voters, and we’re not stopping now. We protect and defend voting rights across the country in order to ensure that our elections are fair, free and accessible to all eligible citizens. We’ve helped defeat laws that restrict voters’ rigths, block such laws where they have already passed, and fight laws designed to curb organizations like ours from registering voters.
Ultimately elections are about voters like you. Join us in protecting voting rights and safeguarding this right for all Americans.
From: Eric Kramer
Subject: Robert Mercer - the greatest threat to American Democracy living today
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage?CMP=share_btn_fb
From: Granate Sosnoff; Communications Strategist, Jewish Voice for Peace
Subject: WINNABLE: Getting Bannon off the NSC
| |
|
What is JVP doing to fight Trump?
For one thing, we’re fighting Steve Bannon: the white supremacist, antisemitic, Islamophobe behind the many-headed hydra of Trump’s Executive Orders.
Will you help us show up strong as the only explicitly pro-Palestinian human rights group on this new roster of progressives fighting this neo-Nazi?
If you’re like me you probably feel overwhelmed right now. It’s hard to find a fighting stance when you’re getting hit with a Muslim travel ban, deportations of immigrants, a surge in hate crimes, desecration of a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, and the heartbreak of Standing Rock.
There are indeed “dark” forces at work, and chief among them is white-supremacist Steve Bannon. We need to get him kicked off the National Security Council.
Bannon has said things like: "Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power."1
So is there a glimmer of hope, an opening to get at Bannon?
YES. By appointing Bannon to the National Security Council Trump himself created a way for us to curb Bannon’s power. Congress has the power to kick Bannon off the NSC - and we can make them do that.
Sign on TODAY — tell Congress to use its authority to kick Steve Bannon off the National Security Council!
We’ve joined with a powerful group of progressive organizations including ColorOfChange, Courage Campign, Greenpeace, and MPower Change. It will take a large-tent partnership to take him on - and the fact that our logo is in there says a lot about our changing times.
We need to charge head on as a united front so Congress hears from as many of us as possible. Congress created the National Security Council and has the power to regulate it.
Let’s make they sure they fight back. Join the 400,000 people who have already asked Congress to stand up to Steve Bannon and protect our democracy.
This is a fight we can win. Join me so we can.
End of MPEN e-Newsletter
posted by lucas at 4:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home