A bunch of technocrats, who are also welfare queens

Alex Samuels of Daily Kos does not like Laura Loomer because Loomer is so far right. But recently Loomer said something quite good. She was on Steve Bannon’s right-wing podcast “War Room” where she said:

I don’t think it’s acceptable for billionaires to have this much power and this much access. What is it going to mean for the future of our country, our national security, and the incoming Trump administration if we have a bunch of technocrats, who are also essentially welfare queens because their companies are receiving government subsidies, and they want to take over our defense industry?

Loomer was also on Eric Bolling’s show. He was on Fox News, though the article doesn’t say who is hosting the show. On that show Loomer responded to Musk spending more than a quarter billion dollars to help the nasty guy win.

This is the problem when you allow for a billionaire to make a $200 million donation and so maybe we really do need to have campaign finance regulations in this country.

Loomer added that Republicans don’t want to annoy Musk because he’s so rich. I add that rich people have been playing Republican campaign bills, like Musk did for the nasty guy, so of course they don’t want to annoy him. This is all part of the spat within the Republican Party between the billionaires and the white supremacists. Each hates what the other is saying and doing that might thwart their own goals. For the sake of democracy what Loomer said is important. Alas, she’s not in favor of democracy. What will come of this Republican spat is simply more chaos. Speaking up for democracy... Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote Democrats are talking about how to invigorate their party and some are saying things I’m glad to hear. These voices say the party needs to focus on the huge economic inequality. Sen. Chris Murphy suggested on MSNBC the breaking up of monopolies, raising the minimum wage, and focusing on the needs of the working class. The economic institutions propped up by neoliberalism should be reformed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines neoliberalism as saying

a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state.

That definition is part of a long article on the term. I note the terms “limited democracy” and “modest welfare state.” To me that translates as the rich as saying they’ll tolerate a little bit of democracy but don’t forget we control everything. And we don’t want to share with the unfortunate because that means less money flowing to us. As part of that visit to MSNBC Murphy said:

Attacking power is not easy for everybody in the Democratic party because we have become a party that is dependent on high-income elites.

For a long time Democrats received money from high-income liberal elites. In recent decades they also gladly accepted money from high-income conservative elites – and tempered their message to accommodate their donors. Murphy proposes a “common-good capitalism” in which workers are valued as much as shareholders and some things – like health care – should never be for profit. Greg Casar is the new chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He notes that voters tend towards the left of Democrats on economic issues and to the right of them on cultural issues. He says he will make sure Democrats support workers over corporations. Populism says the system is rigged against the workers and for the wealthy. There is a broad sense of economic discontent. Republicans exploited that through lying. Democrats allowed that to happen by not doing very much to dismantle the rigged system. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have already been calling for Medicare for All, livable wages, and breaking up monopolies. Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who is black, doesn’t want to lessen the impact of “identity politics” that draws black and LGBTQ voters. Harrison says his identity – his skin – is how he is seen and treated. Even so, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say economic issues are more important. Back at the start of December Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the nasty guy nominated Rep. Billy Long to head the IRS. Long sponsored the Fair Tax Act that would have abolished the income tax and replaced it with a 23% sales tax, a move that would be a huge tax increase on the middle class and poor and a huge cut for the wealthy. That bill also sought abolish the IRS and to repeal the 16th Amendment which authorizes income taxes. He also wants to repeal the estate tax. He left Congress in 2023 and has been working as a tax advisor, encouraging businesses to use the Employee Retention Tax Credit from the pandemic. There was a lot of fraud with the ERTC, though the article doesn’t say if Long was a part of it. That work is what attracted the nasty guy’s attention. There is a current head of the IRS, Daniel Werfel, his term doesn’t end until November 2027. So the nasty guy would have to fire him to install Long. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Lawrence of The Bulwark discussing that if Republicans really were populists they would not try to chop IRS resources.

A better, more consumer-friendly IRS? One that has the people, expertise, and technology it needs to answer taxpayer phone calls, clear 24 million backlogged paper tax returns, contact high-income taxpayers who owe more, delve into complicated tax-evasion schemes, and offer more online digital services? And collects far more money from rich and corporate tax evaders than it spends on audits, thus helping to reduce deficits and the need to raise taxes? “It seems like a fiscal no-brainer to me,” Maya MacGuineas, head of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in November. Count me in, too.

In the comments exlrrp quoted a meme created by Occupy Democrats based on the words of Sen. Murphy.

Trump is intentionally lying about the New Orleans attacker being an immigrant – he wasn’t. Why does this matter? Because he is going to use episodes of violence to justify his crack down on immigrants and his attack on dissent – whether the facts line up or not. This is just the start!”

exlrrp also quoted a meme from Betty Bowers:

If your response when people are killed by someone driving thru a celebrating crowd is to opportunistically make up facts about the driver to further your preexisting prejudices, instead of mourn the dead, your indifference to the lives of those killed means you have much in common with that driver.

Nick Anderson posted a cartoon about that New Orleans attack. A man behind an FBI podium says, “We now believe the New Orleans attacker acted alone.” Beside him is a man dressed to only show his eyes and identified as Islamic State Propaganda says, “Not entirely.” And another meme from exlrrp shows a bunch of teen boys. One asks “Why do they call us ‘the left?’” Another replies, “Because if you take away all of the fascists, corporate sycophants, warmongers, racists, and traitors, we are what’s left.” David Hayward, the naked pastor, posted a cartoon, saying “Too many of us are blind to our privilege.” The cartoon shows a group that includes a gay person, a trans person, a pregnant person, a disabled person, and several more. Facing them is a white man who says, “But why would you call him a fascist when my privilege is only improving?”