You don’t think it’s a money thing... do you?

The forsythia in my yard bloomed quite well this year. This is a photo of the biggest of five bushes. Another one is right behind this one. This photo was taken ten days ago. During a couple weeks in the spring I see wonderful clouds of yellow outside several windows.

The redbud is also in bloom now, with one directly behind a forsythia outside my kitchen window. And behind that, in my neighbor’s yard is a tree with white blossoms.

There is one type of tree in the area that didn’t bloom. I don’t know if it is magnolia or a tulip tree. We had a hard frost just before they bloomed, which turned all the flower buds to brown. A while back Moscow Mitch warned corporations to stay out of politics, to not speak out against the voter suppression laws. Fortunately, according to Laura Clawson of Daily Kos, corporations aren’t listening to Mitch. Last Saturday 100 executives from top corporations joined in a Zoom call to discuss how to apply pressure against such legislation. They even talked about halting donations – which is a really big deal though I don’t like corporations giving to politicians anyway. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted the Associated Press:

For more than a half-century, the voice emerging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s monolithic, Beaux Arts-styled building near the White House was predictable: It was the embodiment of American business and, more specifically, a shared set of interests with the Republican Party. The party’s bond with corporate America, however, is fraying. Fissures have burst open over the GOP’s embrace of conspiracy theories and rejection of mainstream climate science, as well as its dismissal of the 2020 election outcome.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that about 60 major law firms are uniting around challenging voter suppression. They are teaming up with the non profit Brennan Center for Justice, which has been tracking the suppression bills around the country. They will tell lawmakers that suppression is unconstitutional and will result in lawsuits if passed. And they will be the lawyers in those lawsuits. Eleveld wrote this could be big political realignment. However, I don’t want to see Democrats bought off. I don’t want them to be the party representing corporations. I fear they treat corporations too gently already. As an example of what I mean, Rep. Jason Smith tweeted:

Biden’s budget uses the word “climate” 146 times in 58 pages. A not too subtle hint that energy jobs and the livelihoods of hardworking Americans are in jeopardy.

Heartland Strong responded:

This is a Rep from Missouri. Missouri is a state in which green energy jobs could be developed and help to replace some of the jobs that Missouri will never replace. Why is a Rep from a state with virtually no oil interest so interested in standing against clean energy? You don’t think it’s a money thing... do you?

That was followed by tweets listing donations to Smith from Arch Coal Political Action Committee, Chevron Employees Political Action Committee, and ExxonMobile Political Action Committee.

BTW you know how easy it is to know who owns your local politician? I did this with one hand, on a phone, while holding a sleeping baby.

Another shooting by police. There was a claim of mistaking a gun for a taser. This, of course, brought out the tweets. Such as this one from Bree Newsome Bass:

Police, acting w/ govt authority, murder someone. Regular folks protest. Some throw objects at police. Police then respond with military grade weapons & teargas. And we’re supposed to accept the idea this is equivalent violence on either side of the conflict??? I know this is wild b/c as many times as I’ve seen it, it never stops being wild. And what’s even more wild is watching how over the years the protesters’ argument is the same & gains strength while the establishment is clearly struggling to keep justifying it.

In another tweet Bass wrote:

“Police are necessary to protect citizens from the violence we engineer via bad policy. The murder of citizens by police are an unfortunate side effect we must accept. However, the looting of stores can not be tolerated under any circumstance.” -the neoliberal establishment

I’ve seen the term neoliberal before. I knew it doesn’t mean liberal. So I looked it up. From Merriam Webster: a liberal who de-emphasizes traditional liberal doctrines in order to seek progress by more pragmatic methods. From Investopedia: a policy model that encompasses both politics and economics and seeks to transfer the control of economic factors from the public sector to the private sector. ... The policies of neoliberalism typically supports fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, privatization, and a reduction in government spending. ... There are many criticisms of neoliberalism, including its tendency to endanger democracy, workers’ rights, and sovereign nations’ right to self-determination. ... Neoliberal policies have been proven to increase inequality. Kelly Hayes tweeted:

I'm less concerned w whether the officer was panicked & intended to inflict a different kind of potentially deadly force (tasers are not hugs y'all) than I am with the fact that this s--- keeps happening because the system is built to make it happen a hundred different ways. ... Everything about our society is designed to generate these outcomes. The oppression of Black people, the engineering of poverty, and the fundamentally racist nature of policing – that's why all of this keeps happening. But they keep us quibbling over the details. We need to stop fixating on the wrong questions. Did the cop mean to reach for their taser, instead of their gun? I don't f---ing care. The whole damn system is guilty as hell. It always has been. It must be undone. That's the issue.

African and Black History tweeted about Dusky Demon, a black man who invented the rodeo sport of steer wrestling. It also noted one in four American cowboys were black. Michael Harriot, master race baiter, responded to that tweet to tell where the term cowboy came from: the slaves who tended cattle in South Carolina in the early 1700s. Which means Wyatt Earp was a “white cowboy.” The things they don’t tell us in history books.