Can’t be bothered with the messy business of democratic elections

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed the financing behind the Big Lie. As part of his discussion he refers to a piece Charles Pierce wrote for Esquire and a second piece Jane Mayer wrote for The New Yorker. Back in 2016 Mayer wrote the book Dark Money. As Mayer showed all this started quite a while ago with the Koch brothers and their huge investment in secretive conservative organizations with the purpose of influencing politics, including buying politicians. There are, of course, many other conservative groups that aren’t funded by the Koch organizations, though they are funded by other billionaires. Their primary purpose of such groups as Heritage is

the promotion of “free enterprise, limited government and individual freedom,” which are primarily aimed at lowering the tax and regulatory constraints on the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations. In particular, Heritage funds and promotes propaganda to deny, distort, and mischaracterize research about climate change when the result of such research implicates the fortunes and prospects of the fossil fuel industry, as is often the case.

A part of their effort for a good long time (at least since the Tea Party in Obama’s first term) has been to get state legislatures to restrict ballot access. The nasty guy handed them a gift in his open claims of election fraud and that stopping the steal was necessary. These organizations rely

on the largesse and involvement of reactionary, ultra-wealthy donors who can’t be bothered with the messy business of democratic elections. In essence, they depend on people who are less concerned about this country’s democratic origins than they are their own ability to profit from the privilege of living here.

They’re ready with “ultra-fanatic, morally compromised lawyers” to file suits in hopes of getting in front of a “corrupted, Federalist-society appointed judge.” These groups are funding both the Big Lie and Republican lawmakers at all levels.

In other words, for elected Republicans embracing the Big Lie that Trump actually won and voting to overturn the Electoral College results weren’t actions taken out of some conviction that the 2020 election was tainted, but by the practical necessity of maintaining their own offices. A vote to overturn democracy meant keeping their campaign spigots turned on. ... And they have a natural base of support in a Republican electorate continually stoked by racial and class grievances. That type of voter is readily primed to accept any slurs or imagined acts attributed to people they don’t consider legitimate Americans to begin with. ... The election of Donald Trump provided the reactionary billionaires behind these organizations with a golden opportunity to fulfill all of their anti-regulation, anti-tax dreams. But Trump’s ignominious defeat in 2020 has provided them with an even greater, wholly unexpected opportunity: to finally get rid of democracy in this country altogether, or at very least keep it in their own hands and working for their own interests for as long as possible. No doubt they consider what they’re doing the fulfillment of their own personal American dream, even if it entails the destruction of democracy for the rest of us.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Natalie Shure writing for In These Times about Nina Turner, a progressive favorite who did not win a primary election for a Congressional seat in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The winner was Shontel Brown, who will win easily in November in a heavily Democratic district. Back to what Shure wrote:

There’s a reason that the Democratic Party antagonism played well enough with voters to matter, and it presents a messaging challenge for the insurgent Left. Cuss words aside, Turner had a point: Democrats do overlap with Republicans in key ways that help explain the persistent inequality upon which Turner and other left-wing politicians have built their redistributive platforms. If the Republicans have lurched so far to the right that the Democrats can’t help but look better by comparison, the unfortunate fact is that both parties are captured by the same well-heeled corporate donor base, and generally prioritize the interests of the rich. Support for neoliberal trade policies, never-ending wars and bloated military budgets have been resoundingly bipartisan. So, too, is disdain for universal public welfare programs like Medicare for All. Winning left victories — like the extension of the eviction moratorium that Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) helped secure through her high-profile campout on the Capitol steps — demands a confrontation with the Democratic Party

Hunter of Kos reviewed the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), just released. Hunter wrote the consensus has gone from dire to catastrophic. There is now no chance of limiting temperature rise to less than 1.5C (2.7F). The punishing weather events – heat domes, floods, droughts, megafires – will continue and get worse. Though a 1.5C rise is the best we can hope for, keeping the rise to only that will require herculean effort. Since the world’s most powerful people don’t give a damn the rise will likely be double that. We’ve already seen huge climate problems. At a rise of 1.5C we’ll see more powerful monsoons and hurricanes fueled by warmer ocean waters. Much of US farmland will be in permanent drought. Waterways will dry up. At a rise of 2C

all hell breaks loose. Greenland's ice sheet collapses. Antarctic glaciers flow into the sea. The northern ice cap is reduced to nothingness, and the dark ocean water absorbs new heat that the reflective ice had bounced back into space.

That may happen as soon as 2040. A rise of more than 2C will be “unknowably worse.” We’re being stonewalled by people and companies that benefit from the oil industry or other causes of the crisis. As long as the warming world could be ignored these groups could gaslight the public. But once in a century events are happening with regularity across the country. We can limit the damage, with huge public spending for new power systems and new water systems for drinking and watering crops.

We can either take worldwide action to curb the use of fossil fuels immediately and drastically or we can sentence ourselves to a world in which fires regularly consume entire cities, hurricanes routinely reach intensities that were once rarities, and we all choke on summer air thick with the smoke of fires half a world away—in the best-case scenario. Be angry. We saw this point coming a half century off. It wasn't inevitable. We got here for the same reason people were long "confused" over whether cigarettes caused cancer—because the people selling the products made damn sure to keep the "confusion" going as long as they possibly could. ... There's no more confusion on this one. This year's blistering, dangerous weather will likely be the among the coolest summers of the next 20 years, or 50, or 100. Get mad. You are allowed to be.