Politics

Engagement with the 2018 Women’s March was strong in Washington, Las Vegas, and about 250 other U.S. cities. On January 20 about 3,000 marched from the Greater Columbus Convention Center to the Ohio Statehouse. With this year’s Power to the Polls theme, organizers sought to channel energy from the #MeToo revelations and President Trump’s low approval rating among women into electoral gains for women and progressive candidates in the midterm elections.

“Last year was a historical moment,” said Rhiannon Childs, Executive Director of Women’s March Ohio. “This year we’ve turned that moment into a movement. We wanted to take our collective power, unleashing our ability to organize and mobilize, and take that same energy to the polls to get more women and progressive candidates into office.”

As often happens with mass social movements, debate has erupted among groups and individuals engaged in it. In Ohio there is controversy over the narrow focus on electoral politics, and claims that the voices of women of color and other marginalized groups have been excluded from the Women’s March since its inception last year.

The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin, has become a big star in national media by routinely denouncing Russia as a dire threat to American democracy. The senior senator from Maryland personifies the highly dangerous opportunism that has set in among leading Democrats on the subject of Russia.

Chelsea Manning confirmed on Sunday that she is challenging Senator Cardin’s re-election effort in the Democratic primary this June. Her campaign has real potential to raise key issues. One of them revolves around the kind of bellicose rhetoric that heightens the dangers of conflict between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

It was convenient for the teaching moment that James Risen just

The announcement by US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions that he'll pursue federal pot prosecutions has two age-old motivations: power and money.

Financially, of course, the Republican party is vested in America's vast private prison system. Every new arrestee means money in the pockets of the investors who own and operate them. Keeping those cells and beds occupied is the essence of the industry"and of Pot Prohibition.

The Drug War is a giant cash cow, not only for the prison owners, but for the cops, guards, lawyers, judges, bailiffs and all the other operatives whose livelihood depends on destroying those of the nation's tens of millions cannabis customers.

Medical legalization in about half the country, and full legalization in California, Colorado and other states, represents a serious threat to this multi-billion-dollar incarceration scam. Sessions has risen to its defense.

Then there's the power.

For several months we’ve been hearing a crescendo of outcries that Russia used social media to sway the 2016 presidential election. The claim has now been debunked by an unlikely source -- one of the most Russiagate-frenzied big media outlets in the United States, the Washington Post.

Far away from the media echo chamber, the Post news story is headlined: “There’s Still Little Evidence That Russia’s 2016 Social Media Efforts Did Much of Anything.”

Thank Mother Earth 2017 is finally over. It was a year that chewed me up, crapped me out, made sweet love to me, punched me in the gut, stole my lunch money, made me laugh, pantsed me, and gave me hope. And I’m only talking about American politics.

It all began with saying goodbye to Barack Obama, the biggest disappointment since losing your virginity. His departure was going to be the end of congressional gridlock and political baby steps. Special interests, criminals, and Valerie Jarrett would no longer decide the nation’s fate while the president negotiated speaking fees with Cantor Fitzgerald. The people would take back their government, they would take back their lives. Yet, as we know all too painfully, the euphoria was immediately extinguished when Hurricane Donald made landfall.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has inspired a wave of corporate largesse. When Congress passed the tax bill on December 20, AT&T announced that it would give $1,000 bonuses over the holidays to 200,000 of its U.S. employees. The largest telecommunications company in the world by revenue, AT&T was a vocal supporter of the tax bill, which lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Other companies were quick to jump on the PR bandwagon. Comcast gave $1,000 bonuses to over 100,000 employees. Fifth Third announced a $15 minimum hourly wage across the company and gave out $1,000 bonuses to more than 13,500 of its employees.

The most recent claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “running” Donald Trump as if the U.S. president is a Russian intelligence asset comes from former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. “[Putin] knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the president,” Clapper told CNN last Monday. 

Clapper, who served as DNI under President Barack Obama, and who has repeatedly disparaged Trump both before and since the 2016 election, called the Russian president a “great case officer,” which might be the only nice thing said about Putin by a former senior U.S. official in quite some time. 

Clapper was asked by CNN’s Jim Sciutto, “You’re saying that Russia is handling President Trump as an asset?” He responded “That seems to be... that’s the appearance to me.” Later in the conversation, Clapper backtracked slightly, clarifying his remarks by adding “I’m saying this figuratively.” 

I’ve known Jill Stein for years. I knew weeks ago that the Senate “Intelligence” Committee was coming after her.

Let’s all take a moment to savor this great grass-roots U.S. Senate victory in Alabama of Democrat Doug Jones over alleged child molester Roy Moore. Let’s also celebrate the victory of the moderate Ralph Northam over the extremist Republican Ed Gillespie to be governor of Virginia, and a possible flip of the Virginia Legislature, with the influx of a strong contingent of progressive women.

Breathe deep. Stretch up your arms. Shout for joy.

OK?

Now let’s use all that great new energy to fend off Donald Trump’s twin assaults on net neutrality and our core economy.

Losing could leave us blind and impoverished. So don’t even think about it.

On net neutrality, the fight is ongoing and long-term.

On Trump’s tax scam, we have at best a few days.

A mass movement already is in place to save the internet.