Letters from an American: Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-30-2022?s=r

'This letter is for the musician I met this week...She said that in her travels lately she feels something powerful building under the radar, and asked me if such a thing had ever happened before.'

'...Carnegie wrote in 1889, " ...The money flowing up to the top meant that the country’s wealthiest men could build libraries and concert halls and universities and art collections to raise the cultural standards of the whole country.

...Americans could see that the nation was not in the rosy shape Republicans claimed. On shop floors in eastern factories, workers shoveled coal or worked looms for fourteen to sixteen hours a day for pennies...Farmers were saddled with high-interest mortgages, middlemen who skimmed the profits when crops went to market, and freight charges from railroad monopolies that took the rest.

While congressmen and eastern newspapers fought over every scrap of Washington political gossip, western farmers and workers and entrepreneurs had organized. New newspapers, letters, barbecues, lectures, and picnics had done their work, educating those on the peripheries of politics about the grand issues of the day. When the votes were counted after the November 1890 election, the Alliances...controlled 52 seats in the new Congress, enough to swing laws in their direction.'

Keep the faith.

Letters from an American: Heather Cox Richardson:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-28-2022?s=r

As usual there is so much to unpack in this Letter. What stood out for me was the DeSantis handbook.

"...Orbán has taken control of Hungary’s media, ensuring that his party wins all elections; has manipulated election districts in his own favor; and has consolidated the economy into the hands of his cronies by threatening opponents with harassing investigations, regulations, and taxes unless they sell out...

DeSantis is following this model right down to the fact that observers believe that Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill was modeled on a similar Hungarian law. DeSantis’s attack on Disney mirrors Orbán’s use of regulatory laws to punish political opponents (although the new law was so hasty and flawed it threatens to do DeSantis more harm than good).

DeSantis is not alone in his support for Orban’s tactics: Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson openly admires Orbán, and next month the Conservative Political Action Committee will hold its conference in Hungary, with Orbán as a keynote speaker."

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-25-2022?s=r

As always, the professor's letters are rich with information. This is what stood out to me.

"This week, the European Union set out to bring some kind of order to social media, reaching a deal that would require Facebook, YouTube, and other internet services to combat misinformation, disclose their algorithms, and stop targeting users with divisive advertising. And yet, the U.S. today appeared to move in the opposite direction. Twitter announced it had reached an agreement with billionaire Elon Musk to sell Twitter to him. If he gets over all the next hurdles to the deal, that widespread information hub will become a company owned by a single man. Reporter Matthew Gertz from Media Matters wrote that last Friday, 18 House Republicans led by Jim Jordan wrote to the Twitter board that had previously opposed the sale to Musk, browbeating them to consider the sale, which they interpret as a win for right-wing voices that have been banned from current Twitter for spreading lies."

My take regarding Musk: I put him in the same boat as Zuckerberg. If you use their platforms, don't allow them to use you. For example, I use FB for specific groups that I can't find anywhere else, primarily for a couple of medical conditions I have. I also use a pseudonym.

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-23-2022?s=r

"We knew that both former energy secretary Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) had texted with Meadows about possible avenues for overturning the election. We knew that Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had recorded videos before the insurrection that suggested they supported it. We had an odd statement from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on January 5 saying that he, not then–vice president Mike Pence, would count the certified electoral ballots the next day.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ)."

"Republican members of Congress were heavily involved in calls and meetings with former President Donald Trump and his top aides as they devised a strategy to overturn the election in December 2020, according to new evidence filed in federal court late Friday.

Lawmakers who attended meetings, in person or by phone, included Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and numerous members of the House Freedom Caucus, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Meadows who provided key testimony about the conversations and meetings Meadows had in December 2020."

They did this for a man who besmirches everything he touches, a thoroughly corrupt monster. I knew it, but I'm still heartbroken.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/22/gop-lawmakers-deeply-involved-in-trump-plans-to-overturn-election-new-evidence-suggests-00027340

https://www.rawstory.com/mike-pence-secret-service/

Raskin suspects the vice president's Secret Service agents were reporting to Trump's agents, and the plan was to take Pence away from the Capitol to corrupt the certification process as part of the insurrection.

"[Pence then] uttered what I think are the six most chilling words of this entire thing I've seen so far: 'I'm not getting in that car,'" Raskin said. "He knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do."

"It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress."

That's why we have Cheney and Kingzinger on the Jan 6 Committee. And now they've caught Kevin lying like the snake he is.

Letters from an American - Heather Cox Richardson - As usual, this Letter is chock full of important information, including this about the January 6 attempted coup de etat on the United States government:

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol also has a great deal of information; it has now interviewed more than 800 people...“The evidence so far points to the fact that Donald Trump knew and oversaw what happened on Jan. 6,” Lowell told DeVega (The Guardian). “Trump knew in advance about these different elements that came together to form both the political element of his plan, which was to have Pence throw the election, and the violence that took place on Jan. 6.”

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD)...“This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” Trump’s role in that coup will be the centerpiece of next month’s public committee hearings.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-19-2022?s=r

Letters from an American:

Since the American Civil War, deciding who pays taxes—and for what—has been shorthand for who belongs in our nation and what we care about. Curiously, Biden’s policies echo those of the early Republican Party.

The Republicans invented our national income taxes during the Civil War. As costs for uniforms, guns, food, mules, wagons, bounties, and burials rose to as much as $2 million a day...By the end of the war, Congress had imposed 5% taxes on manufactured goods, and income taxes of 5% for incomes between $600 and $5,000, 7.5% for incomes from $5,000 to $10,000, and 10% for incomes of more than $10,000.

Shortly after imposing taxes, Congress stopped selling the “public lands”—Indigenous lands in the West—to land speculators to raise money and instead gave them away to poor men to farm. “Every smoke rising from a new opening in the wilderness marks the foundation of a new feeder to Commerce and the Revenue,” wrote newspaper editor Horace Greeley.


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-18-2022?s=r