Many Corporations Are Funding Seditionists In The GOP

The following op-ed is by Alex Kingsbury in The New York Times:

Immediately after the Jan. 6 attack, hundreds of corporations announced freezes on donating money to Republican lawmakers who had voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victory. “Given recent events and the horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol, we are assessing our future PAC criteria,” a spokesperson for Toyota said a week after the attack.

For many corporations, that pause was short-lived.

“By April 1, 2021, Toyota had donated $62,000 to 39 Republican objectors,” the journalist Judd Legum wrote in his newsletter, Popular Information. That included a donation of $1,000 that Toyota gave to Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona who is a close ally of Donald Trump and a fervent devotee of the “big lie.”

In July 2021, Toyota reversed course and announced another hiatus from donating to lawmakers who voted to overturn the election results. Six months later, the money started to flow again. The company, in a statement to The Times, said it donates equally to both parties and “will not support those who, by their words and actions, create an atmosphere that incites violence.” (Corporations aren’t allowed to give directly to campaigns but instead form political action committees that donate in the name of the company.)

In the year and a half since the attack, rivers of cash from once skittish donors have resumed flowing to election deniers. Sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes just a thousand. But it adds up. In the month of April alone, the last month for which data is available, Fortune 500 companies and trade organizations gave more than $1.4 million to members of Congress who voted not to certify the election results, according to an analysis by the transparency group Accountable.US. AT&T led the pack, giving $95,000 to election objectors.

Of all the revelations so far from the hearings on the Jan. 6 attack, the most important is that the effort to undermine democratic elections in the United States is continuing. More than a dozen men and women who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection or the rallies leading up to it have run for elected office this year. Supporters of Mr. Trump have also run for public offices that oversee elections. And according to an investigation by The Times, at least 357 Republican legislators in nine states have used the power of their offices to attack the results of the 2020 election.

This isn’t a hypothetical threat. On Tuesday, New Mexico’s secretary of state was forced to ask the State Supreme Court to compel a Republican-led county election commission to certify primary election results. The commission had refused to do so, citing its distrust of its own voting machines.

There is also an active effort underway to frustrate the Jan. 6 committee’s work, including refusing to comply with subpoenas. Mr. Biggs, for instance, has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify, as have other Republican members of Congress, including Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, Mo Brooks and Scott Perry. (Mr. Perry, among other congressmen, asked for a presidential pardon for efforts to challenge and overturn the 2020 election, according to Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee. He has denied that charge.) Representatives Barry Loudermilk and Ronny Jackson have yet to agree to interview requests from the committee. Six of these congressmen alone have brought in more than $826,000 from corporate donors since Jan. 6, according to Accountable.US. (Mr. Brooks didn’t receive any money from the Fortune 500 companies and trade groups tracked in the report.)

We tend to think of the past and future threat to elections as coming from voters for Donald Trump and those whom they’d elect to office. But the success of these politicians also depends on money. And a lot of money from corporations like Boeing, Koch Industries, Home Depot, FedEx, UPS and General Dynamics has gone to politicians who reject the 2020 election results based on lies told by the former president, according to a tally kept by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW.

All told, as of this week, corporations and industry groups gave almost $32 million to the House and Senate members who voted to overturn the election and to the G.O.P. committees focused on the party’s congressional campaigns. The top 10 companies that gave money to those members, according to CREW’s analysis of campaign finance disclosures, are Koch Industries, Boeing, Home Depot, Valero Energy, Lockheed Martin, UPS, Raytheon, Marathon Petroleum, General Motors and FedEx. All of those companies, with the exception of Koch Industries and FedEx, once said they’d refrain from donating to politicians who voted to reject the election results.

Of the 249 companies that promised not to fund the 147 senators and representatives who voted against any of the results, fewer than half have stuck to their promise, according to CREW.

Kudos aplenty to the 85 corporations that stuck to their guns and still refuse to fund the seditious, including Nike, PepsiCo, Lyft, Cisco, Prudential, Marriott, Target and Zillow. That’s what responsible corporate citizenship looks like. It’s also patriotic.

We’re going to need more patriotic companies for what’s coming. Not only are Republican lawmakers who refused to certify the election results still in office; their party is poised to make gains during the midterm elections. Their electoral fortunes represent not only an endorsement from voters who support their efforts to undermine our democracy; they also represent the explicit financial support of hundreds of corporations that pour money into their campaign coffers.

Money in politics is the way of the world, especially in this country. But as the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation has made clear, Mr. Trump’s attempted coup was orders of magnitude different from the normal rough-and-tumble of politics. Returning to the status quo where corporate money flowed to nearly every politician elected to office isn’t just unseemly; it is helping to fund a continuing attack on our democracy.

Many Americans say they’ve moved on from the attack on Jan. 6. For those who haven’t, a good place to focus their attention is on the continuing threat to the Republic posed by politicians who are actively undermining it, and the money that helps them do so.

Trump (& Several GOP Congressmen) Are Guilty Of Sedition

From Joyce Vance at MSNBC.com: 

A lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of whether Trump knew he’d lost the election. It’s an important question — if not the mostimportant question in the context of potential criminal culpability. 

Thursday, the committee seriously undercut the theory that Trump actually believed his “big lie.” (And one strongly suspects the committee is not done yet in this regard). Tonight we learned, for example, that Trump was told by both his data experts and his own attorney general that he’d lost.

This matters because of a legal doctrine called “willful blindness,” which says a defendant can’t continue to maintain he didn’t know something — in this case, that Trump didn’t know he’d lost the election — if they have been credibly notified of the truth. Hearing the truth from your attorney general, a man who’d gone along with virtually all of your other whims, would seem to qualify. Even Ivanka was compelled by the evidence against fraud, saying she respected and believed Barr when he said no fraud tainted the outcome of the election. Trump’s continued insistence that he’d won, despite credible evidence there wasn’t any fraud and he’d actually lost, puts prosecutors one step closer to having the evidence necessary to bring criminal charges. 

Willful blindness is especially relevant in terms of Trump’s efforts to compel Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes. (Raffensberger will reportedly testify in person later in these hearings.) 11,780, of course, was the precise number of votes Trump needed to beat Biden in the state. It seems almost too obvious to bear repeating, but if you know you’ve lost, and you ask people you think are on your side to manufacture enough ballots to let you win, then you’re engaging in criminal conduct.

From Michael A. Cohen at MSNBC.com:

I’ve lost track of all the bombshells in Cheney’s opening statement, but don’t sleep on this one: Multiple members of Congress desperately sought pardons from Trump for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The key part here is not that they sought pardons, but why they wanted them. It suggests consciousness of guilt from these members. Or to put in simpler terms: They knew they had done something wrong. 

Those Who Sponsored The Sedition Must Be Punished

 The following post is by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on his own blog. I agree with every word he has written!

Call me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup.

Last week’ rampage left five dead, including a Capitol Hill police officer who was injured when he tangled with the pro-Trump mob. We’re fortunate the carnage wasn’t greater.

That the attempted coup failed shouldn’t blind us to its significance or the stain it has left on America. Nor to the importance of holding those responsible fully accountable. 

Trump’s culpability is beyond dispute. “There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” said Rep. Elizabeth Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House.

He should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office – immediately.  

To let the clock run out on his presidency and allow Trump to seek the presidency again would signal that attempted coups are part of the American system. If Senate Republicans can install a new Supreme Court justice in eight days, Trump can be removed from office within ten. 

He should then be arrested and tried for inciting violence and sedition (along with Trump Jr. and Rudy “trial-by-combat” Giuliani).

Those who attacked the Capitol should also be prosecuted. They have no First Amendment right to try to overthrow the U.S. government. 

Trump’s accomplices on Capitol Hill, most notably Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, should be forced to resign. Knowing Trump’s allegations of voting fraud were false, Cruz and Hawley nonetheless led an attempt to exclude Biden electors, even after the storming of the Capitol. 

The United States Constitution says that “no Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress” who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.“

Both Cruz and Hawley are eyeing runs for the presidency in 2024. They should be barred from running. 

Other abettors are now trying to distance themselves, but their conversions come too late. 

Senator Lindsey Graham now says Trump must “understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution,” and criticizes the White House for making “accusations that cannot be proven.”

Graham had been one of Trump’s key attack dogs, even bullying state election officials to change voting tallies. If Graham is not forced to resign, he should at least be censured and stripped of his ranking membership on the Senate Judiciary Committee.   

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Michael Pence finally broke with Trump, but only after remaining mute as Trump lied and bullied his way through the last eight weeks, thereby signaling agreement with his preposterous claims. 

McConnell should also resign or be censured and stripped of committee assignments. Pence should be barred from any future public office. 

Some administration officials have already resigned in response to the attempted coup. Transportation secretary Elaine Chao said it was “entirely avoidable,” and education secretary Betsy DeVos told Trump there was “no mistake the impact your rhetoric had.” Other Trumpers are reportedly jumping ship, too. 

Yet before Wednesday most of them defended Trump’s antics, lavished him with praise, and willingly did his dirty work. Their complicity should forever haunt their reputations and consciences. 

Other accessories are Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai,CEO of Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company. 

For four years, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have functioned as Trump’s megaphones, amplifying his every lie and rant. When pressured to remove Trump’s fabrications about the election, they labeled them “disputed.”  

Twitter has now permanently suspended Trump, preventing him from sending messages to his more than 88 million followers “due to the risk of further incitement for violence.” Facebook has banned him indefinitely. YouTube should be next. 

But why did it take an attempted coup for them to act? 

Many business leaders who are now denouncing the violence enthusiastically bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign, knowing full well who he was and what he was capable of doing. And they’ve had no qualms about advertising on his largest megaphones, including Fox News. All are complicit because they knew Trump would stop at nothing. 

Fox News’s mendacious hosts and producers have no excuse. After repeatedly telling Trump supporters the election was stolen, they’re now saying the attempted coup was “understandable” because Trump supporters believed the election was stolen. Morally, if not legally, they share responsibility for this travesty. 

All are all part of the ecosystem that led to Trump’s sedition. That ecosystem is still in place. 

Those who say we should “look forward” to a new administration and forget or dismiss what occurred last week are delusional. Unless all who participated in or abetted the attempted overthrow of the United States government are held accountable, it will happen again. Next time it may succeed. 

Chuck Norris Is Losing His Mind

This is a sad story for me. There was once a time when I respected Chuck Norris. The martial arts expert and actor had built a pretty good reputation and was generally thought of as a nice guy who loved his country. But the older he gets, the more he destroys that image.

It looks like the 69 year-old actor no longer supports his country now that Barack Obama is president. I don't know whether it's because he is an African-American, because he's a Democrat, or both, but Norris is now talking about committing sedition and encouraging others to do the same.

Norris wants Texas to secede from the United States -- violently if necessary. He claims to know of "thousands of cell groups" who are united against Congress and President Obama. He actually believes that Texans are ready to rise up against the federal government. I guess he's forgotten what happened last time that was tried.

Making matters even worse, it looks like he also has delusions of grandeur. Once Texas secedes, he sees himself as becoming president of the new country. Norris used to be a right-winger, but now he's gone far beyond that. I think he's beginning to lose his mind.

There are many Texans who like President Obama and many who don't, but they are all good Americans who love their country and would never dream of fighting against it. Texas currently leans Republican and has for a while, but it would be a serious mistake to think Texans are ready to take arms against the federal government.

It's sad to see a man like Chuck Norris disintegrate so publicly and completely.