Month: March 2025

How Waltz is Wrong

by Greg Snyder

On the ABC’s This Week Martha Raddatz asked Mike Waltz this question:

RADDATZ: So Russia could be given the Donbas in addition to hanging onto Crimea even though they invaded Ukraine?

MIKE WALTZ: We have to ask ourselves, is it realistic — are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea?

The answer is not so simplistic. Plus, it is not really an answer to the question that was asked. There are ethnic Russians, many of whom have lived in the Donbas for more than a generation, many of whom identify more as Ukrainian than Russian even though their everyday language is Russian, who should be given a choice to go back to Russia or remain Ukrainian. The ethnic Russians living in the Donbas have been living, along with their Ukrainian neighbors, with the hell rained down on the Donbas by Russian aggression since the beginning of this war. Ethnic Russians will need to determine their loyalty and either stay in Ukraine as Ukrainians, or return to Russia.

Likewise, there are Russians and Tatars in Crimea who are in the same predicament. Waltz does not even mention or apparently take into account the Tatar voice.

This is a matter that Ukraine and the ethnic Russians and Tatars who consider themselves more Ukrainian than Russian will have to sort out after the sovereignty of Ukraine has been secured. And they will sort it out in a civilized way because they have lived as neighbors for hundreds of years.

Mike Waltz’s answer is too simplistic. It doesn’t take these historic and actual facts into account. Waltz really should do his homework and come to an understanding of Ukraine since he is trying to appear to be a diplomat. A diplomat without knowledge and understanding is not much more than a tool.

What is a General Strike?

by Greg Snyder

A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal.

A general strike action can also be a general boycott of paying taxes until conditions and demands are met. Remember the Boston Tea Party? New Englanders got fed up with King George imposing an onerous tax burden on tea which they eventually reacted to by dumping the taxable good, tea, into Boston Harbor. It was an effective message that they were no longer going to pay taxes for no representation and for being governed but having no say in how they were being governed. Sound familiar?

Our situation here in the United States today is different in that it is not tea being taxed, it is that corporations and the rich are not being taxed. Not fairly. Not nearly enough. That means that wealth inequality has become grotesquely lopsided with the well-healed majority of tax payers who are not millionaires or billionaires regularly and continuously paying the lion’s share of taxes while millionaires and billionaires do not. And that is not sustainable.

Everything that is happening in our politics right now is all about money, power, and control. We are witnessing the take over, remaking, and reforming of our government, which, by the way, is a constitutional democracy, into what the Heritage Foundation via Project 2025, Trump, Musk, Vance, the entire Republican Party, and, now, I can add to the list, a small group of Congressional democrats who are collaborating with the Republicans, want to be a permanent, tax exempt class of millionaires and billionaires and corporations. This would be the conversion of democracy into an oligarchic kleptocracy and authoritarianism. It is essentially an attempt to reestablish a permanent ruling privileged class. However, this time instead of a landed gentry/aristocracy and a king, it would be an oligarchy headed by a wannabe dictator and his servile republican party and corporations which, according to the Supreme Court are people too. But most corporations have never paid taxes the way we “the people” do. Corporations and the rich are essentially exempt from fair taxation. They pay scant taxes if any at all while we, the people, pay taxes at rates that actually hurt us and take away any financial reserves that we may have and prevent us from having savings. But a billionaire will still have and will always have many thousands of millions of dollars in savings. The nouveau oligarchic class wants to have all the power, make all decisions, decide all laws, and create an economy that works for them and only for them. That, of course, would always require a reliable tax base from all of the rest of us so the bills can be paid without inconveniencing those who do not pay their fair share of taxes.

The foolhardiness of this attempted swapping out of our constitutional democracy with a kleptocratic oligarchy and dictatorship, which currently is steaming full speed ahead, is that it is not, and will not become, permanent. This situation is not completed and it probably never will be completed. Americans are proud of their 250 year old constitution and are proud of their many achievements and what they have been able to build as a nation of all cultures, ethnicities, in this wonderful multicultural and socially progressive culture that we have nurtured and grown. They are proud too of the strong global economy that has for many decades been one of the strongest pillars of the global economy which is now under attack by Trump and Musk and their disastrous meddling and destructive actions and policies. Americans, formerly could be and were proud of the fact that they used to stand up for and promote democracy. But the current president embraces fascism and is working very hard to undermine the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine through extortion, bullying, withdrawing and withholding financial and material aid and assistance while kowtowing to and doing the bidding of Putin. And for what? Why does this president cozy up to an aggressor imperialist dictator who has been our enemy since the end of WWII and is an enemy of democracy everywhere? So, now, Americans can not be said to be defending democracy anymore. On that point of pride, the United States has shamefully fallen into the abyss and it will be very hard to climb back out of it.

So, back to the idea of a General Strike. Yes. It is a radical idea for people to stop work and all economic activities that are not for basic survival and to sustain that effort until our set goals have been achieved. It is something that people CAN do if they want to. A boycott of paying taxes can be an effective action that could allow us to make our demands known and put our conditions to the government if it wants us to resume our proper paying of taxes. But it would have to be a mass action and we would have to be able to sustain living under those circumstances for as long as the strike would be needed to achieve our goals. That would be a huge undertaking that would take an enormous amount or planning and preparation. A lot of brainstorming and organization would have to go into it because it would have to be a national mass action. Small and medium sized businesses and their employees could talk through what they could possibly do to engage in the stoppage and how they would financially cover it and survive it for the long haul. Entrepreneurs would have to figure out how they could participate.

What would be our goals for such a general strike? I can think of a few things immediately that I would demand. These are as follow:

Remove the artificial cap on upper levels of income tax for funding Social Security.

Congress needs to return all of the money that it has “borrowed” from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for unsanctioned wars and expand benefits to recipients.

Congress needs to create Medicare for All.

Congress needs to write a fair tax code that removes exemptions, waivers, subsidies, and which taxes ALL income and wealth progressively and at significantly higher levels than it has for half a century.

Congress needs to re establish the IRS to levels of funding and function that existed in the Biden Administration.

Congress needs to end and remove and all barriers and obstacles to voting by all eligible voters. All gerrymandering needs to be ended. All states need to be required to draw fair voting district maps using non-partisan and independent legislative map makers. Automatic voter registration at 18 years of age for all eligible voters and voting by mail should be available to all voters nationally.

Congress needs to get rid of the electoral college so that one person, one vote, is the way we elect our president which would go a long way to refresh and revitalize democracy itself.

Congress needs to overturn Citizen’s United and get money out of politics. Strict limits on money in politics are long overdue. Congressional lobbying should be limited, regulated, and made completely transparent with freedom of information and public access to all lobbying activities.

Congress needs to enact campaign finance reform and a reformation of politics in general. There should be term limits for all offices. Politics as a career beyond fixed term limits should be prohibted law. Public elections should be turned from the current two year cycles they have become to cycles that last only a few months and are entirely paid for with public financing.

I personally would like to see the addition of a third political party, an independent party, to represent independent voters who do not identify as either democrats or republicans and who have no representation and are effectively shut out of the primaries and are not currently allowed candidates of their own.

Congress needs to institute reform of the Supreme Court to ensure that it is, indeed, once again the highest court in the land which it is purported to be. Violations of ethics, conflict of interest, non recusal in cases of conflict of interest, taking bribes, acting in a political and/or biased and/or prejudicial manner, and any and all other violations of a set of standards that Americans have always up until recently taken for granted that the highest court didn’t just observe, but modeled, need to be remediated. Sadly, with this current Supreme Court those standards have been repeatedly violated and the court has lost the trust and confidence of the American people. Since the Supreme Court has not done so for itself on its own volition, Congress needs to establish rules, guidelines, and standards of behavior for a court that has forgotten that any of those things apply to it. In reform of the Supreme Court there needs to be a mechanism by which justices in violation of such standards can be impeached, prosecuted, and removed from the bench. Bribery and acceptance of “gifts” by Supreme Court Justices or any other judge should once again be made illegal.

Congress needs to establish laws that definitively maintain the executive branch within the parameters set forth for it in the constitution.

Congress needs to establish laws that hold the executive branch to account and remove impunity from all individuals, including the president.

Congress needs to make laws that ensure that the independent agencies of the executive branch remain independent and are protect from abuse of a unitary executive.

Congress needs to reinstall and protect government watch dogs like Inspectors General that actually prevent real fraud and waste unlike Musk’s non-official federal non-entity, DOGE, and ensure that they are independent of a unitary executive. Congress needs to remove Musk, seize everything that he has done and is yet to do, rescind what he and DOGE have done, end his federal contracts, and permanently ban him and other oligarchs and so-called special agents of the executive branch since they are not legitimate federal entities.

This is just a partial wish list. These are just a few of the demands that I would like to make as a participant in a general strike. What would your demands be?

Let’s see how the rest of 2025 goes. For the next tax year perhaps a mass general strike could be something that we as a country should/could consider doing as a way to go forward? Possibly engaging in a general strike next year at tax time would give us time to plan and prepare for it accordingly during this year.

I leave it to you to think about a general strike and tax boycott and whether or not it could work for you.

The Long and Repeating Republican Ultimatum then Democratic Capitulation Tango.

by Greg Snyder

I don’t get it. Republicans can’t or won’t write a budget that will get the votes it needs to pass. They don’t work with democrats. So, they write a CR instead.

This is a familiar repeating pattern. They stuff the CR with provisions to allow them to try to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security at a later date. They expect democrats to cave to the CR. The senate democrats could have stopped the CR by declaring it DOA prior to it being forwarded to the senate from the house. But Chuck Schumer did not do that. He could have stated that the poison pill CR would go nowhere and demanded that the Republicans go back and write a budget that they could send that would pass. But he did not do that. Schumer could have insisted on a budget, a fair budget, that does not make the cuts the republicans are trying to get away with making that are deeply unpopular with voters and the public in general. Senate democrats, with Chuck Schumer as their leader, say they will do all they can to protect Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security and not allow cuts to those programs. Yet they will probably vote for cloture on the CR with no effort to prevent the malware in the CR that would be a back door for the republicans attempting cuts later. Is the democratic promise to protect these social programs just a joke or are they simply too lazy or afraid to try to break the pattern of ultimatum and capitulation because its such a long-standing habit?

Is it all just meaningless rhetoric and what they think makes for good optics? Will Senate democrats ever have a leader who would be able to lead them on a journey of change that we need as a country and stop the familiar behaviors of worrying and hand wringing and actually adopt the principle to force needed changes? This stagnation and lack of courage to force necessary changes indicates to me that leadership is feeble and perhaps needs to retire and allow younger, more energetic leadership to take the reins.

It’s a very familiar repeating pattern: Republicans can’t write a budget that will pass so they write what they call “a clean CR” and stuff it with what they want as a clever way to attempt to do the real damage that they want to do at a latter date without, of course, disclosing that to their constituents or the public at large. They do this because they are cowards. But it gives them a back door and gets their job of serving their paymasters done. So, the republicans set up their ultimatum for the democrats. The choices the republicans give the democrats are: either vote for the CR to keep the government open and give them what they want which will enable them to later go back to doing the real damage, or close the government down, which would encourage Trump to use the stalemate to his advantage.

This very familiar repeating pattern of ultimatum and capitulation is very old, very dysfunctional, very unproductive, and perpetuates the stasis of governance. It sure would be nice if both parties could actually start getting things done once again. But that can’t happen until they stop playing the political/partisan game of war game they have engaged in for half a century.

Republican Carnage and Wreckage

by Greg Snyder


In the most recent census of 2020, the population of the United States was 331,449,281 people.

Since the inauguration of Trump on January 20th, the country has been experiencing the threat or actual loss of retirement savings, personal identification, personal safety, well-being and security, jobs, education, the USPS, the VA, a healthy economy, health and healthcare, a healthy environment, human rights, diversity, national security, our republic of democratic government and the constitution, the potential for a crypto apocalypse, general instability. And this is just a partial list of the disastrous actions, executive orders, and policies that the Trump administration has issued and which continue to come from Trump. Every day he brings us another or several new horrors and potential disasters. The strong economy that the Biden administration left us with as of January 20, 2025 has been maimed, debilitated, and made vulnerable. The familiar corruption, cronyism, deal-making and pay-to-play system of Trump has reappeared but in a much more vile and malicious form this time. The retribution, threats, intimidation tactics have come back and this time are endorsed and reinforced by Trump’s cabinet picks and his accomplices, the entire republican party. Inflation has come roaring back. The stock market has tanked. Trump has sadistically abandoned Ukraine and betrayed our long-standing allies to curry favor with our enemy, Putin. Trump has filled his cabinet and surrounded himself with a host of advisors with very likely certifiably mentally ill individuals. Mental illness almost seems to be a requirement to work in the Trump administration.

The group that is responsible for doing all of this to all of us is a minuscule number of people compared to the 331,449,281 people in the population. And they are easily named: Trump, Vance, Musk, Trump’s cabinet and inner circle of advisors, 218 house republicans, and 53 republican senators. It is this president and his vice president, the 15 member cabinet, and the (approx.) couple dozen close personal advisors to Trump, this group of approximately 310 people (out of 331,449,281 people) who are doing all of this serious damage to all the rest of us. Republican elected officials at the state level who fall into lockstep with them also add to the still small sliver of the population that is burdening the entire population with this injurious behavior. State level republicans add a significant number to this small number relative to the population as a whole. But altogether, the 310 plus the group of state elected republicans working in lockstep are, compared to the population as a whole, a tiny sliver of the entire population but are hugely disproportionately destructive. It is this small group that is inflicting this injury on the rest of us.

This is a small enough group that it could easily be accommodated in a small for profit maximum security prison.

The United States came into existence as a sovereign nation when it threw off the yoke of George III of England. The country rejected being ruled by a king and his aristocracy. Americans have always taken pride in this act of self actualization that led it to becoming a free and independent sovereign nation. Trump, his oligarch cronies, his mentally ill cabinet and advisors, and the entire republican party, whether they individually are russian assets, white christian nationalists, insurrectionists, and/or sadists and haters want the American people to forget about their proud origin of throwing off a despotic king and their subsequent formation of a constitutional democracy. They are attempting to rewrite history and come out of it as victors and the new king and aristocracy, or in this case, the new American dictator and his kleptocratic oligarchy. I do not think he/they will succeed. The American people are waking up to this reality and, I believe, are slowly coming to their senses about it and will find a way to quash this affliction and will, eventually, come out stronger for it.

My question is, will it take another revolution to get there?


Republican Carnage and Wreckage

by Greg Snyder


In the most recent census of 2020, the population of the United States was 331,449,281 people.

Since the inauguration of Trump on January 20th, the country has been experiencing the threat or actual loss of retirement savings, personal identification, personal safety, well-being and security, jobs, education, the USPS, the VA, a healthy economy, health and healthcare, a healthy environment, human rights, diversity, national security, our republic of democratic government and the constitution, the potential for a crypto apocalypse, general instability. And this is just a partial list of the disastrous actions, executive orders, and policies that the Trump administration has issued and which continue to come from Trump. Every day he brings us another or several new horrors and potential disasters. The strong economy that the Biden administration left us with as of January 20, 2025 has been maimed, debilitated, and made vulnerable. The familiar corruption, cronyism, deal-making and pay-to-play system of Trump has reappeared but in a much more vile and malicious form this time. The retribution, threats, intimidation tactics have come back and this time are endorsed and reinforced by Trump’s cabinet picks and his accomplices, the entire republican party. Inflation has come roaring back. The stock market has tanked. Trump has sadistically abandoned Ukraine and betrayed our long-standing allies to curry favor with our enemy, Putin. Trump has filled his cabinet and surrounded himself with a host of advisors with very likely certifiably mentally ill individuals. Mental illness almost seems to be a requirement to work in the Trump administration.

The group that is responsible for doing all of this to all of us is a minuscule number of people compared to the 331,449,281 people in the population. And they are easily named: Trump, Vance, Musk, Trump’s cabinet and inner circle of advisors, 218 house republicans, and 53 republican senators. It is this president and his vice president, the 15 member cabinet, and the (approx.) couple dozen close personal advisors to Trump, this group of approximately 310 people (out of 331,449,281 people) who are doing all of this serious damage to all the rest of us. Republican elected officials at the state level who fall into lockstep with them also add to the still small sliver of the population that is burdening the entire population with this injurious behavior. State level republicans add a significant number to this small number relative to the population as a whole. But altogether, the 310 plus the group of state elected republicans working in lockstep are, compared to the population as a whole, a tiny sliver of the entire population but are hugely disproportionately destructive. It is this small group that is inflicting this injury on the rest of us.

This is a small enough group that it could easily be accommodated in a small for profit maximum security prison.

The United States came into existence as a sovereign nation when it threw off the yoke of George III of England. The country rejected being ruled by a king and his aristocracy. Americans have always taken pride in this act of self actualization that led it to becoming a free and independent sovereign nation. Trump, his oligarch cronies, his mentally ill cabinet and advisors, and the entire republican party, whether they individually are russian assets, white christian nationalists, insurrectionists, and/or sadists and haters want the American people to forget about their proud origin of throwing off a despotic king and their subsequent formation of a constitutional democracy. They are attempting to rewrite history and come out of it as victors and the new king and aristocracy, or in this case, the new American dictator and his kleptocratic oligarchy. I do not think he/they will succeed. The American people are waking up to this reality and, I believe, are slowly coming to their senses about it and will find a way to quash this affliction and will, eventually, come out stronger for it.

My question is, will it take another revolution to get there?