Opinion

It would be hard to argue that 2021 was a productive year in politics. But for Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – the CrossFit coach turned U.S. congresswoman representing Georgia's 14th congressional district – the year has been just that.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The United States was founded on the idea of freedom by right, not freedom by bloodline. But that has not stopped the super-rich from creating what can only be called an American aristocracy. So much of our politics is shaped by a few hundred families, the .01 percent. Many of them can trace their wealth and power to the late 19th century.

This week, ProPublica posted a barn-burning report on fortunes amassed by the robber barons of old that are still going strong, generations later, in the 21st century. That’s thanks to a federal tax code designed and maintained in large part by our feudal overlords, whose sons and daughters, and institutions, define politics, even what constitutes private property rights and whose job is to protect them.

After days of rumors swirling among reporters on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden confirmed it late Thursday evening: The Build Back Better plan is not going to pass this year. Which almost certainly means that the timeline for passing it is never.

Biden, of course, denied that "never" is in the cards. Instead, he released a statement to reporters, claiming, "My team and I are having ongoing discussions" with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the primary holdout stopping Democrats from passing the bill through the Senate. "Leader Schumer and I are determined to see the bill successfully on the floor as early as possible," Biden insisted.

Four years ago I wrote a book entitled Supremely Partisan about the Supreme Court, in which I argued that the justices were arriving at outcomes left and right based not on the Constitution, but on preferred policy choices. Because of this, I feared this venerated institution would lose public confidence as polls showed that public confidence in the Court ebbs to the extent that decisions appear political, and the justices are perceived as mere politicians in robes.

I predicted that with a Trump presidency, and another conservative justice or two (I never dreamed he would get three picks), the Court would move swiftly to expand gun rights (from all reports they will), reaffirm capital punishment (they did even where prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed that the death-row prisoner was not eligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability), and, horribile dictu, eventually overrule Roe v. Wade (looks like they will).

Around this time one year ago, Donald Trump was leaning heavily on the Justice Department (DOJ) to help him overturn the presidential election. According to notes taken by top DOJ official Richard Donoghue, after attorney general Bill Barr had abruptly skedaddled out of town before the proverbial manure hit the fan, the president called up the newly installed acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and told him "just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen."

That Nixonian "request" was denied by Rosen, since it would have been a bald-faced lie but as we later learned, the White House was also plotting with an obscure DOJ lawyer named Jeffrey Clark to put the heat on Rosen to squeeze state election officials in states Trump claimed without evidence had been stolen from him. Rosen was told that Trump planned for Clark to replace him if he didn't comply but Rosen resisted and Trump backed off after his own White House counsel convinced him that there would be mass resignations at the DOJ if he followed through. Other than one congressman from Pennsylvania, a Republican by the name of Scott Perry who had reportedly called up Donoghue to threaten him into doing Clark's bidding, until now we didn't know exactly who the "R. Congressmen" were. Now The New York Times reports that Trump's accomplices were none other than the members of the House's far-right Freedom Caucus.

It has been a very bad week for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows —maybe even the worst week of his life. And it's not over yet.

Late on Tuesday night, the House of Representatives voted to hold Meadows, a former GOP congressman from North Carolina, in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the bipartisan Jan. 6th Committee. The vote fell mostly along party lines, with only Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans serving on the committee, being the only two Republicans who voted with every Democrat to hold.

Every year around this time we get to argue about the religious significance of Christmas symbols only to be told they’re really secular celebrations of winter holidays. Some places choose to decorate celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanza while others pretend Christmas trees aren’t really Christian. Also if you make an issue of the obviously Christian decorations you’re treated as a killjoy grinch.

As a Jewish woman whose mother loves putting a Christmas tree up, I would really like to say none of this matters and just enjoy the holidays. But unfortunately, I have to be that little grinch and point out that the ubiquity of Christmas decorations, and the claim they’re really just secular, is a pretty big cause for concern. Honestly, it should violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution but, since we live in a Christian country, the Supreme Court has convinced themselves Christmas trees are totally secular and for everyone.

The Supreme Court just offered their blessing to the Texas abortion ban, which rewards bounty hunters for snitching on those who "aid and abet" abortions. Now less than one week later, Republicans are looking to use similar mechanisms to ban not just abortions, but the teaching of history.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has offered up the use of this novel enforcement mechanism to fight the culture wars in classrooms and corporations, which should send a chill down any freedom-loving person's spine. Called the "Stop WOKE Act," the bill would allow any parent to sue a school district for teaching "critical race theory."

Yesterday, the Fed’s policy committee announced it would both end its bond-buying program and likely raise interest rates sooner than had been expected. “Inflation is more persistent and higher, and that the risk of it remaining higher for longer has grown,” Fed chair Jerome Powell explained. Translated: Powell and the Fed are about to slow the economy — even though we’re still at least 4 million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic. And even though, as a result, millions of American workers won’t get the raises they deserve.

I think that’s a big mistake. Powell’s medicine has nothing to do with the real reason for inflation: the increasing concentration of the American economy into the hands of a relative few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.

President Joe Biden released 1,500 of the documents from the JKF assassination out of the 10,000 that were expected to be released. This comes at a time that a group of QAnon conspiracy theorists await in Dealey Plaza for his son, John F. Kennedy Jr. to reappear and reveal that he faked his death.

The Dallas Observer parodied some of the followers so that they could share some of the conversations overheard as they wait for the former president's son, who died in a plane crash over 20 years ago.

it happened twice on Tuesday, and one person was involved both times: Liz Cheney. The House Jan. 6 committee has been moving in the same direction the Watergate investigation moved for a while now, but the thing with Mark Meadows' text messages is what turned the corner. Cheney took center stage the way Sen. Howard Baker gained the spotlight during the Senate Watergate hearings in the summer of 1973 when he asked his famous question: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

Baker's question was prompted by the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean, who had just blown the roof off the Senate hearing room when he testified that he discussed the cover-up of the Watergate burglary with Richard Nixon at least 35 times. Cheney's question was apparently prompted by the revelation of a series of texts between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and several members of Congress on Jan. 6 as the assault on the Capitol was underway. "We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes," Ms. Cheney stated grimly. "Mr. Meadows's testimony will bear on a key question in front of this committee: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress's official proceeding to count electoral votes?"

Regular readers know of my interest in “regime change.” That’s the term I’ve been using to describe when one party and its ideas prevail among a majority of Americans until they fail to meet the political demands of the moment. That’s the start of a period of transition, during which decadence, instability and decay reign, until the other party and its ideas prevail among a majority.

“Regime change” is another way of describing what some political scientists call “the cycles of political time.” The theory is that political time is not linear, moving in one direction that, as many Americans believe, leads us toward some kind of enlightened end. Instead of political time progressing, as many liberals believe, it moves in cycles so there is no end at which point society is much improved comparatively. Instead, old problems become current, current problems become old. History doesn’t repeat itself. It’s just familiar.

After a full day of silence, the hosts of Fox News finally quit ignoring their bombshell text message scandal and came out swinging. It's unclear, however, why they needed an entire day to draft their responses as what they finally offered was both lazy and incoherent.

The text messages sent to Donald Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Jan. 6 indisputably prove that Fox News hosts deliberately lie to their audiences.