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Tennessee Anti-Gay Law: Alcoa Only National Company To Say “No!”

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Alcoa can’t wait… to distance themselves from the part an Alcoa representative on the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce played in helping an awful anti-gay bill pass in that state.

In response to AmericaBlog initiated Netroots action, Alcoa has released a statement condemning the law and calling on Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee to veto it.

“Alcoa provides equal employment opportunity without discrimination and supports state and local legislation protecting the rights of all community members. We do not agree with the chamber on this issue and would ask that the governor veto the bill.”

Alcoa responded 100% to the ask of the petition action, ask the Governor to veto it. The text of the petition:

We demand that you issue an immediate statement withdrawing your support for HB 600/SB 632, and that you tell Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to veto this bill.

So we can be very grateful to Alcoa for this unequivocal show of support and penance. Alcoa is a publicly traded corporation with nearly 60,000 employees and reported over $21B in revenues in 2010. They produce aluminum. Other companies that control board seats include FedEx, AT&T, Comcast, DuPont, Pfizer, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Caterpillar, KPMG,Whirlpool, Embraer and United HealthCare.Three others have responded to the petition action, although, less impressively.

The Netroots call to action has put corporate America swiftly on the run to distance their involvement in lobbying for Tennessee’s anti-gay bill, HB600/SB 632, which would strip away local LGBT non-discrimination protection, such as was recently enacted in Nashville, and prohibit it anywhere else in the state of Tennessee. Last week I wrote about the Equal Access to Intrastate Commerce Act. The state law purports to assert the State’s ultimate sovereignty to define anti-discrimination protection only at the state level and enforce uniformity. But, it is really a naked attempt to strip away local and city level ordinances that protect LGBT residents of Tennessee from discrimination. It has passed both houses and awaits the Governor’s signature.

The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce lobbied hard on behalf of the bill and as such, LGBT activists have called their board members and parent companies to do some explaining. Please tell us how stripping LGBT Americans from discrimination protection is good for business?

In just a few short days, this movement is already having a big impact. The petition has gained almost 10,000 signatures, it is here. It must be getting someone’s attention. No less than four of the 13 companies targeted have issued statements of response.

The other companies releasing statements are Nissan here, FedEx here and AT&T here. They are not nearly as forthright as Alcoa’s and contain a fair amount of spin.

The other statements seem more aimed at damage control than, you know, actually helping the LGBT citizens of Tennessee whose civil rights their companies representatives have thrown their weight behind stripping away.

None of the other three call on the Governor to Veto the bill.

FedEx’s statement says:

FedEx did not lobby for SB632/HB600 – it is our policy not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. While FedEx is a member of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, we do not support every position proposed by the Chamber.

This is disingenuous, and bordering on a lie.In fact, FedEx is more than a member, they’re on the board of directors. Which would place them in the position to, ahem, direct the Chamber’s actions. As such they cannot so easily wash their hands of this and say, “We didn’t know what the Chamber was up to!”

Nissan’s statement says:

HB600/SB632 has become more closely associated with eroding civil liberties than fostering a strong business climate and this we do not support.

And AT&T says:

However, the bill has become implicated in efforts to erode the rights of the gay community, which we do not support.

Actually, that was the whole point of the bill, to erode a hard-fought victory in Nashville. And a little due diligence on the parts of these companies before endorsing would have made that quite clear to them.Nissan, AT&T and FedEx seem more concerned about the bill being “perceived” as an attack on gays than making any actual penance or reparations for their company’s role in helping it pass.

And it isn’t just a perception, this bill is very clearly an outright attack on LGBT Americans, designed specifically to strip them of protection from discrimination. It is a direct response to the LGBT community’s hard-fought victory in getting LGBT non-discrimination protection in Nashville, Tennessee. Stripping those discrimination protections away was the impetus and the purpose of the law. And a cursory research before these companies’ proxies endorsed and worked for it would made that very clear.

It was made quite clear by main bill backer Family Action Council’s support for the bill, from their web site:

How will new legislation in Nashville affect family values across Tennessee?

Yes, “family values” because anything that is good for the LGBT is a threat to families. That’s always a given isn’t it? If a McDonald’s manager can’t fire the fry cook for being gay, you’re going to have to let Elton John babysit your son.The primary backer of the bill was the Family Action Council, a group with a very clear Christian right agenda:

Our Mission: To equip Tennesseans and their public officials to effectively promote and defend a culture that values the traditional family, for the sake of the common good.Our Goals: Engaged Citizens … Godly Officials … Strong Families

If Nissan and AT&T are now genuinely surprised this bill became “associated” or “implicated” to be anti-gay, they just weren’t paying attention. And just look at this TV advertisement Family Action Council produced in support of HB600/SB632. You’d have to be blind to miss the anti-gay animus and hateful demagoguery they were inciting to sell this bill to the public:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7o2YGH8bacE%3Ffs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US

This is the most outrageously homophobic commercial I have ever had the misfortune of viewing. The message is simple: only passing HB600/SB632 can prevent your children from being molested in a public park by the gays. It’s also a tried and true tactic of these hate groups. The soundtrack of blood-curdling screams of the little ones was a particularly classy touch.One thing AT&T and Nissan might consider adding to their vetting process of deciding whether to endorse a piece of legislation, is seeing if it’s a pet project of known Hate Group, identified by The Southern Poverty Law Center. Among the groups sending out Action Alerts of support is The Family Research Council. Family Research Council has been named a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, adding them to the ranks of the KKK and Neo-Nazis, and with good reason.

One quote that earned them that spot was in criticizing American Airlines for providing LGBT partner benefits a spokesman, “What are you going to develop next? A pedophilia market?” Equating homosexuality with pedophilia is a constant refrain for these groups, as we see by the advertisement above. There is no scientific basis to suggest gays and lesbians are more or less inclined to molest children than heterosexuals, but the keep banging that drum because it works.

In the future, any group considering endorsing legislation might do well to cross-reference if a Hate Group is also strongly endorsing it (like the Klan or neo-Nazis, who also make SPLC’s lists). If they are, the chances are pretty good it’s not going end up being a bill you’d want your name associated with. And you can save yourself the trouble of walking back your support by issuing statements like this one from Nissan:

However, HB600/SB632 has become more closely associated with eroding civil liberties than fostering a strong business climate and this we do not support.

Nissan, AT&T and FedEx still need to step it up and do as Alcoa has done: Call on the Governor to veto this bill. That is, if they are sincere in their support of LGBT Rights.

Right click to Enlarge.

Here is the original target list of companies, all are Board Members of the Chamber of Commerce, (not mere members as FedEx tried to say they were). Numbers are their Human Rights Campaign score on the Corporate Equality Index rating their gay-friendliness out of 100. Cross-outs indication companies that have tried to explain their company’s involvement thus far.

AT&T: 100
DuPont: 100
Pfizer: 100
KPMG: 100
Whirlpool: 100
Alcoa: 100
Comcast: 95
Blue Cross Blue Shield : 90
Caterpillar: 75
FedEx: 70
Nissan: 50

Interestingly, Pfizer’s Diversity and Inclusion page includes the following quote:

“Pfizer is committed to sustaining and expanding a culture of Diversity and Inclusion in everything we do.”

“Everything” Pfizer? Including having your representatives lobby for a bill that strips LGBTs in Tennessee of discrimination protection? How does that track?When we’re experiencing impact this substantial it means it’s time to double down. That a company the size of Alcoa, with major operations in the state of Tennessee, has called on the Governor to veto the bill is major news. I am optimistic we’ll be seeing this story get national media coverage in the coming days. That four targets have felt the need to respond will provide pressure for the others to explain their representative’s support for this awful and regressive piece of legislation, which the business community cannot have any reasonable explanation to have a stake in.

Please help us send a message to corporate America: “Keep your hands off of LGBT Americans’ Civil Rights.” Please sign the open letter calling on all of these companies to tell the governor to veto the bill. If you have already please, post it on on your Facebook wall, tweet it or email it to a few friends.

Lt Dan Choi helped out last week, tweeting the link and added a timely and humorous aside:

Photobucket

Yes, time is running out! The Governor may sign this bill this week. Thanks to everyone who signed yesterday. Keep up the pressure.

 

Scott Wooledge also writes at Daily Kos under the handle Clarknt67.
Read Scott’s previous post at The New Civil Rights Movement, “142 Gay Veterans Not Worth $2.1 Million To Obama Administration.”

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News

‘Antisemitic’: Trump Blasted for Attack on Jewish Democrats

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Donald Trump is attacking Jews who vote Democratic, barely days after the criminally-indicted ex-president threatened there would be a “bloodbath” if voters do not put him back in the Oval Office. His remarks, which include claiming Jews Democrats “hate” Israel and their own religion, were quickly labeled antisemitic.

“I actually think they hate Israel,” Trump on Monday told far right wing radio host Sebastian Gorka, who alleged the Biden administration and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “hate” Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

“I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel,” Trump, upping the ante, responded. Gorka is his former White House aide who served briefly in the Trump administration before reportedly being “ousted.”

“I really believe they hate Israel,” Trump also said, and accused Majority Leader Schumer, a Democrat who has represented New York for the past quarter-century, of appearing to hate Israel, for “votes.”

READ MORE: ‘Easy Mark’: Why Trump’s $464M Bond Failure Makes Him a ‘Massive National Security Risk’

“I think it’s votes more than anything else, because he was always pro-Israel. He’s very anti-Israel now,” Trump continued, before declaring: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

Haaretz reports, “Trump’s comments follow similar comments made during a Fox News interview, where he accused Israel of ‘being loyal to a fault’ for hoping to maintain bipartisan support within the United States.”

Trump, under tremendous fire for his “bloodbath” remarks, was immediately denounced for his comments.

“Another day, another depraved antisemitic screed from Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vilified the overwhelmingly majority of American Jews,” observed Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “He first called us ‘uninformed or disloyal’ in 2019 and essentially repeated it today. The feeling is mutual. 79% of Jewish voters have an unfavorable view of Trump according to @pewresearch.”

The Times of Israel’s Sam Sokol writes, “Trump said that ‘any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.’ That’s a majority of US Jews. Gentiles don’t get to decide who is a good Jew. That kind of rhetoric is in itself antisemitic.”

The Biden campaign was quick to post a clip of trump’s remarks. Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘How Fascism Came to Germany’: Historian Warns Trump ‘Knew Exactly What He Was Saying’

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‘Easy Mark’: Why Trump’s $464M Bond Failure Makes Him a ‘Massive National Security Risk’

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National security, legal, and political experts are lining up to sound the alarm about the potential national security risks swirling around Donald Trump, and those warnings are getting stronger.

One month after Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 to announce his run for president, CNN reported on the real estate mogul’s repeated claims of great wealth. At one point Trump told supporters he was worth “well over $10 billion.” At other points Trump says, “I’m very rich,” and “I’m really rich.” CNN’s John King noted, “some voters see this as a virtue, in the sense that they think politicians are too beholden to special interests.”

Days later Politico ran with this headline: “Donald Trump’s new pitch: I’m so rich I can’t be bought.”

Fast forward nearly a decade later.

Donald Trump’s attorneys declared in court documents Monday that 30 companies all refused to secure a $464 million bond for Trump, which he owes the State of New York after losing his civil business fraud trial.

The sirens are now wailing.

READ MORE: ‘How Fascism Came to Germany’: Historian Warns Trump ‘Knew Exactly What He Was Saying’

Citing a Washington Post report, MSNBC’s Steve Benen writes, “it’s now ‘expected’ that Manafort will be hired” to work on the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, “at least in part because the former president is ‘determined to bring Manafort back into the fold.'”

Manafort is Paul Manafort, Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman who in 2017, “surrendered to the F.B.I. and pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through overseas shell companies,” according to a New York Times report in October of 2017.

The Times also noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had “announced charges … against three advisers to President Trump’s campaign,” including Manafort, “and laid out the most explicit evidence to date that his campaign was eager to coordinate with the Russian government to damage his rival, Hillary Clinton.”

In 2019, NPR reported, almost as a footnote, that “a court filing that was inadvertently unsealed earlier this year, revealed that Manafort shared polling data with a business associate who has ties to Russian intelligence services.”

In his MSNBC report, Benen noted, “the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Manafort ‘represented a grave counterintelligence threat‘ in 2016 due to his relationship with a Russian intelligence officer.”

“’The Committee found that Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign,’ the Senate report added.” Benen also reported: “When the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report literally pointed to a ‘direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services,’ it was referring in part to Manafort ‘directly and indirectly’ communicating with an accused Russian intelligence officer, a Russian oligarch, and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine.”

Benen reinforced his thesis, writing on social media: “When the Senate Intelligence Committee pointed to a ‘direct tie’ between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence services, it was referring in large part to Paul Manafort — who’s reportedly now headed back to Team Trump.”

Add to all that this plea from The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs.

READ MORE: ‘Next Up – Property Seizures’: Experts Analyze ‘Unbankable’ Trump’s $464 Million Bond Crisis

“According to reports last week, the U.S. intelligence community is preparing to give Donald Trump classified intelligence briefings, a courtesy every White House extends to major-party candidates to ensure an effective transition. An excellent tradition—but not one that should be observed this year,” Nichols wrote at The Atlantic in a piece titled, “Donald Trump Is a National-Security Risk.”

“Indeed, if Trump were a federal employee, he’d have likely already been stripped of his clearances and escorted from the building.”

After discussing “Trump’s open and continuing affection” for authoritarian dictators, Nichols notes, “even if Trump could explain away his creepy dictator crushes and clarify his byzantine finances, he is currently facing more than half a billion dollars in court judgments against him.”

“That’s a lot of money for anyone, and Trump’s scramble to post a bond for even a small portion of that suggests that the man is in terrible financial condition, which is always a bright-red light in the clearance process.”

Political strategist Simon Rosenberg on Monday warned: “If Trump is given access to national security briefings he will now have someone with a proven history of selling stuff to the Russians on his team to help facilitate the movement of our intel to our adversaries.”

Also on Monday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote on X: “We cannot emphasize this enough: Trump’s mounting court fines make him a massive national security risk.”

“After multiple losses against E. Jean Carroll and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Donald Trump is facing judgements that could end up costing him upwards of $600 million,” CREW reported February 29. “But these rulings are more than a financial headache for Trump, they are an unprecedented opportunity to buy influence with a leading presidential candidate and a sitting president should he be re-elected.”

Diving deeper, CREW notes, “Trump left the presidency with at least $1.1 billion dollars in debt tied to the COVID-weakened commercial real estate market, the vast majority of which would come due in a hypothetical second term in office. These rulings would make that number 50% higher.”

“Giving the highest and most powerful office in the land to someone deeply in debt and looking for ways to make back hundreds of millions of dollars he lost in court is a recipe for the kinds of corruption that aren’t theoretical when it comes to Trump. There’s a reason that you can’t get a job in the military or the financial services industry, or even referee a major sporting event, if you have a massive amount of debt. And you certainly aren’t getting a security clearance because you become too big of a target for corruption.”

Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O’Brien, an MSNBC political analyst and author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,” observed, “Trump’s financial trap — he can’t come up with the cash to appeal his $454 million civil fraud judgment — may ravage his business. More directly: It intensifies his threat to national security by making him an easy mark for overseas interests.”

“There’s no reason to believe that Trump, whose businesses collected millions of dollars from foreign governments and officials while he was president, won’t have a for-sale sign out now that he’s struggling with the suffocating weight of court judgments,” O’Brien continues at Bloomberg. “Trump is being criminally prosecuted for allegedly misappropriating classified documents and stashing them at Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida. Without a trial and public disclosure of more evidence, Trump’s motivations for taking the documents are unknown, but it’s reasonable to wonder whether he pondered trying to sell them. Monetizing the White House has been something of a family affair, after all. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been busy trading financially on his proximity to the former president, for example.”

O’Brien concludes, “the going is likely to get rough for Trump as this plays out, and he’s likely to become more financially desperate with each passing day. That’s going to make him easy prey for interested lenders — and an easy mark for overseas interests eager to influence US policy.”

READ MORE: FBI Agent Furious Over MAL Search Thought Trump Would Return Classified Docs if Just Asked

 

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‘How Fascism Came to Germany’: Historian Warns Trump ‘Knew Exactly What He Was Saying’

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Award-winning presidential historian Michael Beschloss sounded the alarm after Donald Trump’s “bloodbath” threat over the weekend, warning that his remarks echo those that led to the rise and installation of fascism in pre-World War II Germany and Italy.

“That’s how fascism and totalitarianism and in Germany’s case the Holocaust came to Germany, which had been a country where there were big institutions of democracy until, as you well know, the early 1930s,” Beschloss said on MSNBC Monday to “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski (video below). “In a way of Donald Trump has done us all a favor, because if you and I had been talking, Mika, let’s say 20 years ago, and they’ve been talking about what would have seemed like a very abstract and distant subject of how fascism and dictatorship might come to America, you probably would have been more wiser.”

“I would have said, you would have had some smiling person pretending to be a normal candidate like all the candidates for president who had gone before all the way back to 1789. And suddenly, after getting elected, that person would use the enormous powers of the presidency, that are given to that person, by their constitution,” Beschloss continued.

READ MORE: ‘Next Up – Property Seizures’: Experts Analyze ‘Unbankable’ Trump’s $464 Million Bond Crisis

“In a way Donald Trump has made it easier because when he tells you he’ll be a dictator for a day, we all know that dictators don’t resign after a day. When he uses the word bloodbath. Yes, it was in the context of an automobile industry speech, but he knew exactly what he was saying, When he talks about suspending the Constitution, or migrants as animals, this is him. He’s telling you what this choice is,” He continued, adding there is no “precedent for this.”

“I hate it when people treat this race as if it’s just one more presidential campaign. And there was lots of jokes, you know, both sides, you know, flaws and both candidates. Yes, these are two old candidates. One of those that is mentally stable, Joe Biden, whom I saw give a great speech at the Gridiron Dinner on Saturday night. Donald Trump, if you look at one of his speeches of these rallies, this is not someone who seems to have all his marbles.”

Beschloss says, “it’s important to know as we talk about this campaign, as it unfolds, we have never seen anything remotely like this in American history: a major party candidate is saying, you elect me, there’s going to be dictatorship, bloodbath, violence, retribution against my political enemies, that equals what we saw in Italy, in Germany and other places. If Americans do not get that if they choose that voluntarily, then this country has changed in a way that I do not understand.”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Bloodbath’: Psaki Slams Trump Over ‘Embrace of Political Violence’

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