the attitude with Arnie Arnesen. the Labor Day edition Sept 1 noon to 1pm EST streaming on wnhnfm.org
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Arnie Arnesen
Aug 31, 2025, 7:52:35 PMAug 31
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The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen
written by Dr. Peter S. Brouwer is recently retired as Professor of Mathematics Education and Chair of the Department of Secondary Education at SUNY Potsdam,
America tips into fascism —
"Something is materially different in our country this week than last," writes historian Garrett Graff.
The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.
I think many Americans wrongly believe there would be one clear unambiguous moment where we go from “democracy” to “authoritarianism.” Instead, this is exactly how it happens — a blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged. Then you wake up one morning and our country is different.
Today, August 25, 2025, is that morning. Something is materially different in our country this week than last.
Everything else from here on out is just a matter of degree and wondering how bad it will get and how far it will go?
....
Just months short of the nation’s 250th birthday, Donald Trump is close to batting a thousand at speed-running the very abuses of power that led to the Founders to write the Declaration of Independence in the first place. Does any of this sound familiar:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
And so on.
One could say that Trump has blown through the nation’s constitutional and political guardrails, but a more accurate assessment is that both Congress and the Supreme Court — effectively rolled over and played dead when it comes to their constitutional duty to exert checks and balances — removed those guardrails helpfully in advance.
In a dissent last week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared the Court’s current approach, which has allowed Trump to streamroll past the normal constraints of the presidency through one procedural sleight-of-hand after another, to the game Calvinball, played by Calvin & Hobbes. “Today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. ‘[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,’ the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible,” she writes. “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”
The response, meanwhile, by Democrats has been unconscionably weak....
There’s a story that I think a lot about — on September 29, 2008, I went to one of those friendly background lunches that reporters in D.C. do all the time with newsmakers. It was the heart of the financial crisis and a group of us were meeting with Rep. Eric Cantor, a rising star in the GOP and party whip. The House was about to vote on a bailout for Wall Street that effectively everyone agreed was necessary to hold together the global economy — President Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed chair Ben Bernanke, GOP presidential nominee John McCain (who had even suspended his campaign to focus on the crisis) and Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Cantor casually told us over lunch that his caucus was going to vote it down. We reporters, many of them far more experienced Hill veterans than me, were incredulous — all of his party’s leaders, the ones in the roles who knew the stake, the ones the party was supposed to listen to and follow, said this was critical — and yet the House GOP was going to let it burn?
Cantor was right — the House voted down the bailout and the stock market dropped 800 points. The end seemed nigh.
I remember walking out of that luncheon feeling like I had glimpsed something important. The beating heart of the GOP no longer cared about principles or policy. There was a nihilist wing in control that scared me; they were happy to let it all burn.
For years in covering the rise (and return) of Trump and Trumpism, I imagined there was some line that the GOP would not be willing to compromise for greed and power — some incident that would bring party leaders to their senses, some principle or red-line would be unwilling to trade or cross in pursuit of furthering Trump’s agenda. Even after January 6th, I held hope that might be the end. But then Eric Cantor’s buddy Kevin McCarthy showed up at Mar-a-Lago and the rehabilitation tour began.
It has led here, to this moment, where all three branches of the GOP-controlled government have been willing to torch the republic and democracy that generations of elected officials and citizens have tended for 249 years simply to please Donald Trump and avoid running afoul of his temper.
Where America goes from here is a story yet to be written. It will surely get worse — Trump’s push now is clearly focused on locking in an illegitimate claim to power. Whether we can come back from this moment is a story yet unknown. But it’s clear today America is different and, even if we fight our way back, it will never be the same.
part one:
the other day I was interviewing harold meyerson about his article: A Federal Appellate Court Finds the NLRB to Be Unconstitutional
And just like that, it frees Elon Musk—and any fellow employers—to violate whatever rights their workers thought they enjoyed. it was in the course of that interview that he reminded me of Jennifer Abruzzo :as he noted Abruzzo, whose service as NLRB general counsel during Biden’s presidency ranks as the most brilliantly pro-worker tenure of any federal official since Sen. Robert Wagner, the NLRA’s author, has some ideas about what can be done if the NLRB remains deactivated or is abolished altogether. “States have to step in,” she told me, “if the NLRB is no longer functioning.” Already, some states have enacted laws banning employers from compelling their employees to listen to anti-union propaganda. Many have extended bargaining rights to workers excluded from the protections of the NLRA. But if the NLRB is no longer functioning and, for instance, can no longer hold union affiliation elections for a company’s workers, then states should consider holding such elections, she suggested. And even if the NLRA is struck down in toto, she noted, workers would still retain their fundamental right to recourse. The years immediately preceding its 1935 enactment, she recalled, were filled with boycotts, strikes, and even general strikes that closed cities down. Workers will “still have the power to withhold their labor,” she said.
Jennifer AbruzzoThe Memo Writer
Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, has outlined an agenda that would transform the American workplace. https://prospect.org/labor/memo-writer-jennifer-abruzzo/
In 2021 the Senate confirmed the nomination of Jennifer Abruzzo as general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees union recognition contests and investigates and adjudicates disputes over violations of the NLRA. While not a member of the Board itself (which by custom consists of three appointees from the president’s party and two from the opposition’s), the general counsel functions as the NLRB’s chief prosecutor, directing its roughly 500 attorneys across the nation on what kind of cases to bring and what remedies to seek. It’s a powerful position, but no previous general counsel had used that power quite like Abruzzo has....BOTH THE QUALITY AND the quantity of Abruzzo’s directives have dazzled the labor and legal communities, while alarming management-side attorneys. At a recent American Bar Association meeting that Abruzzo addressed, one corporate lawyer was overheard remarking, “We may have to find a different country.”
Jennifer Abruzzo Wants Workers to Fight Back A conversation with the former head of the NLRB. https://workdaymagazine.org/jennifer-abruzzo-wants-workers-to-fight-back/
part two: John Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.
Democrats “Lose When They Fail to Prioritize a Strong, Working-Class Message”
Painters union President Jimmy Williams Jr. says “working people deserve a party that… places their issues front and center.” https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-working-class-message/
If Democrats Want to Reconnect With the Working Class, They Need to Start Listening to Unions
The Democrats blew it with non-union workers in the 2024 election. Unions have a plan to get the party on message. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrats-reconnect-working-class-unions/
KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN'T RISE TO THE TOP - Anonymous
D. ARNIE ARNESEN
15 Rumford Street
Concord NH 03301
nha...@gmail.com
(C) 603-321-7654
Host of "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen"
D. ARNIE ARNESEN
15 Rumford Street
Concord NH 03301
nha...@gmail.com
(C) 603-321-7654
Host of "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen"
Award Winning Public Affairs Show (NHAB 2018)
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