John Anthony Chansley, George Wallace and Donald Trump

 

John Anthony Chansley was released from jail in January, 2023. Non-descript in prison attire is not how we see him. In our mind’s eye, Mr. Chansley will remain a figure with painted face and bare chest, draped in animal skins, wearing a horned helmet, carrying a spear. He was part of the mob which broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected president.

Donald Trump likes some people in uniforms. Just not those who have worn the uniform in defense of democracy. He’s called those men and women “losers and suckers.” Standing on the sacred grounds of Arlington cemetery, he looked around and wondered out loud, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” He speaks of “his army” and “his generals.” One of “his generals,” Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty for conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. He was pardoned by Trump in the last weeks of his term.

Trump also assured anyone who would listen that the racist thugs in Ku Klux Klan garb carrying torches in Charlottesville included “some good people.” To him, the silly looking Halloween shaman, John Anthony Chansley, and the others committed to the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, were “patriots.” No one should doubt if he’s elected presidential pardons will be flying out of the Oval Office for the insurrectionists who have had their day in court, were found guilty, and are serving time. These are his “patriots,” his “good people.”

Trump voters in the state of Indiana are complicit in all of this. All should know Trump is a con artist and a felon. He has a rap sheet as long as a CVS checkout receipt. He’s a convicted felon still owing millions to a former Indiana University cheerleader for liable following a sexual assault. His personal life, five children by three wives, “Stormy Daniels,” is a soap opera minus the soap.

His vaunted financial astuteness is a record of failed enterprises, bankruptcies and adverse court settlements including $25 million worth when the hot air went out of his Trump University scam.

He will be selling his God Bless America Bibles (printed in China), hawking gold sneakers, and pitching $100,000 watches for a long time before he has paid off his legal debts and the lawyers who couldn’t save him in courts of law.

Trump’s speeches have become rambling, personal, dangerous rants. His targets are chosen on impulse. Still Hoosier Republicans accept the thickness of Trump’s lies and the thinness of his ebbing and garbled intellect. Why do they still plan to vote for him this year? It’s not really all that surprising.

Trump is an accomplished demagogue. He succeeds by inflating the dangers of the complex world of the present without the slightest vision for the future. He does, however, welcome one and all to return to the past. It’s a past (see MAGA; see Project 2025) bathed in highly selective memories, filled with heroes and villains, an US vs.THEM challenge, but as with all hungry for power, only under his self-proclaimed matchless leadership.

The last time Indiana saw anything like this was from a man running for president in 1968. In that year, the racist demagogue George Wallace, as a third party candidate, won 11.45% of the Hoosier vote. Maybe I go to the wrong bars and coffee shops, but after the 1968 election I don’t remember any of the Wallace voters speaking out, taking pride in their vote. Win or lose, I predict the same sheepish non-response from Trump voters in 2024 and beyond.

— Gary Daily

Step Up, Protect Vote

 

To the Editor: 

We should all thank Tim Walz for asking the one, all-important question of the Republican candidate for vice president in last Tuesday’s debate.

The background to his question is clear. Donald Trump refuses to accept the facts of the American voters' decision in 2020. His unending, unsupported claims about the 2020 election being “rigged” have come to nothing.

Trump’s fanciful contention and dangerous actions have been rejected in over 60 court cases, physically repulsed through the turning aside of a radical insurrection at our nation’s Capitol, and by the constitutionally sanctioned action of his own vice president, the good Christian and former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

But still Donald Trump blusters on. He declares almost daily he didn’t lose the election. Accepting his idea of a “rigged” election means accepting an authority beyond our votes to decide the outcome of an election. Make no mistake, in doing so he is erasing the sanctity of the vote, all votes, yours as well as mine.

So Tim Walz was required to ask JD Vance a simple, necessary, straight-forward question: “Did he (Trump) lose the 2020 election?”

We all have the responsibility, individual voters and the news media covering the election, to ask ourselves and every candidate for office in 2024, local, state and national, this direct, not to be dodged, not to be pushed aside, question.

Regardless of party affiliation, this question and an honest answer should be the first and foremost guide to how we vote in 2024. A JD Vance type “damning non-answer” puts our vote and democracy at serious risk.

No one leader, no faction of a political party, no promise, false or true, should be allowed to threaten our vote. At this time in America’s history, we need to step up and protect the foundation of our republic, the vote. Just as we did in 2020.

— Gary Daily

Report from the September 28, 2024, Debs Dinner

  It’s 2024. It’s an election year. The Debs Banquet held on September 28, 2024 missed the chance to drive this home to all of us.

At the Debs Dinner last night working people talked real issues and interests. We actually spoke the words--LIBERAL, WORKING CLASS and UNION-- out loud. The sky didn’t crash through the ceiling. LIBERAL, WORKING CLASS, UNION were words spoken with pride and purpose.  For years we heard trickle down nonsense from Republicans, always an indication another tax cut for the super-rich was about to be handed out. But . . .

At bottom workers (“at bottom” and that’s where far too many Americans still  reside in this economy),  want nothing more than a living wage for a week of hard work. The homeless need affordable housing. The uninsured yearn for a national health care system that delivers their families from fear. And the economically left behind crave schools that nurture curiosity and prepare their kids for opportunities not endless tests and book bans that tie teachers and students into meaningless knots. Women want to control their own bodies.

If unions and workers supported candidates that delivered these reasonable necessities, really supported them through education, organization and commitment, Americans would head for the polls and vote with a smile on their faces and a “Solidarity Forever” song in their hearts.

To my mind, the Debs dinner failed to champion, push, even nudge with specific conviction, the needed political support for the Harris-Walz ticket and the down ballot Democrat candidates in Indiana and around the nation. I failed to hear the names Harris-Walz mentioned even once.

What if Trump is elected? What if both houses of the U. S. Congress go Republican in 2024? What if the Indiana state legislature remains in the jaws of the reactionary right?  Where would this leave the working class in the United States? In Indiana?   Won’t our fight for deserved dignity, a fair monetary return for our labor, a secure future in retirement, be made into a very steep uphill battle?  

A Trump/Republican win would mean battles in conservative saturated courts, doomed struggles with state and federal boards and agencies packed with corporate leaning country club types, and legislative losses (state and national) on everything from “right to work” (sic) laws to women’s rights.

Electing Harris-Walz and Democrats in national and state elections won’t mean an easy path, a road without challenges to what is right and just for workers. But it will mean worker’s voices always being heard and mainly acted on, clear obstacles to safety and justice in the workplace removed, and judges in courts ruling from a human perspective rather than from the current top down, profits and pay offs system. 

I wish the speakers on the dais at last nights Debs banquet had named names. I would like to have heard them spell out the positions of Trump and Harris on working class concerns. I wish they had made it clear to all in attendance that the 2024 election is of supreme importance to the working class in America.  

Solidarity?  Walk the picket line with Joe and Kamala and Tim. Wait in the voting line for what Joe did and Kamala and Tim will do.   

________

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations [tax free provision] are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

The Debs Foundation is currently a 501 c 3 organization. 

I would ask:  How long has this been the case? How should  “directly and indirectly” be  interpreted? Does this status curtail possible candidates for the Debs Award? Does this status gag recipients in a way counter to the Debs tradition? Is the Vigo County Chamber of Commerce a 501(c)(3) organization?  And, in terms of monetary benefits, is the Debs Foundation’s 501(c)(3) necessary and worth the obvious down sides?