Ouch!

This is Lexie Hull, three days after she collided with the Storm's Gabby Williams:

Oh my god Lexie!!! 😬😬😬😬😬😳😳😳😳 pic.twitter.com/3AcWm1eqbK

— ericaf455 (@ericaf455) August 29, 2025

Powell Memo; where everything began to go wrong.

Click here for Robert Reich's article on Substack entitled "Today is the anniversary of the worst memo in history." Like I said, it's where everything began to go wrong.

 

It is, of course, the Powell memo, from Lewis F. Powell, Jr., to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (Powell was appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon less than two months later).

It was titled “Attack On American Free Enterprise System” and it outlined ways in which corporate America should defend and counter attack against "disquieting voices” — environmentalists, consumer advocates, and labor unions. Powell warned that their voices were growing louder and their influence was gaining in the halls of Congress.

 Reich says:

Corporate America duly followed Powell’s’ advice. An entire corporate-political complex was born, including tens of thousands of lobbyists, lawyers, political operatives, and public relations flacks.

Within a few decades, big corporations became the largest political force in Washington and in most state capitals. The number of corporate political action committees (PACs) mushroomed from under 300 in 1976 to over 1,200 four years later. Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, corporate PACs increased their expenditures on congressional races nearly fivefold. Labor union PAC spending rose only about half as fast.

It was the beginning of the corporate takeover of the government, as big money flooded in to influence elections.

That tsunami of big money from giant corporations, their CEOs, top executives, and major investors, was engulfing American politics. It not only sunk reform; it began to rig the entire system in favor of the moneyed interests and against average working people.

In subsequent years, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates, ruling absurdly that money was speech under the First Amendment and corporations were people.

And America is in a second Gilded Age of near-record inequality and corruption, featuring robber barons like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the biggest robber of them all — Trump.

Click on the article, which includes a link to a video, "The Memo that Broke American Politics." 

 

 

 

An interesting story in the Trump/Epstein saga

Click here for an article at inkl news (a legitimate news aggregator; look it up) by Sidney Blumenthal, entitled "Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the Epstein files are failing."

One interesting aspect is its mention of a shady Trump real estate deal in 2004 as being the reason why he and Jeffrey Epstein ended their friendship. I knew about the deal long ago, when Trump first started seeking the Republican nomination, but I didn't know Epstein was involved.

I knew Trump was considered to be on the verge of bankruptcy when he was saved by being cast in The Apprentice. Trump Hotels  & Casino Resorts went bankrupt in 2004 and no American banks would deal with him, but he managed to get financing from Deutschebank to buy a Palm Beach estate for $41 million. Apparently the property was badly run down after years of neglect, and $41 million was considered to be a foolishly high price. However, although he never used the property and didn't put a dime into renovating or refurbishing it, he sold it four years later to a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin -- for $95 million. So Trump cleared a tidy $50 million in a deal that was considered by many to be obvious money laundering.

What I didn't know is that Trump's purchase of the estate came after a furious bidding war with Jeffrey Epstein.

Click here for an Associated Press article at NBC News dated November 2004 entitled "Trump casinos file for bankruptcy: Donald J. Trump's casino empire has filed for bankruptcy protection after months of negotiations with bondholders over restructructuring a crushing debt."

There's lots of other interesting stuff in the article -- like Trump's shady adventures owning modeling businesses --  that's well worth the read. One snippet:  

Trump created Trump Model Management, also known as T Models, in 1999. T Models recruited girls as young as 14 to the US on tourist visas with lavish promises of fame and fortune, and once they arrived paid them minimally. “It is like modern-day slavery,” said one of the models, Rachel Blais. “Honestly, they are the most crooked agency I’ve ever worked for, and I’ve worked for quite a few.”