Rita's Spur to Action

New York City is being totally destroyed by scaffolding that remains up for years, by pavements that are never repaired, by streets that are littered with piles of garbage, and by empty stores. Even my little dog will only go to the bathroom on 56th street where the sidewalk is level. Come on people! Rise up! Scaffolding is not necessary for more than a 6-8 month period of time, during which time, the entire building should be inspected and then the entire scaffolding removed. There’s no reason in this world for the pavements of New York City not to be leveled, making it more possible to walk comfortably. 

It looks more and more as though scaffolding, in the city of New York, is just another scam, of which there are several. There should be a legal limit on how long scaffolding can be maintained on any given building. Although there is supposed to be a time limit of around a year, scaffolding has been known to stay up for 16 years. 

Every day in every way Trump violates the basic rules of our democracy. It may not be a bad idea to have control of our borders and who immigrates to our country. However, the recent demands made by “the White House [saying] it planned to require visa applicants from dozens of countries to provide social media, phone and email histories for vetting before being allowed into the US” is appalling.

This is another way for Trump to control freedom of speech and people’s right to disagree with him publicly. “Minky Worden, the director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, said the new entry requirements were ‘an outrageous demand that violates fundamental free speech and free expression rights.’” This is not democracy. This is autocracy. Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were all autocrats. This what America has become under the Trump regime

Notes:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/11/trump-plan-vet-us-visitors-social-media-tourism

President Trump has exhibited a clear loss of mental acuity to the extent that he is no longer qualified (if he ever was) to be president of the United States. Example 1 – He appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

He is not qualified to represent the United States nor be entrusted with the complicated negotiations within our government or with dubious leaders of other world powers.

He should be declared mentally incompetent and Section 4 of the 25th amendment should be invoked, officially removing him from the presidency. If he does claim to be competent, then he simply is a despicable human who feels he doesn’t have to observe the rules of common decency and respect that we uphold when communicating with our fellow man.

“In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.

To one correspondent he said: ‘Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.’

Another: [you’re] ‘third rate … ugly, both inside and out.’

About Somali immigrants to the United States: ‘Garbage’ whom ‘we don’t want in our country.’

To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: ‘Quiet. Quiet, piggy.’

About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of ‘sedition … punishable by DEATH.’”

Translation: he is willing to kill anyone who gets in his way.

Notes:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/age-and-inhibition?utm_source=substack&publication_id=365422&post_id=179578356&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&action=share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1MDA0NDAzMSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTc5NTc4MzU2LCJpYXQiOjE3NjQ4Mzk1MjYsImV4cCI6MTc2NzQzMTUyNiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTM2NTQyMiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.kQtJCOqk1xFa9zM6pgZMWP4SKR1tL6Wjriv61u2bOxA&r=tsm7z&triedRedirect=true

“Trump’s behavior during the shutdown made it clear he simply didn’t care how badly Americans got hurt. ‘He did not just refuse to negotiate,’ journalist Dan Drezner noted. ‘During the shutdown month he also completely bulldozed the East Wing, cut SNAP benefits, witnessed producers passing on the cost of tariffs to consumers, announced curbs on air travel, and participated in a Great Gatsby–style party at Mar-a-Lago.’

Voters hated this, but Trump didn’t appear to care. Indeed, his administration was working to ratchet up the pain of lost SNAP payments [which 42 million Americans depend on] and canceled flights, including not just passenger planes but cargo planes right before the shopping season in which many businesses make the income that keeps them afloat for the year…”

“As Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark noted, the Democrats gave in to Republican plans with few concessions, but the shutdown hurt Trump’s popularity and the Democrats won a vote on [the Affordable Care Act] subsidies, which is a terrible issue for the Republicans.”

“President Donald J. Trump did not want the shutdown to end this way. He was trying to use the pain he was inflicting on the American people to force Republican senators to end the filibuster and pass a series of measures that would essentially have made him a dictator. The Republican senators were clear they didn’t want to do that. And now, they haven’t. They chose a way out of the shutdown fight that did not support Trump’s ambitions. After nine months in which they appeared to do his bidding, that’s an interesting development.”

Maybe finally, Republicans are waking up to the fact that they are Americans and that their allegiance should be to the American people and not to Trump. 

Now, both parties must join together to impeach an unqualified and criminally egotistical president.

Notes:

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/november-10-2025?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

From a recent NY Times article that says it all –

“Authoritarians often turn the government into a machine for enriching themselves, their families and their allies. 

Mr. Trump glories in his administration’s culture of corruption.

He openly uses the presidency as an opportunity to pad his bottom line, in ways that range from the comically petty (like charging the Secret Service up to $1,200 per night for rooms at his hotels) to the shamelessly greedy (like the $40 million that Amazon paid for the rights to a Melania Trump documentary or his recent demand that the government pay him $230 million because he was investigated for breaking the law). He solicits favors from foreign governments, including an airplane from Qatar. His children also profit from their father’s position, through real-estate deals, crypto, a private club in Washington and more. And he rewards those who enrich them, recently pardoning the head of a cryptocurrency firm who worked with the Trump family.

In the first six months of this year, the Trump Organization’s income soared to $864 million, up from just $51 million a year earlier, according to a recent Reuters analysis. It’s worth noting that recent Supreme Court decisions have made corruption harder to police.” (The validity of the Supreme Court had already been destroyed by Trump in the appointments he made during his first term in office).

“After returning from a trip to Asia [over Halloween weekend], Trump left…for his thirteenth visit to the Trump Organization’s Florida property Mar-a-Lago. S.V. Date of HuffPost notes this $3.4 million trip brings to $60.7 million the amount taxpayers have spent on the president’s 76 golf outings in his second term.”

Furthermore, “the clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power.” What Trump is planting the seeds for is to make it more and more difficult to hold just and fair elections. His actions make it clear that he is intending to run for a third term. This would require amending the 22nd amendment of the constitution, which forbids presidents from seeking more than two terms.

“Once that stage is reached, however, the change is [virtually impossible] to reverse. And aspiring authoritarians use other excesses, like a cowed legislature and judiciary, to lock in their power.”

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/31/opinion/trump-autocracy-democracy-report.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-31-2025?utm_source=substack&publication_id=20533&post_id=177706389&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=tsm7z&triedRedirect=true

The future of America depends on the support of the public.

It is up to the public, the people of America to go to the polls and vote for their preferred candidate.

It is ridiculous that Americans are supposed to go to the polls to vote on a working day.

Many people cannot find the time to leave their offices or their jobs.

Why should voting not be on a Sunday, as it is in Europe so that everybody is free?

The strength of democracy depends on the support of the public.

Change the voting date to Sunday.

As people cannot afford to live in Manhattan anymore, they must go further and further out of the city to find homes.

As they go further away, they will ultimately seek jobs or create them in these other places.

It’s already difficult to obtain services in Manhattan. To find painters, plumbers, carpenters, cabinet makers, etc.

These people no longer live here. There is so little parking and they have to lug all of their tools around. 

Why should every single building not have several floors of parking space or designated nose-in metered street parking? This should be mandated for every new building.

One of the main problems of the city is that it caters to those who profit from real estate rather than those who live in it.

New York City was once an iconic town.

As children, we swam in the East River with friends on hot summer days. Can you imagine doing that today?

Central Park had the reservoir and it was a criminal offense to throw anything into it.

The streets were clean and the pavements were more or less, even.

The gutters were cleaned regularly by men driving little carts.

There were very few parked cars. There were no trucks on Park, Madison, 5th Ave, or Central Park West.

Cars were fewer and no one raced their motors or pumped their horns.

The buildings were not covered for years at a time by scaffolding.

Although there were tall buildings they were neither so high nor so dense that one could not see the buildings or light and sunshine.

Stores were stores and people shopped.

It was fun to walk the avenues and see what was available.

Neighborhoods were patrolled by cops who had assigned beats and whom we knew.

And people who worked in the city could afford to live in the city.

Today, New York City, Manhattan specifically, is becoming increasingly a city for the uber rich and the homeless. The people who work here can’t afford to live here. A city where office buildings and stores stay empty, others are torn down and left as garbage dumps.

Every day brings more destruction. Obliteration of light and views.

There is an underground movement rising in this country that reminds one of Germany in the 1930’s – which also began as an underground movement – and reared its ugly head in America just prior to WWII.

Our democracy is at stake, as was the Weimar constitution. The destruction of our democracy is clearly represented by discussions and comments made in a recently leaked group chat that comprised of leaders from the Young Republicans National Federation (some of the chat highlights were black people referred to as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people,” other racial epithets thrown around casually, and the work of Adolf Hitler praised with a simple “I love Hitler” comment).

The shocking thing is, is that this a group of young leaders, and it is youth that represents the future of this country. The Young Republicans National Federation must be monitored and taken seriously as a danger to the future of our nation.

The speech they are using is indicative of dark and sinister motives and agents working, not just within this organization, but in our society.

This is one of, presumably many groups that have sprouted in the wake of Trump’s rise to power and his usage of, “…persistent…hostile, often inflammatory language…that normalizes aggressive discourse in conservative circles [and] can be incredibly influential on young operatives who are still trying to figure out, ‘What is that political discourse?’”

There are enough divisions in America going on right now, and we don’t need a young generation of Neo-Nazis whose true mission goes against the belief and promise of America. They must be stopped in their tracks.

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146?cid=apn&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

WHO WE ARE

Americans today should look closely at the threats to our democracy.

Whenever a political party pressures all members to vote as a block and works to punish any outliers who disobey, while at the same time pardoning those who have committed treason, that party has abandoned democracy and has embraced authoritarian, minority rule.

Today, America is facing a would-be dictator.

The future of America may well depend on thoughtful, reflective people who arrive at their voting booth, put their country first and choose democracy.

Notes: https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/opinion/2021/12/12/taft-much-rides-republicans-choosing-democracy-voting-booth/6461624001/