Republican Issa warns Tech Leaders, don't Criticize Trump, free speech pushing Social Issues could hurt Business. But GOP Corporate Elites...not so much.

Sorry to sound paranoid, but...as we watch our country slip into a fascist state, it's wise to remember the frightening natural tendencies of the Republican Party.

This is just one small example highlighting the attitude of the iron-fisted party in power, threatening to crush free speech for the sake of business, all without blinking an eye.

You would think free speech naturally fits into the whole idea of our free market system, but it doesn't unless you're on that short list of GOP favored industries:

CNET: One of Trump's point people on tech during the 2016 transition, and one of the go-to voices on tech issues, Congressman Darrell Issa, says tech leaders speaking out against President Donald Trump are making a mistake ... criticizing Trump and his administration on both policy and social issues are making a mistake. For example, Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is gay, criticized Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military in July. "We are indebted to all who serve. Discrimination against anyone holds everyone back."

"I stand with the Dreamers," wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, after Trump announced he was rescinding an Obama-era program called DACA, which protected undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.

Thanks to Trump, Issa is now free to say what Republicans have been thinking for decades, and that is business and stockholders hold sway over progress and social policies that put Americans first:

"The tech leaders who are officers of public companies are really ill-advised to make those statements because those statements, quite frankly, are required to be in the best interest of their stockholders and often they're not."

Home Depot Co-Founder Bernie Marcus' Criticism of Americans? Now that's Free Speech: It's still open season to criticize large swathes of Americans everywhere if you're an elitist Republican supporting corporate jerk. He's not worried about stockholders...odd isn't it?

Note: Bernie Marcus went overboard bragging about how important the $1000 bonus was to Americans, who can now use that money to "pay their mortgage, a car repair, they could be paying for a past due bill." But these things weren't important enough to raise the minimum wage, or at the least, stop wage stagnation:



Jimmy Carter laid it on the line, as he has been known to do, with Thom Hartmann. Why this doesn't seem to register with conservatives, I'll never know:

HARTMANN: Our Supreme Court has now said, “unlimited money in politics.” It seems like a violation of principles of democracy. … Your thoughts on that?

CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.