#if nothing else we can give Trump a Congress trying to work against him

[robertreich]

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can't. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life. The system is rigged. But we can fix it. Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it -- as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same. As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism -- socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.” He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion -- roughly one hundred times the size of his company's investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 -- a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders -- not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business -- to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders -- ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value -- such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt -- and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur -- in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves -- the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.

#video #videos #oligarchy #American oligarchy

[a-method-in-it]

I Say This With Love

It’s April 10, 2020, and I really do honestly and truly say this with love. Because I do genuinely love all of the young radical people on here. Depending who you talk to, I also am kind of a young radical, though by tumblr standards I am An Old. And you guys are great, you really are. But I need you to hear this. 

You need to stop pinning your hopes on Bernie Sanders. 

I like Bernie a lot. He was not my first choice in this primary, but he was absolutely my second. The fact that he lost to my second least favorite of the legitimate candidates (Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang are not legit, don’t @ me) makes me really tired. I’m old enough to remember the time the Democrats nominated John Kerry to take on Dubya and look where that got us. I was looking forward to voting for Bernie in the primary -- and in fact I still will to help him shore up his influence going into the DNC -- and the last few days were not fun for me either. 

But it’s time to face facts. And the facts are these:

First, Bernie has dropped out. In this context, “suspending his campaign” means he is dropping out. It’s a way of dropping out that allows his name to remain on the ballot in whatever states already have his name on the ballot, but it means he’s dropped out. You can and should still vote for him to give him more political influence before the convention, but he will not be the nominee. That is the reality. It sucks. It is still the reality.

Second, harm reduction matters. That thing I mentioned above, about Kerry going up against Bush 43? Yeah, for those of you too young to remember 2004, Kerry couldn’t turn out the base and he lost. And do you know what happened in the next four years? Here is a short list:

Bush tried to privatize Social Security. Actually genuinely had a bill introduced into Congress that he planned on signing. 

He completely bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina, screwing over thousands of people, most of them black and low income

We added 21,000 troops in Iraq

Private contractors working for escaped hell demon Eric Prince, who Bush paid $1 billion in military contractor money to run around in Iraq playing soldier, opened fire into a crowd of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, killing 17 innocent people

John Roberts was nominated and confirmed as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, where his ass still sits, fucking us over to this day.

Bush vetoed funding for stem cell research.

He continued to deny that global warming was real, running out four more years on humanity’s clock.

And -- oh yeah! -- the whole goddamn economy crashed.

I really don’t care how little you like Joe Biden. I also do not like Joe Biden. But I promise you, however frustrating it would be to see him elected president, that is nothing -- nothing -- to what it would be like to go through four more years of Donald Trump. And if you disagree, please read any newspaper. 

Third, and this is the big one:

You need to stop pinning your hopes on a single candidate. That’s not how change happens. That’s not how movements happen. 

Politicians do not save us. Not even politicians we like. Not even politicians we agree with. Not even politicians who inspire us and care about us and try to do right by us. No, that’s not how it works. We save ourselves.  

So if you’re pissed off right now, then go unionize your workplace (advice for that here); join your local DSA; donate to Black Lives Matter or Planned Parenthood or the ACLU or Greenpeace or NARF or any one of the dozens of other organizations fighting the good fight; volunteer at an abortion clinic or homeless shelter or domestic violence shelter or food bank or conservation group or with anyone else doing good work in your neighborhood; sew face masks for your neighbors; join -- or start! -- a community garden or urban agriculture group; volunteer for a state or local politician with a good platform that you do believe in; sign up to register voters in your area; start calling your congress people every day; and for gods’ sake, vote blue in November.

To everyone who skimmed over that list because you think I’m full of shit and it was too long -- go back and read it because the fact that it’s long is my whole fucking point.

We need to save ourselves. And that starts with -- big sigh -- electing Joseph Robinette Biden (gods even his name is stupid). 

It just doesn’t end there. Honestly, if you want a movement to reshape the country, trying to just elect a person as president is objectively the least effective way to go about that. It’s trying to cut to the end. It’s building your roof before you’ve laid your foundation. It’s backwards. 

So pick yourselves up, brush off the dirt, patch up your bruises, and go build some foundations. 

I meant it when I said I love you guys. I believe you can do this, that we can do this. Please don’t prove me wrong. 

#politics #bernie sanders #joe biden #long sigh #looooooong sigh #the longest #i hate this election #i hate this election more than i hated 2016 #and i HATED 2016 #but i swear to god #trump is a goddamned fascist #and you know what happens #when you let fascists stay in power for EIGHT YEARS? #they don't leave #that's what #i love you kids #honestly i do #but i want there to be a world for you to grow up in #so i'm gonna need you #to please #PLEASE #not screw yourselves over #because if you think #that it can't happen here #or that it can't get worse #you're wrong #method speaks

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 14, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, Americans began receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Dr. Michelle Chester administered the vaccine to Sandra Lindsay, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, the first American to get the vaccine. Lindsay is a Covid nurse and said she hoped seeing her get the vaccine would convince people it was safe. “I have seen the alternative, and do not want it for you,” she told the New York Times. “I feel like healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of a very painful time in our history.” The pandemic has hit Americans of color particularly hard, making it fitting that the first U.S. dose was administered by a Black doctor to a Black nurse.

Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. But that light is still a long way away. Today we passed 300,000 official deaths from Covid-19, with well over 16 million infections. We also set a new single-day record of at least 232,369 new coronavirus cases. Outbreaks are escalating, not dropping, and the upcoming holidays threaten to spread the virus further.

There is, as well, an issue with the distribution of the vaccines. While the federal government invested in the development of the vaccine, it provided funding and a plan only to get the vaccines to the states. Getting the doses from a central point into people’s arms remains unfunded and unplanned. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services have dug into their existing budgets to find some money for states to start planning, but there is currently no money for states to distribute the vaccine, especially in light of the financial crisis caused by the pandemic. Federal funding of vaccine delivery is set to run out about February 1, just in time for it to fall into Biden’s watch.

The good news is that it appears that Congress appears be narrowing in on a coronavirus relief package. Lawmakers expect to announce a $1.4 trillion compromise measure tomorrow. The Republicans still hate the idea of state and local funding; Democrats still hate the idea of a liability shield for businesses whose workers contract the coronavirus at work. So, negotiators have split those two issues off from the items that have bipartisan support. A $748 billion bill will provide less-controversial funding for unemployment assistance, small businesses, food assistance, rental assistance, health funding, education, and transportation; and a $160 billion bill will offer local and state aid and liability protections.

Today was a big day in politics as well as in health. The Electoral College formally elected Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. president, and Kamala Devi Harris vice president. Tonight, Biden spoke to the American people. He rebuked Trump for his effort to steal the election, saying “In America, politicians don’t take power— people grant power to them.”

Biden tied today’s contest for democracy to our history. "The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing — not even a pandemic — or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame," he said. He asked Americans to move on, focusing on combatting the pandemic and rebuilding the economy.

It’s over.

But, although 62% of American voters say the election is “over and settled” and it’s “time to move on,” Trump continues to insist that he won the election. In the face of the Electoral College confirmation of Biden’s win, this position increasingly seems a ploy to raise money. Even as the Electoral College was voting, the Trump campaign filed yet another lawsuit challenging the outcome of the election. It has lost 59 of 60 court cases, and the Supreme Court last week refused to hear a case in which Trump planned to argue that mail-in voting in swing states that voted for Biden—but not the states that voted for him—injured Republican voters in Texas.

Senate Republicans, who have set the Electoral College vote as the date on which they would acknowledge Biden’s victory, are swinging behind the idea that Biden is indeed the President-Elect. But the Trump loyalists are not giving up. The state Capitols of Michigan and Wisconsin had to be closed to the public out of safety concerns before the Electoral College delegates met; the electors in Arizona had to meet in an undisclosed location. One Republican state representative in Michigan hinted at potential violence against the delegates to the Electoral College; leadership later stripped him of his committee assignments. Despite the fussing, members of Congress are expected to certify the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021.

The Republicans’ willingness to entertain Trump’s tantrums means that, unlike most Americans, 82% of Trump voters say they think Biden’s victory is illegitimate and that Trump should refuse to concede and should do all he can to stay in power.

This was finally too much for Representative Paul Mitchell of Michigan, who announced today he was switching his affiliation from Republican to Independent. Mitchell is retiring from Congress in weeks, perhaps freeing him to speak his mind. He called out Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, for suggesting that Trump’s loss was because of Black voters in Detroit. “Ronna,” he wrote, “you know Michigan politics well.” (McDaniel is the granddaughter of former Michigan Governor George W. Romney, and served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 2015 to 2017). “Trump did not lose Michigan because of Wayne County, but rather he lost because of dwindling support in areas including Kent and Oakland County, both previous Republican strongholds.”

Mitchell called out “political candidates” who “treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote.” He warned, “If Republican leaders collectively sit back and tolerate unfounded conspiracy theories and ‘stop the steal’ rallies without speaking out for our electoral process, which the Department of Homeland Security said was ‘the most secure in American history,’ our nation will be damaged.” He condemned the “raw political considerations” that led party leaders to support the “stop the steal” efforts. He noted that members of Congress take oaths to support and defend the Constitution, not “to preserve and protect the political interests of any individual, be it the president or anyone else, to the detriment of our cherished nation.”

Tonight, just in time to disrupt the news cycle before Biden was set to address the nation, Trump announced that Attorney General William Barr is stepping down on December 23. Barr was a true loyalist, politicizing the Department of Justice to protect Trump from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, stepping in to defend Trump in a defamation suit by a woman who claimed Trump had sexually assaulted her, favoring Trump’s friends, and supporting Trump’s attack on this summer’s protesters at Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. Barr’s resignation letter was full of praise for Trump, but the two men have been at odds since Barr refused to sign on to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. On December 1, Barr told the Associated Press that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 election, thus undercutting the president’s arguments.

While the timing of the resignation announcement seems pegged to try to upstage Biden’s win, the timing of the resignation itself might well reflect that Trump is planning some controversial pardons and Barr didn’t want to be associated with them.

Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen will become the acting Attorney General.

There is one more big developing story. Yesterday, the administration admitted that hackers acting for a foreign country—almost certainly Russia—have breached many of our key government networks, including the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies related to our national security. and agencies related to our national security. Hackers apparently began to sneak malicious code into software updates for business and government computers last March. The breach has enabled them to extract information for many months.  

If indeed it was Russia that broke into our system, it will be their most sophisticated break-in since 2014 and 2015, when operatives broke into unclassified email systems in the White House, State Department, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then went on to hack the Democratic National Committee. The recent hack was so serious the National Security Council, which advises the president about national security, military affairs, and foreign affairs, had an emergency meeting about it on Saturday.

—-

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

#quotes #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #election 2020 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

[relationshipsandpolitics]

Part 3

Since I last posted, we’ve gotten word that a certain rich asshole is going to enter the race.  Now, I could do 500 words on why this guy is awful, but it would sort of go against my belief that just because someone is really rich does not mean we need to pay extra attention to them and their thoughts.   This guy is not winning the nomination, won’t even poll about 3% in most states, and overall is not worth the amount ink that will surely be spilled on his campaign.  Next.

Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders

So we are down to the final 3.  One of those 3 objectively should have been culled much earlier.  If I was doing this purely based on the level of support for each candidate, this guy would have been cut about 8 candidates ago.  But Joe Biden is still the front runner, consistently leading national polls and absolutely killing it in several early primary states like South Carolina.  Biden remains popular among black voters, who serve as the lifeblood of the Democratic party. Even though his policies and personality suck, he is unique from all the other shitty centrist candidates.  So he gets his own takedown.

Joe Biden is a very old man hoping to blind the voters with his connection to President Obama.  And for the most part, it’s working like a charm. Forget the fact that he is a rambling, incoherent mess during campaign stops.  Forget his abysmal views on race, including his support for segregated busing and racist colleagues.  Forget the fact this guy railroaded Anita Hill and still can’t sufficiently apologize to her.  Forget all the bad parts of Joe Biden.  That’s what he is banking on.  Biden is trying to win not based on policy or his strategy for improving the lives of everyday Americans.  No, he is trying to win by painting a false image of who he is and how electable he would be.  Biden is basing his entire campaign on appealing to low-key racist white suburbanites who don’t want to pay more taxes.  That’s his base.  And it’s not an awful strategy.  But it highlights something terrible about the Democratic voter.

The average Democratic primary voter appears to support progressive causes.  They want to see Social Security expanded.  They support a $15 minimum wage and gun control.  They support paid family leave and some form of universal health care.  But the average Democratic voter of a certain age, race and class level doesn’t want to fight for those things.  Because while they agree with those policies in principle, they won’t be that affected by them, and more importantly, would have to pay more in taxes.  So they say they support these goals yet refuse to put any skin into the game to achieve them.   The other possibility is that they would support enacting these policies and paying a bit more, but they don’t think anyone else would and thus think we need to support the least-controversial candidate.  No one really likes Joe Biden, or if they do, no one can really identify what exactly he is running for.   Even though health care remains a joke in this country, Biden isn’t arguing to make it better.  He isn’t supporting a wealth tax.  What is this man running on except a vague idea about returning dignity to the American worker.  Yet voters still support him, either because they know he actually won’t change anything (except make it ok to be gay again) or because they think not changing anything is the only way for a Democrat to win.

The American voter (not just Democratic voters) collectively is a stupid person.  They personally want a politician to enact massive change to better their lives, yet believe the ideal candidate is a moderate who won’t do anything major, and still someone in doing nothing substantial, will improve their lives.  Then, just to double down on that stupidity, they will vote the opposition party into power in Congress to ensure nothing happens, all because they love compromise. Of course, the last thirty years of politics have shown that bipartisanship is a myth.

The American voter is both very ignorant and very naïve.  We accept that.  But it’s tougher to accept that from our politicians.  At a recent fundraiser for millionaires, Biden touted his sincere belief that when Trump goes, Republicans will have an epiphany and start working with him to make our country better.  Folks, this is disqualifying.  The sheer insanity of that belief needs to be a deal breaker.  Biden, in the very same speech to the very same contingent of rich assholes, said that he personally called dozens of Republicans to get Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court.  The Republicans said no and pulled a move so disgusting and unprecedented that we will never see something worse in our lifetimes.  And this was all before Trump was even nominated.

Joe Biden is an idiot. He also is in the bag of the rich. He regularly attends fundraisers hosted by lobbyists for some of the most nefarious industries.  His campaign is mostly funded by Wall Street and Health Insurance.  And how do you think he’ll govern once in office?  Will he go after these bad actors?  Or will he appoint them to his Cabinet?  Remember, this is the guy who worked in an administration that wanted Larry Summers as Fed Chief.  He appointed Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury.

Joe Biden would continue the worst aspects of Obama’s administration without all the good stuff. He’d be in his late 80’s by the time his second term ended, too.  For the love of all that we hold holy, we cannot nominate Biden.

It is now time for the top two candidates.  I would happily vote for either of these candidates, so my choice for one is not a slight on the other.  Each candidate has issues, but they are minor compared to what they bring to the table. So I urge you to vote early and often for either of them.

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders

A presidential candidate should make you excited to vote for them.  It can’t just be “I can’t vote for the other guy so I guess you’ll do.”  It’s a recipe for disaster.  People need a reason to take a couple hours of their day, find parking, wait in a long line, deal with eighty-year old volunteers who yell at you to close the curtain more, and then go into work and deal with their daily amount of shit.  People need a reason to see the process of voting as exciting.  

I think Bernie and Elizabeth are the only two candidates one can reasonably get excited about.  I’m not saying everyone will be excited by them because a lot of people don’t support their policies.  I call these people assholes.  But can anyone honestly say they are excited to vote for Amy Klobuchar or Joe Biden? Even if you support their bland policy proposals which consist of “we need better jobs but fuck if I know how to do that.”

But which one to choose?

I’m going to start with Bernie.  The negatives against him are one of perception rather than reality, but in politics its not the truth that wins out but what you can convince people the truth is. And Bernie will definitely be portrayed as an out-of-touch Socialist.  While the youngins like the word “socialism” the majority of the electorate is still scared to death of the term because they equate social democratic government as the Soviet Union and bread lines.  In other words, most people are stupid.   Sanders best hope would be to hammer home how amazing European countries are, the benefits they enjoy without all the negatives that Republicans conjure up in places like Venezuela. Unfortunately, Republican messaging still rules the day.   Even if you could strap a person in a chair and explain point by point why Sweden and Denmark work as social democracies, they still wouldn’t get it.

Trump will absolutely attack Bernie for being a socialist, and the problem compared to the other candidates he would attack for being a socialist is that the suburban Democratic voters would actually believe him.  Bernie absolutely will upend the system, and a lot of people are still benefiting from that system.  People like my parents.  They have a good amount of money but are not rich.  Taxes going up on them will impact their daily lives, and most of the benefits Bernie is advocating for would not benefit them.  There is a lot of good research out there that suggests the key for Democrats to win across the board is to get the suburban moderate vote. And there is a legitimate argument that Bernie will not get that vote.  Now, one can say that those voters would never vote for Trump. But you must remember a very important thing about politics: white people can get pretty racist when they think you’ll take money away from them.

But here’s what I love about Bernie.  He is entirely genuine in his advocacy for the poor and working class. Most politicians say they care, of course.  They give a speech supporting raising the minimum wage or not cutting Medicaid. But they also tie themselves with rich donors and businesses whenever they can.  They support the poor until there is a good reason not to.  Not Bernie.  He’s been singing the same tune since the sixties.  He doesn’t care if it isn’t popular. He’ll make it become popular. Bernie almost single handedly shifted the conversation on universal health care.  We are talking about paid family leave and free college because of him. And the man deserves credit for that.

Bernie has been hit a lot from the Democratic establishment.  People are still sore that he had the audacity to challenge Hillary Clinton.  Even though he endorsed and campaigned heavily for her after dropping out in 2016, there is still a narrative that he sabotaged her campaign.  Let’s be clear, though.  The reason why the establishment Democratic contingency dislikes Bernie is because he thinks they are just as corrupt as the Republicans.  Which is true.  Democrats work out of the same bubble as Republicans.  They rub shoulders with the same Wall Street donors. Try calling up your Democratic Senator to get an in-person meeting.  Now look at who does get those meetings.  I support Bernie because he actually is trying to change our corrupt political system.  A politician can’t work within the given system without being corrupted by it. The system is a cancer that needs to be destroyed.  

Bernie has said some dumb things and has held some dumb positions.  This can’t be denied.  He’s been accused of being a racist, sexist and homophobe.  Some of this is absolute bullshit and some of it is based on dumb things he’s said.   But judging by the policies the man has supported, the votes he has taken, and what he has said during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, does anyone honestly believe him to be a racist, sexist or homophobe?

If you are having a tough time getting behind Bernie, I’d ask yourself the following questions:

Do you honestly believe he would pursue anti-women and anti-reproductive rights policies?

Do you think a more robust paid family leave policy, along with a policy promoting affordable childcare, would significantly benefit women?

Do you think Bernie would restrict LGBTQ rights or would he expand protections for this group?

Do you genuinely believe Bernie would support or champion policies that would discriminate against black people?  

Do you think health care is a crisis in this country and everyone should have access to it? If so, do you think Bernie makes the situation better or worse?

Do you think a president should fill his administration with people from the financial and insurance industries?  Do you think Bernie would do this?

Do you think millionaires and billionaires should be taxed more and more money should go into programs that help the poor and middle class?

Should college be free or at least much more affordable?

Ask yourself these questions.  Don’t worry about whether he can get them passed.  Truth is it will be tough for any Democrat to get anything passed.  I’d be looking at which candidates are most willing to use executive orders (hint: it’s Bernie).

We can’t keep hedging our votes on what’s practical because the truth is everything is doable with enough willpower.   Think about how insane Social Security is as a legislative success.  We taxed everyone, rich and poor, to provide money to senior citizens for the rest of their lives.  That’s insane, and we did it.  Same with Medicare.  If you think are country needs massive changes to secure our future, vote for the candidate who is advocating for massive changes.  That candidate is Bernie Sanders and…..

Elizabeth Warren.  Everything good about Bernie can also be said about Elizabeth Warren.  This is a person who literally created an agency designed to help consumers go against corporations.  Warren has correctly diagnosed the problem for wealth and income inequality and a lot of the bad shit that’s been happening to the American worker. Corporations suck. Rich people suck. They both need to be taxed way more and we need to use those funds to give benefits to the poor and working class. Warren has a plan for pretty much everything, and that is a great thing.  She doesn’t talk in platitudes about restoring dignity to the working class. She identifies the problem and comes up with an actual solution.  

And for her efforts she gets skewered by her opponents and the media.  When Pete Buttigieg says we should invest more in affordable housing, no one pushes back on exactly what that means.  But when Warren releases a comprehensive plan to pay for Medicare for All, she is eviscerated.  Her plans should be critiqued, but they should also come with the acknowledgement that she has put in the work and is way more open with the American people than the other candidates.  The media and voters need to start making candidates pay a price for not articulating actual plans for their policy goals.  

Warren is fucking smart and driven.  She has the brain and energy to do the job.  She’s not a crackpot; she’s an advocate for the little guy.  Honestly, there isn’t much to criticize Warren on outside of how she will pay for her policy proposals.  But the media will attack what little they have while giving Trump and the more moderate Democrats a pass.  When Trump or Biden talk about strengthening the military, no one will ask what that means and how much it will cost.  But when Warren comes up with a tax plan to pay for free childcare, every single pundit will pounce the second some study comes out that her funding is off by a few million.

Of course, the dumbest part is the idea Warren needs to fully fund any proposal.  Right now, the economy has been doing great for about five years.  And in that whole time, we’ve been running huge deficits.  Maybe government spending without offsets isn’t such a big deal. Warren can’t say that because the media won’t allow her to.  It would be great if Warren could just say “things are going great now despite a trillion-dollar deficit, so why not get free healthcare for a $2 trillion-dollar deficit?”

That’s what I love most about Warren.  The lines of attack against her are so shitty.  Bernie has legitimate concerns that the Republicans will easily exploit. The best they can do with Warren is attack her policies, which are broadly popular.  And with Warren, you get a bunch of different contingencies that will come out for her.  You have women and those who want to see our first female president.  You get progressives excited about finally having a candidate who advocates for them with a fighting chance.  And because she is being so careful not to raise middle class taxes, I think you get a lot of the suburban vote.

I think Warren can win this thing.  She articulates the message well, she lacks genuine baggage and when compared to Trump, she comes off even better.  

So who is my final pick? I’m going with Elizabeth Warren. Not only does she hold most of the same policy positions as Sanders, but she also is fundamentally opposed to the corporate interests that got us to this point.  And I think she can better cajole moderate Democrats to support her agenda.  Finally, I think she comes with less baggage.

What I would love to see, based on the polling, is for Warren to either win or come in second by a close margin to Biden or Buttigieg.  Sanders would drastically underperform, at which point if New Hampshire was also going poorly, he could drop out and swing all his support to Warren.  That would make her the clear front runner. Let’s see what happens.

  Elizabeth Warren

#elizabeth warren #bernie sanders #joe biden

[verycleverboy]

Here’s another one you’re not gonna read...

(...because it’s excruciatingly long, not because it isn’t necessary.)

One of my most faithful followers (unless I’m confusing him with someone else, because what little blowback I get from the other side of the street tends to bleed together these days) checked in about a different post I made for this story, which I entitled (checks notes) ”Geriatric toddler threatens to dismiss a branch of the government during a national emergency unless he gets the toys that he wants”:

First of all, hope you’re doing well in the current situation, and thank you for your thoughtful analysis of the first two words of a joke headline.

The Washington Post article that joke was attached to goes into the president’s threat last week to dismiss Congress under the never-used Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, with the goal of making recess appointments that bypassed the hearings that have tripped up several high-profile nominees.

Like a lot of things that literally every other POTUS before the current one never attempted, there’s a pretty spirited debate as to what conditions would have to be fulfilled for Trump to successfully pull this maneuver off, assuming it’s not all bluster and no muster. One major condition that would have to exist is that the Senate and the House would have to be in disagreement on adjournment, and according to the National Law Journal, there is no disagreement between the chambers at the moment. The current session officially adjourns on January 3, 2021. So until circumstances prove otherwise, we have to operate under the assumption that he can, in fact, exercise this extraordinary Constitutional power...under a narrow set of conditions which don’t exist right now.

The reason he’s making this threat, and why his supplemental threat to “take it to the courts” is toothless, is that the last man in his current position tried to make a recess appointment between the type of pro forma sessions we’re dealing with now and was shot down by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, one which reaffirmed that Congress is done when Congress says it’s done. 

But one justice went a little bit further in his concurring opinion, issuing a warning about any court decision that “transforms the recess-appointment power from a tool carefully designed to fill a narrow and specific need into a weapon to be wielded by future presidents against future Senates.”

“The Recess Appointments Clause therefore is, or rather, should be, an anachronism—’essentially an historic relic, something whose original purpose has disappeared,’” the justice wrote. “The need it was designed to fill no longer exists, and its only remaining use is the ignoble one of enabling the president to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process.” 

Antonin Scalia, ladies and gentlemen.

Here’s where things get interesting, though, because the statement that came from Mitch McConnell’s office, at least if you squint hard enough, signals “I feel ya, bro, but focus.”:  “The Leader pledged to find ways to confirm nominees considered mission-critical to the COVID-19 pandemic, but under Senate rules will take consent from Leader Schumer.”

Which brings us back to our article up there...

What qualifies as “mission-critical to the COVID-19 pandemic”? There are a few nominees that are cooling their heels at the moment, but for the Voice of America (and yes, now is when we finally get to the linked article), one of them strikes pretty close to home.

U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to adjourn Congress because lawmakers have not approved his candidates for senior posts in his administration, including his nominee to run the independent agency overseeing the Voice of America.[...]

Documentary filmmaker Michael Pack, whom Trump has selected to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is one of 15 key nominees awaiting confirmation by the Senate. Trump cited Pack by name (but erroneously identified the body he would head as USAGM’s predecessor agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors). 

Michael Pack is a self-described conservative documentary filmmaker, one who has done work with Trump’s ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon. And there’s a pretty damn good reason why the confirmation committee pumped the brakes on his nomination (per CNBC).:

The “problematic revelations” that Menendez says he discovered just before Pack’s confirmation hearing in 2019 include “whether Mr. Pack engaged in inappropriate or unlawful activity related to transactions between his business (Manifold Productions) and his non-profit (Public Media Lab)” and “whether Mr. Pack engaged in self-dealing while in a leadership position at the Claremont Institute through the awarding of a contract to Manifold” even though that company doesn’t appear to have any qualifications to act as a vendor to the conservative think tank.

The letter to Meadows also sheds light on another aspect of Pack’s confirmation, which is that the Democratic committee leader has asked Pack to provide documents and answers to a variety of questions that could clear up these issues, only for Trump’s nominee to respond in a “perfunctory and inadequate” way.

“More than seven months have gone by since my initial questions. Mr. Pack has yet to provide the Committee with the requested information or to engage in a good-faith and serious effort to do so,” Menendez said.

So when confronted with his unethical, possibly illegal wrongdoing, Pack stonewalled, the way all this president’s men do. Sounds like a great guy to trust with public funds.

But seriously, why is this “mission critical to the COVID-19 pandemic”? 

Back to VOA:

Pack’s nomination has “been stuck in committee for two years, preventing us from managing the Voice of America — very important,” the president said. “And if you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting. The things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and do a great job, but he’s been waiting for two years — can’t get him approved.”   

Disgusting, you say? Let’s settle into that accusation for a hot minute.

Here’s the deal about the VOA: It went on the air on February 9, 1942, a little over two months after America found itself pulled into a global conflict of a massive scale with the actual, non-metaphorical Nazi government which had steamrolled over the European continent. That first broadcast came from a small studio in New York City, directed at an aggressor nation which had developed a robust system of delivering misinformation to its enemies. 

So how do you combat lies? Double down on honesty.

“This is a voice speaking from America, a voice from America at war. Our voices are coming to you from New York, across the Atlantic Ocean to London, from where they are relayed to you in Germany. Today, America has been at war for 79 days. Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.“

“The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.” I’ve never been a journalist, but the first time I read those words I was thunderstruck. In the simplest language possible, there’s the Platonic ideal of what news reporting is supposed to be. It also sets a high bar for how the United States presents itself to the world. We could argue all day on how many American organizations live up to those words, how many American administrations live up to those words, or if any configuration of the American government is equipped to be honest and forthright in every imaginable situation. But that’s the resolution, the goal for all the world to see.

So what is the “disgusting” VOA coverage that President Trump is complaining about? If we look at some recent headlines, we might get a hint.:

US Nowhere Near Ready for Business as Usual, Former CDC Head Says

Fauci: US Economy Won’t Recover Until Coronavirus Controlled

WHO Chief: Worst on Coronavirus Pandemic Yet to Come

WHO Fears US Funding Cuts Will Roll Back Health Gains in Africa

If you actually read these, they’re nothing more than articles recounting expert assessments of the potential consequences of federal actions (or, just as often, inactions) connected to our coronavirus response. Addressing these things in the public square is usually meant to be a corrective, especially when your chief executive pays more attention to the media than his own advisors, and that a broadcast outlet funded by the US government isn’t afraid to publicize criticism of government decisions gives our entire system a much-needed shot of credibility.

But Trump has never been able to take even constructive criticism as anything other than a personal insult, an attitude which he magnifies by using the power of the highest office in the country to scream “FAKE! FAKE! FAKE! FAKE!” at the top of his lungs whenever he sees or hears something that hurts his feelings. 

The only conclusion I can draw is that he wants the Voice of America to be more like the Voice of Korea, and the “mission critical” part of this gambit is that the VOA’s editorial independence distracts and confuses him. Do I seriously think the beacon of the Cold War era, the organization whose current director proudly proclaims “We export the First Amendment,” is going to be converted into a shoddy simulation of the old Eastern bloc broadcasters? Of course not. Would I put it past the current chief executive to at least try, destroying the VOA’s credibility to redesign it into yet another monument to himself? Not a shadow of a doubt.

“The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.” It’s a core element of America’s self-image, and the image we project to friends and foes alike. And the 45th President of the United States thinks that’s disgusting. 

Because he doesn’t want the truth. He wants to be soothed and coddled. He wants a cookie and a story before bedtime. You know, like a toddler.

(PS: For the record, the “very clever boy” in this account’s original title was always intended to be Donald Trump, because, as you probably figured out a long time ago, I don’t view him as very clever, nor has he been a boy for quite some time. I changed the official name of the blog to Trump Happens because some people don’t get sarcasm.)

#constitution #Donald Trump #long reads #COVID-19 #coronavirus #voice of america #VOA

[someguyscaliforniavoterguide]

Select L.A. County/California Races, March 3, 2020

Hi friends, it’s me again. I am here to offer my opinions on how you should vote. As before I am up front about my biases: I am a Warren supporter, I live in L.A. and I am actively pro-density (Yay SB50, you deserved better) and pro-transit. I live in the east Valley, so I tend to focus more closely on the issues that directly impact my side of town, though I try to keep an ear out on things countywide. 

Last time I did this a couple of folks reached out to give me gifts to say thanks for doing this guide. This year, I would encourage anybody who wants to say thanks to donate $5 to Fair Fight,  a group founded by Stacey Abrams to fight voter suppression in the 2020 election. We’re gonna need all the help we can get in November to defeat the GOP, and Abrams is doing it in a smart way. 

Other voting guides

This is my voting guide and reflects my general opinion on things. However, I am indebeted to many other guides, including the Knock L.A. Voter Guide and the L.A. Podcast Voter Guide for their takes. I don’t always agree with them, but both of these are invaluable resources for the progressive voter in Los Angeles. 

L.A. City Council 

This year the even numbered seats are up for re-election. Half of them are effectively uncontested, a couple are very much contested, and two are free for all because of term limits. 

CD2: Ayinde Jones

Look none of these candidates set my heart afire. I work with Councilmember Krekorian’s office a lot (remember, I live in the east Valley) and he’s a competent politician with a ton of endorsements and community ties, I have no illusion he’s going to win his full term comfortably on March 3. However, I believe it’s good to encourage competition, and Ayinde Jones did a good (not great) job at the candidate forum I attended hitting on themes of how the parts of CD2 north of Victory are being left behind as the area evolves. I wish he were better on S50, but then again all three candidates were opposed, so that’s kind of a wash. I look forward to hearing more from Jones in the future. 

CD4: Sarah Kate Levy

From a paucity of options to a surplus of options next door. CD4 is currently represented by David Ryu, a politician who came out of the Neighborhood Council system and went on to become...a city hall politician. Both his opponents are great. Nithya Raman is the founder of SELAH, a group that does amazing work helping the unhoused in Los Angeles, and recently led Times Up! Hollywood for a year. I’d vote for her in a heartbeat, but I am encouraging people to vote for Sarah Kate Levy for two reasons: first, Levy is unabashedly supportive of SB50 and we need this kind of leadership, and second I am hoping these two excellent women will get so many votes that they overwhelm Ryu and leave him in third place. Fingers crossed. 

CD6: Bill Haller 

This is another shoo-in. Nury Martinez is the City Council president and has the backing of the County party and all the local clubs. I am endorsing Bill Haller because he supports an agenda that includes more public funding for affordable housing, more and better transit, and climate justice.  

CD8: Marqueece Harris-Dawson 

There are no other candidates in this race, so congratulations on your re-election Councilmember Harris-Dawson. 

CD10: Aura Vasquez 

This is an open seat, and the smart money has Mark Ridley-Thomas as the frontrunner. Ridley-Thomas is a current member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors (more on them later) who is termed out of that position. I’m endorsing Aura Vasquez, a progressive activist with ties to Mid-City who has served as a commissioner for LADWP and led fights for renewable energy, banning single use plastics, and housing affordability in her community. 

CD12: Loraine Lundquist 

Dr. Lundquist rules. She takes public transit to debates, she is an honest to goodness scientist, and she nearly beat a Republican in what is the most conservative district in L.A. during a special election. I have donated money to this lady because we need to win this one. Her opponent, John Lee, wasted no time in trying to block housing for the homeless in his district and in attacking a successful safer streets project on Reseda Blvd. The city has a chance - a really great chance thanks to the realigned municipal elections - to toss out the worst possible councilmember in favor of the most progressive voice, don’t mess it up. 

CD14: Cyndi Otteson

This race is Kevin de Léon’s to lose, but he won’t commit to serving a full term since he really wants to be mayor. I say let him have his spare time to run for mayor and select Ms. Otteson, a grassroots activist who has the support of the UTLA and who is the only voice in favor of the Colorado Blvd alignment of the NoHo to Pasadena BRT project. Transit equity matters, and Ms. Otteson deserves your vote this March. 

LAUSD School Board 

Deferring to the teachers’ endorsements on this one. 

Board Seat 1: George McKenna

Board Seat 3: Scott Schmerlson

Board Seat 5: Jackie Goldberg

Board Seat 7: Patricia Castellanos

Glendale City Council: Dan Brotman 

An environmental activist with progresive views, Brotman will be a useful voice in Glendale’s city hall. 

District Attorney: Rachel Rossi 

George Gascón and Rachel Rossi will both be light years better than the current county D.A., Jackie Lacey. Both have promised to make substantial reforms in the office. I am really torn on this one, since I think Gascón’s experience as a Deputy DA in San Francisco is a big deal, and since he has the backing of the County Party. I am endorsing Rossi in a tilt-at-windmills hope that somehow she and Gascón make it to the final ballot in November and give us a thoughtful debate between a career prosecutor bent on reform and a public defender whose goal is reform about methods and ideas. Anyway, don’t vote for Jackie Lacey is all I am saying here. 

Superior Court

Voting for judges is stupid. We shouldn’t be doing this, but since we have to, I’ll make some suggestions. My math is based on other progressive endorsements, Party endorsements, and reverse-engineering some well known conservative voting guides to, if nothing else, make sure I am not voting for their endorsement. 

Office 17: Shannon Kathleen Cooley (the race is uncontested) 

Office 42: Linda Sun

Office 72: Myanna Dellinger

Office 76: Emily Cole (Cole is a prosecutor, but her opponent is a man who literally changed his name to “Judge” after serving as a judge in Stanislaus County) 

Office 80: Klint James McKay

Currently an administrative law judge, he impressed Public Defender Union representatives with his thoughtful and articulate answers to their questioning.

Office 97: Sherry L. Powell (Powell’s opponent ran as a conservative Republican for state assembly in 2018, this is a defensive vote)

Office 129: Kenneth Fuller

Office 131: Michelle Kelley (the race is uncontested)

Office 141: Lana Kim (the race is uncontested)

Office 145: Troy Slaten (Slaten’s opponent has a troubling history of misconduct and should not be elected to a judgeship) 

Office 150: Tom Parsekian

Office 162: David D. Diamond

L.A. County Board of Supervisors

The Supervisors oversee policy for the County, including all unincorporated areas, the LASD, County Health services, etc. For a county of TEN MILLION PEOPLE, there are only five supervisors, so they have a hugely outsized influence. 

Seat 2: Jorge Nuno 

A lot of progressives are endorsing Holly Mitchell in this seat. Me, I just can’t go there when she’s speaking at events for Livable California and when she gave a floor speech opposing SB50. Though he’s the front runner, Herb Wesson doesn’t deserve your vote - he was City Council president when the homelessness crisis exploded and he’s done little to address it. Nuno is a progressive and has an ambitious platform. 

Seat 4: Janice Hahn 

She’s solid, and nobody’s pushing her from the left. 

Seat 5: John Harabedian 

Kathryn Barger, the incumbent, is a Republican who supports Trump’s immigration policies. John Harabedian is a solidly Center Left Democrat who has the backing of the county party and who could, in this presidential election year, win an upset in what is traditionally a Republican stronghold of L.A. County. Vote for him. 

County Ballot Measures

Measure R: YES YES YES 

This will provide crucial tools to the already existing civilian oversight committee for the LASD, including subpoena powers. It also requires the commission to study ways to divert offenders from jail. You need to vote yes on this. 

State Ballot Measures 

Prop 13: Yes

$15B in bonds to invest in public schools and “local control” to allow local school districts to issue larger bonds. The only real opposition is from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a revanchist organization that is singlehandedly responsible for much of our state and local problems in the past few decades. Don’t listen to them. 

Congressional Elections 

Despite some misgivings, I am generally supporting the progressive challengers here to hopefully lead to a Progressive/Center Left election in the fall. 

CD 25: Christy Smith 

She has a good track record in the state assembly and a strong local support network. She’s not a carpetbagger with a YouTube show, and she’s not a Republican. 

CD 28: Adam Schiff 

He’s not the most progressive guy in Congress but he’s been critical to holding Trump accountable. He’s earned this vote. 

CD 29: Angelica Duenas 

Tony Cardenas is a bit of a non-entity on the national stage but he does good local work and he was an early vote in favor of impeachment. The rape allegations against him which troubled me last time were dismissed with prejudice in 2019. Cardenas has a progressive challenger, Angelica Marie Duenas, who has run in the past as a Green Party candidate. I don’t trust her decision to abandon that label and come into the Democrats after getting drubbed in 2018, but overall I like her ideas and I’d be happy to see her and Cardenas in a runoff this year. 

CD 30: CJ Berina 

Brad Sherman is an okay Congressmember. CJ Berina is a young, progressive challenger who’s attracted the attention of the Sunrise Movement. I’d vote for him to try to push the GOP out of the runoff and make this a race between the Center Left and the Progressive Left. 

CD 34: Frances Yasmeen Motiwalla

Jimmy Gomez is solid; let’s push the GOP out of the runoff though by supporting this progressive. 

State House 

District 39: Luz Rivas

District 41: Chris Holden 

District 43: Laura Friedman 

District 44: Jacqui Irwin

District 45: Jesse Gabriel 

District 46: Adrin Nazarian

District 48: Blanca Rubio 

District 49: Edwin Chau 

District 50: Richard Bloom

District 51: Wendy Carillo

District 53: Godfrey Plata

District 54: Tracey Jones

District 55: Andrew Rodriguez

District 58: Margaret Villa

District 59: Reggie Jones-Sawyer

District 62: Autumn Burke

District 63: Anthony Rendon

District 64: Fatima Iqbal-Zubair

District 66: Al Muratsuchi

District 70: Patrick O’Donnell

State Senate

SD 21: Kipp Mueller

SD 23: Abigail Medina

SD 25: No Endorsement - I rarely do this but honestly Anthony Portantino does not deserve your vote. Write in Mickey Mouse. 

SD 27: Henry Stern

SD 29: Josh Newman

SD 31: Richard Roth

SD 33: Lena Gonzalez

SD 35: Steven Bradford

County Committees 

Look this is getting waaaaaaaaaaaaaay into the weeds. What I am going to say is this: I know that a lot of “progressive” slates are out there and I encourage you to try your best to vet them. In my district, one of the candidates is somebody I know personally - she actively campaigned for Jill Stein, she circulated the decades-old “Clinton Death List” to voters, and she pushed Pizzagate theories. I am not voting for this person, but she is endorsed by “Progressive California” so...just be careful. 

[politicaltheatre]

Kill The Messengers, pt.3

This week played out like some kind of twisted symphony, the end of American representative democracy as we’ve known it in four movements.

You have the first movement, establishing the world about to be threatened, perhaps even destroyed.

You have the second, when all hope seems lost.

You have the third, chaotic, confirmation of all that has come before, of the doom and gloom we have bare escaped, and yet showing a glimmer of light, a chance at hope renewed.

The fourth movement continues from the third, an explosion of energy, of promise for a better future.

This was the week that was.

The first movement, clearly - or not considering how it played out - was the Iowa Caucus coupled with a motif of war between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington in the impeachment trial’s closing arguments. The expectations set by the caucus and the pantomime on the Senate floor seemed crystal clear at the time. And then arrogance overwhelmed everything.

The arguments weren’t much of anything, really. The House managers laid out a thorough, well reasoned, and, aside from Adam Schiff, incredibly dull closing. Yes, Trump is corrupt. Yes, Trump violated United States laws and the Constitution itself. Yes, acquittal would mean violating any standard of the rule of law and make corruption the new standard of the republic.

Trump’s lawyers turned abruptly from that to complete farce. Richard Nixon, in his shameful, post-pardon exile, infamously said, “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”. On Monday, Alan Dershowitz attempted to make the case that Nixon’s personal defense should be the law of the land. That’s how far we’ve come as a nation in forty years, how low our standards of behavior have been brought.

The Iowa Caucus has been around so long that its functioning has long been taken for granted. People go in a room, give their first choice, and then persuade, bully, and cajole their friends and neighbors to join them until some candidate comes out the winner. They do this all over the state in small groups and it takes time. Reporting it should take time.

And yet, in our impatient, smart phone driven new world, the idea that people should be allowed to take time with something is a thing of the past, like the rule of law. The corruption coursing through our culture at the moment has only exacerbated this, by making the chaos of reporting accurate information about a competition fodder for conspiracy theories and accusations of cheating. Everybody does it, right?

With a crisis like this comes an opportunity, and as in so many crises before that opportunity was seen as a money making one. Some geniuses who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign offered to bring Iowa’s ancient caucus system into the 21st century, and the result, predictably, went sideways.

HBO famously allowed untold millions of Americans steal its HBO GO streaming service through the use of borrowed passwords and other, less scrupulous methods. They did this for a year or so, until they knew that their highly anticipated stand alone streaming service, one not requiring cable TV, could handle the bandwidth. It cost them more money than we will ever know, but once HBO NOW launched, it never went down due to lack of bandwidth.

No one at Iowa’s Democratic Party and the Clinton veterans’ company, Shadow, Inc., thought to test their caucus app, either for bandwidth requirements or for bugs in the code. Oops.

Fortunately for the Democrats, Iowa is no more representative of them as a national party than it is representative of the nation as a whole. This embarrassment will only really last as long as it takes to count the results of the primary in New Hampshire.

The second movement, filling those of us who can feel it with sorrow and shame, encompassed a State of the Union address that had almost nothing to do with the state of this actual union and the vote less than a day later to acquit Trump.

Our expectations of State of the Union addresses is justifiably low. Rarely has anything ever been said or done that was not wholly calculated and lacking in any sense of authenticity. By that standard, Trump didn’t disappoint.

That, of course, is the only standard by which he did not, unless you count yourself among his base. Even more than any president before him, Trump has used presidential addresses as campaign opportunities, and he did so here. The low point - again, unless you just love Trump - was the pantomime award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, a man who has made a fortune cultivating hatred and pitting Americans against each other.

In a way, Limbaugh is the perfect recipient of an award from Trump. He is openly racist, has bullied women, foreigners, and those with disabilities, and has lied shamelessly, all in the service of enriching himself. He is Trump.

Nancy Pelosi’s own pantomime of tearing up Trump’s speech at the end was no less calculated. It may well backfire, offering up justification to Trump’s base for every lie he’s told about Democrats, but she had to have thought about what she could possibly do knowing what was coming the next day to show that the Democrats weren’t just going to sit there and take it. She has her own base to worry about, and that of the eventual Democratic nominee in November.

What came the next day was no more surprising than hearing that “the state of the union is strong”. The only surprise, if it was even surprising, was that Utah Republican Mitt Romney voted to convict on abuse of power. He didn’t have to worry about Trump actually being convicted, and he did have to worry about his own reelection, and yet showing the courage to vote “Yes” on that one charge has cleared the low bar for courage we now hold.

His fellow Republican senators spent the day taking several, heavily scripted lines to justify voting “No”. The most laughable, offered up by a few including Maine’s possibly outgoing senator, Susan Collins, was that Trump must have learned his lesson. The most insidious, offered Ohio’s Rob Portman in an op-ed, was that he voted “No” because the time has come for America to put partisanship behind it and come together.

That’s a bit like punching someone in the mouth and insisting that he learn to turn the other cheek. While you’re punching him again in that other cheek. And picking his pocket. And laughing at him.

When Republican senators trotted out words and phrases such as “coming together”, “bipartisanship”, and “unity”, it was all coded language. What they meant, and have meant in their long journey further and further into political corruption, is “stop resisting”, “just go along”, and “consent”. They don’t want us to stop fighting, they want us to stop fighting back.

Barack Obama repeatedly tried to meet them half way, only to see Mitch McConnell and his House colleagues repeatedly move what they called “half way” further and further to the political right. There is no negotiating your way out of that trap, and there will be no campaigning against it if you give it the weight all of those senators voting “No” have been trying to give it.

So, there we were, a country watching corruption win and boast of its victory over the rule of law. It was enough to make a decent human being think that maybe those Republicans in Washington were right, that there isn’t any point fighting back, that we should just give in and take it.

The third movement is all about that feeling.

The lawsuit against Trump for violating the emoluments clause in the Constitution was dismissed because the Democrats filing it did not hold a majority in the House when they filed it. The same day, it came out that Trump has been charging the Secret Service thousands of dollars each night its agents stay at one of his hotels, which they must do when they guard him.

Trump gave a speech at a national prayer breakfast that was filled with nothing but hate. Well, almost nothing; he does love how he stuck it to those Democrats.

And then Trump began his campaign of vengeance against those who testified against him, firing Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Vindman’s twin brother, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. They violated the rule of omertà.

And yet, a glimmer of light breaks through.

The largest newspaper in Mitt Romney’s home state praised his courage. He may be as safe as a senator can be, a beloved Morman representing Utah, but he knew the point he was making to Republicans across the country and knew all too well how history would remember him.

There were also three Democratic senators in “red” states, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, Arizona’s Kirsten Cinema, and Alabama’s Doug Jones, who all voted to convict. Doug Jones is running for reelection. He may have nothing to lose, running in a state expected to vote heavily for Trump, but he showed courage nonetheless. He’ll campaign on this, and Sinema will campaign for whomever the Democratic nominee for Senate will be in Arizona.

Baldwin may have made the toughest choice among them, knowing that she will have to run point for whomever the Democratic presidential nominee is in an attempt to swing her state back in November.

This is why this impeachment will not be so easily put behind us. It is not because Trump will be campaigning on his acquittal but because the Democrats want Americans looking at how the Republicans in Congress protected him.

Corey Gardener voted to acquit Trump and his chance at reelection in Colorado may now be lower than Doug Jones in Alabama. It was a vote for corruption. It was a vote for a double standard, a set of rules for the rich and another for everyone else. And it will be a yoke Democrats hang around his neck and those of every Republican running in the Senate and the House.

Will they succeed? Well, let’s talk about the fourth movement.

Tonight in New Hampshire, seven Democrats are answering questions on a stage and very likely offering actual answers about how they will be better than Trump. Again, that’s a mighty low bar.

What should make you feel good, unless you are a fan of Donald Trump, are those results from Iowa. Young voters, notorious generation after generation for being all talk, showed up in droves. If they show up next week in New Hampshire and keep showing up, they are likely to tip the scales in the so-called “battleground” states.

They stayed home in 2016. The Democratic presidential candidate, who for some reason keeps on trying to insert herself into every conversation and who never seems able to accept accountability for her own failures, made that campaign all about her and failed. Based on the current field of Democrats - even Bloomberg - that won’t be the case.

Turnout is everything in an election, and what the Democrats - not the DNC, but the ones campaigning to be president right now - seem to understand is that they can’t rely on converting many who voted for Trump. They need to bring out their own voters and they need to give Trump’s 2016 voters a reason to stay home.

Impeachment may not seem like a sexy campaign issue, certainly not when you failed to convict, but it doesn’t have to be the central issue in the election. It will be there, always present, always a reminder of corruption and, most importantly, those who stood to support it.

Trump is emboldened now, yes, and taking his revenge while taking a bigger piece of the pie all for himself, and that will weigh on him and on every Republican running for Congress, not just in 2020 but in 2022 and 2024. The advantage Democrats have now is one that they only just started to have in 2018, one that they could not have had in 2016.

They now have evidence, a track record of corruption and greed and racism and abuse of power that has been so pervasive and so present that ignoring it has become more and more difficult.

Memory is powerful. It’s like the body developing anti-bodies in reaction to an illness. We know now what we’re fighting. We can recognize it. We can focus our energies against it. With enough anti-bodies, we build a defense and we defeat what would destroy us.

The right wing has long spoken in these terms, of invasion, of infestation, of outsiders threatening who we are and those things we love. The threat they want us to see is the “other”, always the “other”.

What we must ask, and what Democrats at long last seem to be heard asking, is why. The right wing wants us looking away, wants us looking at others, because they don’t want us looking at ourselves.

The greatest threat we face is from ourselves. We have an economy that rewards selfishness above accountability because we allow it. We have rising temperatures and weather systems increasingly out of balance because we allow it.

We have corruption because we allow it. We have abuse because we allow it. Donald Trump has carte blanche to be corrupt and to abuse power because we, the American people, have allowed it.

And we have the power to end it, if we so choose.

You impeach a corrupt president because corruption destroys us like a cancer. You fight bullies because you are not afraid. You stand up for the least powerful among us because that is what makes us all stronger. You share what you have because someday those people might be in a position to share with you.

Isn’t that America? Isn’t that the version we tell ourselves we want to be?

That was the lesson for this week. That was the point of impeachment. That is the core issue not only of this upcoming election but of the next one and the one after that.

Big finish.

- Daniel Ward

#politics #corruption #lies #accountability #electability #impeachment #2020 elections #bernie sanders #pete buttigieg #elizabeth warren #joe biden #amy klobuchar #andrew yang #tom steyer #mike bloomberg #alexander vindman #democrats #republicans #mitch mcconnell #donald trump #new hampshire #iowa #long reads

[dearyallfrommatt]

Dumbass Things Seen On Twitter Tonight, Part 7,659

 In reference the Bernie Sanders losing the vote for nomination in a number of states:

 “But what do we who care about Medicare For All or the Environment do now?”

 Are you fuckin’ serious?

 You organize. You call your representatives. You send them emails and snail mail. Hell, fax them if you can. You do the same if Joe Biden wins the general in November. Constantly. You let businesses know your money won’t go to them if they don’t support taking care of either the environment or fellow citizens’ health. You support businesses who put some effort into taking care of the environment or fellow citizens’ health. You educate yourself and share that education with others. You organize. You put some effort into it. You fight. You don’t stop fighting.

 You know what you don’t do? You don’t sit there to cry and moan because the road isn’t going to be as easy as you thought it was. You don’t give up this easily and quickly. Though if you actually thought one man was going to accomplish all this by himself, you probably weren’t thinking all that hard in the first place. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but that’s not how politics works and this “Only One Man Can Save Us" business isn’t going to cut it. Even when it puts someone in office, it never works out well.

��And, yes, it seems to be “working” for Trump, but “seems” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. For one, his actions and attitudes made him loathed by most of the country if not most of the world. Worse, where do things go for the GOP from here? The party is scared shitless of the MAGAts because they know if they upset or “show disloyalty”, the Base will eat them alive. And when he’s gone, what sort of mess do you think he’s leaving in his wake? What sort of terrifyingly demented hellspawn will the Base demand and, if they want to keep their jobs, what will the GOP deliver.

 One of the things Sanders ran on that I really think most of his followers missed out on is that he was trying (more or less) to build a coalition for the future. It’s like he recognized that “Back to Normalcy” wouldn’t make the grade because, one, “normalcy” got us in this mess and, two, whether any of us want to admit it or not, this is indeed “the New Normal”.

 As screwed up as things in this “New Normal” are, there’s nothing that says it’s the way it has to be. Every Democratic president of at least the past 40 years has implemented policies that came from his opponents or he claimed to against before winning. Every single one. Because that’s how politics works. That’s how it’s always worked.

 Despite what the Base thinks, president’s aren’t kings. Their main job is, in essence, keep the underclass from stringing the wealthy up by their intestines. Politics is a dirty business and a smart politician knows they’ll have to change, evolve or get replaced toot sweet. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with only one party that’s willing to listen to people rather than demand everyone adjust to their professed ideology, which they don’t follow in the first place. If you’re upset about health insurance with Sanders (possibly) out of the race, I’ve got news for you. Trump or not, the GOP’s plan for addressing the problem is for you to eat shit and die.

 And as a side note, yes, the two-party is a dud and, yes, the Electoral College is outdated. But guess what? Like with everything else, crying about it because Your Savior wasn’t anointed does exactly Jack and Shit, after Jack leaves town. Every third party in the past 40 years has come and gone like a wet fart because the same people who agitate for such are the same people who refuse to actually do the work.

 Which brings it all back around. Bernie Sanders was never going to wave a magic wand and implement Medicare For All. He would’ve needed the support of not just his party in Congress, but as many from the opposing party as possible. I know we think president’s rule by fiat, but that’s mainly because as spineless as the Democrats may look, the Republicans are actively trying to install an authoritarian Executive Branch. Trump’s just a half-bright dingbat who had a television show and that impresses the rubes.

 But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m old enough to remember when my cousin’s marriage was against the law. She’s white and her husband is black, and that was forbidden by law as gay marriage was. And now, my gay friends can get married in more and more states. The Affordable Care Act wasn’t perfect to begin with even before being hobbled by the GOP, but I for one am still alive because of it.

 The Powers That Be have never “given” the people anything. The people have always had to pry it out of them like pulling teeth. If you are legitimately considering tossing in the towel because Sanders may not get the nomination, you really didn’t have much fight in you in the first place. If you’re going to give up that easily, get the fuck out of the way and let the rest of get down to it.

 We got a lot of work to do and a lot to fight against, and we simply do not have the time to dry your tears.

#fear & loathing on the campaign trail 2020 #Bernie Sanders #Joe Biden #plenty tough union made

[bountyofbeads]

Trump’s Paradigm of the Personal https://nyti.ms/2NwK2xW

Excellent piece by @CharlesMBlow of the Times. Highly recommend, also the comments are interesting as well.

Trump’s Paradigm of the Personal

He confuses the way he thinks he is treated with the well-being of the country.

By Charles M. Blow, Opinion Columnist

Published Aug. 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 26, 2019 |

For Donald Trump, all is personal.

And in his view, he is not the executive of the company. He is the embodiment of the country. He runs the country the way he ran his business, as the curating and promotion of his personal brand.

The people who support him are customers — people to be sold a vision and a dream. The people who criticize or oppose him threaten the brand and must be dealt with.

For Trump, everything is image-based and rooted in the appearance of personal relationships. When the Danish prime minister rebuffed his overture about buying Greenland, calling the idea “absurd,” Trump threw a tantrum and canceled his visit to Denmark.

Trump discussed the episode at one of his press gaggles, calling the prime minister’s response “nasty’ and saying, “We can’t treat the United States of America the way they treated us under President Obama.” He went on to say: “She’s not talking to me. She’s talking to the United States of America. You don’t talk to the United States that way, at least under me.”

No, actually, she was talking to him.

America was not being dismissed or disrespected. This proposal, which sounded like a joke, was being laughed at. And this president hates being laughed at.

Everything in Trump’s view is about whether someone is nice or nasty to him. It’s not about the country at all. It’s not about historical precedent or value of continuity.

His dislike of his predecessors — Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and even Jimmy Carter — is personal, not rooted in policy. He has a particular obsession with Obama, and has set about to undo everything Obama had done.

It’s petty and small and beneath the presidency, much like Trump himself.

I believe that Trump has had a longstanding belief about how China should be dealt with, but I believe that the current trade war is as much a personal beef with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Trump thought that he could play rough and that Xi would fold.

That was silly and shortsighted. The U.S. presidency is term-limited. China’s is not. The Chinese may experience pain from the trade war, but they can afford to wait Trump out.

The fact that Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, won’t attempt to manipulate the economy in ways Trump thinks would be favorable, but is instead operating as an independent thinker, Trump takes as a personal slight. Trump appointed him. Trump demands loyalty and blind obeisance.

When China announced another round of retaliatory tariffs this week, Trump had a Twitter meltdown, tweeting “... My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” and sending the markets into a tailspin.

Trump hated North Korea’s Kim Jong-un before he loved him. Kim has played Trump like a fiddle. Kim has baited Trump into two summits, where Trump got nothing and Kim got a priceless public relations moment. Kim can just send Trump love letters and do what he wants and surrender nothing. In Trump’s paradigm of the personal, Kim likes him and is his friend.

Vladimir Putin is also exploiting Trump’s personal need to be liked — his weak man’s desire to be admired by strong men. Trump has a deep and mysterious affection for Putin. Yes, Putin helped to get him elected, but I’m not sure even that explains the way Trump genuflects for him.

Everyone around Trump knows his weakness: He is a bottomless pit of emotional need, someone who desperately wants friends but doesn’t have the emotional quotient to know how to make and keep them. So, they flatter him and inflate him.

They have all become major-league yes men and women.

None of this is good for the country. The presidency is not owned; it is occupied. It is bigger than any man or woman. Men have grown into it, but they have never subsumed it.

The presidency must have one eye on the past and one on the future. It must place national interest over personal interest. It has absolutely nothing to do with any one person’s feelings.

In George Washington’s farewell address of 1796, he said:

“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”

Trump is trying to embody the country and to lead it astray in the way that Washington warned against. Trump is a slave to his emotions, and this impulse is doing great harm to the nation, both internally and on the world stage.

I’m not sure that damage is irreparable. Our democracy, though fragile in many ways, has proved remarkably durable in others. But there is no doubt that the damage Trump is doing is deep and will take time and effort to undo.

Trump’s personal problems will leave a national scar.

COMMENTS FROM READERS, ADD YOUR THOUGHTS AS WELL:

""Trump’s personal problems will leave a national scar." More like an open wound that won't heal. 60 million citizens have succumbed to his bombast, and to date there seems to be no weakening of their support. That will take years if not decades to heal. It may never. Iraq and the Bush years were tragic, but with President Obama we started a recovery. Even with one of the deepest recession, we all pulled together, and we started the to build jobs again and pulled out of the recession quicker than the rest of the world. We lead the way. But literally within days of Trump taking office the country started it's tragic descent into the abyss. And there is no end in sight."

CHERRYLOG754, ATLANTA

"Because this president views himself a king, like Louis XIV, his actions and words smack of "l'etat c'est moi". Which is a fancy way of saying, what Charles just said, he thinks he embodies the nation, not leads it. Which is funny, because if you are the nation, wouldn't you have a better appreciation of its history, culture, mores, and values? One would think so. I watched the world leaders at G-7 and except for Trump, each shows a keen understanding of what their country represents and where it's headed. Even newbie Boris Johnson is well educated, even if his bombast often resembles that of Trump. More important, they know they are leading their entire countries, not just a small base of ardent supporters. Trump's problem is he can't grow his base, because he doesn't want to: the best part of his job is the one he shouldn't be doing on the taxpayers' dime: holding political rallies to boost his ego." CHRISTINE MCM, MASSACHUSETTS

" In other words Charles, Trump lacks the temperament to be President. Anyone who is honest with him/herself knows that. Even the Republicans in Congress know this. The problem is that neither they nor Trump's base care."

JAY ORCHARD , MIAMI FL

"It makes a sort of sense that Trump expected his "tough guy" act with President Xi would result in Xi giving in. Just as he thought his thrown down the papers and stamp out of the room would make Speaker Pelosi grovel for whatever he wanted. Trump, in the private sector, could choose his victims, and he made sure they would at least perceive he was far richer and more powerful, (whether he was or not) so he could, bluster and rage, doing as he pleased and demanding whatever he wanted. That doesn't work when you become a public employee, which the President is, and Trump has no other rabbits to pull out of that same tired stage hat. And he clearly can't figure out why it's not working any more."

1DCAce, LOS ANGELES CA

"There's nothing mysterious about the President's admiration for Mr. Putin. Putin has made Russia into exactly what Mr. Trump would like to make the United States: an authoritarian plutocracy where the super-rich can do absolutely anything they want — except dispute the legitimacy of the government — while everyone else is kept in line by voter suppression, state-controlled media and churches, and an intimidating security apparatus."

JL WILLIAMS, WAHOO NE

"From my understanding of Trump, his greatest fear, going back to his early days in NYC, is that he is not taken seriously. It's an old vs new money sort of thing, as far as I can tell. He tried to buy his way into big money society by assuming a false name and giving the media false numbers about his personal wealth he was so desperate to prove his real worth. He put gold plate on everything he touched, hoping that would show how wealthy he was. Still, no one took him seriously. And now he's finding that world leaders fail to take him seriously as well. You can almost hearing him thinking -- I'm in the White House, surely they'll take me seriously now. But alas, he's the poor little sort-of-rich boy that no one wants to play with. He doesn't care about the country. He only cares about himself. And he still finds that no one takes him seriously. Sad, as he used to like to say."

AVRDS, MONTANA

"Excellent observations as usual from Charles Blow. I would only add that Trump's form of mental illness is dangerous. It is not innocuous, rather it is pervasive and boundless. That renders him an immediate dangerous to our nation. Immediate. That means he must be removed office immediately. Failure to do so opens the door to sheer disaster and that is exactly what we are looking at everyday he remains office. Disaster." INDEPENDANT, ALABAMA

"After World War 2, our allies respected the United States. Mr Trump has destroyed this respect. Now, our once-firm allies are looking to go around the United States and put their countries first. This will result in a race to the bottom. Trump has diminished the US - and succeeded in making China and Russia great. However, it’s important to remember the this isn’t just Mr. Trump. The vast majority of Republicans like what Mr Trump does, not seeing the damage and reveling in his tough-guy rhetoric. When the damage becomes too obvious to ignore, they’ll say that Trump was’t really a Republican (as they did with George W Bush) They will also, of course, blame Democrats for the consequences of Republican policies. Pity that Republicans, including Mr Trump, seem incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions."JOHN M, OAKLAND

"For Trump, the sun rises and sets in himself. He cannot conceive of anything without inserting himself somehow. He cannot make any move without calculating how it will benefit him personally. The farthest from what a leader should be."NM, NY

"In my more than 60 years I have never experienced a President who truly believed the nation, the American people, excluded all who did not support him. Nor millions of my neighbors who were fine with that idea if they considered themselves as part of that group of supporters. This, to me, is among the most dangerous things which this man has unleashed. My disappointment in my neighbors goes very deep. We will get past Trump, but not the millions of our fellows who like him."DAGWOOD, SAN DIEGO

"Countries can tragically and suddenly head in the wrong direction. In the 1930s, Germans were the most educated in Europe with Berlin the leading city in Europe. Ten years later, the country and most of Europe was destroyed. 75 million dead. It can happen here." SOMEWHERE, AZ

"I have a hard time seeing where it is all personal with Trump. He is faithfully carrying out two agendas, one of the white nationalists and one of the extreme libertarians. It is hard to tell how much of his rolling back of Obama's accomplishments are personal and how much is agenda driven. There seems little question that Trump will have done permanent damage. Western countries will no long be able to trust the US again as they did in the past as another Trump could be elected in any future election. It cannot be quantified how much he has set back efforts to fight climate change but it would seem to be considerable. Can white nationalism be put back in the bottle? That seems unlikely. Trump has uncorked some of the worst stuff in the US population. It is anybody's guess whether the country can return to its previous level of civility." BOB, HUDSON VALLEY

"In the same address Washington also spoke about the three big threats that could destroy America: too much debt, influence of foreign interests and political partisanship. hmmmm" AERYS

"People keep trying to find rational explanations for Trump's behavior. I don't think he generally acts from anything more complicated than going with what makes him feel good. He, and those around him, often say that when he feels attacked, he punches back. That is consistent with a lot of the strange things he has done. Punching back makes him feel strong and he likes that feeling. The problem is that governing is complicated. If Trump's feelings are hurt, he seems to feel justified in throwing a temper tantrum. That tendency to bluster in an effort to intimidate may work for male gorillas, but leaders of governments ought to know better." BETTY S, UPSTATE NY

“The U.S. presidency is term-limited.” The US presidency was term-limited. Does anyone really think he’s joking when he talks about being in office another 10 or 14 years? He’s not going to leave willingly. The bottom line here might end up being whether the military will support his coup."

CLAIRE ELLIOTT, EUGENE OR

"Rather than making America great again, 45 has made America a second rate country. Our allies no longer trust us to keep our word. Our enemies see that our leadership is faltering. It will take years perhaps decades to regain the trust we once enjoyed throughout the world. People see that 45 has not thought out anything he says past the current news cycle. There is no vision for America, no grand plan, nothing."

PSCHWIMER

"Now that this "president" has decided that he has the authority to order America's private businesses to cease all operations in China (which would entail crippling a great many of them financially), it seems to me that the 25th Amendment truly needs to be invoked. Which is to say that the walking apparition named Mike Pence should visit the Oval Office along with the leaders of both houses of Congress and as many of Trump's cabinet members as can be rustled up and tell our delusional chief executive that he has no such authority over private industry and that he should immediately and publicly acknowledge this. He should also explain that the order he had delivered was intended only as a suggestion or a recommendation. Should he refuse to go along with this, it would be clear that he's fully entered the realm of madness (as his private obsession with China would already seem to indicate) and that his removal from office would thereby become necessary. If we weren't already at such a critical juncture we could spend a good deal of time discussing Trump's own business connections with Beijing and arguing that his preference for having his (and Ivanka's) branded merchandise produced there should dictate that he not impugn other American business executives for doing the same thing (let alone "order" them to cease doing so). It's too late for idle speculation, however. Mad King Donald really has to go." STU FREEMAN, BROOKLYN

"I have to think that Washington's words would be met by Trump with blank incomprehension, not merely because the language is hard (by comparison with Trump's own "cartoon-bubble" mode of communication) but because understanding it would require Trump to betray his own most firmly-held convictions." PORTLAND, OR

"Thank you, Mr. Blow, for another strong column. This president's bizarre behaviors have led to complete demoralization and discouragement for U.S. citizens. How can a powerful country be so feckless when it comes to getting him out? Someone commented that the 25th amendment wouldn't work because it's for cases of complete incapacity. I assume they mean physical incapacity. In the case of mental/emotional incapacity, does a President have to be drooling and catatonic, or fly into a rage on television? Is it not enough that he lies constantly, proposes buying another country, frequently insults allies, calls himself the chosen one, decrees that private businesses shall exit China, and flip-flops in divergent directions on important national policies during the same 24-hour period? If it were another president in another time, members of Congress would have taken Trump in hand and led him away to restore order and standing to our country. But no, Congress is on vacation and Trump golfs while the Amazon burns."GWOO, HONOLULU

"The Greenland episode is classic Trump: throw out a crazy initial offer and see what happens. But international politics is not pure business. Greenland was never up for sale by Denmark. Trump's behavior makes him look wholly irrational and by extension makes the American voting public look like a population of fools. Trump displays isolationism with "America First." Other countries should take this seriously. In fact, they should quarantine the United States. They should do so until America can figure out how to elect a sane president and a stable cast of supporting legislators in Congress. Indeed Trump has a penchant for calling those he dislikes "nasty," but that term is reserved for women in power, such as HRC and the prime minister of Denmark. Trump befriends ruthless dictators in countries like North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia -- leaders who actively torture and kill their people -- without referring to them in this way. Trump is also already backtracking on China. He will not let the economy crumble before the election: after all, it's his only real "selling point." Trump maintains a particular disdain for Obama because he is black and Trump is an overt racist, as demonstrated by violations of the Fair Housing Act in the 1970s to the Central Park Five to birtherism to Charlottesville to the Squad. The election next year is bound to be a close one. Do what you can to see that Trump does not win a second term."

BLUE MOON, OLD PUEBLO

#politics #trump news #trumpism #trump scandals #trump administration #president donald trump #greeland #impeachment inquiry now #impeach trump #impeachthemf #impeachtrump #u.s. news #u.s. presidential elections #g7 #g7biarritz #trump trade war

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 23, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Today the United States had at least 82,600 new cases of coronavirus, our highest daily level of cases in a single day since the pandemic started. The outbreak is widespread, meaning it will be harder to move medical personnel around to address the crisis. We have lost close to 224,000 Americans to Covid-19. As it spreads through Republican-governed states, leaders refuse to use government authority to slow its reach. “It’s not a job for government,” North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum said.

In a sign that Trump supporters see his reelection in danger, tonight on his show on the Fox News Channel, Lou Dobbs unloaded on South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, for not doing more to help Trump. Dobbs urged South Carolinians not to vote for Graham, who is up for reelection.

This is ironic, since one of the goals of the very public Republican effort to ram Amy Coney Barrett through a Senate confirmation vote was to get airtime for Graham, who is in an unexpectedly tight race. Graham is faced by Democrat Jaime Harrison, who raised an eye-popping $57 million last quarter, the most any Senate candidate has ever raised in a quarter. Harrison is the first Senate candidate in history to raise and spend more than $100 million.

Even if elected, Democratic senators will come too late to stop Barrett’s lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Today, senators battled over the confirmation of the 48-year-old judge, whom Trump appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit just three years ago. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is urging Republicans not to confirm an extremist judge less than two weeks before the election season will end. “The Republican majority is on the precipice of making a colossal and historic mistake,” Schumer said. “The damage it does to this chamber will be irrevocable.”

For his part, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blamed the fight over Supreme Court justices on Democrats, beginning with their 1987 opposition to Ronald Reagan’s nominee for the court, Robert Bork. This is a common complaint on the part of Republicans, although in Bork’s case, 6 Republicans joined the Democrats to oppose him—making the opposition bipartisan-- and the Democrats went on to confirm Reagan’s next nominee for the seat, Justice Anthony Kennedy, after only three days of hearings. The Senate confirmed Kennedy by a unanimous vote, indicating that the problem with Bork was not Democratic partisanship, but rather the nominee.

In this case, Barrett will be the third Supreme Court justice appointed by Trump, since McConnell refused even to hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland. McConnell said that holding confirmation hearings for Garland in March before an election was a disservice to voters, who should be allowed to make their wishes known in the upcoming election. If confirmed—and the Republicans have the votes to confirm her—Barrett will allow Trump to cement an originalist view of the Constitution on the Supreme Court.

Barrett’s appointment is the outcome of a longstanding attempt to overturn the active government under which we have lived since the 1930s. During the Great Depression, Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to use the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net—this is when we got Social Security—and promote infrastructure. But racist Democrats from the South balked at racial equality under this new government.

After World War II, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, a Republican appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, and Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican appointed by Richard Nixon, the Supreme Court set out to make all Americans equal before the law. They tried to end segregation through the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision prohibiting racial segregation in public schools. In 1965, they protected the right of married couples to use contraception. In 1967, they legalized interracial marriage. In 1973, with the Roe v. Wade decision, they tried to give women control over their own reproduction by legalizing abortion.

The justices based their decisions on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. Congress developed this amendment after legislatures in former Confederate states passed “Black Codes” severely limiting the rights and protections for formerly enslaved people. Congress intended for the Fourteenth to enable the federal government to guarantee that African Americans had the same rights as white Americans, even in states whose legislatures wanted to keep them in a form of quasi-slavery.

Justices in the Warren and Burger courts used that same amendment to protect civil rights a century later. They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment required that the Bill of Rights apply to state governments as well as to the federal government. This is known as the “incorporation doctrine,” but the name matters less than the concept: states cannot abridge an individual’s rights, any more than the federal government can. This doctrine dramatically expanded civil rights.

But from the beginning, there was a backlash against the New Deal government by businessmen who objected to the idea of federal regulation and the bureaucracy it would require. As early as 1937, they were demanding an end to the active government and a return to the world of the 1920s, where businessmen could do as they wished, family and churches managed social welfare, and private interests profited from infrastructure projects. They gained little traction; the vast majority of Americans liked the new system.

But the expansion of civil rights under the Warren and Burger courts was a whole new kettle of fish. Opponents of the new decisions insisted that the court was engaging in “judicial activism,” taking away from voters the right to make their own decisions about how society should work. That said that justices were “legislating from the bench.” They insisted that the Constitution is limited by the views of its framers, and that the government can do nothing that is not explicitly written in that 1787 document. Faced with confusion over the exact meaning of the Constitution, some revised their position in a few ways, one of which was to rest on “textualism,” the idea that a law says exactly what it says and nothing else.

This is the foundation for today’s “originalists” like Barrett. They are trying to erase the era of legislation and legal decisions that constructed our modern nation. If the government is as limited as they say, it cannot protect the rights of minorities or women. It cannot regulate business. It cannot provide a social safety net, or promote infrastructure.

Their doctrine will send authority for civil rights back to the states to wither or thrive as different legislatures see fit, so long as their laws don’t run into textual problems, in which case the Supreme Court will step in to limit state actions.

Barrett is a darling of religious conservatives who expect her to overturn Roe v. Wade, and to undermine civil rights legislation, as the court did, for example, in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But she also has the support of secret dark money donors. She will be the key vote to having a solid pro-corporate Supreme Court that will sharply limit what the federal government can do. Such a court can be expected to gut government regulation of business with more decisions like the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision and to slash the social safety net. First up, of course, is the Affordable Care Act, about which the court will begin to hear arguments on November 10, just a week after the election.

This version of our government is not popular. Republican senators who will vote for Barrett represent 14.3 million fewer Americans than the Democratic senators who oppose her confirmation. Schumer today warned his Republican colleagues: “The majority has trampled over norms, rules, standards, honor, values, any of them that could possibly stand in its monomaniacal pursuit to put someone on the court who will take away the rights of so many Americans.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

#quotes #political #newsletter #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #SCOTUS #history #COVID-19

[afrolesbikita]

Stories & interesting updates on POS and POS Equipment.

Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Beto O’Rourke is on the road again, trying to build public pressure on Congress to take action on voting rights while his fellow Democrats in the Texas Legislature take the fight to Washington, D.C., after killing Republicans’ priority elections bill in Austin.

Arguably the state’s best-known Democrat, O’Rourke has been crisscrossing the state since June 3 and plans to wrap up with a large rally Sunday at the Texas Capitol, which he hopes will send the loudest message yet to federal legislators.

It has been the most statewide travel for a political cause that O’Rourke has done since his blockbuster 2018 U.S. Senate campaign when he narrowly lost to Sen. Ted Cruz.

“I can’t get it out of my system,” O’Rourke said during the first stop of the tour in Midland. “I want to see the state again. I want to be with people.”

Buzz about a potential 2022 gubernatorial campaign has followed O’Rourke everywhere he has gone, but he has deferred a decision on the race until after the current battle over voting rights.

By the time of the Capitol rally, he will have visited at least 19 cities on his statewide tour, which he has titled “For the People: The Texas Drive for Democracy.” And the stops have not just been in the major Democratic cities but also places like Wichita Falls and Brenham, reminiscent of the go-anywhere spirit of his Senate campaign.

Like the state House Democrats who defeated the GOP voting bill by walking out of the chamber late last month, O’Rourke is using the national spotlight on Texas to urge Congress to pass the For the People Act, a far-reaching elections overhaul that would expand voter registration, end partisan gerrymandering and restore voting rights to felons who have finished their sentences. O’Rourke also supports passage of the narrower John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would require many changes to state election laws to go through “preclearance,” or federal approval.

O’Rourke said the two elections proposals in Congress are “mutually reinforcing” and “you need them both.”

The odds are stacked against O’Rourke, both at the state and federal levels. Gov. Greg Abbott plans to revive the state elections bill in a yet-to-be-scheduled special session. Senate Bill 7 would have placed new limits on early voting hours, banned drive-thru voting and tightened vote-by-mail rules.

Meanwhile, the For the People Act remains doomed without GOP support or the elimination of the filibuster, which requires at least 60 votes to advance legislation in the 50-50 chamber. O’Rourke has joined progressives in calling for the end of the filibuster, though the votes are still not there to do so.

O’Rourke is still hopeful things can change in Washington.

“I think Texas has done about all we can, including the very extraordinary step taken by the Texas state House Democrats who walked out at the 11th hour of the regular session,” O’Rourke said in an interview Thursday. “We’re gonna all do our best to stop whatever voter suppression bill comes through in a special session, but at this point, we really need the federal government.”

That is expected to be the main message of Sunday’s rally, which will also feature Julián Castro, the former 2020 presidential candidate, U.S. housing secretary and San Antonio mayor, as well as several of the state Democrats from the walkout. The rally starts at 5:30 p.m. Central on the south steps of the Capitol.

O’Rourke said he would like to use the event to give Democrats in Washington, D.C., an “extra push” as they prepare to vote next week on the For the People Act.

O’Rourke’s reemergence has given Texas Republicans fodder to further make a boogeyman out of him ahead of a potential 2022 campaign. Since O’Rourke’s road trip started, U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, has emailed supporters multiple times mocking what he calls O’Rourke’s “Texas Drive For Voter Fraud” tour.

“Beto O’Rourke is traveling across Texas pushing Leftist talking points that run counter to what Texas is all about,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin said in a fundraising email Thursday. “He’s laying the groundwork for an all-out push to flip Texas blue next year.”

Amid the 2022 buzz, O’Rourke has sought to keep the focus on voting issues for now, and he said he was heartened by two developments in recent weeks. The first was state GOP lawmakers walking back two of the most controversial provisions in Senate Bill 7, a sign that Texans’ voices are getting through to the Republicans, O’Rourke said. The lawmakers said they will tweak parts of the proposal that had to do with the Sunday early voting window and overturning elections.

O’Rourke also pointed to the floating of a potential compromise earlier this week by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has been the sole Democratic holdout on the For the People Act. O’Rourke argued that was due “in no small part” to the state lawmakers who visited Washington, D.C., this week to lobby members of Congress — including Manchin — for federal voting legislation before meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris.

O’Rourke praised the job that President Joe Biden has done so far in elevating voting rights as an issue, citing Biden’s recent speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the statement he issued in opposition to Senate Bill 7 a day before the walkout. Biden used the Tulsa speech to say he will “fight like heck” against GOP efforts to restrict voting, and he said in the statement on SB 7 that it was “part of an assault on democracy.”

But O’Rourke said Biden could do more to show how the debate has roots in former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 elections was stolen and the events that came after that, including the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

“I would like to see him go further, and I would like to see him bring this country together around this issue and connect the dots for all of us,” O’Rourke said.

While O’Rourke was thrilled to see the walkout by state House Democrats last month, he was deferential to the lawmakers on how they should try to stop the elections bill in the forthcoming special session. O’Rourke said they are “leading right now, and the last thing they need is advice from me or anyone else.”

“They have done so much so far,” he said, “and I’m confident they’re gonna do whatever it takes in any special session” to stop the legislation.

On Thursday, state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, told CNN that breaking quorum again is on the table, saying “it’s no secret that that’s something that has been effective in the past.”

In addition to the voting rights fight, O’Rourke’s political future has been an open topic of discussion during the road trip, with audience members raising it as part of their questions to him, sometimes multiple times in one city. Elected officials have also brought it up along the way.

“This is truly a Democratic state, and we’re gonna make it that,” U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, said during O’Rourke’s visit to her city. “They could gerrymander all they want to, but it will not keep us from getting registered and getting out to vote — and it will not keep us from electing Beto as governor.

“Now, nobody wants to talk about that right now,” she added amid cheers, “but I do.”

In the interview, O’Rourke reiterated what he has told countless interviewers in recent weeks: that he would not consider a 2022 run until he sees through the current battle over voting rights. He said “there’s just nothing more important” at the moment.

At the same time, he said he has “really enjoyed the way I have been serving over the last couple years.” That has included registering new voters and working with volunteers through his Powered by People group. Whether as a candidate or not, he said, he will continue “dedicating myself to public service.”

The above article was provided here.

I trust that you found the above useful or interesting. You can find similar content on our blog here: www.northtxpointofsale.com Please let me have your feedback in the comments section below. Let us know which topics we should write about for you next.

#Point of Sale #harbortouch Lighthouse #harbortouch Reviews #lightspeed Restaurant #pos #shopkeep Support #toast Pos Pricing #toast Pos Reviews #touchbistro Pos #touchbistro Pricing #touchbistro Reviews

[opedguy]

Trump’s Last Days in Pompeii

LOS NGELES (OnineColumnist.com), Jan. 17, 2021.--Faced with another wasteful impeachment trial, 65-year-old Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) urged 74-year-old President Donald Trump to not pardon any of the hoodlums associated with the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.  Breaking-and-entering into the Capitol for the purpose of disrupting a joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote  confirming 78-year-old Joe Biden as president, the thugs and petty criminals deserve no mercy. Graham urged Trump to not pardon any of the lawbreakers, letting the criminal justice system give them what they deserve.  “Mr. Presidnt, your policies will stand the test of time.  You’re the most important figure in the Republican Party.  You can shape the direction of the party.  Keep your movement alive,” Graham told Fox News. Graham was worried about reports that Trump could pardon some of his reckless lawbreakers that forced their way into the Capitol.    

         On his way out of the White House, Trump has much on his mind, including mounting debt and ongoing New York State investigations into his finances.  U.S. Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. continues his criminal probe into the Trump Organization, accusing Trump’s family business of tax evasion and money laundering, among other things.  Graham turned from one of Trump biggest critics in 2016 into his biggest fan on Capitol Hill.  Conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), doubted Trump’s conservative credentials but wound up admiring his domestic and foreign policies.  President-elect Joe Biden plans an immediate assault on most of Trump domestic and foreign policy accomplishments.  Biden’s team looks poised to re-enter the Paris Climate Accord, Iranian Nuke Deal, end border wall construction and reverse Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that boosted Wall Street and the economy.         

    Graham wants Trump, beyond anything else, to get his due in U.S. history, someone that pulled off the near-impossible of four Mideast peace deals with Israel.  No other U.S. president has done for Mideast peace what Trump did his final year in office.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Califl.) is hell-bent on destroying Trump legacy with her second impeachment.  When the impeachment moves to the Senate for trial, hopefully Graham can helps coalesce Trump’s support among Republicans to beat back a conviction.  Newly minted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), fresh off two Senate wins in Georgia, is pushing hard to get Trump convicted.  It doesn’t matter to Pelosi and Schumer whether Trump committed “high-crimes-and-misdemeanors,” what matters is preventing him from running for public office again.  Democrats have two motives:  (1) destroy Trump’s legacy and (2) ban him from public office.       

      Graham wants Trump to think twice before pardoning any of the right-wing nut jobs that breached the Capitol and defaced public property.  “I don’t care if you went there and spread flowers on the floor, you breached the security of the Capitol, you interrupted a joint session of Congress, you tried to intimidate us all, you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and to seek a pardon of these people would be wrong.  I think it would destroy President Trump’s and I hope we don’t go down that road,” Graham said.  But Graham doesn’t have to worry about pardons of Capitol Hill lawbreakers.  It’s more fake news the same bogus stories that had Trump firing former Special Counsel Robert Mueller everyday on the nightly news.  Graham’s too inside the Washington bubble to know that Trump would never stoop that low to pardon any criminals associated with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.     

        Pelosi clearly couched the Jan. 6 riot as an “insurrection,” to invoke her phony impeachment article.  Insurrections don’t happen without armed groups taking up arms against the government.  That didn’t happened Jan. 6.  What happened were angry Trump supporters going over the deep end, engaging in criminal behavior at the expense of Trump’s claims of election fraud.  Unlike Pelosi, who insists Trump tried with his mob to overthrow the U.S. government, Graham believes Trump is not responsible for the actions of a small fraction of his Jan. 6 crowd.  “President Trump never said, ‘Go into the Capitol and try to interrupt a joint session of Congress.’ That was the choice they made and they need to live with that choice,” Graham said, reminding Democrats that Trump’s not responsible for crowd violence.  Graham reminds Pelosi that nothing Trump said on Jan. 6 encouraged any supporter to storm the Capitol.   

          Graham will work in overdrive to convince fellow Republicans in the Judiciary Committee to reject Pelosi’s article of impeachment, accusing Trump of “incitement of insurrection.”  Everyone knows that an angry mob rioted Jan. 6, not an attempted coup d’etat.  Yet Pelosi and Schumer continue to weaponize their Article 1 power, pushing for another impeachment over pure vindictiveness.  “It’s now time to move on,” Graham told Fox News, saying he will do anything he can to defeat the angry Democrat mob in the House.  Democrats tried but failed to get 61-year-old Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from Office.  Like Pelosi’s impeachment efforts, it’s entirely unconstitutional to remove Trump from office when he’s committed no crime or is not incapacitated, required by the 25th Amendment.  Graham looks ready to take on House Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

 About the Author

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.  Reply  Reply All  Forward

[multipleservicelisting]

In Home District, McCarthy Faces Some Backlash From the Right

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — As Congress prepared to vote on impeachment for a second time, David Bynum reached out to his former boss — Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House.

Mr. Bynum, 38, was a college intern for Mr. McCarthy more than 16 years ago, when Mr. McCarthy was a rising star in the State Assembly in Sacramento. Mr. Bynum called and texted campaign and D.C. office staffers to urge him, from one Bakersfield Republican to another, to vote to impeach President Trump. A lawyer whose father is a prominent local developer, Mr. Bynum wanted Mr. Trump’s behavior condemned for the history books.

He later asked a campaign staffer how many other calls supporting impeachment Mr. McCarthy was getting from Bakersfield Republicans. “Very few,’’ he was told.

“They said, ‘We’re getting way more calls from people who are upset that he’s not doing more to support Donald Trump,’” Mr. Bynum said.

Mr. McCarthy has been pilloried nationally and throughout California for being loyal to Mr. Trump to the bitter end — voting to overturn the election results hours after a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol and urging censure of the president instead of impeachment.

Democrats and some Republicans called on him to step down. The anti-Trump Lincoln Project released an ad calling him a “pathetic enabler” and urging his staff to “pack up your desk and leave that loser behind.” A scathing Sacramento Bee editorial denounced him for having “a soulless lack of principle” and for abusing his authority “to promote big, dangerous lies about the election.”

But in his home district — one of the most conservative in California — Mr. McCarthy has been under fire for not being loyal enough.

The split illustrates the gulf between the national outrage over the violence at the Capitol and the local hold the president still has on conservative parts of the country. Mr. McCarthy’s district, which includes the city of Bakersfield and most of Kern and Tulare counties in the San Joaquin Valley south of Sacramento and north of Los Angeles, is a place where oil, agriculture and MAGA dominate.

Some Republicans said Mr. McCarthy, the son of an assistant chief with the Bakersfield Fire Department, has done too much for conservative voters in the region for them to abandon him. They believe his delicate navigation of the events in Washington in recent days — speaking out against impeachment but saying the president bears responsibility for the attack on Congress by rioters — would not hurt him significantly in his district as he eyes becoming speaker of the House in two years.

Mr. McCarthy, now entering his eighth term in the House, has become a kingmaker of sorts in Kern County, helping his allies climb the political ranks, and enjoys a reservoir of good will among Republicans.

Clayton Campbell, a criminal-defense lawyer who is a leader of the Kern County Republican Party, said his support for Mr. McCarthy was unshaken.

“You’re going to have some Republicans who like Trump so much that this is going to be a deal breaker for them,” Mr. Campbell said, referring to Mr. McCarthy’s support of censure and assertion that Mr. Trump bears responsibility for the attack on the Capitol. “I don’t think that’s a majority. You’re also going to have other Republicans who feel that McCarthy has been our leader for so long, and he’s never let us down, and they’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

But the events of this month in Washington have brought Mr. McCarthy, 55, more criticism than he is accustomed to in his hometown.

Perhaps the biggest political blow came locally on Friday.

His Republican mentor, Bill Thomas, the former longtime Bakersfield congressman who was the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and whom Mr. McCarthy worked for as an aide, rebuked Mr. McCarthy on local television. Mr. Thomas, wearing a mask, said that Mr. McCarthy perpetuate the president’s false claims of election fraud after the riot by refusing to certify the results.

“Six hours after this tragedy, the Republican leader argues Pennsylvania had fraud,” Mr. Thomas said, adding, “It was as though they went to an extended lunch and came back and resumed their mission — reinforce, by your votes, the lies of the president.”

But since the rioting and impeachment, Mr. McCarthy is also facing attacks from the right. Many conservatives in Bakersfield said they believe the election was stolen from Mr. Trump and that the president did not incite the mob attack. Mr. McCarthy’s remarks pinning the blame on Mr. Trump for the attack and batting down false suggestions that antifa was behind the riot shocked and angered many Republicans.

“I’ll just boil it down: He’s a RINO traitor,” said Kenneth L. Mettler, a Bakersfield conservative activist and home builder. “President Trump did nothing wrong. President Trump communicated his case. He did not incite anybody. I do honestly think there were agitators, infiltrators.”

Mr. Mettler unsuccessfully ran against Mr. McCarthy in the 2016 Republican primary. He said he was debating running against him again in 2022.

“My phone has just been going nonstop,” Mr. Mettler said. “These are MAGA people and former Tea Party people. They’re extremely angry with him. We’ll see how this shakes out a little more. He needs to have a primary opponent, whether it’s me or someone else. Either I or another patriot will step up.”

Even Mr. Campbell, the county Republican leader who supports Mr. McCarthy, questioned why Mr. McCarthy said that Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the mob violence.

“He didn’t tell people to riot,” Mr. Campbell said of the president. “He didn’t say go into the Capitol and trash Nancy Pelosi’s office. We saw all summer that there were people in this country that resorted to violence, rioting, to try to get what they wanted politically. And nobody that they were rooting for politically was blamed for what they did. They were never called Biden riots.” (Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president-elect, condemned the rioting and looting that occasionally grew out of the protests).

In the country’s largest Democratic-controlled state, Bakersfield can feel like an alternate reality.

Just two hours north of Beverly Hills, a conservative culture rules the city. Bobbing oil pump jacks dot the landscape like a page out of West Texas, out near a boulevard named for the country star and hometown hero Buck Owens.

But the city’s dusty Okie stereotype feels outdated — its population of nearly 400,000 is majority Hispanic. Those demographic shifts have started to change Bakersfield, giving Hispanics and Democrats more voice and creating more political tension. Julie Solis, a Democrat who ran for an assembly seat in November, was arrested for trespassing at Mr. McCarthy’s Bakersfield office on Monday, after calling for his resignation, refusing to leave and livestreaming it all on Facebook.

Indoor dining is banned throughout most of California as coronavirus infections and deaths have skyrocketed in the state. But several Bakersfield restaurants openly defy the rules, which are not strictly enforced, and residents gather nightly at restaurants to dine indoors and outside on patios. Though many people wear masks, the anti-lockdown views are a kind of echo of Bakersfield’s embrace of Mr. Trump’s defiant ethos.

Mr. McCarthy has had one advantage in the post-riot and post-impeachment aftermath. One of his San Joaquin Valley colleagues, Representative David G. Valadao, whose district includes a portion of Kern County, voted to impeach the president. The far right, both nationally and locally, have focused much of their anger on Mr. Valadao instead of Mr. McCarthy.

Mr. Bynum, the former McCarthy intern, said even though Mr. McCarthy did not vote the way he wanted him to, he still supported the congressman.

“He kind of has to do a dance that can’t be done,” Mr. Bynum said. “You can’t make everyone happy in the Republican Party right now. There’s no broad consensus on how to be punitive enough to Trump but also supportive enough of him.”

Mr. Bynum said Mr. Trump has severely damaged the party. Back in the presidential election in 2016, he felt he had no candidate to support.

“I didn’t want to vote for Hillary,” Mr. Bynum said. “I didn’t want to vote for Trump. I wrote in Kevin McCarthy for president. I saw Kevin that night and said, ‘Kevin, I voted for you twice.’”

Isabella Grullón Paz contributed reporting.

    Multiple Service Listing for Business Owners | Tools to Grow Your Local Business

www.MultipleServiceListing.com 

The post In Home District, McCarthy Faces Some Backlash From the Right appeared first on Multiple Service Listing.

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3ikWPkr

#multiple #service #listing #news #local #business #ads #near #me

[kingofthenorth49]

New Year, Old Me

The smell of breakfast cooking is filling the house, my dogs is at my feet chewing on his indestructible dollar store ball as happy as a clam (ed note. – how do we know clams are actually happy?) and 2021 has begun with sunshine streaming in every window filling the day with the promise of a bright and prosperous future. Even Gloria is in the kitchen singing to the music playing on the radio.

Then there’s the 30 centimeters of snow forecast for tomorrow. Fack.

I love my Christmas vacations. We took a cruise for Christmas two years ago, I’ll never do that again. Not just the competition with 1300 little off spring for wifi when we were trying to sell a house Christmas eve, there’s just something about doing a whole lot of nothing for 10 days that really appeals to the inner child in me.

I’ve played countless hours of Minecraft. I’ve watched hours of videos. I’ve read, I’ve cooked. We’ve talked about whatr’s next, what’s been, and who. We’ve played with the dog, a lot.

The only thing missing was the kids. I miss them dear

Christmas was awesome for it just being the three of us. We did that on purpose.

2020 was a challenging year in many respects. We lost Ozzy in June, that was a major life event for us both that neither of us saw coming. Then there’s the plandemic, yes, tin foil hat in fully bloom, the politicians of the world are wrecking society over a bad flu. Even politicians in the 1918 pandemic weren’t as incompetent. As someone who has managed risk my entire career I can unequivocally say they fucked this up, likely on purpose. I say on purpose because there’s no way the stupid could be this collective. The costs to society based on the actions of our elected officials over the past year have damaged mankind (not peoplekind moron) and will have lingering effects for decades.

I just can’t grasp the level of incompetence I’ve witnessed in our governments, but I’m not surprised.

2020 professionally was one of my best years ever, mind you I worked a lot, but I’ve never been afraid of that. From mid-March until July I worked every single day from Moncton, dealing with bad decisions made by governments every single day trying to keep the country going. Imagine dealing with hundreds of governments, none who talk to each other and correlate activities. It’s an epic shitshow every day, but it’s honest work.

I’ve met some amazing new friends this year, and we’ve developed some new relationships. I’ve watched some of my team members grow exponentially, as well as watched some of my peers hit their stride. It’s awesome to see people at their best, and knowing you had a hand in helping them get to that place. That’s what I live for now.

Living back home has been a major challenge for me, not some much for Gloria. We came back for her, she wanted to be home and now she is. Life is good here, don’t get me wrong, but I hate living in the fishbowl. People talk too much and invest themselves in others’ business way too often, it’s that part of living here I don’t like. Everywhere else we’ve lived no one cared what kind of car you drove or where you went on vacation, but down east it’s blood sport. The difference for me this time round is I just don’t care what they think or say, their opinion means nothing. Unless I’m paying you for advice, I’ll give it the due consideration it deserves. The day I learned that was likely the day my life changed for the better, and I remember it well.

I’m starting to enjoy living home again, but not for the reasons you’d think.

I’m enjoying the familiarity of people again, the people who interact with us at our favorite restaurants, stopping and chatting with people at Superstore, knowing what is really going on in our community. Those are the kind of things you miss living the lifestyle we did for 20 years bouncing all over the globe. We missed that connection with community.

We are enjoying making our current house our home and putting our touches on it. It’s been a labor of love because as my realtor Cathy said the day we were doing the home inspection and I had a parade of contractors lined up on the street, there’s no way I’ll ever get my money back out of this place. Nope, I won’t. But I’m ok with that. I grew up watching this house and wanting it, now that I own it it’s fun to bring it back to it’s original beauty and improving it’s functionality. Plus we have awesome neighbors and everyone looks out for one another.

I like my job. I like my boss. I still enjoy what I do, and that’s a positive. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with amazing people throughout my career, but over the last year dealing with a pandemic, 18,000 employees across dozens of companies and multiple jurisdictions who move the goal posts daily, I’m very thankful for the team I work with are all A players. We accomplished more this year than I would have ever thought possible given the circumstances.

Then there’s politics. Relax, you knew it was coming, I’ve not ranted very often about anything that doesn’t at least brush up against politics.

2020 was a political shitshow of epic proportions. In Canada we have a buffoon as Prime Minister who is selling out this country to communist China. He’s not even hiding it anymore. The WE scandal should have affronted every single Canadian and we should have marched on Ottawa to demand his resignation and incarceration.

But we didn’t. So we get what we deserve.

In the USA Trump lost a crooked election, and no, you cannot convince me otherwise. It was a surgical strike in key swing states carried out with militaristic effort. I watched hearings in Wisconsin, Illinois and Georgia. There was enough fraud to cost Trump the election. But am I upset? Yes, a bit. Will I get over it? Of course. The democratic party has no morals, the ends justify the means and they had no qualms about using deception and fraud to elect a senile career politician who has accomplished nothing in a 47 year career on capitol hill, one who is racist (not an opinion, there’s his words in video and print) and can’t remember what state he is in most of the time.

And they elected him with more votes than Obama? Seriously?

The entire election reeks. Thousands of consecutive ballots, all votes for Joe, with no down ticket selections. Consecutive. Let me say it again for the kids in the back. Thousands of consecutive ballots for Joe with no down ticketing. (Down ticketing is voting for a set of party candidates, so President, Judges, etc on the ballot). Can you even begin to grasp the statistical probability of that?   Let’s just say the odds of having that many consecutive ballots all for just Joe are astronomical, kind of like getting hit by lightening in your basement on your birthday while having a heart attack during a solar eclipse.

Even that’s more statistically likely.

But at the end of the day, if congress accepts the electors then Biden will be my president. I’m not that stupid or arrogant to say otherwise, although I know in my heart of hearts he stole it. But that’s irrelevant, and he has to look at himself in the mirror every morning just like I do.

What I have learned in the past year is local politics are more important than national politics, and we need to move towards more local control of our resources versus Provincial or Federal control. I’m excited for our new town council and have great hope they will energize this town, as we are poised on the precipice of opportunity. People are relocating here from all over, buying homes sight unseen. Why? Because its small and safe. That’s my theory anyway. With the gig economy, many workers can work from anywhere (I did it for years) and why live in a congested city with all the issues and expense that come with it when you can live like a king in small town Nova Scotia. For the first time in my life people WANT to move here, not away. That’s a huge opportunity that we need to build on.

Anyway, I guess I’m trying to say that while 2020 had it’s challenges, for us there is a lining in the cloud that we shouldn’t overlook. We ended the year on a high note with the perfect New Years eve for the three of us, a few drinks, a cigar by the fire, and McDonalds. Yep, 2020 didn’t deserve anything more than a McChicken and fires.

So those are my final thoughts for 2020, the year has now passed and 2021 has arrived, full of promise, hope, and excitement. What you will make of 2021 lies within you, and you alone. You can choose to climb a mountain or read a book, but all I ask of you is you help us maintain the ability to have the freedom to choose. That is my only fear going into the new year is that we are allowing our freedoms to be taken away at an alarming pace, with no sign of resistance. That’s not a good thing. Once your freedoms are gone, you won’t easily get them back.

Happy New Year folks, its going to be amazing. Either that or the murder hornets show up and then it’s over.

Jim Out.

#itsover