#(and I still say senators and the house should only have the healthcare and pay they'd normally qualify for)

[medicinemane]

I still wonder about the people who double down on communism... and not even like me when I was younger where I got (not the full extent, but got) that the soviet union and such were awful, but just thought that maybe with less terrible people at the helm it could work (later realizing that these kind of things always have power hungry people rise to the top) Anyway, no I just don't get the "well see, you've admitted your great grandpa owned a chicken, sounds like he deserved to die" people... like the fuck is there even to gain here about being smug while dying on a particularly stupid hill?

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Another week and month in the books. We’ve crossed into February and Punxsutawney Phil says six more weeks of winter. I’m ok with that. Coffees ready, let’s get going.

MARK KENNEDY • Yahoo

Carl Weathers, linebacker-turned-actor who starred in ‘Rocky’ movies and ‘The Mandalorian,’ dies

I remember seeing Rocky as a kid and I didn’t much like Apollo Creed. He was arrogant, cocky, and besides, the star of the show was Rocky, the underdog. Of course they eventually became friends and I liked him then.

I loved him as Al Dillon in Preditor and as Chubbs in Happy Gilmore.

R.I.P.

Amanda Richards • Netflix

NASCAR: Full Speed Is Coming to Your Screen at 200 Miles per Hour

I blew through the five episode season in a couple days. Why’d they only order up five episodes in the first season? I mean, F1: Drive to Survive has had 10 episode since season 1.

They focused on the playoffs but they could’ve done more leading into the playoffs. It’s a long season full of drama and I wanted more.

Overall it was really good and I hope we get a full 10 episodes in season 2.

Pkl

Define all your data in Pkl, and generate output for JSON, YAML, Property Lists, and other configuration formats.

Pkl is an Apple project. They’re trying to become a services company and having a better means of managing things sounds like a good idea.

It’s odd to see Apple using Java and Kotlin for this but it does make sense given it’s meant to be portable to different platforms. And by different platforms I mean actual different platforms like Linux, Windows, and Mac. Not Mac, iPhone, and iPad. 😄

Jason Parham • WIRED

Black Twitter Remains Unbothered in Elon Musk’s X

I’ve seen folks on Mastodon talking about how difficult it is for Black Mastodon to get started.

When I setup Curmudgeon Cafe there was a large contingent — and still is — of LGBTQ+ instances.

If memory serves it was more a matter of discoverability.

I’d love to see multiple BIPOC instances spring. We need more diversity, not less.

Miguel de Icaza • blog.la-terminal.net

My current effort is slightly different: how to build a native iPadOS (and hopefully VisionOS) experience for Godot. So rather than rewriting the existing Editor codebase with Swift, this effort is about making a SwiftUI on top of the existing Editor.

I don’t keep up with Godot but I do keep up with Miguel. It’ll be fun to watch his effort evolve into a finished product.

Robert Downen • Texas Tribune

Texas' standoff with the feds in Eagle Pass is igniting calls for secession and fears of violence

The MAGA crazed are ready for war and his orangeness is egging them on. Not only that he’s actively working with leaders in the House and Senate to blow up a bipartisan bill that would be the best deal the GOP has seen on the border. All to get that orange dumbass re-elected.

David Nield • Lifehacker

It’s 2024, and I’m here to extol the virtues of using an RSS reader.

Of course everyone should use an RSS reader! Might I recommend Stream for iOS? 😘

Yes, yes, it’s my app, but you should give it a try and if you like it, please, leave me a tip. 🙏🏼

Tim Hardwick • MacRumors

NHS App users in England can now collect medication from a pharmacy without having to visit a GP or health center, according to NHS Digital.

Man oh man would I love to have a national healthcare system that’s fully integrated and lets me manage how I interact with doctors and other healthcare providers.

I’d like it to work like Facebook. Doctors should invite me to join, or I invite them to join, my medical record.

American Healthcare is still stuck in the past. I’d love to see it fixed.

Nick Barclay • The Verge

Spotify accuses Apple of ‘extortion’ with new App Store tax

Spotify and others didn’t get what they really wanted. They don’t want to pay a single cent to Apple. Which from a business perspective makes perfect sense.

Guess we’ll see what the law says.

Aki Ito • Business Insider

In the two years I’ve been writing about Americans' changing relationship to work, there’s one theme that’s come up over and over again: loyalty. Whether my stories are about quiet quitting, or job-hopping, or leveraging a job offer from a competitor to force your boss to give you a raise, readers seem to divide into two groups.

There are so many factors to loyalty. The true believers exist and they have little to fear. Then there are the masses who quietly do their jobs and aren’t really seen.

We had a layoff at work last May and it destroyed morale, destroyed the company culture, and left loyalty at an all time low.

I hate to be so cynical but companies aren’t there for you. They’re there to make profit. Loyalty from the company only extends so far to the employee.

I still love my job and work hard at it everyday but I fear being laid off.

Jakub Porzycki • The Verge

Microsoft says Apple’s new App Store rules are ‘a step in the wrong direction’

Of course they think it’s going in the wrong direction! They’re a huge corporation in the business of selling software. They don’t want to hand any of it over to Apple.

Epic’s Tim Sweeney referred to it as “Malicious Compliance.”

Get out the popcorn! 🍿

Vadim Kravcenko

New libraries. New languages. New Frameworks. New Intern coming in and thinking he can rewrite better parts of the code himself. It’s easy to get swept away. But is the newest framework always the best choice? Is a rewrite really going to make everything better? Or is there wisdom in the code that has been around for years, has been tested with crazy edge cases, and has evolved together with the business?

I understand why folks are tempted to rewrite thing, I really do. When I wasn’t a dinosaur of a developer I hand that tendency. “I can make this better”, my brain would say. Sure, there’s occasion to “turn the soil” once in a while and I believe that’s good for a code base. But a full rewrite? No. 🌹

Nikita Prokopov

As you can see, even the checkmark wasn’t always there. But one thing remained constant: checkboxes were square.

A square checkbox is something us old timers are accustomed to seeing and changes can be confusing.

The Vision Pro’s checkboxes are confusing but I kind of like UIKit’s toggles as long as you don’t go crazy styling them. 😃

Nilay Patel • The Verge

It sounds amazing, and sometimes it is. But the Vision Pro also represents a series of really big tradeoffs — tradeoffs that are impossible to ignore. Some of those tradeoffs are very tangible: getting all this tech in a headset means there’s a lot of weight on your face, so Apple chose to use an external battery pack connected by a cable. But there are other, more philosophical tradeoffs as well.

I think Nilay did a great job balancing his review of Vision Pro.

It’s a great start but has a really long way to go as a general computing device. That’s my opinion having never used one.

I really believe we’ll get a sense for how we should be using it if we see pictures of Apple Executives wearing it daily to do their jobs. I kind of doubt we’ll see that for anything other than articles written about it.

The iPhone, Watch, and AirPods are devices those same executives probably use everyday. I just can’t see them using Vision Pro as much.

When/if they’re ever able to make them look like regular glasses and they cost around $500-800 I’d consider wearing them all the time. Until then they’re way too expensive for my blood. I would rather spend that kind of green on a new MacBook Pro.

Will Stream support Vision Pro? I think so. I have no idea when, but I think it will.

[antoine-roquentin]

“The federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on,” Mitchell wrote. This banker, Jeff Courtney, put that figure closer to just 51 to 63 cents.

Now, for a private lender, like a bank, this projected shortfall would indeed be a ticking time bomb. The bank might be in danger of insolvency (unless, of course, it was rescued by a federal government that could give the bank an emergency cash infusion and take those bad loans off its hands). But there’s no real danger of a federal Cabinet-level department becoming insolvent. The Treasury Department is already in the habit of making up the Education Department’s budgetary shortfalls.

So what is the problem again? Typically for a news outlet like the Journal, the story describes this potential shortfall as what “taxpayers” would be “on the hook for,” but obviously, we all know that that is not how federal budgeting works. Taxes could rise for certain people for certain reasons, but no one will receive an itemized bill for this uncollected debt. And as for that large, catastrophic number ($500 billion!) that might never be paid back, it amounts to less than one year of a national defense budget that “taxpayers” are similarly “on the hook for.” (The Journal’s editorial board recently complained that the Biden administration’s proposed 2022 $715 billion Pentagon budget, while an increase in real terms, nonetheless represents an unconscionable decline in the defense budget as share of gross domestic product. “Taxpayers” are not mentioned in the editorial.)

Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report.

The story, then, is that the government might not collect some debt, even if it currently pretends, for budgetary reasons, that it definitely will, and, as a result, the deficit may rise to levels higher than the current estimates predict. For a committed conservative, such as DeVos, that situation is inherently scandalous. For everyone else, that could only ever become a problem in the future, and only if that future deficit has some negative effect on the overall economy, which is not very likely considering the entire recent history of federal deficits and economic growth.

That state of affairs may explain why articles like the one in the Journal so often invoke “taxpayers,” as if everyone would have to write personal checks to cover the Department of Education’s shortfall: because without imagining taxpayers as victims of government deficits, it’s hard to point to anyone actually harmed by a government department giving unrealistic estimates of future revenues.

Except in this story, there are actual victims: the people who hold debt that the government doesn’t realistically expect to collect in full but who are bled for payment regardless. As Courtney’s report found, because of the importance of these loans to the department’s balance sheet, the government keeps borrowers on the hook for the loans even if they will never be able to repay all of the money they owe, often by placing borrowers on a repayment plan tied to their income. (As the economist Marshall Steinbaum has explained, the “income driven repayment,” or IDR, program is framed as a means of helping borrowers, but in reality, it “exerts a significant drag on their financial health, to no apparent purpose” by forcing them to “make less-than-adequate payments for many years before their debt is finally cancelled.”) The victim of such a scheme isn’t taxpayers, it’s debtors.

There’s one particular portion of The Wall Street Journal’s story that the public should treat as a moral and political scandal (the emphasis here is mine):

One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, a program that removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was included in a sweeping law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, which had become a concern in both parties as the nation spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as baby-boomer retirement was set to raise Social Security and healthcare outlays.

A key motive for letting graduate students borrow unlimited amounts was to use the projected profits from such lending to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the legislation.

Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws in the 1990s as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education in the Obama administration.

But how agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office “score” such changes—determine their deficit impact—“is a key factor in deciding whether a policy is adopted or not,” Mr. Shireman said. “The fact that it saved money helps enact it.”

To explain this more plainly, Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report, because CBO scores are more real to senators than flesh-and-blood people.

This is the sort of depravity that deficit obsessions produce. The Iraq War needed to be “paid for” with the future earnings of students who, lawmakers imagined, would eventually be rich, even as many of the same lawmakers voted to cut taxes on already-rich people. Now the debt of the still-not-rich students can’t be forgiven because of its importance to the federal government’s predicted future earnings. And politicians and commentators in thrall to deficit politics still paint the situation as a morality tale, in which the borrowers are irresponsible for having the debt and the government would be irresponsible to forgive it. After all, think of the poor taxpayers.

The early days of the Biden administration led some to believe we were finally free of this incoherent political mode, where dubious predictions in CBO reports dictate the limits of the politically possible and determine who will be arbitrarily punished for the sake of limiting the size of a program in a speculative 10-year budget projection. The proof that Democrats had learned their lesson was one major piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan, designed to respond to a unique emergency.

More recently, the administration, and some of its allies in Congress, have signaled strongly that they’re returning to the old ways. The American Prospect’s David Dayen has reported that the White House is determined to “pay for” its infrastructure plans, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is apparently leading the charge to ensure the infrastructure spending is “offset.” This will have the likely effect of limiting the scope of the plan, once again sacrificing material benefits for the sake of estimates and predictions from the CBO.

The Biden administration seems to be determined to go about this without violating its pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 (a threshold meant to define the upper limit of “middle class” despite being comically higher than the Obama administration’s similar $250,000 limit for tax hikes). It has floated increasing IRS enforcement and raising the capital gains tax for the wealthiest Americans. Both are fine ideas. But the best thing about taxing the rich is not that you can use their money for infrastructure, it’s that doing so reduces their political and economic power. That’s also the reason why it’s so difficult for Washington to do it.

The complete incoherence of the current Democratic position on spending and deficits is summed up well in another Wall Street Journal story, where Montana Senator Jon Tester was quoted saying, “I don’t want to raise any taxes, but I don’t want to put stuff on the debt, either.… If we’re going to build infrastructure, we have to pay for it somehow. I’m open to all ideas.”

“Open” to “all ideas” but unwilling to tax the rich, and unwilling to allow a CBO report to show a larger deficit as a result of needed spending: This is more or less precisely the dynamic that led student loan debt to explode in the United States, and it’s the zombie worldview that threatens any chance of this government averting a multitude of political, economic, and ecological disasters.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 10, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

The shocking revelations from former acting attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen about former president Trump’s direct efforts to use the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election, along with the horrors of spiking Covid among the unvaccinated, drove out of the news cycle a revelatory piece of news.

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor released the jobs report for August 2021. It was stronger than economists had predicted, and even stronger than the administration had hoped.

In July, employers added 943,000 jobs, and unemployment fell to 5.4%. Average hourly wages increased, as well. They are 4% higher than they were a year ago.

Harvard Professor Jason Furman, former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, tweeted: “I have yet to find a blemish in this jobs report. I've never before seen such a wonderful set of economic data.” He noted the report showed “Job gains in most sectors... Big decline in unemployment rate, even bigger for Black & Hispanic/Latino… Red[uctio]n in long-term unemp[loyment]... Solid (nominal) wage gains.”

“Still a long way to go,” he wrote. “[W]e're about 7.5 million jobs short of where we should have been right now absent the pandemic. But we've made a lot of progress.”

Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays, told New York Times reporter Nelson D. Schwartz: “It’s an unambiguously positive report���. Labor market conditions are strong. Unemployment benefits, infection risks and child care constraints are not preventing robust hiring.”

The jobs report is an important political marker because it appears to validate the Democrats’ approach to the economy, the system the president calls the “Biden Plan.” That plan started in January, as soon as Biden took office, using the federal government to combat the coronavirus pandemic as aggressively as the administration could and, at the same time, using federal support to restart the economy.

In March 2021, the Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package. In addition to strengthening healthcare systems to combat the coronavirus, it provides economic relief primarily to low- and middle-income Americans by extending unemployment benefits and the child tax credit; funding schools, housing, and local governments; providing help for small businesses; and so on.

Polls indicated that the measure was enormously popular. A Morning Consult poll from February showed that 3 out of 4 voters liked it, and local governments and state governors, including a number of Republicans, backed the bill.

But every single Republican lawmaker in the House of Representatives voted against the measure, saying it was too expensive and that it was unnecessary.

Since 1980, Republican lawmakers have opposed government intervention to stimulate the economy, insisting that private investment is more efficient. Rather than use the government as presidents of both parties from Franklin Delano Roosevelt through Jimmy Carter did to keep the playing field level and promote growth, modern-day Republicans have argued that the government should simply cut taxes in order to free up capital for wealthier Americans to invest. This, they said, would create enough growth to make up for lost tax revenues.

President Ronald Reagan began this trend with major tax cuts in 1981 and 1986. President George H.W. Bush promised not to raise taxes—remember “Read my lips: No new taxes”—but found he had to increase revenues to address the skyrocketing deficits the Reagan cuts created. When he did agree to higher taxes, his own party leaders turned against him. Then President George W. Bush cut taxes again in 2001 and 2003, despite the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2017, Republicans under President Donald Trump cut taxes still further.

In 2017, Trump claimed the cut would be “rocket fuel for the economy.” Then–Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin echoed almost 40 years of Republican ideology when he said: "The tax plan will pay for itself with economic growth." And then–Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: "After eight straight years of slow growth and underperformance, America is ready to take off.” (In fact, while Trump’s tax cuts meant tax revenues dropped 31%, they yielded only 2.9% growth, the exact same as the economy enjoyed in 2015, before the cuts.)

Laws like the American Rescue Plan should, in the Republicans’ view, destroy the economy. But Friday’s booming jobs report, along with the reality that the Biden administration has created an average of 832,000 new jobs per month, knocks a serious hole in that argument.

It may be that the pendulum is swinging away from the Republican conviction that tax cuts and private investment are the only key to economic growth.

Today, the Senate passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by a vote of 69 to 30. The bill repairs roads and bridges, invests in transit and railroads, replaces lead pipes, and provides broadband across the country, among other things. In the next ten years, it is expected to create nearly 3 million jobs.

Nineteen Republicans voted in favor of the bill. There were many reasons to do so. The measure is popular with voters, and Republicans were embarrassed by their unanimous opposition to the American Rescue Plan. Indicating a willingness to work with Democrats might also undercut the Republicans’ image as obstructionists and help to protect the filibuster (a factor I’m guessing was behind McConnell’s yes vote).

But that Republicans felt they needed to abandon their position and vote yes for any reason is a big deal. "For the Republicans who supported this bill, you showed a lot of courage,” Biden told them. “And I want to personally thank you for that."

The bill now goes to the House, which will take it up after the Senate passes a $3.5 trillion infrastructure measure through the reconciliation process, which Democrats can do with a simple majority and without Republican support. The larger package addresses climate change, child care, elder care, housing, and so on. Moody Analytics, which provides economic research and modeling, says that, if it is combined with the bipartisan bill, it will add close to 2 million jobs a year over the next ten years.

Yet, Republicans say it is a “reckless tax and spending spree.”

In contrast, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: “My largest concern is not: What are the risks if we make these big investments? It is: What is the cost if we don’t?”

—-

Notes:

https://www.bls.gov/bls/history/home.htm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-5-key-takeaways-from-the-july-jobs-report/2021/08/06/97dff92a-f6f3-11eb-a636-18cac59a98dc_story.html

Jason Furman @jasonfurmanI have yet to find a blemish in this jobs report. I've never before seen such a wonderful set of economic data: --Job gains in most sectors --Big decline in unemployment rate, even bigger for Black & Hispanic/Latino --Redn in long-term unemp --Solid (nominal) wage gains2,735 Retweets10,265 Likes

August 6th 2021

https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/24/covid-stimulus-support-poll/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/business/economy/july-2021-jobs-report.html

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-legacy-of-the-2001-and-2003-bush-tax-cuts

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/789540931/2-years-later-trump-tax-cuts-have-failed-to-deliver-on-gops-promises

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/06/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-july-jobs-report/

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/10/1026081880/senate-passes-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/10/senate-passes-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-503265

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/infrastructure-bill-explained/index.html

https://www.moodysanalytics.com/-/media/article/2021/macroeconomic-consequences-infrastructure.pdf

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/08/10/senate-passes-infrastructure-bill-bipartisan-support/5539281001/

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/yellen-says-enacting-bidens-agenda-key-to-keeping-america-as-worlds-pre-eminent-economic-power.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Biden is going to win, I’m sure of it, but the Senate seems to have slipped through our fingers.  So long as McConnell is majority leader, he will continue to hold it hostage; Biden won’t be getting any judicial appointments unless he makes recess appointments.  The problem with that is recess appointments only last for a single congressional session (max 2 years), and McConnell isn’t going to let the Senate go int recess, so Biden would need to prorogue Congress, which would take approval from Pelosi (the president can only force a recess if the House and Senate disagree on a date), and would be political suicide because the American people are really on edge about authoritarianism right now, and nothing screams dictator like disbanding Congress to pack the courts.  People expect Republicans to be ratfucking bastards, they get a free pass to cheat the system, but Democrats are expected to follow the old rules, to stay in line, to uphold tradition and precedent and whatever the hell else will let Republicans walk all over them.  If a Democrat tried to skirt the rules the way Republicans do,their approval ratings would tank, and the Republicans would ride a red wave into the midterms.

I feel like Biden will be a doormat as president.  He has run on a platform of being palatable, inoffensive, milquetoast, he’s not going to make any waves, he’s not going to try and out maneuver the Republicans, because doing so would sacrifice his veneer of bipartisanship.  He has already said he doesn’t want to use executive orders to sidestep Congress the way Trump has, so he’s going to end up accomplishing very little, all the while completely misunderstanding why young people are becoming increasingly mad at him.  He’s not assertive enough.  I don’t think he has a clearly defined Biden Doctrine.  What will his presidency be about?  Healthcare will be a major issue when the Supreme Court gets rid of Obamacare next week, but he doesn’t stand a chance of getting a new plan passed while McConnell controls the Senate.  And Republicans across the country will blame him instead of trump for gutting their healthcare, saying that Obamacare was his fault when he was terrible and his fault when he was Vice President, but also that its absence is terrible and his fault when he is President.  It’s a lose-lose situation.

Republicans are scheming, Democrats are most definitely not.  Republicans know how to game the system, Democrats don’t.  Biden needs to hit the ground running.  He needs to hire young advisors who can help him play the game in the 21st century, but that’s almost certainly not what he’s going to do.  He’s going to surround himself with old white moderates and a few token moderates of color, and slog his way through the first half of his term before floundering at the midterms because the Republicans will have organized a powerful opposition by then.  He’s not particularly inspiring, he’s just a calming presence compared to Trump, and even THAT wasn’t enough for a blowout; a good 45 - 50% of the country is batshit fucking crazy, and will not hesitate to blow him and his presidency out of the water.  He needs to go big or go home, he needs to add some new songs to his repertoire.  Trump lost because all he knew how to play was Free Bird.  Biden needs to do some experimental shit, throw anything at the wall, see what sticks, make himself more exciting, not just boring, safe, old Grampa Joe.

I do not think Joe Biden is an evil man, I just think he is unambitious and unwilling to take risks because he is stuck in the past.  The country will be better off under him than under Trump, but I just don’t think he’s going to make as many big sweeping changes as we had hoped.  He needs to close the camps, he needs to reunite families (that is if Trump doesn’t actively sabotage this by erasing data to fuck him and the rest of the country over between now and January 20th), he needs to raise taxes and close loopholes so that big corporations don’t just move overseas to avoid paying said taxes.  Economic inequality should be a major platform issue for him, but I don’t know if he’s committed to it as much as we need him to be.  He is not a progressive, we won’t be seeing anything like a President Bernie Sanders, I just hope he has plans for the future; 2024 is going to be HELL ON EARTH if he stays the course.  America doesn’t need any more third-way, neoliberal, moderate centrist bullshit.  I would say we want major progressive reform, but I guess the majority actually doesn’t, because half of them still voted for the worst human alive today.  When Republicans are in power, they don’t give a shit about Democrats, so why should Democrats bother about them?  Why should Biden keep trying to placate them when they’re never going to vote for him; they didn’t this time, they won’t next time, especially if Trump runs for a non-consecutive term or one of his brood runs in his place to establish a dynasty.  Biden needs to play hardball and push through an agenda, regardless of what Republicans do.  We can’t always take the high ground, we need to stop playing fair when the other side plays dirty!

[disillusioned41]

With the Democratic Party poised to take control of the U.S. Senate on the back of projected victories by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff—achievements made possible by tireless grassroots organizing—progressives on Wednesday wasted no time making clear that Democrats will soon have a mandate to urgently pursue a transformative policy agenda aimed at tackling the immediate crises facing the nation and securing a just, livable future.

Major networks declared Warnock the winner over Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) early Wednesday, and Decision Desk HQ projected that Ossoff will emerge victorious in his race against Republican David Perdue. If Warnock and Ossoff's leads hold, as they're expected to, Democrats and Republicans will each hold 50 seats in the Senate, putting Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the role of tie-breaker. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is set to become Senate minority leader.

"Change won't happen unless we demand it. This is the moment we've been preparing for. It's time to celebrate a new era of possibility, and it's time to get to work." —Eric Holthaus

After applauding the historic nature of the likely runoff victories—Warnock is on track to become the first Black senator from Georgia, and Ossoff the state's first Jewish senator—progressive activists and lawmakers swiftly pivoted to detailing what Democrats must do to ensure that the wins bring about desperately needed change.

"Victory in Georgia must lead to transformative change across America," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). "Recurring survival checks, union jobs that pay a living wage, guaranteed healthcare, racial justice, voting rights, immigration reform, climate action, reproductive justice, education, and much more. It can't wait!"

Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) added simply, "The era of small ideas is over."

In the late stages of their pivotal campaigns, Warnock and Ossoff both threw their support behind the effort to deliver $2,000 direct payments to most Americans, a popular push—led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Senate and CPC members in the House—that may have given the Georgia Democrats a last-minute boost.

With President-elect Joe Biden also behind the demand, the checks were viewed as a no-brainer relief measure that Democrats could pursue immediately upon taking power to provide rapid financial assistance to millions of Americans struggling to afford food, rent, and healthcare amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

"Why yes, I just asked Majority Leader Schumer's office when the $2,000 checks bill would hit the Senate floor," The American Prospect's David Dayen tweeted late Tuesday as the election results rolled in.

The direct payments, as well as other significant Democratic legislative priorities, could be passed through budget reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority vote—something that could still prove hard to achieve, given the willingness of right-wing Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to buck the party.

Making matters more difficult for Democrats seeking bold change is the legislative filibuster, which requires at least 60 votes to clear. While only a simple majority is needed to kill the filibuster—the persistence of which could effectively give Republicans veto power over big-ticket policy items—Manchin has made clear that he is ardently opposed to such a reform.

"If Democrats win both Senate seats in GA, it's going to be hard to explain why they should promptly re-empower McConnell by seeking small-ball deals with him instead of getting rid of the filibuster and passing Biden's big, bold agenda," Adam Jentleson, public affairs director at Democracy Forward, said late Tuesday. "Biden has a mandate. Time to use it."

"Many senators who once opposed going nuclear later supported it," Jentleson added. "For Biden it's a question of whether he'd rather spend his energy courting folks like Manchin to pass big stuff, or chasing McConnell (plus 10 Republicans) for small deals that probably won't materialize anyway."

Take Back the Court, an organization dedicated to reforming the U.S. judicial system, warned that if Democrats fail to make effective use of their Senate majority, Biden's legislative agenda "is mostly DOA" and the nation "will return to an authoritarian trajectory once the GOP returns to power."

With Trump and his Republican allies continuing to wage war on democracy, Indivisible co-executive director Ezra Levin said early Wednesday that he "cannot stress enough how existentially important it is for Dems to enact democracy reform ASAP."

"These attacks from Trump and his acolytes will only intensify while they're out of power," Levin warned.

In his newsletter Wednesday morning, meteorologist Eric Holthaus called Warnock and Ossoff's projected victories "incredibly good news for the planet," but stressed that the work of advancing a policy agenda sufficient to prevent the worst of the climate emergency and ensure a just transition away from fossil fuels has just begun.

"The implications of Tuesday night's victories by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock cannot be overstated in terms of climate action," Holthaus argued. "The effects will reverberate for centuries and millennia in the climate system. For once, it's OK to feel tremendous hope for the future. We've earned it. We deserve to look ahead to a livable future."

"But... change won't happen unless we demand it," added Holthaus. "This is the moment we've been preparing for. It's time to celebrate a new era of possibility, and it's time to get to work."

[theculturedmarxist]

For those that might not know, Grover Norquist is Washington’s anti-tax poster boy since the Reagan administration. Calling him an anti-tax lobbyist is missing the vast majority of other shit he’s responsible for or has had a hand in. He’s basically been integral in creating the immensely shitty situation in regards to a failed government and overpowered business lobby that we’re in today.

Anyway, I wanted to share the absolutely delusional bullshit these people say to each other, because it’s absolutely illuminating.

Grover Norquist On Taxes, Socialism And The Demonization Of The Rich

Grover Norquist is President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer organization that opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle and has been leading campaigns for tax reductions since 1986. ATR was founded at the request of President Reagan and asks all candidates for office in the United States to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a written commitment to vote against any tax hikes while they are in office. Rainer Zitelmann spoke with him:

Rainer Zitelmann: In Europe, governments are already looking beyond the coronavirus crisis and planning massive tax increases. In particular, there have been increasing calls for a wealth tax on the richest within society to pay for coronavirus measures and guard against future crises. Supporters of free market economics, on the other hand, are calling for tax cuts to get the economy back on track once the current crisis has abated. What do you think will happen in the United States? If Trump is re-elected, will he cut taxes again? And what will happen if Biden wins?

Grover Norquist: Once we’re looking back on coronavirus in our rearview mirror rather than having it flying at the windshield—then what? Little will happen before the November 2020 American presidential election. Democrats will demand higher taxes and massive spending, Republicans will propose tax cuts. But the Democrat-controlled house will block any tax reductions and the Republican-dominated senate and the Trump veto will block any tax increases or spending explosion. Should Trump win re-election, Republicans will move to enact their stated goal of reducing the corporate income tax to 15% from today’s 21%. They will push to index capital gains for inflation—so capital gain taxes would only be due on real gains, not inflationary gains. Should Biden win the presidency, and the Democrats capture the senate, Biden has promised $3.4 trillion of new taxes. That is three times what Hillary Clinton threatened/promised in 2016—and she lost for being too left wing. Spending will explode. Income tax will be increased, an energy tax will be imposed and eventually a Value Added Tax will be levied. Of course, this fork in the road would be exactly the same if there was no coronavirus. Republicans are the party of tax reduction and (modest) spending restraint. Democrats remain the party of endless tax hikes and endless spending sprees.

Zitelmann: In the United States, socialism used to be a dirty word—and it still is for many older Americans. In contrast, large numbers of younger Americans are committed to “socialism.” So why has anticapitalism become so popular in the United States, especially among younger people?

Norquist: The sad answer is that younger Americans do not know what socialism means. Millennials do not remember the Soviet Union. Or Stalin’s Gulags or the Warsaw Pact. They only know Russia. They could not even tell you what the initials U.S.S.R. stood for, or that Nazi is the abbreviation of National Socialist. Somehow, Bernie Sanders, who is well versed in Soviet history and Cuba’s tradeoff of “literacy” against political prisoners, has explained to younger Americans that “socialism” means Sweden and Denmark.

‘Sanders Had Already Won The Policy Debate’

Zitelmann: Sanders is now out of the race. However, you believe that his ideas have nevertheless prevailed. Why is that?

Norquist: You might think that Bernie Sanders’ withdrawal from the 2020 campaign and the likely victory of Vice President Joe Biden represents a move to the center by the Democrats. Sadly, no. I would argue that Bernie Sanders left the race not because he failed to get enough delegates to win but because he had already won the policy debate. Biden’s threatened tax hikes total $3.4 trillion dollars over a decade. That is three times more than Hillary Clinton threatened. Biden promises to ban fracking, plastic bags (he said plastic, let’s generously assume he meant only plastic bags), expand Medicare with a “public option,” meaning a door through which all Americans could be pushed into a one-size-fits-all, government-controlled health care system, and an energy/carbon tax. What is the difference between Biden and Bernie? They have the same Rolodexes. The same likely White House staffers. The same rhetoric.

Why The Rich Are Being Demonized

Zitelmann: In the Democratic primaries, all of the candidates seemed to be competing to outdo each in terms of their “rich-bashing” rhetoric. Even Michael Bloomberg, himself one of the richest men in the world, was forced to demand higher taxes on the rich before he was forced to withdraw from the race. Where does this hatred of the rich come from?

Norquist: The Democrats need trillions of dollars to buy votes to win the 2020 election. To do that they will require a great deal more money than the $3.8 trillion raised in taxes under the 2019 budget. And they can’t afford to admit that regular voters are the likely target of their new and additional taxes—an energy tax, a Value Added Tax and higher payroll taxes. So Democrat candidates, continuing the strategies adopted by Clinton and Obama, started by demonizing the rich and then promising to tax them—not you, the typical voter. Now, both Clinton and Obama did raise taxes on the middle class—but they talked so much about taxing the rich that even a well-educated voter could be forgiven for thinking that the new taxes were all on the rich. Every new tax voters heard about were announced as targeting the rich (or corporations which, of course, pass on their increased tax burdens to consumers in the form of higher prices and workers in lower wages). The left needs to demonize the rich. It is, after all, their justification for taxing them. Americans do not like the idea of taking money away from someone who earned it.

Zitelmann: A great deal of energy is expended on arguing that the “rich” did not earn their money.

Norquist: Yes, the logic is this: If the rich are only rich because they got lucky, then they never truly earned or deserve their fortunes. This is why Barack Obama told small businessmen in the 2009 campaign, “You did not build that,” when referring to their own small businesses. If you didn’t build it—it isn’t really yours. And, once Democrat logic is accepted, taking it away is not really theft. Nor wrong. Nor immoral. But demonizing the rich has a second advantage for the left. In addition to making it easier to tax the rich and trick voters/taxpayers into thinking they are not the true target of higher taxes, the war on the rich covers up the 50-year failure of the Great Society. The Great Society was launched in 1965 with the promise that the government knew how to help the poor become middle class and self-reliant. Government spending on housing, healthcare and education would instill the poor with middle-class values such as hard work, self-reliance and a willingness to work and save today for a better tomorrow, maintaining a long-term perspective. But the Great Society spent some $14 trillion in giving money to the poor, or more often paying well-paid government employees to “provide services” to the poor, and has little or nothing to show for it in terms of improvements in savings, income, education or work. So rather than admit that they wasted trillions of dollars and concede that they should shut down government job programs that only benefit the Democrat party’s base, the left pivoted to a new problem. Not that the poor are poor, but that there is a large gap between the rich and poor.

This new problem—inequality—can be solved without helping to lift a single poor person out of poverty and into the middle class. One only needs to reduce the wealth and income of the rich. That way we will be more equal. All worse off. But more equal. It is possible for modern Democrats to reduce inequality without doing anything to help poor people or communities. The middle class can suffer while we “reduce inequality.” That they can do. To tax the rich; first undermine their right to keep what they create. Demonize them. To avoid embarrassing questions about the failure of the left’s “war on poverty” you just need to shift the focus to inequality.

‘Immigration Is Our Strongest Competitive Advantage’

Zitelmann: Donald Trump has certainly done some positive things in terms of tax policy and deregulation. At the same time, however, he has increased what was already an extremely high level of national debt and is pursuing protectionist trade policies. I have the impression that Trump has no clear market economy compass. How capitalist is Trump?

Norquist: It’s not clear whether Donald Trump has ever read Hayek. But his tax cuts are straight out of the Ronald Reagan/Art Laffer/Milton Friedman playbook. His de-regulation goes further than all previous presidents combined. His judges will strengthen and repair America’s commitment to the rule of law for a generation. And his unwillingness to be dragged into every stupid idea some European intellectual thought up—windmills, solar to replace real energy that really powers a national economy—has been a godsend. Those who wish to embroil America in every war in every quadrant of the globe have no ally in Trump. Trump knows that war is the enemy of liberty and fiscal prudence. Free trade and immigration are issues where Trump departs from President Reagan and Adam Smith. But as President Trump said before the coronavirus crisis—we are running out of workers in the United States. And the higher wages and jobs growth he delivered reduced the grumpiness of American voters who no longer lash out at immigrants and foreign competitors suspected of stealing their jobs. Trump’s tax cuts, de-regulation, sound legal system and respect for property rights delivered growth to America before the virus and will return when the virus is behind us. Trump’s growth silenced the concerns that drive protectionism and tariffs and stoke fears of immigration. Yes, the wall will be built. America will gain control of its borders, but it will maintain large and open doors. Immigration is our strongest competitive advantage over China, Japan, Russia and most of the world. And yes, our trade agreements need to ensure that our intellectual property is not stolen and reduce the ability of governments anywhere to subsidize trade and disadvantage foreign competition.

Zitelmann: What are your thoughts on the Fed’s low interest rate policy? What does this mean for our market economy system?

Norquist: The danger of near-zero federal interest rates is that borrowing money is seen as “almost” free. The deficit is not the problem. Overspending is the problem. The deadweight cost of government is total spending. The deficit is one element of the problem—like the visible part of an iceberg. But it is the larger, hidden mass of the iceberg below the water line that ripped the Titanic apart. If deficit spending is held down, and taxes are not raised, then there is a limit on spending. That is good. But if deficit spending is “free” or “inexpensive” because interest rates (today) are low, then public opposition to more and more government spending is reduced and government spending will be allowed to increase and weaken the economy.

[etraytin]

west wing gang on day 14 of self quarantine?

(Okay, assume for the purposes of this fic that the US election schedule is based on reality and not the show’s weird two-year offset, okay? So everything is happening in 2020 instead of 2018 or 2022.)

“Does my face look flushed to you?” Josh demanded. 

“Well, you’ve been yelling for the past ten minutes, so...” Donna pointed out. 

Josh frowned, leaning closer to his laptop. “No, I’m being serious. Do I look flushed to you? I feel hot.” 

Donna flicked her eyes down, studying him through the screen. “Nope,” she decided. “Just normally enraged by politics. Did you take your temperature?” 

“Well yeah, of course I took my temperature,” he replied, grimacing. “I took it three times.” 

“And what did it say?” she asked patiently. 

“98.9,” he admitted. “But I normally run cool! That’s high for me!” 

“Are you coughing?” 

“No, but my throat feels scratchy.” 

She smiled faintly. “Did I mention the part where you’ve been yelling for ten minutes?” 

“Well I can’t help it!” he insisted. “We’re less than four months from the convention, we haven’t sewn up the nomination, we can’t hold a single goddamn rally or let the candidate shake anybody’s hand, we lose every news cycle to a new report about how sneezing is bad for you, I’m four hundred miles away from you and the kids and I can’t come home, the SATs are cancelled so god knows what that’ll do for Jo’s college search-” 

“Josh,” Donna began gently, then more insistently. “Josh! JOSHUA! Calm down, take a breath!” She smiled when he subsided, for all he was still glaring at the screen. “I know it’s frustrating, and I miss you too, but it’s going to be okay,” she promised. “Sam's the prohibitive favorite atthis point, and the virtual Q&As have been very well-received.I've got data here showing a solid fifteen point lead in primarystates that have yet to vote, and twenty-five points against theRepublican candidate. Everything we're doing is working,” shereminded him.

 “Not well enough!” Josh insisted. “I mean, how do we know?Maybe people aren't answering their phones. The only in-personpolling they can do is from people too stupid to stay home, so that'sgotta be skewed, right?”

 “I think it's a pretty good indicator still,” Donna told himpatiently. “And yes, the SAT was canceled, but that just puts us inthe same boat as thousands of other families. Jo has a 4.0 GPA andgreat extracurriculars, plus a letter of recommendation from JosiahBartlet. I think she's going to be just fine.”

 “Maybe,” Josh had to assent. “I feel like I have body aches.Body aches are a symptom, right?” 

 Donna's eyes sharpened. “Where are they at?” 

 “My lower back is killing me,” he informed her, “and myshoulders.” 

 She eased back. “Have you been using the lumbar cushion?” sheasked archly. “And how many hours have you been hunched over thatscreen?” 

 “What else is there to do?” Josh demanded, skirting the pillowquestion entirely.

 “How about some exercise? You guys are in a three bedroom suite,right? There's room to at least do stretching. Oh, CJ's pinging me,I'll patch her in.”

 Donna tapped a few keys and the screen split, now showing both herand a somewhat disheveled CJ. “Christ,” CJ muttered, brushing herhair flat, “I didn't realize we were video calling.” 

 Josh grinned at her, happy to see at least one person less puttogether than himself. “Hey CJ, long time no see! Are those yourpajamas?” 

CJ glared at him. “I'm in quarantine, what do I have to getdressed up for?” 

 “Are you back in the States now?” Donna asked. “Did you haveany trouble?”

 “Not much, all the restrictions are on Europe, but we're stillsupposed to quarantine for fourteen more days.” CJ adjusted thecamera up so only her head and neck were showing. In the background,Danny was wandering around the kitchen in a pair of University ofCalifornia boxer shorts, apparently unaware of the webcam. “How'sthe campaign?” 

 “Stalled,” Josh groused.  “Dead in the water. Momentumless.” 

“That's the spirit!” Sam told him cheerfully, coming from hisbedroom and fastening his cuffs as he leaned over Josh's shoulders.“Josh has been talking to Toby,” he confided to the womenonscreen. “I think we'll have to stop him.”

 “Sounds like a good idea, Mr. Senator,” Donna agreed,grinning. 

 “You'll probably have to tie them both down in separate rooms,”CJ advised. “Long time no see, by the way. You're lookingremarkably happy for a man in quarantine with his campaign staff.” 

 “That's because I have America in my heart,” Sam told her withmock gravity. “Hi, Danny!” CJ glanced down at her own screen and abruptly yanked the webcamfocus back onto herself. 

“Hi Sam!” Danny's voice echoed over theline. “You should be nicer to the press pool.” 

 “They're never nice to me back!” Sam pointed out. “I'mhaving a lot more luck with the women's magazines.” 

 “I bet you are,” CJ cackled. “Hey, have any of you heardfrom Abbey and Jed?”

 “They're all right,” Donna reported. “Zoey, Charlie andtheir kids are out with them, and that farm is so remote it's aboutthe safest place they could be. Abbey says they've got enough cannedgoods in the basement for a year , if you don't mind a lot ofapple-based dishes.”

“And apple based trivia, I'm sure,” Josh put in. “How aboutyou, you're not going out, are you?” 

“I'm being very safe,” Donna assured him. “I'm fromWisconsin, we stock up when there's a storm coming. Hey, Garret!”she called, snagging a fast-moving blur behind her chair. “Say hito Dad and everybody!”

 Garret leaned down into the frame, all lanky body and light brownhair and a dimple just like his dad when he grinned. “Hi Dad andeverybody! Hey Dad, I can use your car while you're gone, right? Ipromise not to go where there are people.” 

 “What?” Josh squawked. “My car? No!” 

 “We'll talk about it later, kiddo,” Donna told Garret, shooinghim away. 

“Donna!” Josh protested. 

“Listen, mister, you haven't been stuck in the house forfourteen days with two bored teenagers,” Donna reminded him.“Even the internet has stopped being enough. It's your own damnfault for buying that middle-age crisis testosterone-mobile.” Josh frowned and tried to ignore the fact that CJ was alreadylaughing. “Fine, but when our insurance rates skyrocket, I'm goingto be the one saying I told you so.” 

 “That's a price I'm willing to let you pay,” Donna replied,serene once again. “You guys have another Q&A in a couple ofhours, right?”

“It's on healthcare in America, so it should be a barn-burner,”Sam agreed. “Are you going to watch?” 

“Oh, I have a list of questions,” CJ assured him smoothly. 

Sam's eyes widened. “That sounds a little terrifying.” 

“I like to think of it as getting you prepared for the bigchair,” CJ told him. “You'll do fine. Josh, don't let him haveany more coffee.” 

 “I'll drink it all myself,” Josh promised. 

 “Josh!” Donna protested. 

 “Good man. Good luck!” CJ called cheerfully. “We're rootingfor you!” 

“Just make sure you vote for me!” Sam called back as CJ'swindow blinked out. “I'm gonna go make some coffee,” he muttered,wandering off into the kitchen.

 “Still feeling warm?” Donna asked when it was just the two ofthem again. 

 “Not as much,” Josh admitted rolling his shoulders. “Stillpretty stiff, though. I miss your backrubs.” 

 “As soon as you can get home, I'll make sure you get one,” shepromised. “Go take a long shower and some Advil, it'll help.” 

 “I miss you, too,” he told her seriously. “This sucks.” 

 “Yeah,” she sighed, slumping visibly. “But it's not forever.Take care of yourself, okay? Come home soon.” 

 “Doing my best,” he promised. “But next time we getquarantined, I'm bringing you with me. Love you.” 

“Sounds like fun,” she laughed. “Love you too. Go do a job.”The picture winked out. Josh took his temperature again. 98.9. Stillokay for now. How long was this thing going to last? 

This fic can also be found at Archive Of Our Own, username Etraytin, under the title   Isolated Cases.

[96thdayofrage]

Since Republican Senator Tim Scott’s remarks on Wed April 28 (following President Biden’s address to Congress) the question, “Is America a racist nation?” has found renewed traction on the major news networks. Hot takes on our social media feeds also abound. There are many ways to think about how/why this question has been able to garner the attention it has in our public square. But for those of us who study how the history of race and anti-black violence unfolds in the North American context, one thing is abundantly clear: It’s precisely because the United States is a place where racism in general, and anti-blackness more specifically, can thrive that this question is able to capture the collective attention it has. In other words, that we’re still asking this question of whether or not “America is a racist nation” seems less about the question itself, and more about the existential threat that it poses to our collective investment in what Eddie Glaude, Jr. calls “the lie”. The lie, Glaude writes, is that “broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions” that gives to whiteness the subject position in the American grammar book. The same architecture of false assumptions that stitches together the horrific brotherhood of twenty-five year old Michael Stewart, forty-four year old Eric Garner and forty-seven year old George Floyd.

The minutes leading up to the jury’s verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial were harrowing, in a historical sense. They are minutes that many of us will always remember. We’ll always be able to recall what we were doing and who we were with as they slowly ticked away. What made the wait most difficult for me was watching my sons – both young black boys growing up in and against the “powerful architecture” of the lie – wait through those minutes, knowing that no matter what the verdict was, there was really no good news to celebrate with them. So when ‘guilty on all three counts’ finally came, there was some sense of relief, for sure. But it was the kind of relief you might liken to standing on the edge of a precipice, and being lucky enough to not have fallen off ‘this one time’. What I mean by that is that alongside the relief one feels in not falling off is that more overwhelming ‘wobble’ of dangling over the edge of a precipice in the first place. It’s a relief, yes. But not enough to undo the horror of what you’re all too aware was statistically way more likely. Not enough to undo the horror of knowing that you’re alive not because you were supposed to survive, but because of, well, some alchemic combination of grit and dumb luck.

It was in that way that I was relieved to hear that Derek Chauvin was going to be held accountable for the life he had taken away (in that slow and casual way he stole George Floyd’s life). The trifecta of guilty counts felt like being given a chance to steal away from a precipice’s edge, just a little, so that you saved yourself from falling off. At least this time. When I found out that George Floyd’s murderer was going to pay a price for taking his life, I felt like I needed to hug my two boys, in the way I imagine George Floyd’s family felt the need to embrace each other. Not quite in a moment of celebration, although there was a clear battle that had been won. I hugged my boys because we were seeing what looked like a criminal justice system working to value black life, affirming a black man’s sacred humanity. But I also (and, to be honest, mostly) hugged my boys because what we were seeing that day felt so very happenstance, so ‘this one time’, so unexpectedly against what we’ve come to know as statistically likely. Nothing about the relief of the Chauvin trial’s guilty verdict takes away this wobble of being racialized as black in the US, of having to insist on one’s right to freedom in a world in which black life is unequivocally unfree. I guess you can say that I hugged my boys because they still needed to understand this as their reality, even as the guilty verdict came across the TV that afternoon.

Rehearsing, here, all the police killings of unarmed black women, men and children that happened in the months prior George Floyd’s murder and immediately following the conviction of Derek Chauvin feels somewhat like indulging in catastrophe porn. (It is also something that would make me very fucking tired, and so I’m not going to do that.) However, I do want to point to this ever- and always-growing cluster of police killings to raise, perhaps, a more useful question than “Is America a racist nation?” And that is: Is there something about the intimacy between racism and self-formation in the US, which will always make that question a false start?

In a 2003 co-authored piece, Steven Martinot and Jared Sexton write that “notions of the state as the arbiter of justice and the police as the unaccountable arbiters of lethal violence are two sides of the same coin. Narrow understandings of mere racism are proving themselves impoverished because they cannot see this fundamental relationship. What is needed is the development of a radical critique of the structure of the coin.” What if we’ve already missed the rot of anti-black racism if we wait for a Derek Chauvin to express our outrage? What if what we should mean by ‘anti-black racism’ is not only the “flash point” of Breonna Taylor’s murder, but (before that), the disproportionate access to life-sustaining healthcare, education, clean water and safe housing that structures being black in the United States? What if “a radical critique of the coin” shows that anti-blackness – the racially uneven distribution of death across all aspects of our social field – makes someone like Derek Chauvin not a statistical anomaly, but rather a likely product of a state machinery invested in the capture of black life?

The black radical imagination and black activisms have historically understood the need for this kind of radical critique – of the whole coin, and of the interconnectedness of all its sides. It is only then, on the heels of such a critique, that an ‘otherwise’ future opens up for black life, an otherwise future in which “black” can, indeed, be free and human and sacred. To be sure, working toward such otherwise futures has always been the impetus for black politics in this radical sense, the sense in which studying blackness (in the words of the poet, Charif Shanahan) reveals what is both the “pained and possible” of black life. What is possible — it is also with that in my heart that I hugged my two boys on the afternoon of April 20. Imagining and working toward otherwise futures is essential to mothering black children. We raise them for living, for breathing, and for taking up the task of demanding – with an audacity of hope and a suspicion of cheap optimism – a world in which they can be free.

And so the question of what is possible for black life – possible as abolitionist rehearsals of naming ourselves – has always accompanied and ruptured the impossibilities coded in the violent algorithm of “the lie” in which the US continues to invest. And for this reason, what is of most concern to scholars of the history of race and anti-blackness in the United States is not the question of whether or not “America is a racist nation”. Rather, what most concerns us is the more urgent question of how we might gather our present and ancestral resources in order to – in the words of Ruthie Gilmore – “change everything”.

[thepoliticalpatient]

Healthcare objectives for the Biden administration

For the next 2 years we hold the slimmest possible majority in the Senate, we have the House, and we have the presidency. We can get a lot done with that, but we will largely be limited to what we can accomplish via the budget reconciliation process, a process that allows the Senate to pass bills with only 50 votes, rather than the usual 60, but requires that all components of the bill be directly related to federal spending.

Here are some things that we can and should get done:

A simple bill to nullify the lawsuit against the ACA

This needs to happen basically immediately after inauguration. Congress can pass a bill through the budget reconciliation process reinstating the tax penalty for not buying insurance at just $1, and the basis for the whole lawsuit will be null and void. But they have to pass this before SCOTUS rules on the suit, which could happen literally any day.

Fixing the ACA’s subsidy cliff

The ACA has a serious problem with its subsidy structure. Anyone making 400% of the federal poverty level or less qualifies for subsidies that make the plans affordable. But if you’re making even just a little too much, you no longer qualify for any financial help, and the out of pocket price for a plan jumps drastically. Through reconciliation, we can and should pass a bill that caps the OOP price of ACA plans at a percentage of income for everybody, to ensure that nobody has to pay more than they can afford.

Expanding low-cost healthcare for people living in non-Medicaid expansion states

Since 12 states have not expanded Medicaid, low income residents of these states often don’t have affordable healthcare options. We can’t force these states to expand Medicaid, but we could expand the ACA to offer highly subsidized private plans to this population.

Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices

Coverage for prescription drugs was added to Medicare in 2006, but drug companies lobbied to prevent Medicare from being able to negotiate the prices. Removing this restriction would probably not change the out of pocket costs for patients, since Medicare prescription copays are usually a fixed cost and not a percentage of the sticker price. But it would save the federal government money that it could use to help pay for other healthcare endeavors, like the prior 2 proposals I just described, and it would also be a good check on pharma companies to tell them that they can’t just charge whatever the hell they want to and expect to get away with it.

Maybe a public option?

A public option probably cannot be passed through budget reconciliation, so it’s the most ambitious item on here as we’d have to convince Republicans to vote for it. I still hesitate to say that it isn’t doable, considering that this is policy that is a whole-ass decade old - it was in the original text of the ACA but had to be stripped out to appease Joe Lieberman. America was almost ready for a public option 11 years ago and we’re past ready now. But, unfortunately, it is still ambitious at this time.

Medicare for All is not going to happen with any immediacy

Medicare for All would not fit within the restrictions of budget reconciliation, and we will not be able to convince 10 Republican Senators to vote for it. It cannot realistically pass in the next 2 years. We can continue laying the groundwork and making arguments for why it’s a good policy in hopes of passing it in the future, of course.

[jaywrites101]

Why You Should be Voting Democrat: The Republicans are Hypocrites Against God.

This is an essay I now have to give to a person living in this house with me. Some context, they pinned a piece of Republican propaganda they received in the mail to the community posterboard with the words “why I vote Republican” written on it. I have interpreted this as an invitation to challenge their beliefs. And my response is in the essay below.

Sincerely, By Everyone in This House

Pro-life vs Pro-Choice

This argument is a messy one to argue, this is something our country is literally divided over this and each argument is so twisted it's hard for either side to understand one another. For this to be the hill you've chosen to fight on I'm going to have to assume two things—1: you believe abortions are murder, and 2: You believe abortions are a common occurrence made by lazy people who want to get rid of the consequences of their bad actions.

Both of these are common arguments made by the Republican party to defund Planned Parenthood. So it may surprise you that not a single person on the Left is trying to disprove your fighting points.

That's because this isn't about abortions at all. It's about women's rights. Abortions only play into this because it was the item that forced the issue before the courts and the public.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. This decision effectively guaranteed that a woman had the right to treat her body as her own property, meaning she could choose what she eats, who she has sex with, and, yes, whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.

The decision ruled that the US Government has no right to decide the moral outcome of a single person's choices. Nor do they have the right to force a person to live in what they currently believe to be an ethical lifestyle.

This is the one and ONLY law in our country that explicitly gives women the same rights to life, responsibility, and authority that a man has. It also the only law that ensures a woman has the ultimate right to refuse to have sex with a man.

Republicans want to overturn Roe v. Wade and defund Planned Parenthood (not end abortions). They often cite the evils of abortions as the reasons why they want to overturn it. However, this is not their real motivation. Planned Parenthood has a multitude of other services for women and men besides abortions. They help people conceive children, provide safe-sex alternatives to reckless teens, provide both erectile stimulants and contraception, and even hormone therapy for trans people transitioning genders. They also provide pregnancy care for women just like any other hospital.

And as we've discussed Roe v. Wade is about a woman's rights to her body.

Republicans are trying to keep women from having equal rights. This much has been stated by Republicans in the 1970s and that mentality continues to today. It's blatant hypocrisy from a group of people who've only read the Bible enough to make real Christians like yourself believe they're doing God's work. And they are not shy about signaling how religious they are. God even has a Bible verse for them specifically:

 “Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.” Matthew 6:2. (NKJV)

Government Spending

This one's actually a very easy argument to refute. Republicans are always talking about making tax cuts and spending less money. In truth, all the money they save goes straight into the military budget which increases by BILLIONS of dollars each year. We're currently spending $934 billion a year on our military budget. According to the last Discretionary Spending Audit under Obama, more than half of that goes back into the politicians in both the House and the Senat across both sides of the aisles. That's also why this issue is one many Democrats actively support; the military is giving them a kickback.

The tax cuts you experience is not the government saving an extra twenty cents by cutting out beef from their cafeteria and passing the savings to you. It's the Republican party throwing the US into more debt to artificially give you a tax break so you'll continue to vote for them, and force the Democrats to be the ones to have to put that back to normal so they look like the bad guys.

Long story short, if you want the government to save money, vote Democrat, pay higher taxes and demand a drastic decrease in military spending.

Fun Fact: If we succeed in cutting the military budget by one-hundredth of a percent, the excess funds would pay to empower EVERY SOCIAL SERVICE the democrats suggest (from healthcare all the way to free electricity.) for the next ten years.

Education (Really? This one's so backward you should know better without me explaining.)

Republicans have been so far on the wrong side of this debate I'm surprised I have to tell it to you. For decades they've cut school budget both in the public and private sectors. They happily cut millions of dollars a year from the federal grants that are supposed to help kids afford college, while also artificially inflating the price of school, school supplies, and class prices.

This is not some secret thing you'll have to search hard for. They brag about it on tv every other episode of Fox News. 

The document you gave me lists education but provides no real proposals or examples of problems they hope to change, it is preying on your ignorance in this situation to make themselves look good. (What follows was not any part of the document they left, but are bullet points I thought they should be thinking about when they go to vote.)

Gay Rights

People who are gay, or otherwise not cishet WASPS should have the right to live a life of their own choosing without persecution or judgment from us. Jesus says everyone has that right amongst man. We're supposed to leave all that to God, so leave it for God.

Racism

I direct you to the current protests as proof that Racism is a thing that still exists, and has only gotten more unmanageable as time has moved on. Also, every Black Lives Matter protest since Martin Luther King Jr.

Socialism

Roads, parks, schools, and social security are all social programs funded by the government for the people. We on the Left wish to expand these capacities to healthcare, electricity, internet, higher education, and phone services, while also insisting that the government provide the minimum funding needed for people to live. (This in a time when the cost of living keeps rising higher due to unchecked capitalism.) We demand the government provide for the homeless, and regulate the supply chain of food. (because over 70% of all food in the garbage across this country is thrown away while it's still fresh.)

We have the ability to end starvation, and homelessness in this country. We argue this means we have the responsibility to do so as well.

Gun Reform

Democrats believe no civilian needs access to weapons of war. It's too easy to exploit these weapons and it results in mass killings of innocents. There are far better and more effective ways to defend yourself and your family than buying a bunch of guns and shooting anything that makes a noise in the night.

Police Reform

This is the current agenda. Police have gone unpunished for their crimes against civilians, (especially civilians of color,) and our current system 1: Encourages police to kill first, ask questions never, 2: Forces cops to take on roles they are untrained for, and 3: Gives them too much power without any reliable method of accountability. We demand all three of these things be addressed and changed in a meaningful way.

All of this without even mentioning Trump, the man actively trying to be a dictator.

[phroyd]

Negotiations on a new coronavirus relief bill hit an impasse on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, leaving no clear path forward even as millions of Americans face a sudden drop in unemployment benefits, and the economy teeters on the brink.

A meeting between top White House officials and Democratic leaders ended with no agreement on extending emergency unemployment benefits that expire Friday or on reviving a moratorium on evictions that lapsed last week. That means some 20 million jobless Americans will lose $600 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits that Congress approved in March, which could send the economy reeling.

After a day of meetings, all parties declared their differences all but irreconcilable. Democrats shot down the idea of a short-term fix for unemployment insurance and the eviction moratorium, which President Trump had announced earlier Wednesday he would support. And the two parties remained far apart on a larger bill, with Democrats standing by their wide-ranging $3 trillion proposal even as Republicans struggled to coalesce around a $1 trillion bill released by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday.

Each side said the other was to blame for the failure. Paying the price will be the unemployed at a moment of deep uncertainty and fear, with coronavirus cases spiking and states pulling back on reopening as deaths near 150,000 in the United States. The talks could get back on track in coming days, but the signs Wednesday were not promising.

“I don’t know that there is another plan, other than no deal," said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. "Which will allow unemployment, enhanced unemployment, I might add, to expire. … No deal certainly becomes a greater possibility the longer these negotiations go.”

Meadows offered his dour assessment as he headed into his third straight day of meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the Capitol. He was no more upbeat when he came out.

“We are nowhere close to a deal,” Meadows said.

Democrats echoed his pessimistic assessment, while putting the blame on Republicans.

“Our Republican friends don’t seem to come close to meeting the moment. … They’ve put us up against the wall. We have two cliffs because they wouldn’t negotiate for months,” Schumer said.

“They’re tied in a total knot because of the disunity in their caucus, because of their inability to gather votes, because the president says one thing one day, he says another thing the other day,” Schumer added. "We want to come back and keep talking to them. But they don’t have anything to say.”

McConnell held out hope in an evening interview with PBS NewsHour, saying: “This is only Wednesday. So hope springs eternal that we’ll reach some kind of agreement, either on a broad basis or a more narrow basis to avoid having an adverse impact on unemployment.”

Earlier Wednesday Trump had called for a quick fix to address the unemployment benefits and eviction moratorium, saying other issues could wait.

“The rest of it, we’re so far apart, we don’t care, we really don’t care,” Trump told reporters outside the White House, referring to divisions between the two parties.

But Democrats called that approach wholly inadequate.

“We don’t know why the Republicans come around here with a skinny bill that does nothing to address really what’s happening with the virus, and has a little of this and a little of that. We’re not accepting that," Pelosi said. "We have to have the comprehensive full bill.”

McConnell has not embraced the piecemeal approach either, insisting any bill must include a five-year liability shield for businesses, healthcare providers and others — a non-starter for Democrats.

More than 20 million Americans remain unemployed and have been receiving a $600 weekly emergency unemployment payment that Congress approved in March, on top of whatever benefit their state offers. That extra federal benefit runs out Friday.

Democrats want to extend the extra jobless payment at its current level. The Senate GOP bill released Monday proposes cutting it to $200 weekly until states can phase in a new system that would aim to replace 70 percent of a worker’s wages before unemployment.

Underscoring the continued need, the head of the Federal Reserve said Wednesday that rising coronavirus cases since mid-June are beginning to weigh on the economy, based on consumer credit card spending and hotel occupancy data as well as some labor market indicators.

“On balance, it looks like the data are pointing to a slowing in the pace of the recovery," Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said during a news conference Wednesday. "I want to stress it’s too early to say both how large that is and how sustained it will be.”

Powell said funding from the $2 trillion Cares Act passed in March was key to keeping people in their homes and jobs. He pointed to the success of the small-business Paycheck Protection Program for getting money directly to businesses that couldn’t necessarily have been saved through a Fed lending program.

“Lending is a particular tool, and we’re using it very aggressively, but fiscal policy is essential here," Powell said. “As I’ve said, more will be needed from all of us, and I see Congress is negotiating now over a new package, and I think that’s a good thing."

But the negotiations are not going well. Democrats want to spend three times more than Republicans on the overall bill, expected to be Congress’s last major coronavirus relief bill before the November election. They also are insisting on a new round of state and local aid, which was excluded from the GOP bill.

Some Republicans don’t want to spend any more money at all, and there are deep divisions over the $1 trillion bill McConnell released Monday, which proposes to send a new round of $1,200 stimulus checks to individual Americans and inject more money into the Paycheck Protection Program, among other provisions. McConnell said in his PBS interview that there are about 20 GOP senators who would prefer to take no additional action because of deficit concerns.

A number of Republican senators signaled Wednesday they were open to some kind of short-term, stand-alone deal — but also said there was no clarity on what that might actually entail, or on much of anything at all.

“There’s no consensus on anything,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) told reporters twice after a closed-door lunch with Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He described this as “A normal part of the catharsis that goes with actually getting to the solution," while noting: "We’re far away right now.”

McConnell is leaving negotiations with Democrats to Trump administration officials. The whole process has been overtaken by increasingly bitter partisanship, which was on display on the Senate floor Wednesday as McConnell and Schumer traded insults.

McConnell accused Democrats of adopting a “completely unhinged position” in insisting on continuing the $600 weekly emergency unemployment benefits. Republicans say such generous payments act as a disincentive for people to return to the workforce, given that in many cases they can make more on unemployment.

Referring to Pelosi, McConnell said, “She’ll just refuse to legislate until the election and wish American families good luck dealing with the pandemic.”

Schumer denounced those comments in his own floor speech a short time later.

“This absurd, nasty insinuation by the Republican leader doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Schumer said.

As time runs out on the expanded jobless benefit, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has started crafting an alternative unemployment insurance proposal, according to an official familiar with the draft.

The plan would allow states to choose one of two options, the official said: either a jobless benefit supplement that amounts to 80 percent of the initial wage, or a sliding scale that would amount to an additional $500 per week in August, $400 per week in September and $300 per week in October. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a plan that was still being drafted.

Trump’s push for an extension of the eviction moratorium came even though the GOP legislation released by McConnell did not include it. The eviction moratorium provision, which was passed as part of the Cares Act in March, shielded 12 million renters nationwide from eviction — but it expired Friday. House Democrats have pushed for it to be extended.

A federal eviction moratorium is ending. Here’s what renters should know.

Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, suggested Sunday the administration would back extending the moratorium. He then clarified Monday on Fox News that the administration was pushing an extension in forbearance for homeowners — allowing them to delay payments on their mortgages — but that the administration was still studying the eviction moratorium. That measure prevented renters from being evicted from properties with mortgages backed by the federal government.

Trump also said Wednesday he would continue to demand nearly $1.8 billion for a new FBI building at its present site, near his hotel in downtown Washington.

McConnell and multiple other Republicans have said they oppose inclusion of the FBI headquarters provision.

“Then Republicans should go back to school and learn. They need a new building … and we can do it very easily,” Trump said.

Congress passed four bipartisan bills in March and April, injecting about $3 trillion into the economy as the coronavirus began its deadly and economically devastating march across the country. At the time lawmakers hoped the pandemic would die down; instead it’s been spiking in many places.

Phroyd

[bigskydreaming]

Biden does not have the nomination yet. It is not yet a matter of “a vote for Biden is a vote against Trump, anything else is a vote for Trump.”

And until it is, until either Sanders or Biden has all the delegates they need, peoples’ criticisms of Biden are absolutely relevant. And even should Biden GET the nomination, c’mon guys, there is STILL room to be aware of everything Biden IS and everything about him that needs OPPOSING, even WHILE still opposing Trump. This is not counter-intuitive....if you are against most of what Trump has done, because it is WRONG rather than it is just Trump who did it, and did it in obvious ways, then this is vital, I’d argue, because Biden isn’t going to address a lot of it once in the White House unless people DO keep in mind what is and isn’t likely to still be an issue in a Biden presidency.

This isn’t divisive, this is NECESSARY. If you can’t find a way to hold both truths in your mind: “Trump absolutely needs to be ousted, and opposed, and his works undone,” as well as “Biden has a long history of doing harm in his various seats, and he is the lesser of two evils ONLY in some respects and its important to know what those are because evil is still evil”....that’s something to WORK on, not just “Biden or bust.”

And to be clear, I’m not advocating for “Bernie or bust” either. I’m simply saying: This is all more complicated than accusing people of having brain worms for thinking “Guy who won’t expand health care as much” is the same as “Guy who is killing people.”

Let me be perfectly, 100% clear: If Biden gets the nomination, if it comes down to him or Trump, I am voting for Biden, hands down. But I will be doing so not thinking that Biden is in any way a more moral choice, but because I think the true danger of Trump is in him serving these past years as a rallying point for all the most vocal white supremacist and homophobic and misogynistic elements within our society, allowing them to feel emboldened and having no shame about expressing their hate openly. I think the true danger of Trump’s presidency is how little of it is actually Trump doing anything other than acting as a magnet that draws all focus and trains all eyes on him, even as his cabinet stocked to over-flowing with white-supremacists, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic and eugenics-advocating assholes go about ACTIVELY advancing agendas of hate behind him while he serves as the catch-all for all opposition.

That absolutely needs to be opposed, and defeated, but fuck this self-defeating nonsense that this means the work will be OVER the second Trump is gone, whenever and however that happens. And I think for as much as people accuse some of us of doing the enemy’s work for them by sowing division and dividing our efforts and how this is doomed to be self-sabotaging and backfire on all of us, I think the same is true of saying things like the only real drawback to Biden is ‘doesn’t want to expand Health Care as much as Sanders whereas he’s otherwise not remotely comparable to Guy Who Is Killing People.”

Because BOTH ARE SELF-DEFEATING. Both set up only ONE THING as a goal or a focus that needs tackling and carries the implicit “and then we can rest” instead of holding up as a goal or focus that both need defeating or plenty of people are still going to die, as they’ve been dying all along.

If you’re going to go with the Devil You Know because he’s also the Lesser Evil of the two Devils You Know....

You still need to know who he is, and who he is is not just guy who won’t expand health care as much and claiming him to be such and nothing more is DANGEROUS.

Vote for Biden if it comes down to him and Trump, yes! But do so in a way that will let you get right back to work opposing all the shit HE prioritizes and stands for, every bit as much as you claim to oppose all the same with Trump!

Stop treating this as an impossible ask. It is not as simple as evil or not evil. It is as simple as making the choice that ensures most people survive....and then from there, actually ensuring that means that the most people survive. 

Which can only happen when you keep in mind how Biden will still be dangerous even once Trump is gone, and who will still need protection from him and his administration and policies, even once Trump’s are gone....and especially because there are a number of those policies that Biden, based on his own policies of the past, is not likely to prioritize or even be helpful in getting dismantled.

Any posts responding to this with anything remotely on the lines of “you’re encouraging people not to vote for Biden and thus helping Trump win” will be ignored the same way they ignore that THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS, OR SAYS, OR WANTS. I am not responsible for your inability to read what this post actually says, or your unwillingness to hold two not actually opposing viewpoints and priorities in your head at the same time. I am being as clear as I possibly can be on what I will be doing if Biden is the nominee, and why, and how none of that makes Biden’s worst flaws or history irrelevant or a distraction from Trump.

First off:

“Won’t expand healthcare that much” IS actively letting people die. GoFundMe’s biggest usage is trying to raise money for people whose health care isn’t keeping them alive and most of those goals are never actually met, and that’s literally killing people. 

Please be cognizant of what kind of people are most being killed this way. Ones who have the most trouble MEETING (often) impossible goals. The most marginalized members of society. 

If anyone is still framing the health care issue in their own heads as a matter of whether or not they can always pay for their own medical expenses, or will always be able to, please understand this disregards the many people who flat out can’t, and die every day as a result. Homeless people, people kicked out of their homes for being gay or trans or neurodivergent, not having access to quality health care for those reasons or turned away by the specialists they desperately need because the specialists’ only concerns are they can’t afford to pay. Ex-cons who are largely barred access to jobs with good medical benefits, and are largely barred access to the goodwill of random internet strangers willing to shell out some money of their own for their gofundme campaigns. And so on, and so on.

Absolutely the camps and detention facilities are a huge ongoing issue, but its a huge ongoing issue MOST being talked about throughout these entire past four years by a lot of the exact same leftists being accused of taking focus away from the very issues they are doing the most to highlight.

Now onto Biden specifically:

Are Biden’s positions on everything identical to Trump? No, but for starters, Biden wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, responsible for building more prisons, increasing prison sentences, deploying more cops, and increasing and furthering the exploitation of prison labor, etc.

He’s long been a major proponent of capital punishment, directly leading to the creation of over 60 new capital offenses including murder of federal law enforcement officers. And oh yeah, Biden also voted against limiting appeals and rejecting racial statistics in death penalty appeals.....which would be great if the vast majority of the new death penalty offenses he had a hand in creating - like the murder of police - haven’t been massively disproportionate in who they end up targeting and who ends up charged with and convicted of them: 

Like carjackings, acts of terrorism (just hardly ever acts of domestic terrorism aka the mass shootings of white supremacists, antisemites and disgruntled white guys), and the many drug-related offenses that stem from him being known for decades as a ‘drug warrior’ behind many leading efforts in the war on drugs.

Such as how in the 80s he was the head of the Senate Committee responsible for passing most of the most punitive measures against drug users, during the crack epidemic that was largely created to target and make scapegoats of lower class drug users and PoC, whom were at the time denoted as statistically more likely to use crack cocaine than powder cocaine....

And given that Biden himself sponsored and co-wrote the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which specifically and deliberately laid out hugely harsher penalties for crack cocaine use than were received for being convicted of using power cocaine.....aka a particular favorite past-time of rich white guys (including politicians and political staffers)....all during and throughout the crack epidemic Biden and his cohorts happily whipped up public moral outrage about....

This directly makes him and his political career an inciting element in the huge disparities in prison populations, all stemming from this drug warrior’s leading role in a war on drugs he helped get underway and become what it eventually became in the first place. (Please keep in mind he was famously critical of REAGAN for not being strongly enough anti-drug, as well as George H. W. Bush.)

Granted, Biden admitted his role in crafting and enforcing legislation that led to such huge disparities, at least by the time he was asked about such things in the debates of the 2007 Democratic primaries.

But to my knowledge, to this day he has yet to ever similarly walk back his role in things like oh, the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act in 1983. Which directly empowered and has steadily more and more further increased the power of drug enforcement agencies to seize assets of even just those charged with anything from drug possession to intent to distribute. Which in turn, almost always directly affects the ability of defendants to pay for their own defense instead of being limited to the representation of overworked and underpaid public defenders. Not to mention limits their ability to repeatedly avail themselves to the unlimited appeals Biden nominally has always been in favor for. 

Or there’s the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Bill which was a bit of shady shitmanship that squeezed through thanks to being attached to an unvetted, unrelated and super fucking vague child protection bill that has often been criticized as overreaching in scope. And this IDAP Bill, despite its superficially stated intentions, has historically most often been used by DEA agents as an intimidation tactic wielded against drug-reform protestors at rallies and other such events.

Biden might never have openly had his support base chanting Build the Wall, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t vote for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which partially funded the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the Mexican border. 

And his stance for over ten years about whether he’d allow sanctuary cities to ignore federal law has been a clear and concise NO, which y’know, given that’s kinda the whole point of sanctuary cities....and given that sanctuary cities have been absolutely CRUCIAL to even attempting to stave off the worst of Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, travel bans, etc.....this may not make him worse than Trump, but I fail to see that particular stance helping all that much even after Trump is gone. 

Because Biden might not have put the same efforts into motion as Trump has, had he been the one in office, but I do not for a second believe he will in ANY way make reversing or undoing some of them his priority. All of that is just as likely to be an uphill battle in a Biden presidency. His track record speaks to itself as to how much he’s likely to make anything like abolishing ICE or getting rid of the detention facilities his first order of business - or even second, third, or even tenth....UNLESS PEOPLE FORCE HIM TO MAKE IT THAT, INSTEAD OF JUST TRUSTING THAT HE WILL BECAUSE HE’S NOT TRUMP.

The caveat I have here is that Biden and his inner circle and support base are unlikely to ever be that visibly resistant to repealing Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, or that visibly in favor of what’s happened there, and he isn’t going to campaign on a platform of overt racism.....but that’s kinda the point. He’s never needed to, in order to still do a huge amount of damage to an untold number of lives over the decades, all while being able to claim to be nominally or superficially progressive and use that to advance his own career. 

Trump doesn’t care about hiding his racism....and Biden doesn’t try all that hard to either. But he’s always known he doesn’t really have to try all that hard....just to hide it just enough to claim it isn’t there and its nothing worth anyone worrying about or pushing back against. Plausible deniability - made all the easier and all the more plausible by having someone like Trump to point to and know just by doing so people will breathe a sigh of relief because whew, at least he’s not Trump. Not that this is likely a huge comfort to the people killed long before now, due to his prison policies, capital offense expansion, and war on drugs that happen to not be the right kind of drugs, or being snorted in the right form of those drugs, or snorted by the right people.

And putting a face and a claim to things that absolutely none of his actual efforts back up or are even aimed in the same direction as....this is something that extends to pretty much everything else about him. 

Yeah, he reversed his stance on voting for DADT and DOMA in years prior, when as Vice President he said he was totally fine with the idea of men marrying men and women marrying women and each enjoying all the same benefits and civil rights and liberties as anyone else. Course, that doesn’t actually reverse how he voted, nor did he actually have anything to do with striking down the results of his and others’ votes as unconstitutional.

And yeah, Biden drafted the Violence Against Women Act, which he’s famously called the most significant piece of legislation he’s crafted throughout his political career and the one he’s most proud of, citing it as the beginning of a ‘historic commitment to women and children victimized by domestic violence and sexual assault.’ Not that it helped Anita Hill that much, nor that he ever seemed all that interested in helping, believing or supporting her, despite whatever he may have claimed a couple years ago at the start of the #MeToo movement or around the Kavanaugh proceedings, when he stated he’d always believed Anita Hill and voted against Clarence Thomas.

(With Thomas of course still a member of the Supreme Court, alongside Kavanaugh now, thanks to Trump. And Thomas still being famously considered one of its most conservative justices. And still someone whose appointment to the Court might not ever have happened had not Biden - the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing Thomas’ nomination to the court -  made the choice to never call forward four female witnesses who’d been waiting in the wings the whole time to testify on Hill’s behalf and speak to her credibility. With this decision of Biden’s only ever being described as the result of a ‘private, compromise deal between Republicans and then-Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden,’ after which all four other women’s testimony was deemed irrelevant, and thus a waste of the court’s time.

And sure, Biden as of just last year supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, that he’s only supported since as far back as ‘76. The Hyde Amendment, of course, blocks federal funding from being used to pay for an abortion except in the specific provision of an abortion being needed to save the woman’s life, or when the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape. Of course, even through all those decades that Biden did support the Hyde Amendment, he pretty famously never felt it went far enough, and thought it shouldn’t include a provision allowing for federal funds to be used to pay for an abortion that stemmed from incest or rape. But that doesn’t speak to his personality or priorities either, obviously, since he took it back (while preparing to hopefully run against pussy-grabbing Trump).

And Biden’s not as interested in giving billionaires tax cuts as Trump is, for instance, since he was always against even George W. Bush’s tax cuts for Americans who made more than one million dollars a year. He was always of the belief that this money should then be put in a dedicated Homeland Security and Public Safety Trust Fund, to invest specifically in increased law enforcement. Joey does love him some cops.

And Biden’s not quite as likely to go to war compared to how often Trump seems to have us poised on the brink of it. Biden only favored sending American troops to Darfur, is a self-described Zionist who has defended various acts of aggression by the Israeli army against Palestinians, and was of the opinion that the biggest problem with our involvement in the Syrian Civil War was that Europe didn’t trust we had a plan there.  

Of course, much like with numerous other stances, its not like there’s not plenty to point to as proof Biden’s invested in keeping us out of any international conflicts. For instance, he’s been a longterm advocate for ‘hard-headed diplomacy’ against Iran that included pushing for coordinated international sanctions against them...except then he voted against a measure to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, said war with Iran wouldn’t just be a mistake, it’d be a disaster, and threatened to personally begin impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush if he attempted to start a war with Iran. This was in December of 2007. Course, then in September 2008, he said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was a terrorist organization and that the Bush administration already had the power and right to declare them as such, soooo......hmm.

And Biden did vote against the first Gulf War in 1990. Then supported the use of force against Iraq in 1998 and expressed a commitment to taking down Hussein, even if it meant being in it for the long haul....which as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, he ratified by voting to authorize war against Iraq, going on record as firmly believing that Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear weapons. 

Then again, in 2006, Biden did go on to say that the original authorization for going to war with Iraq had been a mistake that was due to Bush “using his congressional authority unwisely” (and that Biden had no role in unwisely helping him obtain), and that there were no stockpiled weapons in Iraq and likely never had been. 

Which Biden then followed up in 2008 by saying in his opinion the real mistake had been in labeling Iraq the focus of the War on Terror, instead of Afghanistan, which he believed was really the focus all along, and that we should leave Iraq....and shift our focus fully back there. Because see, the problem was the war in Iraq was a war of choice, whereas the war in Afghanistan was a war of necessity.

And he did have this to say in 2011 about getting involved in the conflict in Libya: "NATO got it right. In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."

Course, five years later in 2016, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Biden stated he was "strongly against going to Libya" due to the instability it would cause within the country. He said, "My question was, 'OK, tell me what happens.' He's gone. What happens? Doesn't the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn't it become a place where it becomes a petri dish for the growth of extremism? And it has."

And then there’s his stances on North Korea...and Russia...and Central America....and Cuba.....all of which can be summed up as “that’s Joe Biden’s hot take on this issue, tune back in next week where he plays devil’s advocate with himself and argues the exact opposite.”

So yeah, all of that and more is who Biden is and always has been. Do not buy into him being someone who has grown and changed, because he’s more recently said the right things - especially as opposed to Trump. Biden has ALWAYS said the right things for the time he’s saying them at.....and history has always shown him willing to say the exact opposite, as soon as its more to his advantage to change his tune to that instead.

He is not the lesser of two evils, IMO, he is just the less overt of two evils. But make no mistake.....I can not tell anyone what to do, nor am I trying to, ultimately, beyond just asking people to BE AWARE of things like this. I can only really tell you what I’m going to do, and if Biden gets the nomination, I AM going to vote for him, not just to get rid of Trump....but everyone Trump brought with him, and the way Trump’s spent four years assuring every hateful piece of shit in America that they are not alone in their hate, and they have presidential approval.

I am simply ALSO saying, at the same time, that I do believe that even a Biden presidency can help push back against this, by virtue of at least being the American people saying We Do Not Support Trump or Want Him Back in enough quantities as to shame at least some of the more hateful and cowardly elements of our society back into silence.....

But that even while doing so, it IMO will remain MORE CRUCIAL THAN EVER to keep in mind.....none of those people or their hate simply sprang into being when Trump took office. They were here all along, and just because BEFORE Trump many of them weren’t brave enough to be seen out of the shadows, doesn’t mean that politicians like Joe Biden haven’t seen them and been fine with them and even agreeing with them and catering to them in various ways all along. Its just, unlike Trump, Biden cares too much about being seen as doing and saying the right things, the progressive things, to do any of those dealings openly, speak to any of those elements directly. But that’s never meant he’s above dealing with them, or profiting from their support.

So elect Biden if that’s what we have to do, even if only because his desire to be seen as progressive is at least a lever to ply between him and such elements of our society, where no such lever exists between Trump and them at all.

But it needs to be remembered that such a lever is only as effective as WE MAKE USE OF IT, AND FORCE HIM TO CATER MORE TO ACTUAL PROGRESSIVE PUBLIC OPINION RATHER THAN ALLOW HIM THE TIME AND ENERGY TO BE TWO-FACED THE MOMENTS OUR BACKS ARE TURNED.

And that if we do not keep this in mind, the latter is very much something Biden will do, just as he has done it countless times before.

AND ALSO PLEASE KEEP IN MIND:

HE STILL IS NOT THE NOMINEE YET, AND UNTIL HE IS STOP TAKING IT FOR GRANTED.

There is a marked difference between preparing for less than your preferred scenarios, and taking for granted that you might as well go ahead and settle for them already.

Too much of the latter has too much to do with the current state of our country, SO WHAT IF WE STOPPED DOING IT.

[bustedbernie]

Hi @heatherleee .

I don’t “hate” anyone. But as far as politicians go, Sanders has a comportment that is totally unacceptable. And it’s not just about policies.

So, i worked for the Obama and Clinton campaigns in 2008, 2012, and 2016. I’ve volunteered for local and state level candidates in both the Albuquerque area and in rural parts of New Mexico. This is to say that I am a democrat and have been working for actual democrats for longer than Bernie himself has been. That’s part one why I dislike Bernie. He is not a democrat. He is not “blue.” If he wants support from actual democrats, than that means he’d have to do several things. 1) either apologize for his past and current antagonism toward democrats or at least claim to “evolve” on this. 2) fundraise BIG for downballot democrats both in his home state and across the country. 3) Work for the actual party 4) register as a democrat through and through and run as a democrat in his senate elections. He hasn’t really done any of this. I’m sorry, but if he is expecting people like me who have spent time calling, canvassing, data banking, knocking on doors and donating to be on his side if he got the nomination, that’s insane. This is hard work and takes a lot of sweat, tears and dollars. We see him as a conman who is using our carefully built infrastructure while not doing the above to help. We don’t stand for that. And add in him getting involved with OUR campaign and saying OUR man, the first black president, needed to face a primary while we were dealing with a very powerful candidate emerging in Mitt Romney? It was not only totally irresponsible and disrespectful, it was a slap in the face. Don’t forget that Bernie has long held onto the idea that democrats and republicans are “the same.” Why would I like him after all that? 

Going on, I can’t forgive nor overlook his sexism and racism. This is kinda a big deal. His plans are not intersectional. Even to cite himself and many of his supporters, he bases much of his ideology on marxism. Marxism comes from a specific time and place and our point in history is quite different. I am quite smitten with many radical thinkers and philosophers, which is why I see Marxism and marxist writings/thoughts as foundational to a certain worldview in the same way Aristotle is. They’re great, but we’ve built on that worldview and adapted it, and we now have thinkers who speak not only of the facetious nature of “revolution,” but also the need for intersectionality and how “revolutions” often come at the expense of oppressed groups. Bernie’s ideology has not caught up. If you hear me say things like “Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris are far more progressive than Bernie Sanders,” this is why. Their plans actually address issues of racial justice and gender issues while Sanders sees them, at best, as a secondary issue. He himself has called them “distractions,” while also peddling the idea that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” This just isn’t the case. If he is truly as revolutionary, futuristic, and truly the justice candidate, why in the world can’t he support or speak to issues that black americans, queer americans and indigenous folks deal with everyday? Saying a “rising tide lifts all ships” is to ignore us, to leave us unseen and to castigate the very base of the democratic party. Why can he speak to the so-called “white working class” but not anyone else? 

We can use your housing plan as an example. On the surface, I support many of Bernie’s goals and even many of his plans. But on this issue, you can see that he is peddling ideas that became popular in the 60s and 70s and were implemented in some areas. But, his program is outdated and racist, and doesn’t address the need for black wealth building programs. It also uses blanket policies that aren’t good for certain urban areas. Furthermore, his plan makes little room for new housing development which is actually the largest issue with rent and home prices currently. His plan would actually perpetuate problems by ignoring the supply-side issue. This is seen throughout much of his policies and proposals. 

Let’s get into why that’s an issue. Bernie supporters will tell us that it should be “just about policy,” yet, Joe Biden has now created a public transport plan that is the gold standard in this primary. Elizabeth Warren’s housing plan addresses the issues I outlined above. Kamala Harris’ plan did as well and arguably was better than either Warren or Biden’s current plans. Both have been attacked by Bernie supporters on this issue in breathtaking ways. They have been labelled land developers (which i’m not sure as to why that’s a pejorative), neoliberals, centrists, republicans even. This is not a policy debate. In this example, I’ve mentioned three candidates that have had policies. Instead of engaging on the policies, they attack the very character of the candidates. Whether you support Biden, Buttigieg, Warren or yes, even Sanders, they ALL have very similar goals and ideas. They may have very different timelines for those goals or funding mechanisms or might value some goals more than others, but we are all on board. Yet, we are attacked as if we don’t want healthcare or housing for the poor, as if we don’t want some form of debt relief, etc. There is no nuance allowed and I see frequently the idea that “Bernie is the ONLY one fighting for [X,Y,Z].”

And that’s the largest reason I don’t like Bernie. He has built up a very dangerous cult of personality. It feeds a form of discourse that is corrosive, divisive and actually benefits our largest rivals more than it benefits any type of progressive goal. Me, and many others, place much of the blame for 2016 at Bernie’s feet. You don’t have to agree, but that’s that. I, personally, will not forgive him for what he said and did against Hillary Clinton. I won’t forgive his campaign or his followers for lying on Kamala Harris. And I am not a super big fan of Warren or Biden and here I am finding myself defending them because many in your cohort are spreading the same kinds of lies and conspiracies and propaganda as the MAGA people. And yes, I am fully aware I am making an equivalency between Trump and Sanders with that statement, and I fully stand by it. This black and white worldview is why we have a discourse where “Bernie is the only candidate that has done [X,Y,Z]” is taken seriously by some voters, many of whom either don’t believe Bernie has ever evolved on issues (guns, LGBT rights, women’s rights, states rights, military, etc) or are willing to give Bernie the right to grow and evolve as a politician while not allowing the same of other candidates. It’s not right nor is it okay. 

So I don’t hate Bernie for any one policy, I am more than happy to engage in policy debates and accept that we all have slightly different views on that. But, those debates need to be done in good faith and that’s simply not something we get from Bernie or a majority of his supporters. If this were a policy thing, I could talk about Bernie the same way I talk about Warren or Biden or Buttigieg, and say they’re okay people with okay ideas but they need to pay attention to X,Y,Z because of A,B,C. But when I said I like Kamala’s health plan best for X reasons, I got told i was a fascist or centrist or neoliberal or whatever. I NEVER had a discussion where someone told me why they thought Bernie’s plans were better. Same with Hillary Clinton. Same with everyone still running today. As for this blog, I made it because I was frustrated by all of the above and wanted a place to vent + I wanted to make sure there was at least some content on Tumblr challenging the idea that Bernie is perfect, unproblematic or the undisputed winner. B/C that narrative really made people who spend a ton of time on the internet freak out when it turned out not to be true in 2016. I STILL see people who say “I don’t know a single Joe Biden supporter” on here. I’ve seen that for several other candidates as well. If this blog helps demonstrate that not all democrats/leftists are not on board with Bernie, maybe it will help just a little bit to lessen that blow. I’ve met people who have supported most all of the candidates. The echo chamber needs to have some challenge to it. That echo chamber only feeds the awful cult of personality that i really can’t stand and that I feel is very dangerous. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 21, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

As we enter the home stretch to this election, we are bombarded with so much news the only way to make sense of it is to divide it into categories.

The president is angry and self-pitying while campaign officials are trying to tip the election with the dubious laptop story. Administration officials are also working as quickly as they can to push through whatever they can while they are still in power, hoping what they are doing flies under the radar with so much going on. And this flurry of activity means there are bad slips.

At the same time, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is trying to get elected, but in such a storm of crazy that his actual policies, which are quite developed, are simply not getting much airtime. Instead, people have begun to look to him as a return to an America in which strength was measured not by dominance but by caring.

The president began the day by tweeting about Biden’s proposed tax plan, which he calls “the Radical Biden-Harris Agenda.” He claims that the plan will “slash the typical American’s income by $6,500 per year. They will raise TAXES by $4 TRILLION DOLLARS – triggering a mass exodus of jobs out of America and into foreign countries…. Your 401k’s will crash with Biden. Massive Biden Tax and Regulation increases will destroy all that you have built! Additionally, 180 Million People will lose their Private Healthcare Plans.”

In fact, though, it is the administration that is talking about slashing things, including millions of dollars from Democratic-led cities that Trump and Barr have labeled “anarchist jurisdictions”: New York City; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and Seattle, Washington. That money would cut federal grants for coronavirus relief, HIV treatment, newborn screening, and so on. Officials from the affected cities, as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, say they will sue if the administration tries to follow this through.

In a move that threatens to destroy our nonpartisan civil service, Trump today signed an Executive Order creating a new category of public servant who is not covered by normal rules. These employees can be hired by agency heads without having to go through the merit-based system in place since 1883, and can be fired at will. This new “Schedule F” will once again allow presidents to appoint cronies to office, while firing those insufficiently loyal. It also appears to shield political appointees from an incoming administration by protecting them from firing because of political affiliation.

Yesterday, an inspector general for the United States Postal Service issued a report requested by Congress examining the effects of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s changes to the postal service. The report concluded that the changes resulted in “significant negative service impacts across the country.” DeJoy is a Trump loyalist. The USPS Board of Governors, made up of Trump appointees, rejects the report’s conclusions.

Meanwhile, a number of senior administration officials and lawmakers from both parties are worried that the White House is fast-tracking a business deal worth billions of dollars in what is essentially a no-bid contract to a company associated with Republican operatives, including Karl Rove. The company, Rivada, wants to lease the Department of Defense’s mid-band spectrum. This spectrum is wildly valuable for the 5G market, the next-generation mobile network. Pentagon leaders are opposed to the deal since the military uses that spectrum, and they say they have not been able to study the effect of commercial use of the spectrum on military readiness. Pentagon lawyers say the White House has no authority to sell or lease its spectrum. Lawmakers of both parties oppose the deal. One senior official told CNN, “Something is really fishy about this.”

Today, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe blamed Iran for hacked emails purporting to come from the alt-right Proud Boys warning Democrats to vote for Trump. Ratcliffe said “we have identified that two foreign actors, Iran and Russia, have taken specific actions” relating to the election. He said the emails were designed to hurt Trump. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Rachel Maddow that intelligence officers in a classified briefing about the matter did not, in fact, say that there was any attempt to hurt Trump. “I’m surprised that Ratcliffe would say that to the public…. I had the strong impression it was much rather to undermine confidence in elections….”

Meanwhile, Trump continues to push the laptop story. He is reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray after the election because Wray has refused to announce an investigation into Biden, his son Hunter Biden, or other Biden associates. After Wray’s refusal to back up Trump’s insistence that this summer’s violence was from “Antifa,” the FBI director’s unwillingness to announce a Biden investigation is apparently infuriating the president. In 2016, then FBI director James Comey announced a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just 11 days before the election, an announcement political scientists say helped to swing victory to Trump. While the president can, in fact, fire an FBI director, it is unusual, and certainly should not happen because the director refuses to attack the president’s political rival. The term of the FBI director is set at 10 years so the director serves at least two presidents, and is not bound to the political cycle.

Trump is railing not just at Wray, but also at Attorney General William Barr. Trump was counting on Barr’s probe of the Russia investigation to implicate high-ranking members of the Obama administration just before the election, but Barr has backed off on delivering the report. Trump is frustrated, recently retweeting a photo of Barr with the caption “for the love of GOD ARREST SOMEBODY.” Barr has been staying out of the news lately, although he was in Memphis, Tennessee, today, announcing arrests made there under his Operation Legend, the name for the police crackdown in a number of cities announced in July.

Pushing the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop got a lot more difficult today when Sacha Baron Cohen revealed that his new Borat film shows Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani—the source of the laptop-- in a compromising position with a young woman. Giuliani insists the scene is a “complete fabrication,” but the stills I saw (and I was trying really hard not to see any of this) indicate that this explanation will convince only those determined to be convinced. As many observers have pointed out, if Baron Cohen could prank Giuliani so easily, what does that say about how well Giuliani could identify foreign influence operations?

For his part, Biden is acting like a normal presidential candidate, which just doesn’t grab the headlines the way Trump’s actions do. After Trump attacked Biden’s tax policy, though, a number of stories noted the actual terms of the plan.

Biden proposes to raise taxes on the wealthy. He would get rid of some of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, including the cut in the income tax rate for people making more than $400,000 a year. Trump cut that rate from 39.6% to 37%. Biden would put it back where it was. This change would affect fewer than 10% of taxpayers. People would also pay into the Social Security payroll tax for incomes over $400,000. That tax is currently collected only on $137,700 of earnings. Under this plan, the nation’s top 1% of earners would bring home about 15.9% less money after taxes than they do now.

Biden also proposes to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, and establish a 15% minimum tax on the so-called “book income” of a corporation, that is, the amount its directors report to shareholders, which often makes a corporation look quite profitable while it pays little or no tax. He would also increase taxes on international profits. These proposed taxes would make up more than half of the revenue the Treasury would see from the new measures.

The Biden proposals would raise between $2.4 and $4 trillion over a decade. The Penn Wharton Budget Model concludes that the top 1% of earners would pay about 80% of the tax increases. Its report continues: “All groups outside of the top 5%... see their after-tax incomes fall by less than 1 percent.” The Washington Post awarded four Pinocchios to Trump’s attacks on Biden’s tax plan. The Tax Foundation could not score Trump’s own plan because he has made no actual proposals.

Biden had powerful help today getting out his message. Former President Barack Obama, who has largely stayed out of the political fray, has reentered it powerfully. In a speech in Philadelphia, Obama directly attacked Trump, tearing apart his successor’s response to the coronavirus and his administration in general. No one gets under Trump’s skin like Obama does, and the former president seemed to be deliberately needling the president, perhaps to prod him to more self-destruction at tomorrow’s debate.

His appearances were not just attacks on Trump, though. They were reminders of what the presidency looked like just four years ago, and they were designed to make sure people get to the polls. “We’ve got to turn out like never before,” President Obama said. “We cannot leave any doubt in this election…. A whole bunch of people stayed at home and got lazy and complacent. Not this time,” he said. “Not in this election.”

Still, what made most news for Biden today was an old video of the former vice president at a memorial service for Chris Hixon, the athletic director at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who died when he tried to disarm the killer. In the clip, which circulated widely on social media, Biden expresses his sympathy to Hixon’s parents and is walking away when Hixon’s son Corey, who has Kabuki Syndrome, runs up and, as Biden turns to see what’s happening, throws himself into Biden’s embrace. Biden spontaneously kisses the young man’s forehead and asks if he’s okay. When he shakes his head no, Biden hugs him, cradling his head, and reassures him, “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay, I promise.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox  Richardson

[whitehotharlots]

Elizabeth Warren is a weak candidate

It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year.

Last October, prospective presidential candidate Liz Warren stopped by the ur-#Resistance podcast Pod Save America, a program in which several former Obama staffers named John talk about which Gryffindor house Trump administration members belong to, and helpfully explain why Andrew Cuomo is actually way more progressive than Cynthia Nixon. They talked about how Trump had taunted Senator Warren by referring to her as Pocahontas, a cruel play on her claim to Native American heritage. Why, they asked, don’t you try and shut that bully up? Why not take this test from our eugenicist friends at 23 and Me? 

“By golly,” said Liz. “That sounds like a real dandy of an idea!”

Now… this is actually stupider than the mainstream narrative suggests. Because even though it turned out Liz had a smaller percentage of Native American DNA than basically every other American white person, simply taking the test reified an offensive precedent of blood quantum, which is more or less universally rejected among actual Native Americans. Even if it turned out she was 50% Cherokee and had little feathers floating in her piss, the entire spectacle still would have made a mockery of the intense, material struggles faced by Native Americans to this day. 

Now, normally on this blog, I’d go on for several paragraphs about how I don’t actually care about Warren’s heritage (I don’t), how it’s more important to note that she and the rest of the Democratic establishment only care about Native issues to the extent to which they can exploit them, how her refusal to take a stand against DAPL was not just concerning but disgusting, how she can write as many “Pow Wow” recipes as she pleases but at the end of the day she’ll just be another shitty Democrat who expresses solidarity with oppressed people but does nothing to prevent their water being poisoned or their land befouled. But that’s jumping the gun. We’ll only have to worry about being gravely disappointed by Warren if she manages to beat Trump in general election. And I’m sorry to tell you, but she doesn’t have what it takes to get that done.

Warren is a goon. I’m sorry, but she is. She can’t answer softball questions about her recent political history without coming across like a teen who was just caught shoplifting and has been asked why there’s Playstation-sized bulge beneath his shirt. (“D-did I support gay marriage? Well, umm, jeeze louise who can remember something like that? Uhhh. There might be notes? Maybe? But there isn’t. So, I… I guess, well, who can say, really?”)

Warren isn’t nearly as a self-certain as Hillary was, and that’s a problem. It wouldn't be a problem if she actually were a leftist and actually did plan on proffering material solutions to the material problems facing nearly every American. But she’s not. Policy-wise, she is somewhat better than Hillary or Biden. That’s fine. But that’s not enough. She’s already spent too much time courting the Democratic establishment and their corporate base. She knows, therefore, that when a dying cancer patient asks her if she supports Medicare For All, that she has no choice but to lie to his face, that she’s prioritizing corporate cash over helping suffering people, but she lacks Hillary’s soulless cruelty and so she can’t simply laugh away the man’s concerns as naive bro stuff. This causes her to stutter and panic, which makes her (rightfully) appear disingenuous. 

Warren’s plans are likewise a degree or two more progressive than what was being offered by Hillary in 2016. But they’re not straightforward. They are cloaked in the maddening layers of equivocations, loopholes, and means testing that have infected every Democratic proposal since the early 90’s. This is the unavoidable consequence of party seeking to appease two diametrically opposed interests. You can’t satisfy the profligacy of capital while helping everyday people. It cannot be done. And so Democrats rely on Rube Goldberg-style labyrinth policies to obscure this fact, to make it look like they’re trying to help when actually they’re not, they are at best attempting to add a little sugar to the arsenic so that we won’t fight back so much when they pour it down our throats.

Obama could pull this off. We all knew Obama was lying in 2012, but he was appealing enough to make us rationalize away his lies. Same thing with Bill Clinton. If you’re not old enough to remember, check out this debate clip. The man looked like he was going to crawl through your TV and fuck you, and most of us were cool with that. Hillary lacked this appeal. Warren lacks it even moreso. And, yes, I guess this is essentially affective and subjective--just my opinion and whatfor. But any soberheaded person should be troubled by the fact that Warren’s campaign as already absorbed the most viscerally annoying people from the Hillary campaign, and is already aping HRC’s most repulsive and alienating tactics.  

These are people like Sady Doyle and Amanda Marcotte: neurotic, celibate scolds who engage with politics primarily as a way to actualize their petty grievances and insecurities. These people are incredibly unappealing to everyone who isn’t immediately inclined to like them, which is about 90% of the American electorate. And this unappealingness has nothing to do with their gender or their physical appearance. It’s because they are liars who are running a manifestly cynical grift, and they don’t have enough charm or intelligence to trick voters into thinking they’re doing something else.  They are electoral poison, and their outsize presence with the Democrat establishment is a big reason why the Democrats get their asses beat so consistently even though they are supported unanimously by the American media and cultural classes. 

Their grossness was encapsulated very succinctly yesterday, in the misadventures of Ms. Ashlee Preston. Preston is a large black trans woman who works as an official Warren campaign surrogate. She took to twitter to do what these people do: lie about Bernie Sanders and his supporters. They need to lie, because they are working for a candidate who is manifestly more regressive and less electable than him, but they still want to position themselves as the most radical in the field. So she lied. She said that Sanders hadn’t done anything to support gay rights since the 70’s, and that therefore it was actually good that Warren voted for Reagan twice during the AIDS crisis, because that means she grew into her present woke state.

This was all par for the course. Liars lie. Preston is paid to lie. So she lied. 

Also par for the course: Bernie supporters asking her what on earth she was talking about, and doing so politely. And then, once again par for the course, the liar claiming to have been viciously harassed by Bernie Bros, which is meant to validate the lies that warranted the response--which actually wasn’t a lie since it was just, like, sarcasm that y’all folx was too hateful to understand. 

This process has been going on pretty much non-stop since the middle of 2015. Anyone who pays cursory attention to it knows what’s happening, but the weird rules of political decorum make it so we all have to pretend to take it seriously. But yesterday there was a twist. Preston, apparently, had a bunch of semi-coherent tweets in which she said all kinds of neat stuff about Mexicans and Asians. These got posted. She reacted by saying she was kinda sorry but also still right and that it was harassment to bring up that stuff. And… that was it. Cancel Culture’s denizens applauded her apology (a courtesy often provided to those who are willing to lie about leftists). She is still employed by the Warren campaign. The incident wasn’t discussed in any mainstream news sources. The outrage over her old tweets was actually co-opted to smear those who unearthed them. 

The simple observation here was made by hundreds of people online: if this were a Sanders surrogate, they would have been fired immediately, the affair would have been discussed on cable news, and it would have been held up as proof that Sanders should drop out immediately. And when I say hundreds of people posted something along these lines, I might be understating this. The duplicity on display here is manifest to everyone who isn’t on the take. Everyone can see how rotten this is. There’s no question about it. No argument to be had. I’m sorry to say, but this kind of brazen cynicism does not go over well with most voters. It is, in fact, incredibly alienating. The people who claim universal healthcare is inherently racist and attempt to ruin people’s lives for using imprecise language can’t just turn around and demand immediate ablution for their own hateful acts. Or… I guess they can, since that’s what just happened. But they shouldn’t be able to. And the fact that she was able to, so completely and so easily, proves just how much of a shitty fucking grift this whole thing is. You don’t need to be a genius to realize that. You don’t even need to be well-read. You just need to pay a little attention and possess a little bit of self-respect. And that’s why Warren is going to lose.