Month: March 2021

Norman Ornstein has a word for the press about Mitch:

Memo to mainstream journalists: Stop treating Mitch McConnell as an institutionalist. No one has blown up more norms. Stop taking everything he says at face value. Do you really think if he employed obstructionist tactics to blow things up that the majority would be helpless?

Use unanimous consent to bring the Senate to a complete halt? The majority can bring back a motion on the previous question to override, or use other rules changes to obviate. Delay every confirmation? Majority can find many ways to expedite.

Go to DEFCON 1? Majority can schedule votes and sessions with scant notice, can schedule votes when majority of Rs are going to be back home, telling Ds in advance to organize their schedules. In other words, McConnell’s threats are idle.

So why did Mitch not change the filibuster for legislation when Trump and Rs had control for 2 years? He had only these priorities: confirm Supreme Court justices– he blew up that rule, along with the blue slip–get a huge tax cut, try to repeal Obamacare.

He could accomplish those in reconciliation. So no need to eliminate 60 threshold for legislation. But you can be sure that if he had other top priorities he could only accomplish be shredding Rule XXII, he would have done it in a nanosecond.

Right.

The fact is that the Republican party doesn’t have a legislative agenda. They have put all their eggs in the judiciary and executive basket. They only exist to stop Democrats from doing anything and ensuring that a Republican president can pack the courts with extremist judges and confirm toadies and henchmen to the executive branch. That’s it.

McConnell blew up every rule he needed to blow up to get his agenda passed.

Paul Krugman did a twitter thread today about the difference between the 2009 stimulus and the 2021 rescue plan that I thought you might find interesting. This time they are just going with basic Keyenesian economics instead of the “innovative” austerity experiment (which many people knew wouldn’t work.)

There’s been a fair bit of Econotwittering about this J.W. Mason post on the American Rescue Plan and what it says about economic theory. I agree with a lot although not all of it, and in any case think some might be interested in my take.

The ARPA definitely marks a big break with the austerity/debt obsession that crippled recovery after the 2008 crisis. That’s a very big deal. And even the debate over the bill was very different from what went before .

One thing people should realize, however, is that policy orthodoxy in, say, 2011 did NOT reflect macroeconomic orthodoxy in the sense of what the standard models said. In crucial areas it was in flat defiance of what Macroeconomics 101 would have recommended.

It was actually quite weird: there was a lot of innovative, creative economic analysis — all of which turned out to be dead wrong — being deployed FOR austerity, which conventional macro rightly said was a really bad idea.

No, austerity isn’t expansionary; no, there isn’t a growth cliff at a debt ratio of 90 percent. Nothing in standard macro suggested either of these things should be true. All that supported them was bad statistical analysis and the political will to believe.

So part of what’s happening is simply that the Biden team is actually listening to the economic consensus, rather than grabbing dubious doctrines that fit right-wing preconceptions. But it’s also true that there have been some changes in theory.

Concerns about debt did loom larger in economic analysis than they should have — partly, I think, because people didn’t grasp the implications of r<g, partly out of partially unconscious deference to political fashion.

The truth is that if we’d taken our own models seriously we would have adopted an attitude much closer to Abba Lerner’s functional finance.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40981939?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Someone will bring up MMT. After all this time, I still don’t know what it is beyond functional finance — every time you try, you’re told that you don’t get it, and at this point I think it’s mainly a marketing ploy. So never mind.

Anyway, the whole debate over ARPA was in effect conducted in terms of functional finance — not whether it cost too much, but whether it was inflationary. But that’s not so much new theory as taking our own models seriously.

The other big change — and this does mark a change in theory — is that the NAIRU has largely dropped out of discussion — basically because nothing that’s happened since 1985 supports an “accelerationist” view of inflation.

Low unemployment and a hot economy do seem to yield somewhat higher inflation; but there has been no sign that this quickly or easily translates into an ever-rising inflation rate. Maybe it’s anchored expectations, maybe it’s downward wage rigidity, but it’s just not there.

This doesn’t mean that inflation is never a concern. But it does mean that the stability of inflation over time does NOT mean that the economy was on average at full employment. Instead, there’s now a good case that we’ve been persistently underemployed.

That is a pretty big deal, and feeds directly into policy: Biden and co’s relaxed attitude toward debt is matched by a relaxed attitude toward inflation.

So there have been important changes in how economists talk about policy, some of which include rethinking of our models. But a lot of what has happened is simply that economists are following their existing models, instead of tweaking them to justify political prejudices.

Originally tweeted by Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) on March 17, 2021.

The American Rescue Plan as Economic Theory

During the Trump years, there was an excessive amount of hand-wringing over the fact that he and his administration were exploding all the “norms” that had previously held our government institutions together. His insulting behavior and crude lack of decorum woke up many a pundit to the idea that much of our system was dependent upon a good faith adherence to the spirit of democracy as much as any formal rules, regulations and laws. He came to Washington without any serious understanding of how government worked and he didn’t care when it was pointed out to him. Many were left shocked at how feeble our institutions had turned out to be in the face of someone who had no respect for them.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Those norms had always only been as strong as the people who were charged with upholding them and those agreements were unraveling long before Trump entered politics. So we should have seen it coming.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had been making a mockery of Senate norms for years as Majority Leader and he had made it quite clear those old-fashioned notions were no longer operative. There was a time when elected officials would express their support for a new president of the opposite party, wishing them success for the good of the country. McConnell broke that norm during Barack Obama’s first term when he openly admitted that he considered it his top priority to deny Obama a second term. He didn’t believe it was in his interest to accommodate or negotiate in good faith and instead began a campaign of total obstruction so that the president and his administration would fail and the Republicans would take back the White House.

While this sort of scorched-earth tactic wasn’t unprecedented, it was unusual for a national political leader to flaunt his intentions so boldly. There used to be a penalty for being so openly ungracious but McConnell found that it didn’t hurt him so he kept right on going, purposefully paralyzing the Obama administration, making it obvious that democratic norms were no longer functional. And left unable to confirm any members of the judiciary under McConnell’s obstructive tactics, the Democrats had to eliminate the filibuster norm for everything but nominees to the Supreme Court. After he won the majority, McConnell brazenly blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland, Obama’s choice for the high court, for months only to scrap the filibuster for the Supreme Court as well once Donald Trump won the White House and nominated a Republican to the seat. McConnell’s excuse, which he made up out of whole cloth, was that in an election year the seat should stay empty because it should be up to the people to decide which president should choose the new justice.

It was an unprecedented abuse of Senate norms, signaling that McConnell had decided that anything goes. He used every trick in the book to keep Democrats from bringing any bills to the floor. He ignored all legislation that came from the House. And he spent virtually every minute confirming massive numbers of unqualified conservative judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. And when he was asked what he would do if a seat on the high court became vacant during the upcoming presidential election in 2020, he took a long drink of water and smugly said, “Oh, we’d fill it.”

And they did. Six weeks before the election they rammed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in total contravention of everything McConnell had previously said and without even the slightest hint of embarrassment. And now, after all that, he has the nerve to stand on the floor of the Senate and threaten the Democrats with fire and fury if they decide to change the rules in order to pass their agenda over unified GOP obstruction. Shamelessness doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Needless to say, the Democrats are no longer under any illusion that McConnell and the Republicans operate in good faith, as they have demonstrated over and over again that they don’t. They pretend to negotiate in order to delay and then when they get Democrats to compromise they refuse to vote for the bill anyway. It’s no longer worth it for Democrats to waste time playing their game. So, they are now seriously discussing reforming the filibuster in order to pass some of their important priorities. If they don’t, the entire legislative agenda is dead in the water and they know it.

Even the recalcitrant centrists Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema have signaled that they are open to changing the rules to require a “talking filibuster” which would have several elements that make it very difficult for the minority to efficiently obstruct. (The Intercept’s Ryan Grim explains the various possible rule changes in his newsletter this week.) In an important shift, President Biden said on Tuesday that he too is open to the idea:

.@SenJeffMerkley had a bill in 2013 that would restore the talking filibuster.

In his interview tonight, President Biden endorsed this reform. https://t.co/CiE0fP7hd9

— #CeasefireNow (@maxberger) March 17, 2021

Mitch McConnell is not pleased.

On Tuesday, he angrily declared that if the Democrats were to change the rules as he routinely does when he is in charge, the Republicans would respond by defunding Planned Parenthood and loosening gun restrictions as soon as they get the majority, which he will do in any case if it pleases him.

Breaking Senate rules to kill the filibuster would not open up an express lane to liberal change. It would not open up an express lane for the Biden presidency to speed into the history books. The Senate would function more like a hundred-car pile-up. Nothing moving.

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) March 16, 2021

Working himself up into a froth, McConnell warned that if the Democrats were to do this, there would be a “100-car pileup” and “nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like.” He threatened the Democrats with delaying tactics saying, “I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum, which, by the way, the Vice President does not count in determining a quorum.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Il, remained unfazed by the threat, however, pointing out that McConnell “has already done that. He’s proven he can do it and they’ll do it again, I assume.”

McConnell’s extreme politicization of Senate norms, grinding the Obama administration to a halt and then confirming hundreds of extremist judges, including three onto the Supreme Court, demonstrated that he has absolutely no respect for democratic norms. He didn’t try to hide it. And that was his big mistake. By being so smug and so flamboyant in wielding his power (remember “we’ll fill it”?) he finally managed to get the Democrats to understand that they have nothing to lose by going around him to enact their agenda and letting the people decide if they like the results. If it works out they, will be re-elected. If not, they did their best. That’s democracy, after all, the most important norm of all.

Salon

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making threatening noises (as threatening as he can muster) over talk of ending (or tweaking) the filibuster. Some of that talk came on Tuesday from President Biden.

“Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin — can even begin — to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” McConnell said. “The Senate would be more like a 100-car pileup. Nothing moving.”

Raw Story has Chris Cuomo’s reaction:

“Now, not only is this not true, but it is not to be believed,” said Cuomo. “I don’t know why anybody is seeing this with any type of sense of apprehension. It’s being viewed as a threat. It is not a threat. It is a promise from a political conniver without equal, who’s made a legacy of beating the Democrats. He eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in 2017. Hello? Why would you listen to him about this? Why would you even consider what he’s saying? That was scorched earth.”

“No one can imagine it?” he continued incredulously. “You lived it, Democrats. You’ve lived it with him. He refused to even meet with a president from your party’s Supreme Court nominee. Remember his reasoning. It was too close to an election. Then what did he do? He confirmed his own party’s nominee in record time during an election. Millions of Americans had already voted. Why is anyone surprised by what he says or does? Why would you even weigh his words? Why would you even put it into the calculus of what you need to do to get your agenda done?”

“Be more like him when it comes to understanding manipulation of the power,” said Cuomo. “He only does scorched earth. Show me Mitch McConnell acting in bipartisan fashion on any regular basis. Scorched earth is passing unpopular, unpaid-for tax cuts for millionaires without a single Democrat vote. Scorched earth is burning millions of struggling Americans by holding relief hostage, and why? To protect corporations during a pandemic. Do you really think McConnell is going to work with the Democrats on [voting rights bills] H.R. or S. 1? This is a holy war for the opposition party. Expanding voting rights is an existential threat to a party banking on white fright.”

“By the way, the filibuster was born during the Jim Crow period to allow the senator who didn’t want progress to slow it down,” added Cuomo. “That’s where it comes from. It’s not in the Constitution. Just as now in the last wave of politics it’s about suppressing the minority vote, this time to block Biden’s agenda.”

Norm Ornstein responded with a brief tweet storm:

Memo to mainstream journalists: Stop treating Mitch McConnell as an institutionalist. No one has blown up more norms. Stop taking everything he says at face value. Do you really think if he employed obstructionist tactics to blow things up that the majority would be helpless?

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) March 17, 2021

Go to DEFCON 1? Majority can schedule votes and sessions with scant notice, can schedule votes when majority of Rs are going to be back home, telling Ds in advance to organize their schedules. In other words, McConnell's threats are idle. 3

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) March 17, 2021

He could accomplish those in reconciliation. So no need to eliminate 60 threshold for legislation. But you can be sure that if he had other top priorities he could only accomplish be shredding Rule XXII, he would have done it in a nanosecond. 5

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) March 17, 2021

In other words, sound and fury from McConnell signifying nothing but his displeasure at being leader of the minority.

Something has got to give on the filibuster. Its elimination is not a matter of if but when and how. Especially now that President Biden has expressed support for change (Vox):

The president came out in favor of filibuster reform in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. After Stephanopoulos asked Biden if he’ll have to “choose between preserving the filibuster and advancing your agenda,” the president initially answered “yes.” But he then clarified that he’s inclined to support a middle ground between eliminating the filibuster outright and preserving existing rules, which allows the Republican minority to block most legislation unless 60 senators agree that a bill should pass.

“Back in the old days,” Biden said, a senator who wished to maintain a filibuster “had to stand up and command the floor” and “keep talking on.”

The president, in other words, endorsed a so-called “talking filibuster,” a possible reform that recently received some tepid support from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), another Senate veteran who previously opposed changing the filibuster rule. Under this framework, at least one senator in the minority would have to stand on the Senate floor and keep talking in order to maintain a filibuster.

Yet, as is often the case with rules reform, the devil is in the details. Depending on how senators crafted a new filibuster rule, that new rule could provide a potent deterrent against future filibusters — or it could prove to be a paper tiger that does little to prevent the minority party from obstructing legislation.

Democrats had better craft craftily. If there exists a way to obstruct Democrats that Mitch McConnell has not found, he’ll find it. Or invent it.

Law enforcement authorities have a suspect in custody, but have not released a motive for shootings Tuesday evening at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. The attacks left eight dead and one wounded, “many of them women of Asian descent,” the Associated Press reports:

The attacks began around 5 p.m., when five people were shot at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor in a strip mall near a rural area in Acworth, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Atlanta, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Capt. Jay Baker said. Two people died at the scene and three were transported to a hospital where two of them also died, Baker said.

There were more shootings to come.

Around 5:50 p.m., police in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, responding to a call of a robbery in progress, found three women dead from apparent gunshot wounds at Gold Spa. While they were at that scene, they learned of a call reporting shots fired at another spa across the street, Aromatherapy Spa, and found a woman who appeared to have been shot dead inside the business.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that four of the slain women were of Korean descent. Their nationality is still undetermined.

The Georgia State Patrol apprehended the single suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Ga., about 150 miles south of Atlanta.

JUST IN: Robert Aaron Long, 21 , is booked into jail accused of murdering 8 people in shooting spree targeting Asian massage parlors across metro Atlanta. pic.twitter.com/xrU5JCNCMx

— Michael Seiden (@SeidenWSBTV) March 17, 2021

Police said video footage showed the suspect’s vehicle in the area of the Atlanta spas about the time of those attacks as well. That, as well as other video evidence, “suggests it is extremely likely our suspect is the same as Cherokee County’s, who is in custody,” Atlanta police said in a statement. Atlanta and Cherokee County authorities were working to confirm the cases are related.

There is no confirmation at this time that the killings were racially motivated, however police in New York City and Seattle have stepped up their presence in Asian-America communities.

The Atlanta killings follow a wave of attacks against Asian Americans in the last year (Los Angeles Times):

Since coronavirus shutdowns began last March, thousands of Asian Americans have faced racist verbal and physical attacks or have been shunned by others, according to a study released Tuesday.

The report by Stop AAPI Hate documents 3,795 racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans from March to February, noting that the number is likely a fraction of the attacks that occurred, because many were not reported to the group.

Stop AAPI Hate formed last March in response to attacks related to the perception that Asians were responsible for the coronavirus because of its origins in Wuhan, China. The group did not collect data in previous years to show whether attacks against Asians have increased during the pandemic.

The reported shootings of Asian American women on Tuesday in Atlanta is an unspeakable tragedy – for the families of the victims first and foremost, but also for the AAPI community — which has been reeling from high levels of racial discrimination. https://t.co/rBVPnrEBps

— Stop AAPI Hate (@StopAAPIHate) March 17, 2021

The Anti-Defamation League’s records go much further back. An ADL press release this morning indicates white supremacist rhetoric spiked to “an all-time high” across the U.S. in 2020:

ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) tracked the distribution of racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ fliers, stickers, posters and banners by various members of far right and white supremacist groups. The annual report found that at least 30 known white supremacist groups were behind hate propaganda efforts, affecting 49 states in 2020.

The report itself states:

The barrage of propaganda, which overwhelmingly features veiled white supremacist language with a patriotic slant, is an effort to normalize white supremacists’ message and bolster recruitment efforts while targeting minority groups including Jews, Blacks, Muslims, non-white immigrants, and the LGBTQ community.

Alarming @TheJusticeDept says this Army reservist arrested for Jan 6 is a known Nazi sympathizer, who publicly espoused racist, misogynist and #antisemitic views. And yet he continued to work as a security contractor at a US Naval base. https://t.co/ta01HEfaJV

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) March 15, 2021

“How many Timothy McVeighs attacked the Capitol on January 6th?” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell asked Tuesday night on “The Last Word.” How many were capable of the level of violence McVeigh showed in murdering 168 people including children? McVeigh hoped to be the catalyst for bringing down the government he had sworn to defend while in the U.S. Army.

Americans filled with hate are everywhere, just as the poster in the lower right corner of the top image declares. That hate is not directed only at the government.

This LA Times profile of Katie Porter, which attempts to show that she’s “difficult”, actually shows how incredibly smart and confident she is. She knows exactly how to exert progressive power and is pushing up against the entrenched leadership — and that’s exactly how it needs to be. The leaders like Waters, Pelosi and Clyburn are all very old and the new guard needs to get the experience they need to take over. I think Porter is one of the very best.

Democrats loved watching Orange County Rep. Katie Porter skewer Trump administration appointees and corporate executives in congressional hearings.

But it felt different when Porter’s progressive passion and impatience for convention turned to them.

Just as she wielded a whiteboard and sharp questioning to expose the flaws and outdated thinking she saw in Postal Service management or the nation’s COVID-19 testing system, Porter recently took aim at House Democrats’ rules and traditions for what is usually a behind-the-scenes competition to determine which lawmakers sit on which coveted committees.

It was a calculated high-stakes gamble that resulted in Porter not returning this year to sit on the Financial Services Committee, one of the House’s most sought-after panels and one for which the former bankruptcy and consumer law professor was highly suited.

Her sharp-elbowed maneuvering and willingness to publicly confront party leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters underscored the brash determination that made Porter the surprise national standout of California’s 2018 House freshman class — and a strong contender for the U.S. Senate someday.

But in an institution fueled by seniority and relationships — especially within one’s own party — Porter’s tendency to ruffle feathers could cost her the allies she will need in the future in order to get legislation approved.

In an interview, Porter expressed no regrets that her actions might have cost her support. In some ways, she may have felt she had nothing to lose. None of her progressive bills made it through the Democratic-controlled Financial Services Committee in her first term, a factor in her decision to focus more on oversight.

“That was a big concern for me as a front-liner,” she said, using the Democrats’ term for a politically vulnerable member, “and as somebody who’s very committed to governance and to doing the work.”

I really doubt this sort of thing will cause her any support in the future. She’s one of the Democratic stars and if she can keep winning in Orange county they will be happy to let her have the spotlight.

Though she will no longer serve on one of the House Democrats’ four “exclusive” committees, Porter did not walk away empty-handed. She will continue to be on the House Oversight Committee, the body’s top investigations panel, where her knack for cutting to the chase and simplifying complex issues will come in handy.

Porter also picked up a subcommittee oversight gavel on the House Natural Resources Committee, and she’s already announced plans to go after polluters and oil and gas companies.

“I absolutely love oversight,” said Porter, who recently purchased the new vanity license plate “OVRSITE” for her minivan. “I came into Congress with a background in banking, but what I found is that the oversight skills I developed there, and the ability to explain technical things, particularly economic issues, translates really well to oversight across a large variety of subjects.”

She is amazing at doing that. Better than anyone else in congress, actually.

Porter, 47, came into Congress in a freshman class distinguished by its unprecedented number of women, progressives and younger people. Like Porter, many hold no fealty to the expectations placed on new members, such as respecting seniority and waiting your turn.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Porter is simply doing what she was elected to do.

“So many of us, regardless of ideology, run on ‘shaking up Washington.’ But then when you actually come here, there’s a lot of consequences for doing that,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who sat near Porter on the Financial Services Committee and remains on the panel. “There are many strong personalities in our class, and that leads to some ruffling of feathers, because we’re sent here literally to try to disrupt.”

But Porter’s critics say there is a risk in trying to change the system that her colleagues have been operating under for years, particularly trying to undermine committee leadership.

“This is a place that operates on relationships,” said one Democratic lawmaker, echoing a sentiment repeated by others but speaking on the condition of anonymity. “These things don’t win Katie any friends.”

Porter may already be on shaky political ground as a progressive serving in a Republican-leaning, Irvine-centered district that the GOP is targeting for a pickup in 2022.

Porter won reelection in November, but by less than President Biden’s margin in the district, a sign that she is vulnerable. The coming post-census redistricting of California’s congressional map might make reelection even harder in 2022.

Though some have wondered whether Porter might seek refuge in a 2022 challenge for Sen. Alex Padilla’s seat in the Senate, she took such a move off the table,disclosing that she has endorsed Padilla for 2022 and contributed to his campaign.

“I’m a strong supporter of Sen. Padilla,” Porter said, “[I] really look forward to working with him and have already begun conversations about policies we can collaborate and opportunities to introduce him to the Orange County community.” Padilla was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat previously occupied by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Porter did not rule out, however, a future bid for the Senate. Progressives hope she runs when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 87, leaves the Senate, although it is certain to be a crowded field.

Thanks in part to her hearing moments that went viral, Porter’s campaign has become one of the top fundraisers in the House, a rarity for a lawmaker in only her second term.

“It’s so hard to break out and have a national presence,” said longtime Democratic operative Bill Carrick. “She managed to be able to do that in her first term, especially on the Financial Services side.”

Porter made her exit from that committee almost as prominent as her tenure, providing a window into her political style.

Committee assignments are key to lawmakers, offering television exposure, political contributions and a platform to advance a legislative agenda or steer federal dollars.

For Democrats, four committees are labeled “exclusive” due to their influence and time commitment. In addition to Financial Services, they include Ways and Means, Appropriations and Energy and Commerce.

Two years ago, Porter and several other progressive freshmen, including Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), landed on Financial Services.

Porter immediately clashed with committee Chairwoman Waters, a powerful member of the California delegation who is close with Pelosi. In addition to balancing the needs of her party’s moderates with the boisterous newcomers, Waters, a longtime force on Democrats’ left flank, didn’t always see eye to eye with the new crop of progressives.

The first time Porter tried to use a poster board in the committee, Waters upheld a Republican objection, citing committee rules. When Porter came back to another hearing with a “Financial Services bingo” board, Waters again told her to take it down. “We’ve talked about this before,” she said.

Porter balked at Waters’ ruling. “Are we adding additional committee rules at this time?” asked Porter, whose use of such props was not an issue on the House Oversight Committee.In a show of her emerging political star power, Porter eventually got to display the bingo poster — on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”

“I disagreed with her interpretation of the rules regarding the ability of committee members to use evidence to make their points,” Porter said in the interview. “I was overruled on the whiteboard. I was overruled on my ability to play audio. I was overruled on my ability to display a poster board.”

Waters’ office declined to comment.

There were some substantive clashes over legislation as well between Waters and the committee’s progressives.

For some Democrats, the biggest snub came late last year when Porter lobbied to take Financial Services off the list of exclusive committees. That top-tier designation comes with a price: members may not serve on any other committee unless they receive a waiver.

Such waivers are not rare. But if Financial Services were no longer exclusive, it would be easier for new members like Porter to remain on the committee while also branching into other areas without the need for special permission.

“The goal should be to get members on the committee who stay, year after year, who will make this a primary committee and build up expertise over time,” Porter said. “Financial Services is so important and no one knows that better than Chairwoman Waters— how important this really is to people and to our economy and to Southern California.”

Porter’s proposal to change the exclusivity status went nowhere.

When it came time to request committee assignments in the new year, Porter raised eyebrows once again. She requested to remain on Oversight and join the Natural Resources committee as her top two choices. Then she asked for a waiver to continue on Financial Services.

Porter pitched herself to Pelosi in a letter, which Porter has shared. “As the only single mother of young children in our Democratic Caucus, and an expert on consumer debt, mortgage lending, and bankruptcy, I bring deep knowledge and great passion to issues of economic justice and fairness,” she wrote.

It didn’t work. The steering committee in charge of the matter got 10 requests for waivers to get on the Financial Services Committee, according to Porter’s calculation. Only Porter and one other Democrat were denied.

Some progressives say Porter was targeted for removal, pointing to the fact that several members of the Financial Services panel are allowed to serve on other committees, some even as chairpersons. “She wasn’t really wanted, perhaps because of the spotlight she garnered and the goals she sought,” wrote David Dayen, executive editor of American Prospect.

Skeptics say Porter tried to game the complex House Democratic rules to her advantage, and when it didn’t work, allowed herself to be cast as a victim who got kicked off the committee.

Once members have a seat on an exclusive committee, all they typically need to do to stay on it is keep it is as their first choice. If Porter really wanted to stay on Financial Services, critics say, she should have prioritized it.

“She chose to ‘get removed’ from Financial Services,” said one member of the panel, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You can’t be that choosy.”

Advocates of the committee-approval process say it is designed to ensure there is diversity — racial, gender and geographic — on the committees. Members can lobby the steering committee for waivers; eventually the entire caucus ratifies assignments.

But Ocasio-Cortez called the process a “black box.” She said she and Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) were “pretty lined up” for positions on the Energy and Commerce Committee — another exclusive panel — but “that rug got pulled out from under us.”

In the end, Porter made no secret of her disappointment.

In a tweet, she pointed out that others in the same situation got waivers. “I did not,” she wrote. “I play by the rules.”

I’m sure the leadership wishes she would sit down and shut up. They don’t like to be challenged. But this woman is a future leader and the sharp Dems understand that.

And let’s face facts. Going up against the “libs” for whatever reason, is good politics for a progressive in a purple district. But Porter picked her battles without selling out her values. She’s going up against entrenched power, not policy. And that’s very smart. Of course.

Republicans are afraid of Americans voting but are just fine with Russia interfering on Donald Trump’s behalf. Again:

I’m sure you recall Mike Pompeo, John Ratcliff and other lying Trump toadies all saying that Russia wasn’t really interfering and it was actually China that was pushing for Biden. Surprise! That wasn’t true:

Top lines from a new ODNI assessment of election interference: China didn’t interfere and Putin was directly controlling André Derkach, who was promoting anti-Biden disinformation

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) March 16, 2021

You remember Rudy and Derkach, right?

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and a key Ukrainian ally in their plot to smear Former Vice President Joe Biden have both tried to distance themselves from collaborator Andriy Derkach after he was sanctioned and outed as an “active Russian agent” by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Rudy Giuliani, who worked with Derkach and whose work as Trump’s lawyer and top Biden-dirt-digger culminated in his own client’s impeachment, told The Daily Beast on Friday that he was no longer in touch with the Russian intelligence asset.

I guess Rudy’s going to get away with what he did to try to sabotage the 2020 campaign for his client Trump. But it is stunningly traitorous behavior that went all the way to the oval office. The fact that the Republicans didn’t give a shit about any of this and it will be swept under the rug, probably forgotten, still boggles my mind. Rudy Giuliani was working with a Russian agent, who we now know was on orders from Vladimir Putin, to help the president set up a foreign operation to destroy his political rival. The president was impeached for it and the Republicans voted in lockstep to protect him, in effect endorsing his plot.

And it’s just … whatever.

Salon’s Chauncey DeVega interviewed the distinguished sociologist Robert Putnam about Joe Biden and the Democrats’ “FDR-LBJ” moment:

How are you feeling, given all of the tumultuous changes and challenges the American people have been facing with the Age of Trump and now into Biden’s presidency? We have gone from a nightmare scenario to some hope under Biden, but matters are still dire.

Given all the ups and downs of recent months — the pandemic, the economy and politics — prediction is hard, especially about the future. One can imagine many things going wrong — new virus strains, white nationalist terrorism and so on. That said, I’m feeling optimistic about where the country is headed, not merely in the short run, but even in the long run — and the long run is my main concern.

In my new book “The Upswing,” I examine parallels between the second decade of the 21st century, and a period 125 years ago which is very much like our present. I argue that we should and likely will be replicating the kinds of changes that were pursued in the Progressive Era during the first part of the 20th century. There is a phenomenon called the “I-We-I” curve, a movement from selfishness to community to selfishness. That curve is ripe for change in the United States.

Biden and the Democrats just passed a landmark COVID relief and survival bill. Given your concerns about social progress, how do you assess Biden’s presidency so far?

Biden is proving to be just what the doctor ordered for a shaken country, focused explicitly on “we,” not “I.” It’s not just his well-known empathy for people in pain, nor his equally well-known propensity to work across the aisle, but also his ability to adapt to changed political circumstances. While he tried to work with Republicans on the Hill — and polls show that the public believes he was sincere in that effort — he also proved able to act on his own when the GOP party leaders blew him off. His rising poll numbers show that he’s got most of the public, including many Republican voters, on his side.

From the Age of Trump and its many disasters to Biden’s presidency and its potential and opportunities, it feels as though America is in a world-historical moment. Who knows what happens next? How do you make sense of what could be a true turning point in history?

I have that same feeling. I also felt that way during another pivot point in American history, which was the middle of the 1960s. I went to college in the fall of 1959 and graduated from college in the spring of ’63. That was a period of time when we — the whole country, but especially college students and other young people — thought that we were going to change the world. We were going to end racism and social inequality, for example. Everybody in the world knew that big things were happening in all spheres of life. It’s an experience that is very difficult to explain and describe to someone who has not lived through such a moment.

What about backlash and right-wing reactionary politics?

When you are in a world-historical moment, some moment of great change, you do not know how it is all going to turn out at the end. That’s the nature of the thing. One is so close to the surface that they cannot get up to that 30,000-foot level and see what is happening in context, to see what is just around the corner. In the 1960s, we did not know what was going to happen next and it could have been anything. And in that case, what did in fact happen next was exactly the opposite of what we hoped. The reform movement of that period seemed to be winning, but then there was a dramatic reversal and basically bad things happened in every respect.

That was true in terms of racial justice. It was true in economic terms with Richard Nixon. Those questions of backlash are hanging over us now too.

If you could bring a Progressive-era activist through time to America today, what do you think they would see that is familiar? What would be different?

The first thing they would see would be completely familiar to them. That time traveler would see a world of great inequality. That is the world they knew in the Gilded Age. It was a world of intense political polarization like America’s present. Social relations among people, that is, their connections to their families, to the community and to religion and so on, were weakening.

That time traveler would see that is true here today. Their era was one of great narcissism or even self-centeredness. That is true in America today as well, especially given Trump’s presidency. He is the greatest narcissist of all.

And then, if our visitors from the Gilded Age were a bit more thoughtful, they would see that the strategies used during their era to fight back against inequality might work today as well.

We need a moral revival right now across issues such as racism and political polarization, and also more generally in terms of how our society treats human beings. We can learn from the Gilded Age how so many of our country’s problems require local solutions as well.

During the Gilded Age there was a great amount of experimentation with local solutions which would be piloted in different parts of the country and then shared nationally if they worked. These were called “laboratories of democracy.” Many of the solutions did not come from Washington. Then, as now, we also needed grassroots mobilization. And another echo of the past with the Progressive movement is how young people were the leaders. It will likely be young people who again lead the United States out of our current crises as well.

If you were to write a simple mission statement, what does it mean to be a progressive?

“We want to make progress.” Progressives also believe that we have the right ideas about how to solve problems. However, progressives are not exclusive in how we find solutions to problems. Other people and groups may have good solutions as well.

A mission statement for progressives right now would be: Think morally. That is the first part of the mission statement. Progressives must think about how to make changes that will improve the lot of the least well-off people in society. Progressives should also think scientifically in terms of solutions and real evidence. Do not rely on old myths or hearsay and rumors.

What do we know empirically about the impact of social capital and the “I-We-I” curve on American society today?

Children who grow up in social isolation do far worse than children who grow up in communities where the “we” is emphasized. In such communities the neighbors look out for one another. “We-ness” also positively impacts education and health and social mobility. People who grow up in areas where there is low social capital do not live as long. They also have higher mortality rates from many diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

How come America’s death rate from COVID is so much higher than almost every other country in the world? How does such a thing happen?

The country was at the lowest ebb of our “we-ness,” that sense of collective care and concern and identity. America was at a low point in social capital, which meant that when the pandemic hit we were more vulnerable than other countries. Trump did not cause that accidental coincidence. It was a function of low social capital and COVID happening at the same time.

What advice do you have for young progressive activists today?

Change happens because people want to make change. We are agents. We are not merely the objects of history. We are the agents of history. That’s what change-makers during the Progressive Era understood. You can make a difference, and without you society is not going to change for the better.

Do you have any advice for the Biden administration and the Democratic Party on how to keep their momentum and work to create the progressive renewal you described?

Politically, their top priority has to be the midterm elections, and the American Rescue Plan is an excellent start. Whatever else may affect the Democrats’ chances in 2022 — from Dr. Seuss to crises at the southern border to unexpected Supreme Court decisions to shenanigans in Trump’s Republican Party to voter suppression — the electoral fundamentals next year will be, a) whether the pandemic is in the rearview mirror and b) whether the economy is booming again. All the experts agree that the COVID-19 rescue plan has more or less assured those two fundamentals. I’d much rather be playing Nancy Pelosi’s hand than Mitch McConnell’s hand over the next two years.

I’m focused much more on the next two decades than the next two years. But the prospects for the long run depend on what happens in the short and medium run. I’m more optimistic today than I have ever been in my life that within my lifetime. And I’m now 80! America may once again pivot toward a “we” society — more equal, less polarized, more altruistic, less socially fragmented and more attentive to historic, structural inequalities.

I’m trying to share these more optimistic takes whenever I see them. I have been so immersed in the ugliness of the Trump years and the years preceding with terrorism, war and ongoing anti-democratic actions going back a quarter century. I really need to remind myself that there’s another side. And there has been great progress along with all that, particularly the cultural progress that really forms the basis of everything we hope to do politically.

But it doesn’t have to be exactly as HR1 is written.

Richard L. Hasen is one of the country’s most respected election law experts. He predicted exactly what Trump was going to do post election last May. He has some serious reservations about the “do-or-die” approach to H.R 1, the For the People Act that passed the House and for good reason — namely that it can’t pass the Senate as is.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t pass a voter protection bill. They really don’t have a choice. It has to be done:

Are Democrats in Congress and their good government allies going to blow it again on voting rights? It sure looks like they could — by portraying the 791-page For the People Act, or H.R. 1, as the only hope to save American democracy from a new wave of Republican voter suppression.

This mammoth bill has little chance of being enacted. But a more pinpointed law, including one restoring a key part of the Voting Rights Act, could make it out of the Senate to guarantee voting rights protections for all in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

In the wake of former president Donald Trump’s relentless false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 elections, Republican lawmakers throughout the country have proposed over 250 bills to make it harder for people to register and vote. Although the sponsors tout these bills as measures to deter fraud or promote voter confidence, the history of similar laws shows that they do neither. Laws requiring people to make copies of their driver’s license to prove their identities when voting absentee, for example, prevent no appreciable amount of fraud because there is not a lot of impersonation voter fraud overall. Nonetheless, some of these state laws are likely to pass, and some will probably survive court challenges, thanks to a Supreme Court that has proved to be less protective of voting rights over time. This means that many of the gains in voting rights in the fall, prompted partly by the coronavirus pandemic, may be rolled back by the next time Americans choose members of the House, the Senate and the White House.

But Congress does have broad powers in the Constitution to set election rules and combat these new efforts at voter suppression. To begin with, Article I, Section 4 gives Congress the power to “make or alter” any state voting rules applicable to presidential elections. Congress also has power to enforce constitutional amendments that promote voting rights, including the 14th (guaranteeing equal protection), 15th (barring race discrimination in voting), 19th (barring gender discrimination in voting), and 26th (barring age discrimination in voting). That gives it some power over the rules of purely state and local elections as well, as when Congress banned the use of literacy tests in the Voting Rights Act.

That means Congress likely has the power to do many, but not all, of the things H.R. 1 proposes. Some parts of it could well be found unconstitutional if it passed, such as a provision requiring states to reenfranchise all people convicted of felonies who are not currently serving time in a correctional institution. Courts could potentially find that provision interferes with states’ constitutional right to set qualifications for voters.

But potential unconstitutionality of some provisions is not the main problem with H.R. 1. Instead, the problem is that the bill contains a wish list of progressive proposals that make it unlikely to survive debate in the Senate. In addition to sensible provisions protecting voting rights, the bill also contains controversial rules on campaign financing, including the creation of a public financing program for congressional candidates, new ethics rules for the Supreme Court, and a requirement that most candidates for president and vice president publicly disclose their tax returns.

Not only is H.R. 1 unlikely to survive a filibuster led by Republican senators such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who has directed most of his opposition to the campaign finance aspects of H.R. 1; it is not clear it could even get 50 votes from the Senate’s Democrats and their independent allies. That makes it an unlikely vehicle for convincing Democrats to abandon the filibuster requirement for voting rights bills, as I and others have advocated. Why would Democrats such as Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who say they want to keep the filibuster in place, vote to abolish it for a bill that might not even have majority support?

A narrower bill targeted at protecting voting rights more directly would appear to have a better chance of passage, by assuring that there are more than 50 senators — including perhaps some moderate Republicans — to support the bill. Such a narrower bill still might require blowing up the filibuster for voting rights reform, but that target seems much more achievable with a pinpointed proposal.

What would be in the new, narrower bill? There are many parts of H.R. 1 and of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act that are worth copying or modifying, and at least some of these could attract moderate Republican support.

First, Congress could restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder killed the preclearance provision in Section 5 of the 1965 law that had required states with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval for changes in voting rules before they could make them. These states had to demonstrate that the proposed changes, such as cutbacks in days of early voting, would not make minority voters worse off. The court held in Shelby that the formula for determining which states needed to get advance clearance was outdated because it was not tied to current voting discrimination. Congress could reenact preclearance with a new coverage formula tied to current evidence of discrimination.

Second, Congress could require that states offer ample registration and voting opportunities to voters. For example, lawmakers could require that states offer online voting opportunities; 36 states already do, and when Texas was ordered to do so recently as part of litigation, half a million more people registered to vote. Congress could also require that states offer two weeks of some form of early voting — whether in-person, by mail or both — in all federal elections. It could even require that states offer no-excuse absentee balloting.

Third, Congress could require states to assure election security. Lawmakers could require states only to allow voting for federal elections on machines that produce a piece of paper that can be counted in a recount, assuring that the totals announced by voting machines can be verified by hand. Congress could also require states to have certain procedures in place to protect the integrity of voter registration databases and other pieces of critical election infrastructure. These requirements are important for both to assure that election results reflect the people’s will as well as to promote public confidence.

Finally, Congress could end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts by requiring states to use bipartisan or nonpartisan commissions to draw the lines. Ending the scourge of partisanship in redistricting will not only assure that members of Congress are more representative of the will of the voters; it will also help to create the conditions where candidates appeal to the center and are less driven by partisanship.

A more tightly drawn measure along these lines is likely to get more support than the sprawling H.R. 1. It would reverse many of the new suppressive laws that could be enacted by Republican legislatures, but it wouldn’t reach further into other issues that could pull apart majority support in the Senate.

Some Democrats and progressives, though, are pushing H.R. 1, seeing this as the only opportunity for change in this generation. Soon Democrats might lose control of one or both houses of Congress, which would mean H.R. 1 or other voting reform no longer have a chance of passing.

In 2006, I and others testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Congress needed to change the coverage formula of the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act because without a change, the Supreme Court could strike the measure down as exceeding congressional power. But Congress and good government groups decided to roll the dice, believing the Supreme Court would never strike down a crown jewel of the civil rights movement. The gamble did not pay off, and Shelby County has made things far worse.

We are at a similar moment now. H.R. 1 is unlikely to make it out of the Senate. It should be swapped out for a measure more directly targeted at the voter suppression to come that could actually be signed by President Biden and upheld in full by the courts.

Holding out for a perfect bill, in the end, will just prevent enactment of a good one. At the moment, it seems more likely that nothing will become law before the 2022 elections than that H.R. 1 will. And then Democrats will look back at yet another missed opportunity to protect voters.

I hope he’s wrong and that the Senate sees the necessity of passing the most important items in the bill as he outlines. They will no doubt regret it if they don’t.

But the pressure is going to be immense to pass HR1 exactly as written and I worry that he’s right.

I was sad to learn actor Yaphet Kotto has passed away at age 81. Most of the headlines today are along the lines of “Yaphet Kotto, star of Live & Let Die…” Well yes, his “Mr. Big” was one of the more memorable Bond villains, but that was hardly his defining role! His other big-screen credits included Nothing But a Man, Across 110th Street, Blue Collar, Alien, Brubaker and Midnight Run. He was also an accomplished stage actor.

He had a stereotype-shattering role as Lt. Al Giardello on David Simon’s brilliant police procedural series “Homicide” (1993-1999) which showcased his considerable acting chops.

My favorite Yaphet Kotto feature film performance is in Paul Schrader’s 1978 drama Blue Collar (co-written by his brother Leonard). Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Kotto portray Detroit auto workers tired of getting the short end of the stick from both their employer and their union. In a fit of drunken pique, they pull an ill-advised caper that gets them in trouble with both parties, ultimately putting friendship and loyalty to the test. 

Akin to Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, Schrader subverts the standard black-and-white “union good guy, company bad guy” trope with shades of gray, reminding us the road to Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. Great score by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, with a memorable theme song featuring Captain Beefheart (“I’m jest a hard-woikin’, fucked-over man…”).

Kotto was also a good sport. In 1994 he appeared “as himself” as part of this fascinating social experiment conducted by Michael Moore for his 1-season series TV Nation. This bit presages the “prank with a point” that has become stock-in-trade for Sacha Baron Cohen.

Same as it ever was. Rest in peace, big man.