Month: February 2023

Fat chance of it becoming law

Two Democratic senators called on Congress to adopt a proposal that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made in 2011 to address a standoff over raising the debt ceiling, which would grant the president the authority to raise the limit on their own. 

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Wednesday that McConnell’s plan is simple and took the “weaponization of the debt ceiling off the table” during a battle over raising the debt limit more than a decade ago. 

The plan was included in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which ended an impasse between a Republican-led House with a Democratic-led Senate and then-President Obama. 

“While the broader Budget Control Act had numerous flaws, the McConnell plan itself was a good solution then, and it remains a good solution today,” Merkley and Kaine said. 

They said McConnell’s plan allowed Obama to raise the debt ceiling on his own while allowing Congress to pass a joint resolution to override that action if two-thirds of lawmakers wished to. They said this allowed Congress to continue to have oversight over raising the debt ceiling but prevented it from being used as a political tool. 

Merkley and Kaine said their Protect Our Credit Act of 2023, which they introduced this month along with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would make McConnell’s plan from 2011 permanent. 

Under the legislation, Congress would only be allowed to prevent the president from raising the debt ceiling if two-thirds of members of the House and Senate, a veto-proof majority, opposed it. 

“McConnell had it right in 2011,” Merkley and Kaine said. “A dozen years later, the clock is ticking to protect jobs; interest rates for mortgages, car loans and student loans; and our broader economy from unnecessary and self-inflicted disaster.” 

The Treasury Department began enacting “extraordinary measures” last month to prevent the federal government from defaulting on the national debt, but the limit must be raised by this summer to avoid a default. 

Congressional Republicans have pushed for the Biden administration and Democrats to agree to spending cuts in exchange for voting to raise the debt ceiling. 

The ceiling does not allow the federal government to borrow more money but rather pay for debt it has already incurred. 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said spending cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table,” but spending for all other programs could be considered. The House GOP has faced pressure to release their official demands for spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. Trump celebrates Scottish leader’s plan to resign: ‘Good riddance’Americans’ dissatisfaction with gun laws at new high: Gallup poll

Republicans from the House Budget Committee released a list of possible areas that the party could focus on last week, but some other Republicans expressed skepticism over the plan. 

Merkley and Kaine quoted McConnell from 2011 in saying that the country must reassure markets, Social Security recipients and the families of military veterans that default is not a possibility. 

“We could finally end this episodic crisis by putting a stop to using the debt ceiling as a tool for political blackmail,” they said.

That’s via The Hill.

I am still scratching my head over the fact that the Democrats didn’t disarm this bomb when they had the House majority. I know that a hangup was Manchin and Sinema refusing to eliminate the filibuster and resistance to using the reconciliation process but this might have been a way to get a couple of Republicans on board if they’d tried it. Maybe they did, but there is no evidence of that argument being made at the time. Why?

It just sounds insulting. We don’t know why.

Matt Lewis at the Daily Beast has some thoughts:

For Donald Trump, the first step is always to label his victim. Indeed, assigning a good bad nickname appears to be a sine qua non in the Trump playbook. Once he gets that part right, the job is half-done.

For example, “Crazy Joe” (which gave way to the superior “Sleepy Joe”) never resonated the way “Crooked Hillary” (or Lyin’ Ted, “Low Energy Jeb,” and Lil’ Marco) did. And now that “Meatball Ron” has become his leading moniker for Ron DeSantis, Trump might have landed on another keeper.

Back in 2016, when Trump first started gaining traction, a few outlets dug into why his nicknames were working. Some people saw it primarily as a symptom of the coarsening of discourse and dirty political fighting he reveled in; but others spotted an evil genius at work.

One theory argued that our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and Trump understood how to succinctly capture the most negative framing of a person’s fundamental nature.

“Trump realizes campaigns, especially for president, aren’t about issues—they’re all about personalities, especially for independent voters,” Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, told Roll Call. Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist, concurred, saying, “The bottom line is: Trump’s nicknames stick.”

There are linguistic reasons why some of his name-calling packs an especially powerful emotional punch. “‘Crooked Hillary,’ is exponentially more powerful than the statement ‘Hillary is crooked,’” wrote Jon Allsop in Columbia Journalism Review back in 2017, “just as ‘the Big, Bad Wolf’ resonates more deeply than the claim that ‘the wolf is big and bad.’ The academics Jason Stanley and David Beaver argue… that this is because ‘Crooked Hillary’ slips into the mind as a presupposed truth.”

The good news for DeSantis is that this specific technique is not currently being used on him (stay tuned for “Groomin’ Ron”). But what does “meatball” even mean? The New York Times calls it “an apparent dig at [DeSantis’s] appearance,” which I take to suggest a shorter, pudgier frame—while hinting at a lock of social grace. But “meatball” is also a slur against Italian-Americans (all eight of DeSantis’ great-grandparents came here from Italy).

Somewhere, Don Rickles must be thinking that if he were born 30 years later, he might have been president.

It’s not like DeSantis can complain or cry foul about this. It’s hard to imagine the current governor of Florida trying to curry sympathy from a Republican electorate that couldn’t get enough of it when Trump called Elizabeth Warren “Pocohontas.”

To test the waters, I reached out to the non-partisan National Italian American Foundation for a comment. I received a generic quote back from the group’s president, telling me that they “do not countenance any ethnic stereotyping used to denigrate an individual or a group.” Not exactly a stinging rebuke of Trump’s slur. This is to say that in 2023, nobody is going to be morally outraged about Donald Trump calling an Italian-American politician a meatball.

But let’s be honest, Trump is an equal opportunity offender. His goal is to come up with some way… any way to define, diminish, and humiliate his opponents. He works diligently at this effort, testing and revising his slurs. And while “DeSanctimonious” was a good first effort, it also had too many syllables. Likewise, “Shutdown Ron,” the other name he is reportedly toying with, doesn’t have the same ring as “Meatball Ron.”

Trump, of course, isn’t the first person to grasp the power of name-calling. Although nicknames can be terms of affection or a badge of honor, they can also be a way to demean, dominate, or humiliate. Just ask any schoolyard bully.

Nicknames are powerful for the same reason that words are powerful and names are powerful. In the Bible, God changes Aram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of many nations.” Cults, likewise, engage in thought control by changing a member’s name and identity. If you can change someone’s name, you have a good chance to change our perception of them—to change their narrative.

Trump understands this Orwellian technique more than most, precisely because he’s an expert on branding. His business success, to the degree he has had success, is more contingent on image and bluster than on reality.

As a fan of Norman Vincent Peale, Trump adheres to a sort of name-it-and-claim-it “power of positive thinking” philosophy. Just as framing himself as a success has been more important to Trump than actually being a success (he won the 2020 election, after all!), Trump likewise understands that making someone appear to be a loser can also manifest that destiny.

Trump is a master of introducing ideas into the public bloodstream, and then repeating them over and over to make them sink in. Remember how Trump responded when the acting attorney general told him he couldn’t just overturn the election? In case you forgot, Trump responded: “[W]hat I’m asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest up to me…” That’s right, he didn’t ask the DoJ to actually do anything; he just wanted him to open the door for Trump to work his magic.

Of course, having emerged in a post-Trump world, Ron DeSantis will not be blindsided by Trump’s unorthodox style like previous adversaries.

What is more, DeSantis actually has a strong record that should resonate with Republican primary voters. He has been more effective when it comes to fighting culture war battles than Trump. But Donald Trump has a way of destroying people, and minimizing their accomplishments. I can almost hear him now, “I oversaw the greatest economy in 50 years; ‘Meatball Ron’ fought against Mickey Mouse.”

We are still at the beginning of this incipient battle. DeSantis hasn’t even declared yet. Still, the floating of nicknames suggests to me that the gloves are coming off and things are going to get darker and more extreme.

In the cinematic classic Rocky III, a professional wrestler dubbed “Thunder Lips” (played by Hulk Hogan) battles the “Italian Stallion” Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) in what is ostensibly an exhibition match pitting wrestler against boxer.

Before the fight, Hogan’s character, who later goes berserk and throws Rocky out of the ring, describes the billing as “The ultimate male versus the ultimate meatball.”

I thought about that this week when I heard that Donald Trump, who also postures himself as “the ultimate male,” described Ron DeSantis as “Meatball Ron.” Just as Stallone circled the ring, throwing perfunctory jabs before Hogan slammed him to the ground, we are now in the “circling the ring” stages of a heavyweight throwdown between Trump and DeSantis.

It’s about to get ugly.

Trump probably got the nickname from that Rocky movie. He steals a lot of “branding” ideas, including his most famous one, “Make America Great Again.”

He’s mad because of the windmills. It’s as petty as it gets. But it’s also clear that he intends to make transgender people a major target of his campaign and it’s just sick. These are some of the most vulnerable people in the world, especially the kids, and these pigs are going to bully them on a national basis and try to literally ban them from American life. It’s heartbreaking.

But Trump always has his finger on the pulse of right wing media culture war obsessions and this is one. He’s not going to let DeSantis and the rest of them get to his right.

A smart political promise

People made fun of Biden for putting so-called Junk Fees on his agenda but it turns out to be a very smart move. People hate them:

Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on many things but paying less for concert tickets or to switch cable TV providers is one of them.

During his Feb. 7 State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass the Junk Fees Prevention Act, which would limit extra fees or surcharges across the travel and entertainment industries, including early termination fees from cable TV or internet providers and service fees often attached to tickets for concerts and sporting events.

Biden previously called out companies like Live Nation Entertainment Inc.’s Ticketmaster to lower the “huge” service fees it places on many events and to be more transparent with consumers about a ticket’s full costs. The ticketing platform has been under Congressional scrutiny since November for its disastrous handling of presales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which renewed accusations that the company is monopolizing the live event industry.

A new Morning Consult survey shows Biden’s proposals have bipartisan support, with clear majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents saying Congress should pass laws limiting these so-called “junk fees.” Overall, about 3 in 4 Americans support the measures.

The shares of U.S. adults who support or oppose Congress’ doing the following:

The fact that they really irk older people is a feature not a bug. They vote.

Speaking of which AARP did some polling that you might find interesting:

OLDER VOTERS, and particularly OLDER WOMEN, remain the critical group to watch.

As a reminder . . . voters age 50 and over made up the majority of the electorate in 2022, and an AARP survey of battleground Congressional Districts found that 65+ voters, especially women, made the difference limiting Republican gains in the House. 

The latest AARP research in our She’s the Difference series paints a very nuanced picture of how these voters are feeling and what they care about coming out of the 2022 elections. 

In short . . . it’s complicated. 

The same party divide that we see in the electorate writ large, exists with the 50+ as well, coloring their views on the economy, democracy and the top issues facing the country.

For example, Republican 50+ voters overwhelmingly see the country as on the wrong track (94%), say America’s best days are behind us (72%), and believe the U.S. economy is not working well for them personally (72%). Meanwhile, 50+ Democrats are far more positive, with 62% saying the country is going in the right direction, 59% seeing America’s best days still to come, and 68% feeling the economy is working well for them personally.

Despite this, voters 50+ across party lines feel more positive about their own situations, assessing their own lives differently than they assess the country. 

While only a handful (5%) of voters say America’s best days are “happening now,” over a quarter (28%) say their own best days are happening right now. There is not much difference by party; about as many Republicans and Democrats agree (26% and 31%, respectively).

Many older voters are still anxious about their economic situation.

While a majority report they can afford their expenses, or even call their own financial situation “secure” (65% secure, 35% not secure), costs and inflation continue to be a pressing worry and a top-tier concern about the country. “The cost of food, gas, and everyday goods,” is voters’ top concern about the country (45% “one of the biggest problems,” 89% “one of the biggest” or “major” problem). And in a series of personal worries—as opposed to national problems—“my income keeping up with rising costs” also tops the list (30% “very worried,” 73% total worried).

Women consistently feel more economically vulnerable than men.

More men than women say they’re living “comfortably” (39% men, 29% women). More women than men say they are less financially secure than they expected to be at this time of their lives (48% women, 39% men). More women than men say they’re “very worried” about their income keeping up with costs (34% women, 25% men). And fewer women than men say their personal financial situation feels secure (62% women, 69% men). 

These gender differences largely transcend party and are magnified by age.Across party lines, women are more likely than their male counterparts to say they are less financially secure than they expected to be. Republican women feel particularly less secure (53%) compared to Republican men (44%), but there is a similar gap among Democrats (42% women, 32% men) and independents (49% women, 35% men). On this same question, women 65+ feel less secure than men 65+ (42% women, 29% men), much like women 50-64 feel less secure than men of a similar age (53% women, 47% men).

Financial strain is also more likely to be felt by caregivers, both current and former.

Current and past caregivers are less likely to say their financial situation is “secure” (58% and 62%, respectively) than non- caregivers (68%). Nearly two-thirds (64%) of current caregivers are “very” or “somewhat” worried about their family’s financial situation, while only 54% of non-caregivers and 57% of former caregivers say the same. And more caregivers say they feel less financially secure than they expected to be at this stage in life (46% current, 48% former) in comparison to non-caregivers (41%).

Retirement evokes a mix of worry and optimism, with the stability of Social Security and Medicare and access to long-term care all top-of-mind concerns.

A majority of 50+ voters say they worry about “the ability to live independently as I age” (61%). About as many (60%) are worried about affording their retirement and about Social Security being there during their retirement (58%).  And, large majorities see long-term care for seniors and Medicare and Social Security being there for future generations as major problems facing the country. An overwhelming 83% say Social Security/Medicare is one of the biggest or a major problem, putting it in the top-tier of national issues.

Raise the cap on Social Security contributions, Democrats. There’s gold in them thar hills…

Trump’s campaign strategy comes into focus

When Donald Trump took office in 2017 he was determined to best Barack Obama in every way and, as absurd as it was, he was especially determined that he should win the Nobel Peace Prize as Obama had done in his first year in office. Trump even went so far as to ask then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to nominate him (which he dutifully did). At times he also went around saying that because a couple of right-wing European randos had also nominated him, he’d actually won it, claiming that he was bringing world peace and so deserved it.

This ruse played into Trump’s cultivated image as some sort of peacenik, despite the fact that he is one of the most bloody-minded public figures in American history. Sure, he managed to avoid getting into a major war during his term but that was mostly a combination of luck and adversaries who knew a sucker when they saw one. But it was always clear from his history and his rhetoric that Donald Trump had a very violent imagination. Recall his repeated retelling of assaults by undocumented immigrants and gang members, mesmerizing his followers with explicit, lurid details. Here’s one from the 2018 midterm campaign:

In one two minute stretch, Trump rants about crime in Chicago, brags about reducing illegal immigration, and claims that Democrats want to repeal the 2nd amendment. He's all over the place. pic.twitter.com/oHnvp9NvJH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2018

Trump is a big believer in summary execution. One of his other favorite tales during that campaign was the account of Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier in Afghanistan who had wandered off and was captured by the Taliban who then brutally tortured him for nearly five years before he was returned to the United States. The right called him a deserter and stated that five years of torture wasn’t bad enough. Trump said repeatedly that back in the good old days, “when we were strong,” Bergdahl would have been summarily executed, at which point Trump would pantomime committing a killing, to huge cheers from his supporters.

His worst was this apocryphal horror story:

They were having terrorism problems, just like we do. And he caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem. Okay? Twenty-five years, there wasn’t a problem.”

Again his supporters cheered madly.

This was the essence of what they loved about Trump. He was refreshingly open about his grisly anti-social fantasies in a way that validated their own. He unleashed their primitive beast.

Trump was particularly in love with the idea of imposing the death penalty for drug crimes. Early in his term, he shocked his foreign policy advisers by inviting Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House, complimenting him on his brutal and deadly drug policy. Trump told him, “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.” That job was “a bloody extermination campaign against suspected drug dealers and users, which has included open calls for extrajudicial murders and promises of pardons and immunity for the killers.” Throughout his term Trump came back to the idea of quick executions of drug dealers, often telling his staff “you know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them.”

Trump didn’t make as much of that sort of thing in 2020 but it looks like he’s reviving his ghastly homicidal rhetoric for the 2024 campaign.

A new campaign video in which Trump promises to “wage war” on drug cartels by “deploying all necessary military assets” including special forces and cyberwarfare capabilities was just released. In it, Trump is reprising his commitment to “quick trials and immediate execution” of drug dealers. At his recent rallies, he’s said that they will then “send the bullet to the family and have them pay for the bullet.” (No mention if it will be dipped in pig’s blood.) 

Furthermore, Rolling Stone is reporting that Trump is “still committed to expanding the use of the federal death penalty and bringing back banned methods of execution” such as firing squad, hanging, and “possibly even by guillotine.” He has “mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives” and is also intrigued by the idea of group executions.

Trump has long been a huge fan of the death penalty, making one of his earliest forays into politics when he took out that famous full-page ad back in 1988:

He refused to apologize after the Central Park Five were exonerated, suggesting they weren’t actually innocent.

As it happens, Trump did get his chance to “bring back the death penalty” when he and then-Attorney General Bill Barr removed the federal moratorium and went on a killing spree in the final months of his presidency, executing 13 people. He had pardons for his cronies and war criminals but didn’t spare the time to even look at reports from the Office of the Pardon Attorney recommending clemency. 

Ron DeSantis may be running as hard as he can to capture the right wing with his war on “woke”. He’s banning books and curbing voting rights and humiliating LGBTQ kids and parents in order to suck up to the people who think the biggest threat to America is drag shows and a gender neutral Potatohead doll. Trump has something else in mind altogether: he’s going to go even further to the right than DeSantis by running a savage, bloodthirsty campaign against crime with proposals to crack down hard with the full force of the law and even vigilantism if necessary. He will paint a portrait of America that is so dangerous and chaotic that only he can put it straight: American carnage, redux.

Trump was always a warmonger, it’s just that his war was always going to be waged against his enemies at home. Can DeSantis beat that by fighting teenage trans kids? 

Russian occupiers found a world different from theirs, so they smashed it

War in general is an atrocity. But zoom in from 30,000 feet and it gets personal. Nobody comes out untainted by reducing enemies and civilians to bone and ash. The Iraq invasion and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib set me on the path that led me here.

Treat tales of atrocities with a degee of skepticism, propaganda always being a feature of war. So much arrives as anecdotes.

Somewhere I heard that when Red Army troops occupied Berlin in WWII, they sent in uneducated troops from Central Asia among the occupiers to humiliate the master race. They’d gather wristwatches and wear several. They couldn’t tell time, the story went. They just liked the sound of the ticking. (Take with a grain of salt.)

If only that was the least of it.

So today arrive more tales of Russian Army actions better documented than that anecdote (CNN):

The Russian government is operating an expansive network of dozens of camps where it has held thousands of Ukrainian children since the start of the war against Ukraine last year, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report contains disturbing new details about the extent of Moscow’s efforts to relocate, re-educate, and sometimes militarily train or forcibly adopt out Ukrainian children – actions that constitute war crimes and could provide evidence that Russia’s actions amount to genocide, it said.

The report was produced as a part of the work of the US State Department-backed Conflict Observatory by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. The Observatory was established last year to gather evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The total number of children involved exceeds 6,000 detained in 43 identified facilities stretching across Russia from Crimea east to the Pacific Ocean.

“The primary purpose of the camps appears to be political reeducation,” he said, noting that at least 32 of the facilities identified in the report “appear to be engaged in systematic re-education efforts that expose children from Ukraine to Russia-centric academic, cultural, patriotic, and in two cases, specifically military education.”

Russia’s embassy in Washington dismissed the report as “absurd,” and accused the US of being complicit in the alleged deaths of children in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.  

The Atlantic offers more. Except inside occupied Ukraine the political reeducation project seems haphazard and pro-forma. Just as the Stalin’s army did in Poland, write Anne Applebaum and Nataliya Gumenyuk, Vladimir Putin’s troops arrived with lists of people to arrest, including Viktor Marunyak, the mayor of Stara Zburjivka. His captors seemed as clueless as the watch-collectors before them. “They took no notes,” the pair explain. “Their questioning was sloppy; [Marunyak] could not work out what they actually wanted to learn.”

“Because Marunyak fit into no category that the Russians could recognize—perhaps even because his local patriotism and his civic-mindedness seemed strange to them—they decided he must be a secret member of a Ukrainian ‘sabotage group.’ He was not,” the pair write.

Marunyak was arrested, beaten, and tortured with electric shocks for days:

Over the past 10 months, the Reckoning Project has deployed more than a dozen journalists and field researchers to record detailed testimonies of victims of and witnesses to atrocities in areas of Ukraine that are or were under Russian occupation. Lawyers and analysts then seek to verify these accounts, with the goal of providing evidence that will be admissible in future court proceedings. The organization has found that Marunyak’s experience was not unusual. Oleh Yakhniyenko, the mayor of Mylove, another village in the Kherson region, was detained twice. Olena Peleshok, the mayor of Zeleny Pod, was imprisoned for more than two months. Mykhailo Burak, the mayor of Bekhtery village, was detained and tortured. In the formerly occupied territory of Kharkiv alone, police investigators have evidence of 25 torture chambers. The Ukrainian government believes that mayors, deputy mayors, and other local leaders from a majority of the Kherson region’s 49 municipalities were arrested or kidnapped. Some have simply disappeared.

Many of their stories share not only gruesome details but also an atmosphere of unreality. Ukrainian captives were told that the Ukrainian state had discriminated against them for speaking Russian; now they were “free,” the invaders insisted. But when Russian-speaking mayors and other elected officials flatly explained that no one in Ukraine had harmed them for using their native language, or that Russian was widely spoken in the region, the soldiers didn’t have any response. Dmytro Vasyliev, the secretary of the city council of occupied Nova Kakhovka, recalled that his Russian was more fluent and more grammatical than the Russian of the soldier interrogating him. The soldier was a Kalmyk, one of Russia’s minority groups; Vasyliev had been born in Moscow. He considered himself a Ukrainian of ethnic Russian extraction, which confused them: “They couldn’t comprehend why I, Russian by ethnic origin, did not want to cooperate with them,” Vasyliev recalled. “I said, ‘How can I look into the eyes of my son, my colleagues, if I become a traitor?’ They just didn’t get it.” Since his interview with the Reckoning Project, Vasyliev has died.

Neither do Putin’s troops seem capable of grasping simple, civic-mindedness, much less local self-governance: “Anyone who conducts any independent activity—anyone who engages with civil society or who might be described as a social entrepreneur—is at risk in an occupation zone run by men who may have never encountered a genuine charity or a genuine volunteer organization before at all.”

It seems all rather Trumpian, or maybe DeSantis-ist. A few schools are reopened, told to Russify, and to organize political celebrations that mirror those in Russia. Not much happens. Occupation troops are going through the motions to put on a show for Moscow.

“I am following their activities,” says Marunyak who eventually escaped the area. “They are all done for a camera shot in Russia. Even people who live in the occupation don’t believe it is for real. It’s like a huge Potemkin village. It can’t function. They try to glue it together, but it doesn’t work.”

Failure and incompetence lead to violence; violence creates more resistance; and resistance, so hard for the invaders to comprehend, creates wider, broader, ever more random destruction, pain, and suffering. This is the logic of genocide, and it is unfolding right now, in our time, in the occupied Ukrainian territories that have not yet been liberated, in the towns where Russian soldiers still arrest people arbitrarily on the street, in the villages where the Ukrainian state cannot yet count the torture chambers, let alone shut them down.

But arresting and torturing people for no particular reason is the protocol, if the Reckoning Project is to be believed. So they do it. They might have collected watches instead.

Republican senators pummel Biden nominee to FCC

“You’ve said, quote, ‘Republicans know that the only way they can win an election is to suppress the vote’,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) on Tuesday in challenging Gigi Sohn, President Joe Biden’s nominee for a seat on the Federal Communications Commission.

Sullivan is shocked, shocked, that anyone would think Republicans want to suppress the vote. Senate Commerce Committee Republicans find Sohn’s tweets a stumbling block in a way that the former president’s were not.

“Maybe next election, Republicans will stop beating up on gays and women,” Sohn also wrote somewhere. Sohn is openly gay.

“Do you understand just how ridiculously infuriating these statements are?” Sullivan went on. “You are saying Republicans want to suppress the vote.”

MAGA Republicans get bigly mad when you call out their voter suppression tactics, and their attacks on women and the LGBTQ+ community. Well Dan Sullivan (R-AK) I see nothing false about Gigi Sohn's statements. Have a watch!👇#wtpBlue #DemVoice1 #DemsAct pic.twitter.com/rB32wNWeQ5

— Brian Cardone 🏴‍☠️🇺🇦 (@cardon_brian) February 14, 2023

We haven’t seen such mock Republican outrage since … since … since the State of the Union Address last week after President Joe Biden looked into the camera and told Americans that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare.

Where could Sohn have gotten such an idea about Republicans and vote suppression?

Perhaps the senator from Alaska should visit North Carolina more. The Tar Heel State could add With Almost Surgical Precision to the license plates. Or Wisconsin. Or several other states with a Republican-dominated legislature.

This popped up just Tuesday in North Carolina’s legislature:

North Carolina has had 2-1/2 weeks of early voting for two decades. Two-thirds of the vote is cast early. In larger counties, voters may vote at multiple sites during that period. During lunch. On the way to work, or after. Elderly people who once had trouble getting to the polls manage to find a way there in 2-1/2 weeks and no longer need urgent rides-to-the-polls on Election Day.

Early voting is convenient. Voters like it. Republicans want to cut it by over half. They think they can make it so by constitutional amendment on Election Day 2024. “Consecutive” means they will codify one day of Sunday voting as a sweetener for slashing the schedule.

But how dare you say they want to suppress the vote!

Democracy Docket:

On Thursday, Feb. 9, North Carolina Republicans introduced Senate Bill 88, the so-called Election Day Integrity Act, which would require all election officials to only count mail-in ballots that arrive by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. Under current law, officials count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and arrive by 5 p.m. on the third day after Election Day.

North Carolina Republicans previously tried to change the absentee ballot deadline in 2021 via an identically named bill, but Gov. Roy Cooper (D) vetoed the proposal, calling it an “ironically named” bill that would ensure “that some [votes] will go uncounted.”

The current policy of allowing absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day three days to arrive at the local Board of Elections is too lenient as well, Republicans believe. Because of cutbacks at USPS, my snail mail first travels to Greenville, South Carolina for sorting before returning here to North Carolina for delivery. I have no idea how many other communities are similarly affected.

With Democrats holding a mere one-vote state House margin for sustaining Cooper’s veto, they believe they can override this time. The Republican majority earlier this session adopted a rule change that would allow veto override votes with no advance notice. Prior rules required two days’ notice. After an uproar, Republicans are reconsidering revising the rule. But the negotiated revision is cosmetic.

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1622981704490094592?s=20&t=xouyEnHW2fBVDZnpmI7LNw

Oh right, Gigi Sohn. Her nomination has been held up for 15 months. Advocates view her opposition less charitably (Reuters):

Nearly two dozen LGBTQ advocacy organizations sent a letter to Senate leadership earlier this month urging Sohn’s confirmation and pushing back against what they called “homophobic and sexist fear-mongering” hampering the nomination process.

“It is unconscionable that the Senate has failed to confirm someone so qualified and so dedicated to fighting for the public interest, especially at a time when the American people have needed the FCC to get to work,” said nonprofit Fight for the Future campaigns and managing director Caitlin Seeley George in a statement. 

Sohn believes “that regulated entities should not choose their regulator” but that industry insiders want her appointment stopped (The Hill):

“Unfortunately, that is the exact intent of the past 15 months of false and misleading attacks on my record and on my character,” Sohn said.

“My industry opponents have hidden behind dark money groups and surrogates because they fear a pragmatic, pro-competition, pro-consumer policymaker will support policies that will bring more, faster and lower price broadband and new voices to your constituents.”

But her views on vote supression. Shocking!

Update: Fixed a glaring typo in the headline

Update 2: Where do those Democrat scalawgs get such ideas!

Texas Republican Introduces Bill To Ban College Polling Places

It’s bad for business

Semafor reports that this bullshit is starting to cost real money:

Last year, Republican-controlled legislatures began passing laws blacklisting state investment funds from doing business with money managers that pushed what they deemed to be liberal agendas, like boycotting gun manufacturers and mining companies. BlackRock, run by Larry Fink, an outspoken supporter of so-called ESG principles, has taken the brunt of the pressure, with at least 10 states pulling their money from his firm or threatening to.

“If Larry or his friends on Wall Street want to change the world — run for office,” Florida’s chief financial officer said in December, when he announced the state would pull $2 billion out of BlackRock, which he accused of running a “social-engineering project” with clients’ cash. A chorus of state governors, treasurers, and attorneys-general joined in, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a test kitchen for conservative legislatures, outlined model bills that statehouses could propose.

In recent months, though, several campaigns have failed even in conservative strongholds, and studies have calculated the financial cost to these ideological stances. They include:

-Indiana’s budget office found that a bill forcing state pension funds to divest from “woke” money managers would cost $6.7 billion over the next decade in sub-market returns, forcing retirees to increase their paycheck contributions.

-Executives in charge of one of Kentucky’s retirement funds sent a letter last week to the state’s treasurer, arguing that a recent law requiring them to pull money from BlackRock and 10 other firms deemed hostile to the energy industry would violate their duty to get the highest returns for pensioners. BlackRock manages one-third of the fund’s international stock holdings, according to Ed Owens III, CEO of the $10.8 billion County Employees Retirement System.

-A 2021 Texas investment blacklist cost municipalities an additional $303 million to $532 million in bond interest, according to a study by University of Pennsylvania’s Daniel Garrett and Federal Reserve researcher Ivan Ivanov. JPMorgan, Citigroup, and other big banks left the state after the law was passed, leaving less competition for the underwriting deals and pushing interest rates about 40 basis points higher in the eight months that followed, they found.

-The board of the American Legislative Exchange Council ended up rejecting a proposed model bill that would have required states to stop doing business with companies considered to be boycotting fossil fuels.

-North Dakota last week voted down, 90-3, a Texas-style bill that would have required the state treasurer to prepare a blacklist of financial firms that have committed to reducing carbon emissions. but would have stopped short of banning state investment funds from doing business with them.

LIZ’S VIEW

Owning the libs turns out to be expensive.

Whether politicians decide the political value of these stances more than compensates for the lost profits is another question. So too is whether voters, who are also taxpayers and pensioners, will punish them for it.

And as my colleague Bradley wrote in the fall on a different investing conundrum, that of Catholic funds, there are trade-offs all across the moral spectrum between principles and profits. But the fact remains that limiting choice in money managers will lead to less choice, worse returns, and higher costs.

Blackrock was making good money for these nuts but they went after them. Aaaaand guess what?

And the political gains have already been wrung from the fight. BlackRock is beating a hasty retreat from the front lines of ESG, touting its investments in fossil fuels and rolling out technology that will let investors cast their own ballots in corporate elections instead of outsourcing their votes to the firm. The move would blunt criticism that BlackRock is using its $8.6 trillion in assets to push a progressive agenda.

It’s just a political football that a bunch of idiots have decided to throw around to own the libs. I really wonder if they care at all about how much it’s costing them. This is what they do. Still, you’d think the guys with all the money would start pulling some of their powerful strings to tell them to mind their business.

They always are

Krugman reminds us of the history:

But, of course, many Republicans do want to eviscerate these programs. To believe otherwise requires both willful naïveté and amnesia about 40 years of political history.

First of all, if Republicans had absolutely no desire to make major cuts to America’s main social insurance programs, why would they sunset them — and thus create the risk that they wouldn’t be renewed? As Biden might say, c’mon, man.

And then there’s that historical record. Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.

So, about that history. It has been widely forgotten, but soon after taking office Ronald Reagan proposed major cuts to Social Security. But he backed down in the face of a political backlash, leading analysts at the Cato Institute to call for a “Leninist” strategy — their word — creating a coalition ready to exploit a future crisis if and when one arrived.

To that end, Cato created the Project on Social Security Privatization, calling for replacing Social Security with individual accounts — which George W. Bush tried to do in 2005. By then, however, Cato had quietly renamed its project; “privatization” polled badly, and Bush insisted that it was a “trick word” used to “scare people.”

So there’s a history here, and there’s a similar history for Medicare. Many people probably recall that Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in 1995. I don’t know how many people realize that Gingrich’s key demand was that President Bill Clinton agree to large cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

After Republicans gained control of the House in 2010, Paul Ryan began pushing for major cuts in spending. One key element was converting Medicare from a system that pays medical bills to a system offering people fixed sums of money to be applied to the purchase of private insurance — that is, vouchers.

But many though not all supporters of the Ryan plan insisted that calling vouchers “vouchers” was a left-wing smear.

So are people who claim that Biden was over the top unaware of this track record? Do they really not know that Republicans have spent more than four decades trying to find ways to undermine Medicare and Social Security? Are they unaware that there’s a long history of Republicans whining that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe Republican policies using exactly the same words Republicans used themselves until political consultants urged them to find euphemisms?

TPM reminds everyone that 75% of House Republicans signed on to the cuts just last summer…

As we noted earlier, Republicans are now aghast that anyone would be claiming they want to cut Social Security. But last year the Republican Study Committee — a House caucus which includes about 75% of all House Republicans — released a proposed 2023 budget which included basically every kind of Social Security cut on offer.

The Blueprint to Save America proposed raising the eligibility age at first to 70 and then higher if and when life expectancy goes up; it proposed cutting (or in their words “modernizing”) the benefit formula for everyone currently 54 and under; means-testing Social Security benefits; including work requirements for some Social Security beneficiaries; and allowing people to divert payroll taxes into private investment accounts — aka “retirement freedom.”

(See details on pages 81-82 of the Blueprint to Save America.)

Earlier I noted there are three broad buckets of proposed cuts to Social Security which program foes push for. Three quarters of House Republicans just proposed steep versions of all three and actually included a couple more I didn’t even think to mention.

RSC members are out hitting the airwaves now claiming that none of this ever happened. In fact, new RSC Chair Rep. Kevin Hern (OK), who oversaw the creation of the Blueprint, says this: “There is NO Republican in Washington, DC, in the House of Representatives or the Senate, that wants to CUT the benefits for seniors on Social Security and Medicare. That’s a falsehood. That’s a lie.”

There is NO Republican in Washington, DC, in the House of Representatives or the Senate, that wants to CUT the benefits for seniors on Social Security and Medicare.

That's a falsehood. That's a lie.

I discussed that and more on @FoxBusiness last night. Check it out: pic.twitter.com/dwJq50LGi2

— Congressman Kevin Hern (@repkevinhern) February 9, 2023

How can he be saying this? Note the wording: no cuts for current beneficiaries. At least according to Hern and his Committee colleagues, you’ll be safe if you’re already on Social Security. The cuts will apply to people in the workforce now. The cuts apply to everyone except those already on Social Security and those just a few years away from becoming eligible.

As you can see, it’s really all word games and flimflam. Republicans are shocked!, outraged, **frustrated** that President Biden has the effrontery to claim they want to cut Social Security while they are simultaneously on the record proposing exactly the cuts he claims they support.

They’ve always done that “current beneficiary” thing and old people don’t buy it. Once they start talking about cuts. old people get nervous. As they should.

I mentioned that Republican Study Group budget in this piece about the ongoing plans to cut the safety net for Salon last week.

This should be lit:

House Republicans have asked former White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony to testify before Congress as they launch a new investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The GOP leaders of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Committee on Oversight and Accountability sent a letter to Fauci on Monday requesting a transcribed interview. Fauci said in November that he would cooperate with any oversight hearing in the Republican-led House.

“If there are oversight hearings I absolutely will cooperate fully and testify before the Congress,” Fauci told reporters during his final briefing at the White House. “I have no trouble testifying — we can defend and explain everything that we’ve said.”

Fauci, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts, was the public face of the U.S. pandemic response during the Trump and Biden administration. He stepped down from his posts at the White House and at the helm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in December.

House Republicans also sent letters requesting testimony from EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak and former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins. EcoHealth Alliance provided funding, which originated at NIH, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study coronaviruses.

The inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department found that EcoHealth Alliance received about $8 million in funding from NIH during 2014 through 2021, according to a report published last month. About $600,000 of that money went directly to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the threat posed by bat coronaviruses.

The study of bat coronaviruses at the virology institute in Wuhan, China, the city where the pandemic first began, has raised suspicions among some scientists and investigators that Covid-19 could have escaped from a lab. But Fauci, Collins and many others have maintained that a natural origin in which the virus spilled over from bats through an intermediate animal into people is more likely.

“The vast evidence from other perspectives says no, this was a naturally occurring virus,” Collins told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in 2021. “Not to say that it could not have been under study secretly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and got out of there, we don’t know about that. But the virus itself does not have the earmarks of having been created intentionally by human work.”

In 2021, President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to provide their analysis on how the pandemic began. Four agencies assessed with low confidence that the pandemic began through natural exposure, while one assessed it was the result of a lab accident. Three other agencies could not agree on either explanation.

House Republicans on Monday also sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines requesting classified briefings with seven intelligence and law enforcement agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

They also sent a letter to Health Secretary Xavier Becerra requesting interviews with more than two dozen U.S. health officials.

Republicans, who won control of the House with a narrow margin in last November’s midterms, had vowed to launch several investigations into the pandemic’s origins, the federal response, and how taxpayer money was spent.

“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said in a statement.

I can hardly wait for Marjorie Taylor Green (yes, she’s on this committee) to question scientists about their communist plot to kill millions of Americans. She inherited money from her daddy and ran a cross fit gym. She knows her shit.

The idea that these ignorant cretins have even the slightest notion of how to predict a pandemic is so ridiculous I’d laugh it weren’t actually possible that they could get real power in the next few years.