Eat Together, Stick Together

My Sunday movie was The Old Oak. It is one of a series of films director Ken Loach has made about the lower class in England. The Old Oak is a pub, the last one in a village in northeast England. The village is not named but is near Durham. The town is deep in poverty because it had been dependent on coal mines, now closed. Town houses are going for dirt cheap prices because people are leaving. Many of those who remain can’t sell when prices are that low. That means in 2016 there was plenty of space to move in Syrian refugees. The locals are quite annoyed because the refugee families get government assistance and they don’t. Of course, there are the usual white – non-white issues. The pub owner is TJ. He tries to do what he can to help the refugees and is soon working with Yara, whose English is decent. She had worked with the nurses in the refugee camp in Syria, which gave her some medical training and helped her learn English. The pub has a back room, which has been locked up for 20 years. It has been neglected so long it can no longer be used, even though it might be the last place in town that big enough for any sort of community gathering. TJ takes Yara into the room to get something. She sees on the walls photos and sayings from the miner strikes. One photo shows big community meals with the caption “Eat Together, Stick Together.” And that gives her ideas for how to get the English and Syrians to respect each other. Of course, it doesn’t go smoothly. In the meantime TJ is dealing with poverty and failed relations. Yara and the other Syrians are dealing with the trauma of having lived in a war zone, being pulled from their homeland, and trying to make sense of a new country where they don’t feel welcome. I recommend this one. It is a good example of building community. I finished the book Boys Come First by Aaron Foley. It is a novel about Dominick, Troy, and Remy, three black gay friends (not lovers) in their early thirties living in Detroit. Over about nine months they deal with common issues of that age. Looking for sex and trying to turn it into love. Struggling to keep or establish a new career. Worried the best in life has already passed them by. Dealing with aging parents. And some issues unique to being black and living in Detroit. It has been a black city for decades. So white people moving back into the city feels like gentrification, leading to pushing out the black people and taking over the levers of power. This is very much a Detroit story. It is full of Detroit and suburban locations and of Detroit products. People not in the area won’t know the character of such places as Corktown, Midtown (formerly Cass Corridor), Rosedale, Indian Village, Somerset, Ferndale, Livonia, Novi, and Birmingham. They won’t know the reputations of Renaissance and Cass Tech High Schools. They won’t recognize Vernors and Faygo. I’m familiar with them because I’ve now lived in the area for more than forty years. I enjoyed this one. An item in the news today is the nasty guy had a long conversation with Putin about Ukraine. Whether Ukraine had any input about its own fate seemed to not be a part of the discussion. Yesterday, Kos of Daily Kos reported that in an interview with Fox News the nasty guy sounded like he was saying he would give Ukraine a half-trillion in military aid and wants a half-trillion in rare earth elements. Kos says though an exchange like that is morally repugnant, it would be an easy yes by Ukraine. First is that half-trillion in military aid. Second, the biggest deposits of rare earth elements are in the districts that Putin claimed back in 2014. To give those elements to America implies pushing Russia out of there. And those elements were why Russia invaded. Third, it seems this offer comes without the conditions Biden put on his gifts. Ukraine could use the supplies to attack sites within Russia. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that the way the nasty guy has been talking matches the idea of the unitary executive, that the Constitution gives the president complete authority over the executive branch of our government without any checks from Congress or the judiciary. The prez can ignore a law he doesn’t like and can fire any employee he doesn’t like. No, the Constitution does not say that. Needham says this is not a new idea. Back in the Reagan years Attorney General Edwin Meese created the idea. Under Bush I Deputy Attorney General Bill Barr used the idea to say Congress didn’t need to authorize sending the military into Iraq. Under Bush II John Yoo and Dick Cheney said the president could authorize torture even though it was illegal. And Barr was back to push that idea onto the nasty guy. Needham then described a couple of the ways the nasty guy is acting like a unitary executive. He fired 17 inspectors general and removed the chair of the National Labor Relations Board. Now the question is whether this Supreme Court will side with the nasty guy or tell the executive branch it must follow the laws laid out by the legislative branch. We’re depending on the Supremes to uphold the Constitution because, as Emily Singer of Kos reported, Republicans in Congress aren’t going to do it. She listed many of the excuses they are using. And I’m not going to repeat them. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post tweeted the apparent DOGE game plan. It has three parts: 1. Gut and fire the federal workforce, which unlocks: 2. Control over agency functions and records, which unlocks: 3. Mass budget and agency cuts, reducing the size of government. As part of (1) we’ve seen attempts at buyout and purges of agency leadership. Coming soon might be mass sales of federal property. Part (2) would include sucking up internal and personnel records that had been carefully guarded, feeding sensitive government databases to AI to look for automation, and to put allies in charge of the payment systems. Then in part (3) they cut freely.

To me the biggest outstanding question now is what happens if/when the courts say much of this is illegal, as is widely believed by senior U.S. officials. Do Musk/Trump back down? Or do they ask John Roberts what troops he commands?

Kos reported that the mass deportations ordered by the nasty guy aren’t up to demanded quotas. That’s because immigration officials are already at capacity. They need help from local and state law enforcement. The nasty guy doesn’t want to punish red states by doing his mass purges in friendly territory. He would rather punish blue states. So his Justice Department filed suit against Illinois for being a sanctuary state. The stated reason is that there is a national emergency from illegal immigration (which is not an emergency). Illinois’ defense is solid. Back in 2017 Antonin Scalia wrote the federal government cannot command state or local officers and police to enforce a federal program. And if the Supremes reversed that decision the next Democratic president could demand local police more aggressively enforce gun laws. That’s the reason why Scalia ruled as he did. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the New York Times:

Mr. Vance, a 2013 graduate of Yale Law School, has repeatedly argued in recent years that presidents like Mr. Trump can and should ignore court orders that they say infringe on their rightful executive powers. While his post did not go that far, it carried greater significance given that he is now vice president. The post may also offer a window on the administration’s thinking toward the orders against it as Mr. Trump has openly violated numerous statutes, like limits on summarily firing officials and effectively dismantling U.S.A.I.D. and folding it into the State Department. It also raised the question of whether the administration would stop abiding by rulings if it deemed them to be illegitimately impeding his agenda.

A major part of any court ruling against Vance and the nasty guy will be whether what they did was indeed a “rightful executive power.” In the comments Frank Amari posted a cartoon by Garth German showing a barbecue presided over by a man in a MAGA hat, who says, “I don’t want immigrants bringing their culture and ruining our country!!” Around him are pointers to where the barbecue supplies originated – fireworks from China, hot dogs from Germany, beer and chips and salsa from Mexico, lemonade from Egypt, apple pie from England, Cole slaw from the Netherlands, and the hat made in China. In a second roundup Chitown Kev quoted Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. This one is about the National Institute of Health drastically cutting indirect support (the costs of simply running a lab) to universities. Marshall thinks there are two reasons. One is payback for COVID research and a general hostility to scientific expertise with the belief universities are not friendly to the nasty guy. The second reason is once the grants are seen as coming at the political pleasure of the Oval Office they become a powerful tool to discipline the institutions. Criticize him and your budget gets cut. In the comments of this roundup is a cartoon by Dennis Goris. A husband and wife are in bed. She shows him her phone and says, “It’s a text from Elon Musk – he’s in our checking account. We just bought a Tesla.” Way down in the comments of a third roundup The Geogre talks about the advantages of demonizing DEI.

Quite simply, it is a magical term for every person a bigot hates explained away by category so as to escape any individual critical thinking or moral accounting. 1. I don’t want to work around [Black people/ women, because I’m convinced I’ll be sued every minute of the day by those 1980’s propaganda campaigns/ gay people (because I have a stereotype of Ru Paul calling me names I don’t understand], 2. There is this one person _____, and I really envy/hate/argue with her/him. 3. If there were no quotas affirmative action DEI, then THEY wouldn’t be around me. 4. Therefore, I don’t have to think about why I dislike/avoid/can’t talk to THEM, and, even better, 5. No one can tell me I’m a bigot! Best of all, 6. I can tell them that they’re for waste fraud and abuse because they want DEI!

Yes, we can tell him he’s a bigot. Further down in the comments is a cartoon by Paul Fell. It shows three wolves, labeled as the Nebraska Legislature and their Stand with Women Act, surrounding a girl with a red hooded cape. The wolves say:

Hiya, sweetie! Don’t mind us... We’re here to protect you from boys in girls restrooms! What’s in the basket?

The caption says:

What those pushing anti-trans legislation never tell you is that in order to apply their new laws, someone has to examine your kids. And as we all know, from religious figures to Olympic team doctors, too often that ends up with kids being assaulted.

Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon of God talking to an angel as he looks at a blackboard covered in mathematical equations, “I guess I can’t prove I exist either.” Pundit roundups seem to be a good way of getting a sense of what’s going on. In a fourth roundup Dworkin quoted Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum of Musk Watch discussing the invasion of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Musk has been talking about creating a peer-to-peer payment system, the kind of app the CFPB regulates. With Musk in control of this system he “now has tremendous access to confidential information about his competitors,” an official warned. Dworkin included a tweet by Chad Pergram:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Dems/DOGE: The Democratic party has latched on to this new, shiny object called the rule of law

Noah Smith of Noahpinion wonders what DOGE is up to. It moves so fast and is so secretive we can’t keep up. Coverage is mostly reactive, filing suits against it and digging up dirt on its people. That’s too slow. So we should focus on two questions: “1. What is the actual purpose of DOGE? What are the main dangers of DOGE?” We have to think about what it is doing now and what it will do in the future. David Dayen of The American Prospect notes that for a half-century conservatives have been digging up dirt on small government programs while ignoring the real waste, “like the trillions of dollars that get funneled up from ordinary taxpayers to elites like Elon Musk.” One reason DOGE is going after IT systems is to integrate AI into government operations. The purpose is to automate government work and use AI to catch discrepancies.

So you have a bunch of techno-futurists who think that the future of government efficiency is either cherry-picking stuff that sounds bad, or running everything through a supposed HAL 9000 super-computer to weed out the waste. Neither will accomplish their aims, and will probably lead to tons of negative consequences in the process.

Dayan titled his piece, “Government by Malicious Autopilot.” Down in the comments Regina Schrambling posted a cartoon by Pedro Molina:

Two weeks ago he said he wanted Panama. A week ago he said he wanted Canada, Yesterday he said he wanted Greenland. Today he said he wants Gaza. But what he really wants is the attention of the world while his minions destroy the USA.

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jen Sorensen titled “In the end it was a catch-22.” It shows a gay man and two women talking to a guy in a suit. The black woman says, “Hey, we’re feeling a little existentially threatened over here.” The suit responds, “So elitist and polarizing! You mustn’t alienate the people who demonize you.” Not so far down in the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Marco De Angelis. It shows a formal dinner with a waiter serving an apple. Around the table are people looking to enjoy that apple – Adam and Eve and the snake, Isaac Newton, William Tell and his son, Snow White and the witch, a couple I haven’t identified, and Bill Gates (though some say it should be Steve Jobs). In a separate post on Kos is Sorensen’s cartoon about the Consumer Financial Destruction Bureau. The tagline is a CFDB official saying, “Remember, the weak call strength ‘crime.’” At the top of a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos from Bill in Portland, Maine is a video from Denmark’s TV2. Several dozen people come into a room, each definable group standing in a square on the floor. There’s us and them, people we trust and people we avoid, the young and old, farmers and city dwellers. The announcer asks people of various characteristics to come forward to stand before a wall for a group photo. Who was the class clown? Who are stepparents? Who believes in life after death? Who has seen a UFO? Who loves to dance? Who has been bullied? Who has bullied? Who has had sex in the last week? Who feels lonely? Who is bisexual? (Only one came forward.) Who admires his courage? Who loves Denmark? That brings everyone forward. “Maybe there’s more that brings us together than we think.”