A liar, ineffective, or compromised

I leave for a short trip tomorrow afternoon. I probably won’t post again until Sunday or Monday. Then next Wednesday I leave again for a week. Abe Streep, in an article for ProPublica posted on Daily Kos, discussed the sale of federal lands in the West. A requirement to sell land, which I had mentioned, was thankfully pulled from the Big Brutal Bill. While land conservation groups, along with hunters and hikers, are cheering they must still be wary. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has been pushing for a federal land sale since he came to the Senate in 2010. The basic reason is the government has no need to hold on to it (conservation groups, hunters, hikers, and lots of other people who use federal land would disagree). Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976 and in 1980 Reagan campaigned on returning federal land to the states. Many Western states have a high percentage of land owned by the government. I think I remember seeing that the feds own 87% of Nevada. Streep provides a history of the efforts to sell or protect federal land. The desire to sell federal land got a boost recently from “coastal elites” who recognized building on former federal land could help ease the housing crisis. Utah is short 61K housing units and Nevada is short 118K units. Why not sell federal land near cities to build affordable housing? That isn’t so easy. Sell the land for what developers are willing to pay for it – perhaps $200K an acre – and costs are already too high for affordable housing. The Bureau of Land Management can sell it for the low price of $100 an acre (and they can sell it for whatever they want to promote the common good). But there are few takers. One problem is the law gets in the way, partly because its terms are not well defined, partly because the processes don’t favor the goals, and partly because developers make a whole lot more money from expensive houses than affordable units. Some deals have been made but are proceeding slowly. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin has a lot of quotes of people discussing the Epstein case. I’ll mention only one of them. Sahil Kapur quoted an article in the New York Times that quoted Natalie Winters, co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast:

She summed up the movement’s sense of betrayal this way: “I just think it’s frankly very grifty to have spent your entire career promoting, even if it weren’t the Epstein thing directly, but the idea that there is this deep state, the idea that there’s this unelected class of, you know, banker, corporation, countries, intel agencies, blah, blah, blah. And then finally, you have the power to expose it, and either you’re not because there’s nothing there, it which case it makes you a liar – and I don’t believe that – or you’re ineffective, or you’re compromised.” This twisted tale has raised fundamental questions about the limits of Mr. Trump’s abilities to control the conspiratorial forces he has plied in his pursuit of the presidency.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme:

So Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for a “made-up hoax by Obama, Comey, and Biden”? MAGAs, are you that stupid to believe your cult leader?

Maxwell was Epstein’s assistant and it seems the woman took the fall for much of what Epstein did – then again Epstein was in prison for those crimes and there was a lot of discussion on whether he committed suicide or was murdered so the details of his career would not be revealed in court. TheKingOfPies posted a cartoon showing an elephant and donkey:

Elephant: Trump’s fighting in other countries’ wars!?! Trump’s tariffs really are taxes Americans pay!?! Trump won’t release Epstein’s list of clients!?! Donkey: Are you just realizing Trump’s lies or are you admitting Trump lies?

When the nasty guy moved back into the White House Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland. Perhaps to distract from the Epstein scandal he called her a “Threat to Humanity” and said he would try to revoke her citizenship. GoodNewsRoundup of the Kos community posted the full text of O’Donnell’s rebuttal. Here’s a bit of it:

you call me a threat to humanity— but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman a queer woman a mother who tells the truth an american who got out of the country b4 you set it ablaze you build walls— I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists you crave loyalty— I teach my children to question power

A week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session of the state legislature to demand they make the state Congressional House districts even more gerrymandered in hopes of blunting the expected loss of seats to Democrats next year. Some Republicans in that Congressional delegation are concerned that in an attempt to make more Republican majority districts their margin in each district will be smaller, giving Democrats a better chance to win. Democrats say this is a craven political move to distract from the central Texas floods. Also a week ago Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy and his cabinet redefined a “federal public benefit” to prevent undocumented immigrants from accessing a wide range of resources. Previously, if a program such as Head Start or a food bank was administered at the community level the recipient didn’t get it directly from the federal government. That meant undocumented immigrants could apply. The new definition says that if the program is funded with federal money undocumented immigrants were banned from receiving the benefit. It means all these programs have to ask for documentation. It also means immigrants can’t use federally funded education and food programs mentioned plus are banned from many health and mental health clinics. Why make this change?

The administration has not been shy about using the tools of violence to push immigrants out of public life. But deploying soft power like this, by withholding resources, is just as dangerous—so of course they’re doing it.

They’re doing it because they can, because they want to make life for immigrants as difficult as possible, because they relish in being cruel. Biden and his Federal Trade Commission created the click-to-cancel rule. Canceling a subscription online must be as easy as signing up. A company can’t make signing up easy, done with a single click, yet extremely difficult to cancel. Needham reported of course, companies hate it, so they ran to a favorable court, this time the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. This was a safe court because it has only one judge appointed by a Democrat.

One of the bases for the ruling was that the FTC failed to do a preliminary regulatory analysis, required when a rule’s impact on the economy would exceed $100 million. Of course, the only way companies can complain that making it easier to cancel things would cost at least nine figures is to acknowledge that trapping people into paying for services they can’t cancel is a significant moneymaker.

The 8th Circuit gave its decision five days before the click-to-cancel rule was to go into effect.