Instead impose fines later if anything goes awry

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the Becerra v. Braidwood case to come before the Supreme Court. It challenges the constitutionality of preventive care requirements in the Affordable Care Act. These are things like testing for sexually transmitted diseases and coverage for PrEP, the drug that can prevent transmission of HIV, used by a lot of gay men. The case is brought by a company owned by Christian conservatives who don’t like STD testing and PrEP because they are “complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior.” Conservatives are attacking the ACA in court (they failed in Congress) with a two part plan. First, try to overturn people getting basic health care. Second, overturn mandating coverage for things evangelicals object to. This case does both. The case has already been through the court of Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas. He was appointed by Bush II. He gave the plaintiffs everything they wanted and more. Here’s where it’s really a problem. O’Connor blocked all preventive care requirements for insurance plans.

So, no more zero-cost coverage of heart statins (drugs that lower cholesterol), lung cancer screenings, and drugs that reduce the risk of breast cancer. Physical therapy for older people to decrease falls? Gone. Prenatal nutritional supplements? Gone. Screening for depression? Gone.

The 5th Circuit Court, reliably conservative, agreed, though they said O’Connor’s ruling applies only to the conservative company that brought the suit, not to the nation as a whole. However, that’s an invitation for more companies to sue for the same ruling. So both parties requested the Supremes take the case.

Perhaps worst of all, the conservatives on the Supreme Court lack compassion. Justice Samuel Alito will not be swayed by the fact that preventive-care requirements help increase health equity, ensuring better outcomes for women of color. Justice Clarence Thomas will not be bothered by the fact that upholding O’Connor’s decision could eliminate nearly three-quarters of the ACA’s preventive care for women, infants, and children. Justice Amy Coney Barrett will not care if getting rid of PrEP coverage causes HIV rates to skyrocket. This case gives the conservative justices a chance to make life harder for people they hate while also making the work of government much more difficult. It’s hard to imagine they’ll pass up the opportunity to do just that.

Alex Samuels of Kos worked from a report from the Associated Press discussing career civil servants who work in the National Security Council, the people who do the work to make sure the nation is secure. These people are being scrutinized for their fealty to the nasty guy. As one might expect, many are quitting. That might be what the nasty guy wants. But that means the NSC will be understaffed, maybe for quite a while. And that leaves our national security exposed. Andrew Mangan of Kos wrote that the nasty guy’s desire to make Canada a US state would backfire. The reason is simple. While Canada has five parties represented in their Parliament, even the most conservative party would correspond to centrist Republicans with the rest further to the left. That means if they were a part of the US in the last election they would have added three times more votes for Harris than for the nasty guy. Canada has 41.5 million people, about two million more than California. That means it would get 48 House seats. Democrats would get 31 seats and Republicans 17, which would flip the chamber. Yeah, gerrymandering would balance that out a bit. As for the Senate, would all of Canada be one state? If so, Democrats would not flip the Senate. But if each province became a state that would be twenty more Democratic senators. Alix Breeden of Kos discussed the real reason why the nasty guy wants Greenland. He has said the US needs Greenland for national and economic security. That’s because...

Greenland is a treasure trove of minerals the U.S. needs to compete with China, and the island hasn’t been quick (enough) to fork them over. More specifically, Greenland has neodymium and dysprosium. These extremely rare elements—used for electric motors, wind turbines, and other electronics—are found in healthy amounts and lay widely untouched across Greenland. Thanks to climate change, the once iced-over minerals are now up for grabs. ... With Greenland’s minerals—not to mention their untapped oil resources—the U.S. would be able to rely less, or not at all, on China’s supply.

The nasty guy isn’t the only one trying to grab, though the locals are pretty good at giving the boot. China has tried, as have the UK, Canada, and US billionaires. Musk’s companies SpaceX and Tesla are well known. He has others, including The Boring Company, as in boring holes in the ground. Daniel Rothberg of ProPublica and Dayvid Figler of City Cast Las Vegas, in an article posted on Kos, did some research into that company. Musk proposed an idea, a way to reduce traffic. He would bore tunnels under a city and supply electric cars to whisk people through those tunnels. Sounds pretty sweet! But California said no. So did Illinois. And Baltimore/Washington. The reasons for the rejection is that Musk’s environmental impact studies were woefully inadequate. Finally, Las Vegas said yes. Well, the Convention and Visitors Authority did. They started with a loop under the Convention Center, a 0.8 mile route that opened in 2021. It’s a private project and receives no federal funding. There are plans for more later, perhaps 104 stations across 68 miles of tunnels under the city and to the airport.

The project is also realizing Musk’s notion of how government officials should deal with entrepreneurs: avoid lengthy reviews before building and instead impose fines later if anything goes awry. Musk’s views on regulatory power have taken on new significance in light of his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump and his role in a new effort to slash rules in the name of improving efficiency. The Las Vegas project, now well under way, is a case study of the regulatory climate Musk favors.

Impose fines later if anything goes awry? I hope you’re enough of an environmentalist to understand the gigantic flaw in that statement. Tunneling underground encounters groundwater. It may contain contaminates or the boring process may introduce them. Improper disposal of that water pollutes the disposal area. And cleaning up that contamination is much harder than preventing it. The consequences of “gone awry” can be quite severe. Its victims may be permanently harmed. Paying fines may not repair or compensate for the harm. That’s especially true if the company pays top lawyers to litigate the case to avoid paying the fine. I don’t intend to declare that all construction should be banned because someone or something might be harmed, perhaps severely. But we have environmental and workplace safety rules so that companies know the ways to reduce the harm, to learn from and understand the situations that have happened in the past and have a chance of happening now. Musk wants to avoid all those “regulations,” better understood as worker and environmental protections. Yeah, the boring encountered groundwater. And Musk is accused of handling it in ways that increase the damage. Boring workers have also filed complaints about other workplace hazards. Yet, Musk still has been working to circumvent oversight. Tunneling to the airport means complying with Federal Aviation Administration regulations and federal environmental reviews. So the company plans to end its tunnels perhaps a mile away. And that does nothing for congestion at the terminal – which better traditional mass transit could relieve. Even with the abysmal environmental record the Las Vegas City Council is still in favor of extending the tunnels. That’s because hotels are pleading for better ways to move the crowds around. Musk has the nasty guy’s ear. Musk wants to operate without consumer, worker, and environmental protections. Consumers, workers, and the environment will be harmed. He’ll work to block the fines. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos are several cartoons about how close Musk and other billionaires are to the nasty guy. And exlrrp posted a meme:

Musk’s Wealth 2012: $2 billion 2024: $447 billion Bezos’s Wealth 2012: $18 billion 2024: $249 billion Zuckerberg’s Wealth 2012: $44 billion 2024: $224 billion USA Minimum Wage 2009: $7.25 an hour 2024: $7.25 an hour

In the comments of a pundit roundup that has been hiding in my browser tabs since early August is a meme posted by user Proginoskes.

Bubba: I vote Republican to keep Foreigners, Minorities, Women, Socialists, Gays, and Liberals from ruining my life. Billionaire: I vote Republican to keep this moron from realizing I’m the only one ruining his life.

Bringing joy back to politics

If you pay attention to the news you’ve heard that Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos had the job on that site of officially bringing the news to our attention, though community members also posted early. Einenkel talked a bit of the good stuff Walz has done for his state before comparing Walz to the opposition – as in all the weird stuff Walz has not done. An Associated Press article posted on Kos has a lot more on who Walz is – where he grew up (small town Nebraska), how well he he has worked with Republicans, and that he could help in the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (Blue wall, because if the Democratic candidate can keep all three they win, if they lose any one winning will be quite difficult). I was amused with a news report with Walz saying his hometown was so small his graduating class had 24 people – and 12 of them were cousins. That reminded me of my father, a generation older, who graduated in a class even smaller. jaybeleriand of the Kos community posted a photo that’s going viral, though it was taken a while back. Walz has just signed the bill for the state’s program for free lunch for public school students. He’s being hugged by a scrum of kids. The picture captures something that’s been missing in politics for way too long. That something is joy. Just by bringing joy back to politics will go a long way in this election. Last week Biden proposed reforms for the Supreme Court – a binding code of ethics, term limits of 18 years, and a constitutional amendment removing presidential immunity. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that Chuck Schumer has introduced in the Senate the No Kings Act to do something about the presidential immunity part. This act won’t have the force of a constitutional amendment, however it carefully explains why the Constitution gives Congress the power to do what’s in the bill. Second, the bill clearly explains who can challenge the law – only current and former presidents and vice presidents. This prevents conservatives from getting anyone to challenge the law, whether or not they’ve been harmed by it, something this Supreme Court has been way too wiling to ignore. Third, the case can be heard by the DC District Court and appealed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals – and not the Supreme Court. Finally, the law will be retroactive. Previous Supreme Court rulings have allowed laws that say a law can be retroactive and can prevent the Supremes from ruling on it. There have also been several times when the Supremes issued a decision, followed by Congress overturning it. The only thing that will happen to this bill before a new Congress is seated in January is a Senate vote that forces Republicans to vote against it. And, before the election, that may be enough. Joan McCarter of Kos reported Justice Neil Gorsuch, during an appearance on Fox News, issued a veiled threat with a hidden topic and hidden target. Here are the parts McCarter quoted:

The independent judiciary … means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution. If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights—you’re popular. It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you—when the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? ... I’m not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year. I don’t think that would be helpful. ... I just say: Be careful.

McCarter wrote, “That’s a nice little fiction he’s trying to create,” considering the big gifts he and his cronies have given corporations, how little they’ve respected the rights of the little people, and how much they’ve gutted rights. Who is Gorsuch telling to be careful? A president and Congress trying to make the Supremes behave? Voters who might vote for reforms? Chief Justice Roberts? Only Gorsuch knows. The Michigan Constitution allows for citizen initiatives, which are different from citizen led amendments to the state Constitution. The people wanting the initiative collect a required number of signatures. Then the legislature may approve the initiative. If it does, the governor does not get to sign it or veto it, and it does not go on the ballot. If the legislature doesn’t approve it then it goes on the next general election ballot. For about 40 years, until two years ago, Republicans used gerrymandering to control the state legislature. At least once they used the citizen initiative to approve an abortion restriction they knew the Democratic governor would not sign. I don’t remember how far that got. Back in 2018 citizens had gathered enough signatures for a minimum wage/sick leave increase initiative. The Republican legislature approved it, which kept it off the ballot. And after the election, in the lame-duck session, they reopened the provision and loaded it with so many amendments that it was essentially gutted. Anna Liz Nochols of Michigan Advance reported last week that the Michigan Supreme Court said, nope, you can’t do that. The decision was 4-3 along party lines. The court said that if the voters had approved the provision the legislature would not have been allowed to amend it. So they can’t approve and amend. One of the judges called it “anti-democratic,” saying ever wonder why public opinion of politicians is so low? It’s tricks like this. I don’t know why almost six years has passed between when the legislature pulled this stunt and when the Supreme Court told them they can’t do it. So the minimum wage in Michigan will go up in February. Second, the minimum wage for tip workers (which is mighty small because restaurants assume servers will get enough in tips to cover the difference and twisted lawmaker arms accordingly) will also rise and within a few years be phased out. Third, workers get a minimum paid sick leave. Workers and Democrats praise the ruling. Republicans and small business owners call it devastating with Republican lawmakers demanding the legislature immediately be called back from summer break to “fix” it. They describe a catastrophe of small businesses laying off servers or closing, their usual apocalyptic way of describing things.

About 91% of restaurant owners say they will raise prices on menus and rooms and 58% said they’ll lay off employees to offset changes to minimum wage and sick leave, a survey published by the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association in September 2022 found.

Perhaps. I noticed something not listed there: Restaurants saying their servers are now being well paid so the customer doesn’t need to tip as much. That got me thinking about my travels last month and how often when I made a purchase the worker would flip their computer screen over to show me all the options for entering a tip. These kinds of places did not have servers that brought food to me. I had to get it from the counter.

Poison pills for every bill

I finished the book The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer. It is both gay and science fiction, a great combination! The story starts about 400 years from now. The narrator is Ambrose Cusk of the rich Cusk family and the Fédération, one of the last two countries on earth. He even graduated from Cusk Academy with top honors. He wakes up to see he’s on a spaceship. The problem isn’t that he’s on the spaceship, it’s that he doesn’t remember the launch. The mission is to rescue his sister Minerva who went to Saturn’s moon Titan to establish a colony and she set off a distress beacon. Already, I’m thinking what’s with these missions of just one person? That doesn’t sound wise. There are other weird things about the mission. What Ambrose thought was his entire spaceship he discovers is only half and in the other half is for Kodiak Celius of Dimokratía, the other remaining country. The culture of Fédération feels very American and Dimokratía feels very Russian, so yeah, they’re supposed to be enemies. More weird things: They have lost contact with Mission Control on earth and it can’t be restored. There are rooms the AI (which uses Ambrose’ Mother’s voice) running the ship won’t let them into. They find a damaged panel with dried blood that matches Ambrose but is a couple thousand years old. When Ambrose does meet the aloof Kodiak he feels the attraction immediately. Since Ambrose is narrating we don’t know for quite a while if Kodiak has reciprocal feelings. They are lovers, but they’re more partners, partly because there is no one else. The weirdness increases, then turns to violence and cruelty. I’m wondering: What is going on? I won’t explain because the mystery is a good part of the book’s experience. The reader needs to feel the confusion as Ambrose and Kodiak do. The cruelty and weirdness are soon partially explained. Only much later is the true mission of the journey explained. That mission is one used in a large number of science fiction stories. And that leaves the big question: Why did the author choose a mission profile that is based on so much cruelty? Is this the only scenario he could come up with in which two enemies could fall into love? Overall, I did enjoy the book. Ambrose and Kodiak are pretty sweet characters and handle their predicament well. Last week Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported on the nasty guy’s campaign’s plan for mayhem after the election. Senior campaign advisor Chris LaCivita told Politico’s Jonathon Martin: “It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath.” Add to that a statement by Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, according to The Washington Post: “As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election.” Also, LaCivita wonders why we’re obsessed over the “stolen” election even as the nasty guy keeps talking about it and saying we soon won’t have to bother with elections anymore. Back in June, before my travels, Mark Sumner of Kos discussed that Republicans know how to win even without the votes. Over the past four years Republicans have worked to consolidate their control over low-level election officers – the people who oversee and certify elections.

As The Washington Post reports, Trump-aligned county officials have refused to certify results following elections in five swing states since 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania—exactly the states Trump disputed in the last election. So far, none of these attempts has successfully blocked certification. Most efforts have run into state rules governing the counting of results, or succeeded only in delaying results until another authority could enforce certification. But don’t think of these attempts as failures. Think of them as experiments. Think of them as a tiger prowling its cage, testing each bar, and looking for a weakness. Republicans are investigating how these roles can be used to interfere with the quick and accurate generation of election results. They are looking for ways that, by refusing to certify the vote at the district or county level, they can prevent the vote from being certified at the state level. And they’re not even trying to keep these actions secret.

Even if these actions are overturned, they will take time. They increase the doubt that the election was fair and accurate, and they might prevent a state from certifying its results by the deadline to select electors.

If Project 2025 is the autocratic agenda for what happens if Trump wins, this is the flip side—what happens if he loses. And the biggest goal is simply to make it impossible for Trump to lose.

The team trying to overturn the 2020 election didn’t know what they were doing. They’ve had four years to prepare for 2024. On Monday Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote:

On Monday, Ohio state Sen. George Lang introduced Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, at a rally by saying, “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's J.D. Vance are the last chance to save our country politically.” Fair enough. “I'm afraid if we lose this one,” Lang continued, “it's going to take a civil war to save the country.” ... This isn’t the first time a Trump ally has threatened violence if the majority of Americans don’t comply with the MAGA agenda. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts recently said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The old trick of saying: The problem isn’t me taking over the country and oppressing you, the problem is you trying to stop me. I’m keeping in mind the America they want to “save” is the one where the straight white Christian males claiming to be at the top of the social hierarchy have permission to oppress anyone lower in the hierarchy that they want to. McCarter reported now that Biden has dropped out of the race for President the House Republican investigations into Biden, in hopes of uncovering an impeachable offense, have been abandoned. Which is proof that the effort has always been political. In the meantime the House efforts to pass spending bills has been so caught up in Republican v. Freedom Caucus battles the House might take their August break two weeks early – and still remain out until Labor Day. The Freedom Caucus wants poison pills for every bill. Sumner wrote:

Trump and Republicans are trying to put forward a mock unity that mostly consists of mouthing platitudes while reducing calls for retribution. But as the hall of yawning Republican delegates showed at the Republican National Convention this week, without their calls for violence, they have nothing else. They were forced to put on a circus act, just to kill time and try to stir the listless crowd.

Also, the nasty guy can’t keep his mouth shut and his vocabulary is limited to whining and making threats. The nasty guy has fed his white male base through that whining and making threats. So how to keep them happy without keeping up the calls for vengeance? Don’t worry. Now that the convention is over the calls for violence will return. Kos of Kos reminds us there is now only one guy in the presidential race who is old.

Don’t worry, Republicans will soon levy their sexist, racist attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris. That is absolutely ahead of us. But for years now, they have built a narrative that being old is a bad thing. Heck, they just wasted a whole week at their convention railing against Biden’s age. Now, for the last three or so months of this campaign, they’ll get to wear that albatross around their neck.

Nick Anderson posted a cartoon on Kos it shows a big sign on the side of the RNC headquarters that says “Don’t vote for the Old Guy.” A worker is starting to paint over it as a guy at the door yells, “Hurry up.” Now is probably a good time to pull out some stuff that has been languishing in my browser tabs. The old family farm, built around 1900, has a way to get from the basement (I think Grandma called it the “cellar”) directly to the yard. The doors were not vertical but diagonal over the stairway. Grandma used the doors to take the laundry from the washing machine to the clothesline for drying. I mention all that because most younger people probably are not familiar with such doors. And if you are unfamiliar, just look at this cartoon. It is from February and is by David Horsley and is captioned “The rats in America’s cellar.” It shows emerging from that cellar a guy with a white power shirt, another with a Klan hat, a bit of a Confederate flag in the back, and all with guns. Willie Ross Jr tweeted:

We know that Trump didn't create racism. But, do you think he gave his followers permission to be and practice racism?

Pastor David Hayward posted a cartoon of the nasty guy dressed as a shepherd. One sheep tells the others, “He says the art of the deal is we pray for him and he preys on us.” Jen Sorensen of Kos posted a cartoon with the title “Many white Americans fail to assimilate.” It shows them in self-segregated neighborhoods, such as “Caucasion Pointe.” They fly the flag of a foreign country, such as the Confederacy. And they refuse to speak contemporary English, clinging to old offensive terms. McCarter reported that yesterday marks the 15th anniversary of the last time the minimum wage was raised. It has been at $7.25 all this time. Yes, many states have created higher minimum wages, but many states, mostly Republican led, have not. And Republicans are good at using cultural war issues to distract from not raising it. In that time the cost of many items, such as rent and groceries, have gone up about 50%. Those earning minimum wage take home only $14,500 a year, far below the federal poverty level. Yet, CEO pay went up 13% just last year. When the last attempt to raise the minimum wage happened Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrats, made sure it failed. They’ll be gone next year. But will the government be in Democratic hands? Sumner wrote that Elon Musk bragged about how much he was donating to PACs to help the nasty guy’s campaign. And it was quite a bit. But now he is pretending he isn’t giving that support. What changed? Tesla’s profits. They dropped 45%. Republicans don’t buy electric cars because the nasty guy told them not to, because the nasty guy gets big donations from Big Oil. Democrats do buy electric cars, but when Must became so loud in his support of the nasty guy Democrats stopped buying Teslas. They can bypass that brand with so many other electric vehicles now available.

Claiming fake is real, and real is fake

California raised the minimum wage for some fast-food workers to $20 an hour. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the DailyKos community discussed it. There is the predictable outrage from corporate America and the newspapers that support their view.

Naturally, any public policy change of this scope is going to have ripple effects, and, indeed, if you do a quick Google News search on California’s new law, you’ll see one hand-wringing article after another that focuses on potential price increases, lost jobs, and pared-back hours. In other words, if you buy into the usual pro-corporate, anti-minimum wage arguments, you’re inclined to believe this new law will actually hurt the workers it purports to help.

What those articles leave out is the greed of the corporate bosses, who have made out quite well in the last 50 years while workers haven’t. Those articles also don’t say:

In a recent commentary for Cal Matters, the economists argue that minimum wage hikes can actually help fast-food restaurants by making it easier for them to retain their workforce creating more experienced, productive staff, lowering recruitment and retention costs.

This is all part of Biden’s effort to refute the Reagan era trickle-down economics.

Bidenomics, according to Biden himself, is about growing the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up.”

I had written the nasty guy posted a bond to cover $175 million of his legal judgment to allow him to file an appeal. I also wrote there seemed to be some shaky things about that bond. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports New York state wants more information about the bond. Things like: Is the issuing company sound and can they pay the amount of the bond? Is there sufficient collateral in identifiable assets? Biden went off to Baltimore to inspect the damage of the bridge collapse. He reaffirmed his commitment that the federal government will pay 100% of the cost of rebuilding the bridge because it is so essential to regional economy and national supply chain. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that before Biden formally submitted the funding request to Congress the Freedom Caucus has already issued its ransom note. They say they’ll support it only if the money comes from other federal programs. This isn’t the first time the FC has tried to block disaster relief funding. They did so for Hurricane Katrina relief in 2005, Hurricane Sandy relief in 2018 and wildfire relief in Puerto Rico in 2019. Others pointed out when the disaster relief is needed in red states the FC is quite willing to vote for it. And Maryland is a blue state. At the end of March Princess Kate recorded a video announcing she has cancer. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that minutes after it was released social media swarmed with claims that it was an AI deep fake. The suspicion is somewhat understandable because Kate had released a family photo that was obviously manipulated. Kate had admitted as much. The BBC tried to assure the public that the video was fake because they filmed it. The rumors persisted.

For years, when people warned against the threat of AI tools generating audio, images, and video, the biggest concern was that these tools might be used to generate convincing fakes of public figures in compromising positions. But the flip side of that possibility may be an even greater issue. Just the existence of these tools is threatening to deplatform reality.

AI is getting good enough that distinguishing real from fake is getting hard and AI will only get better. It will be harder to dismiss an AI image as fake. It will also be easier to claim a real image was generated by AI.

But even before the flood of fakes arrives, we’re having to deal with what may be the more debilitating effect of this improving suite of tools—a profound doubt about the statements, images, and videos that are not fake.

That has serious implications for both Princess Kate and elections in any democracy. Kellyanne Conway was a spokesperson for the nasty guy and is now a Fox News contributor. Walter Einenkel of Kos wrote of the latest line she is using against Democrats. They aren’t saying “thoughts and prayers” enough and therefore are at war with religion. Sheesh! She seems to think that’s what the Bible commands us to do, rather than doing important things such as banning guns to reduce killings, making sure the poor have enough money to feed and house themselves and perhaps get adequate education to get a better job (or any job), and offering support for the immigrant. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary.

"Trans Visibility Day had no effect on your Easter. Nobody was at church like, 'Well, we were gonna celebrate the resurrection, but instead everyone line up for your gender reassignment surgery.' … And for what it's worth, there's a false premise to this entire controversy, which is that there's even a conflict between trans people and Christianity to begin with—there isn't! In fact, the Bible doesn’t say anything about trans people. It does, however, say to love thy neighbor, and to not judge other people, and perhaps the most famous of bible verses: Please do not sell me for $59.95 to pay off your rape fines." —The Daily Show guest host Desi Lydic, on the MAGA freak-out because Easter coincided with the Day of Transgender Visibility “According to a new report from the real estate website Zillow, the worst time to purchase a home is in the fall or winter. And the best time is in 1958.” —Seth Meyers.

Kos user exlrrp posted a meme in the comments of a pundit roundup. It shows the nasty guy sitting in a church pew with wife and children. The text says, “The same people who think Obama is a Muslim think Trump is a Christian.” In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev of Kos quoted Paul Kane of the Washington Post who wrote about senior Congressional staffers, the workers who actually get stuff done. I’ve written about House members who have the bickering and are leaving or have left, soon giving Republicans only a one vote margin. Staff people are leaving too.

Most congressional aides have gone to college and studied public policy or political science, and maybe have an advanced degree in law or some key issue area. They largely come to Washington to try to shape things toward their party’s ideological vision of things. But now, too often, newer members of Congress show up without much concern about policy and instead focus on their communications staff and getting attention on social media and cable news. [...] Their collective ire also goes toward the representatives and senators themselves, who have amped up their bombast so much that it makes it harder for aides to secure the goodwill needed to do their jobs effectively. Almost half of senior aides strongly agreed that the tone taken by lawmakers “inhibits the ability of staffers to collaborate across party lines.”

In the comments is a cartoon by Weyant and posted by Chunterkap that shows a guy with a red cap holding the sign saying, “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” And Biden replies, “And they think I have a bad memory!”

When people die because they don't have health care, I had to bury them

My Sunday movie was the documentary That Pärt Feeling, about modern Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. I’ve known about his music for quite a while and have heard several of his pieces both on the radio and live in concert. I think his most famous piece is Fratres. This documentary featured Pärt coaching Cello Octet Amsterdam. There were also several other leaders of various instrumental and choral ensembles describing what it’s like to perform his music as we heard their groups perform. This included an orchestra in Kinshasa, Congo. Pärt is quite spiritual and religious. In spite of his musical success he leads a simple life. His music is described with words like simple but hard to get right. Like thin ice, beautiful yet full of danger. It’s serene and draws people into connection. He was born in 1935 and his musical training was when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union. His early compositions were under that influence. In the mid 1970s he saw that style and influence was not for him. He withdrew from musical life for a bit to come up with his own style. An example of that simplicity and serenity is his piece Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror) for violin and piano. This piece was not included in the movie. There are performances on YouTube, one with a score, many without. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed Republicans and the Supreme Court. The Court has been issuing a string of conservative rulings to the delight of Republicans. But at the end of the last term the Court issued a not conservative ruling – Alabama was ordered to redraw its Congressional districts to create a second black majority district. It looks like Republicans have no trouble ignoring rulings they don’t like. The Alabama legislature did redo their map and a second district has more black people, but it isn’t the majority the Voting Rights Act and the Court required. The original plaintiffs are, of course, back in a lower court. Some say Republicans may be OK if the court draws new maps – as a way of saying yeah, there’s another black district, but we didn’t create it. Others think no matter what the lower courts do the case will be back before the Supremes. Dartagnan noted Republicans also want to ignore laws that the nasty guy broke. Which means in the conservative mind the only laws that matter are the ones that coincide with conservative interests. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Ishmael Reed of El País in English:

Rather than exist in a society where members of all ethnic groups have an opportunity for success, millions of American whites would approve of a dictatorship. Ten million would restore Donald Trump to the presidency by force. Recent polls show that Biden and Trump are tied in the presidential race even though Trump said he would suspend parts of the Constitution and construct an all-powerful executive branch with him as the head.

Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos discussed Project 2025, a blueprint for whichever Republican can get into the White House. The document is over 900 pages and it is a battle plan to dismantle the nation’s regulatory framework. Among its goals: block expansion of renewable energy and close the Department of Energy renewable energy office. Cut the EPA environment justice office. Prevent other states from adopting California’s car pollution standards. In summary: stop the federal government’s climate work, block the transition to clean energy, and shift government agencies from regulating the fossil fuel industry to supporting it. Of course, this was released at the end of the hottest month in 125,000 years and when green energy projects are contributing to keeping the economy humming.

To sum up, this horrifying, planet-killing initiative would likely make climate change orders of magnitude worse while undermining the domestic economy and benefiting narrow, entrenched, obscenely wealthy interests. In other words, everything Republicans have been doing for decades—only more so.

Hunter of Kos discussed the heat and the effort of Pablo Manríquez of The New Republic who asked several Congressional Republicans about the heat their own constituents are cooking under. And Hunter heard that “the mocking contempt for the question positively drips from every mouth.” Steve Scalise dismissed the weather as “Southern Louisiana is always hot.” Ted Cruz said, “There are lots of people who have political agendas, and whatever happens with the weather they attribute to climate change. That's not science, it’s ideology.” So the phrase, “Hottest on record” is meaningless and is only a chance to mock. NPR host A Martínez talked to Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign about the federal minimum wage that hasn’t been raised in 14 years. We’re at a point where full time at $15 isn’t a living wage – $20 is. Some of the things Barber talked about: Both Republicans and Democrats could have raised the minimum wage – and haven’t. Both parties praised the pandemic essential workers and the minimum wasn’t raised. Barber mentioned four lies that have kept the minimum wage where it is: 1. Raising the minimum will increase inflation. Debunked by economists. 2. Personal immorality rather than societal immorality that doesn’t provide a living wage. 3. The current $7.25 puts one above the poverty level. 4. The culture wars – trans people, immigrants – are the problem when they’re really a distraction so we don’t notice the culture warriors are the same ones blocking living wages. Barber explained why he is a leader of this campaign:

I was a pastor for 40 years, almost - 30 years at one church. When people die because they don't have health care, I had to bury them. When people are stressed out and die, stroke out because they working so hard, I had to bury them. And I could not stand up in that pulpit and say, God called them home, and this was a natural death. This is policy murder. I've had to watch families be torn apart because they couldn't - they never were home with each other 'cause they were trying to do everything they could. And they are just living in so much anger because they would see these politicians getting all this money and all these CEOs getting this money, and all they wanted - all they wanted was a living wage, that's all. They just wanted the basics of life.

Aaron Mendelson of the Center for Public Integrity interviewed Santiago Mayer of Voters of Tomorrow that has the goal of boosting Gen Z voting. The interview was posted on Kos. Here’s one exchange:

Q. In recent months in 2023, we've seen this concerted effort from Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Ohio and Idaho to make it more difficult for young people to vote. The conservative election denier Cleta Mitchell recently said, “They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm. So they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.” Why do you think these politicians are so aggressively going after student voters? A: Because they're terrified of us. That's the simple answer. They are terrified because they know that young people are not buying what they're selling. We've seen it in 2018. We've seen it in 2020. We've seen it in 2022. Young people are turning away from the hate-filled platform that many people on the right have. I don't think that describing Gen Z as a Democratic generation is accurate. What Gen Z is really looking for is a future that works for them, and a government that works for them, and that protects them. And what we have seen from people on the right, especially over the last few years, and with people like Cleta Mitchell, is that they acknowledge what is happening, they know young people are rejecting them. But they refuse to really turn their platform around. And they are much more interested in continuing this wave of hate and harassment against LGBTQ+ rights, of turning back rights that my generation has never lived without, like abortion rights.

Mark Kreidler, writing for Capital and Main and posted on Kos wrote about the Hollywood strikes.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” one executive told the news site Deadline. Added another, “It’s been agreed to for months, even before the WGA went out.” A third industry source called the tactic “a cruel but necessary evil.”

Kreidler then tied the Hollywood strikes to the strike by the Los Angeles hotel workers. They haven’t gone on general strike, but are targeting a few hotels at a time.

Decades of deregulated takeover and consolidation across major U.S. industries have struck a hard blow to labor power. Unions are often in the position of negotiating not with their direct employer, but rather with one facet of a much, much larger conglomerate—one with nearly limitless resources and a constant eye on stock price. These corporations, often multinationals, can wait out almost any single labor situation. They may not always want to, but they can. That tips the balance of power, creates a new layer of anxiety for those with livelihoods on the line, and potentially makes negotiating brutally difficult.

There has been a lot of consolidation on both the hotel industry and in Hollywood.

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who was formerly a labor and employment lawyer for several Hollywood studios, wrote recently that for these conglomerates, “The production of entertainment/content might be a sliver of their overall business. …If some banks are ‘too big to fail,’ these companies might be ‘too big to successfully strike.’”

How can voters trust you to defend democracy?

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I think new cases per day has his a plateau, even with the omicron variant 5. The peaks over the last few weeks have been 2043, 2265, 2140, and 1768. The deaths per day has stayed low, under 20 a day for the last five weeks. Back in 2018 Michigan citizens gathered enough signatures to put a couple proposals on the ballot. These were not amendments to the state constitution. They were proposals for laws put forth by citizens. The Michigan version of this process has a twist – the legislature can enact the proposal, and if so it won’t go on the ballot. And when the legislature does that the governor cannot veto it. So, yeah, the Republicans in control of the legislature have been manipulating this method. A group gathered signatures to put voter suppression measures on the ballot. This gets them around the Democratic governor, who had vetoed similar bills in the past. It wouldn’t actually get on the ballot, where it might fail. This particular proposal didn’t turn in signatures by the deadline because there was signature fraud. But they weren’t aiming for the ballot anyway and could turn signatures in later. A second method of manipulation was to adopt the measure once the signatures were turned in, which would keep it off the ballot, then “amend” (gut) the provision in the lame duck session after the election. In 2018 they did that to two proposals, one on minimum wage and the other on paid sick leave. Of course, proponents of these proposals were furious. And they took it to court. Nearly four years later the Michigan Court of Claims ruled this “adopt and amend” strategy is unconstitutional. The legislature cannot amend a citizen proposal. And since the legislature adopted them, they are now law. I’m not sure how paid sick leave works though it is now better than it was. For minimum wage it is $12 an hour now rather than rising to $12 an hour by 2030. It also increases the tipped minimum wage to be on par with the regular minimum by 2024. Before now the tipped minimum was $3.75 because the law assumed tips would make up the difference. I had heard about this story on Michigan Radio as a news item, so they didn’t have the full story online. Another favorite Michigan news outlet didn’t mention it. I did find a source with a link to share with you – the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. After stating the basics they added their editorial about how “crippling” this will be for businesses and their hope it will be appealed to the state supremes to be overturned. No sympathy from me. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the forced birther nightmare is now here. She presented several cases of horrors of people who cannot get abortions. We’re going to be hearing a lot more of these stories. There’s the story of a 10 year old rape survivor who had to go from Ohio to Indiana for care. A Texas hospital let a woman bleed until she almost died before treating her ectopic pregnancy. A Wisconsin woman nearly bled to death over 10 days before her incomplete miscarriage was treated. A common theme in these cases is the doctors are fearful of being sued under whatever their state law is. If an abortion is allowed to be done to save the life of the mother, how sick or how close to death does she have to be before treatment can be given and lawsuit avoided? These stories may have stayed hidden in the 1960s. They won’t be hidden now. And they shouldn’t. They will be evidence of Republican cruelty. Dorothy Roberts tweeted:

How close to death do patients experiencing pregnancy complications have to come before doctors in forced pregnancy states can treat them without risking criminal prosecution? What kind of barbaric question is that?

Jonathan Metzl, Director of Medicine Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, added, along with a link to an article in the New York Magazine:

Similarly, the notion of picking "a side between the baby or the mother" is a wholly false construct in many medical emergencies like ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Fetus is not viable, denying treatment is matricide.

Evelyn Lomax replied to Metzl with a meme:

Hint: If you oppose abortion rights, which Jesus never mentioned, because you are so deeply Christian; but support the death penalty, which Jesus directly opposed, the rest of us are no longer obliged to take your Christianity seriously. – John Fugelsang

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post who discussed how to prevent Republicans from avoiding questions about what the nasty guy did. Another reporter had asked Arizona Governor Ducey whether the nasty guy’s conduct should disqualify him. Ducey gave a non-answer. Rubin gave several possible follow up questions that should be used to force elected officials and candidates to discuss democracy. Here are some of them:

How can voters trust you to defend democracy if you cannot rule out supporting the instigator of a coup attempt? Should pressuring the Justice Department to “just say” the election was fraudulent despite any evidence of fraud be permissible? Is it acceptable to urge an armed mob to march to the Capitol to stop the count of electoral votes?

Now that Sen. Manchin has scuttled Biden’s climate bills Meteor Blades of Kos reported on what Biden might do on his own. There are a few executive orders Biden might announce soon. He could also announce a climate emergency, though he likely won’t do that yet. Many are urging him to declare and emergency, saying if now isn’t the time, when is? The Brennan Center for Justice put together a list of over 130 statues that give Biden special powers once an emergency is declared. Blades mentioned a few, which I’ll summarize: * Oil leases have clauses to suspend them in an emergency. Invoking that seems logical if the emergency was caused by oil. * He can respond to industrial shortfalls, such as batteries for electrical vehicles and components for renewable energy. * The Secretary of Transportation could “coordinate transportation” as in restricting high emission vehicles. * Invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to handle an extraordinary threat that is mostly outside the US to impose sanctions against companies and countries trafficking in fossil fuels. Of course, it will be litigated. Describing the situation terms of national security might splinter the Supreme Six. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois tweeted a thread:

One of the great tragedies of the Senate's climate failure this week is that fossil fuel workers are going to bear the brunt of their failure, in spite of their claims to be on their side. And there is no better place to see that tragedy than West Virginia.

Casten then provides numbers of what has happened in West Virginia since Manchin joined the Senate in 2010. There is a drop in employment in mining and logging. A drop in population. A drop in total jobs and workforce participation. An increase in suicides and drug overdoses. A drop in wealth.

So fewer jobs, less money, more suicide and more overdoses. This is the direct result of a policy environment that has doubled down on failing industries, elevated the interests of mine owners over labor and failed to provide a social safety net to those in need. To be clear, Manchin is not unique. His political views are, in fact shared by the majority of the US Senate. But if you want to know where that policy agenda leads, you need look no further than WV. The American people deserve so much better than what the US Senate is capable of providing them.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the trial of Twitter suing Elon Musk for backing out of his purchase deal now has a date. There was a preliminary hearing yesterday in which both sides laid out their basics. Sumner wrote Twitter’s basic is this: “Musk isn’t just welching on a deal, he’s trying to burn down his opponent in the process.” The trial is to be held in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Delaware is very pro business – a lot of corporate documents say they are registered in Delaware. So they have a court for business disputes. After laying out what Musk did Sumner wrote (bracketed words are his):

The reason that all this is intolerable to the Delaware court is simple enough to understand by substituting [Generic Rich Guy] and [Target Acquisition] into the above scenario. If what Musk did was okay, then anyone who has enough money to mount a supposed acquisition could make an offer to buy, gain access to company data, then use this data to bring the company down. Imagine this scenario in terms of a tech CEO buying out a rival, or someone like Rupert Murdoch going after a rival network. In either case, the [Generic Rich Guy] knocks the stuffing out of [Target Acquisition] with next to no investment. And now that the target company is worth a fraction of that original offer, the would-be buyer could either walk away and leave behind the wreckage, or pick up the remains for a song. It’s a form of corporate sabotage that not only invites those with deep pockets to rampage over any potential corporation, it’s economically terrifying in the sense that it makes corporations impossible to value. In almost any market, whether it’s the local yard sale or Wall Street, the value of something is what someone will pay for it. But if you can say you’ll buy something, purposefully damage it, then demand a discount … what’s the real value? That form of corporate sabotage is something the Delaware court is really, really not going to tolerate. Because it can’t.

And it can’t because it has been tried many times before. Sumner lists several outcomes of this case from Musk is allowed to walk away, to Musk is required to pay several billion (several times the $1 billion renege penalty in his contract) as a “go away” fee.

Just that dedicated to protecting life

My performing group gave a concert Saturday evening, the first of four before Christmas. This was our first concert in front of a live audience in two years. All of the performers and all of the audience wore masks. Of course, much of it was Christmas music. It went well and our audience told us how much they appreciated hearing live music. My Sunday movie was Scenes from an Empty Church. It is the story of two Catholic priests in a church under lockdown at the start of the pandemic. Since parishoners are not allowed in the building the two men have little to do. And one of them is paranoid about the virus. When I heard about the movie and saw the trailer I thought the movie was about how the priests figured out how to provide all sorts of services for their neighborhood. Well, not exactly. A friend of Father Andrew wants to visit. Soon they figure out how to allow people to come in to pray and to give confession. So the story is about how people are handling life with the virus, how to understand and deal with an upended world. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data as of December 3. This past week there was a day with 11,189 new cases. Yes, a scary number that is 32% above the peaks of under 8400 last April and November a year ago. However, I suspect much of that is a recording artifact because four days before – I’m sure it was Thanksgiving Day – recorded only 1837 cases in that day. I suspect both numbers will be revised. From two weeks ago to six days ago (after which the data hasn’t been fully posted yet) the deaths per day have been in the range of 67-95. On Friday a high school senior I know came to do some yard cleanup to earn a bit for his college fund. I was surprised he said he would be there before 2:30. I thought he didn’t get out of school until 3:00. When he arrived he explained. His school was closed for the day, but not because of COVID. After the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan a few days before there have been dozens of copycat prank threats to high schools in Michigan. School officials, police, and the FBI have been stretched way thin trying to track down each threat. Many schools closed out of precaution. The day before at my young friend’s school rumors were flying fast from phone to phone and by the middle of the school day half the students had left. My friend said he had received more than one messages saying, “Dude! Get Out! Now!” It was a tense day. So the next day the school closed. We are traumatizing our kids. In response to that shooting Michael Harriot tweeted:

Remember: Guns don’t kill people The cowards hiding behind thoughts, prayers, gun manufacturers & a 200-yr-old sentence written by bitch-ass white boys who needed muskets to stop their throats from being slit by the Africans they enslaved…THAT’S who kills people …Using guns.

A couple days ago I wrote about a woman who filed a complaint to get books banned under Tennessee’s new law banning teaching Critical Race Theory. That prompted Harriot to tweet:

They’ll NEVER allow their kids to learn what MLK REALLY stood for. If he came back today & ONLY said the 5 quotes they cherrypick & regurgitate, they’d shoot him in the face again. It’s not that they love the distorted, whitewashed version of MLK… They love the dead version.

One more from Harriot:

We shouldn’t teach kids how the gov’t killed leaders of protest movements & slaughtered infants because of their race. They shouldn’t learn about historical figures just because of the circumstances of their birth Cancel all Christmas displays in schools Technically, it’s CRT

Also referring to the Oxford school shooting and its original count of the dead (one later died in hospital) Fred Wellman tweeted:

You know what didn’t murder 3 children today? Critical Race Theory.

beguiling bus bug tweeted, though I don’t think “love” is the right word:

i love how the "fight for $15" has been going on for so long $15/hr isn't even remotely a livable wage anymore and the federal minimum wage is still like $7

To check is stats one will need to scroll down a ways. Hunter of Daily Kos discussed the situation of COVID patients showing up at hospital emergency rooms and their family demanding they be treated with horse dewormer, one of the fake cures promoted by the anti-vax crowd. And when the doctors and nurses refuse the family gets mad, threatening legal action or calling on the Republican state Attorney General to harass the hospital. Which leads to a question: If you were going to reject the treatment the staff thinks is appropriate, why come to the hospital? Hunter wrote:

All I can propose is that hospitals just leave out a basket of horse dewormers in the emergency room lobby. Want to be treated by medical professionals? Sign your name and take a seat. Want to get the treatment you saw posted on Facebook, the one all your archconservative pandemic disbeliever friends say is the Real Deal, For Sure This Time? Grab a tube and leave us alone. Our health care system is already a dystopian hellscape, it's not hard to imagine us adding this one to the mix. ... If there's just a basket of farm supplies at the hospital entrance with no instructions and no treatment implied, though, maybe that would take everybody's stress levels down a few notches. Reducing the potential for patient-on-doctor violence is nothing to cough at, you know.

Hunter included humorous dialogue of how such a scenario might play out in the emergency room. Mark Sumner of Kos reported at the request of Gov. Mike Parson, the Missouri Department of Health analyzed the infection and death rates in counties that implemented mask mandates compared to the rest of the state. The analysis showed that masks work very well. Sumner included one of the graphs from the report. As is done by many Republican governors, Parson received the report – and buried it. The Missouri Independent had to invoke the state’s Sunshine Law to get a copy. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted some late night commentary. Here’s one of them.

It looks very likely that Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned. The truth is, this is the culmination of a 50-year plan for the conservative movement to reshape the courts for this very purpose. Say what you want about it, but you gotta admit the conservative movement is just that dedicated to protecting life. I mean, not protecting life from coronavirus. Or school shootings. Or lack of health care. Or climate change. Or poverty. Or homelessness. Or… —Trevor Noah

The rejection of bipartisanship

I had written that Pelosi had named eight House members to the committee to investigate the Capitol attack. The committee was formed after the Senate blocked a bill to have an evenly bipartisan committee. The version that passed the House included Pelosi having veto power over the five people Republicans can name. Hunter of Daily Kos reported Kevin McCarthy finally did so and included Rep. Jim Banks and Rep. Jim Jordan. Pelosi rejected Banks and Jordan, though permitted the other three. Hunter explained Banks was rejected because he had declared is purpose in serving on the committee was to expand the scope to include Black Lives Matter protests, allowing a both sides did it narrative. Jordan was rejected because he has already disrupted the nasty guy impeachment investigations. He’s a guy ready to deflect and attack any connection between the attackers and the nasty guy. McCarthy responded by removing all five of his choices. That leaves the committee with one Republican, Liz Cheney, appointed by Pelosi. Cheney got the seat for her refusal to be a part of the Big Lie. In a post from last week Mark Sumner of Kos discussed a book about the nasty guy White House that was about to be released. Sumner didn’t buy the book and doesn’t name it. He worked from an article in the Washington Post. The book, according to the article and Sumner, describes the senior military officers, led by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, in the days before the Capitol attack. They were so concerned that the nasty guy would use them in a coup they developed a plan to resign, one by one, rather than accept an order to be a part of the coup. The officers so concerned they discussed this with other generals and members of Congress. Yes, this is scary. In the comments Sumner added: If the top military leaders resigned decision making would have gone to their second in command. And most of that level and below had recently been replaced by nasty guy loyalists. Resignation would have played into the nasty guy’s plans. I’m glad the top guys didn’t have to resign. Sumner then gets into an important question. When did the book’s authors know this important detail? If it was that disturbing why are we hearing about it just now? In another post (which I don’t have a link for or remember who wrote it) the author gave a warning. Do not buy and do not read these nasty guy revelation books. The flood of them is just beginning. If they contain important details news outlets will discuss them. So the only things you will miss is people trying to buff their reputations. An example in one book is the Princess reminding everyone that she was the only one who could keep Daddy from going off the deep end. Without her controlling him the whole thing would have been much worse. That reminds me of a friend who was a teacher. After hearing a student’s excuse, she would say, “Oh! I like fairytales. Do you also know the one about the three bears?” Another reason for avoiding these books is something Sumner mentioned. Why is the author telling us now – when they are being paid by the book sold? Why didn’t they tell the world about it at the time when the knowledge might have done some good? Chuck Schumer had the Senate hold a test vote on the bipartisan infrastructure plan (no actual bill yet). All Republicans voted against it. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about the lead up to the vote. She quoted a tweet from Brian Schtaz, who summed it up well:

It is hard to credibly claim you are for bipartisanship if you filibuster bipartisanship.

Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Nicole Hemmer of CNN discussing both Pelosi’s rejection of Banks and Jordan and bipartisanship.

Pelosi was right to reject Jordan and Banks, who, as blood was still drying on the floor of the Capitol, voted to give the insurrectionists what so many of them wanted. At a deeper level, Pelosi's actions here also constitute a crucial development: the rejection of bipartisanship as a positive force in US politics. The select committee will still be bipartisan -- GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump for fomenting the insurrection, will still serve on it -- but the notion that Democratic leaders must work with Republican leaders in order to have political legitimacy is well and truly dead. As it should be. The fetish for bipartisanship has dominated Washington for at least 80 years. In that time, bipartisanship acquired a rosy glow: to label a policy bipartisan was to deem it both representative and virtuous, the byproduct of opposing sides compromising their way to the best possible solution. But on its own, bipartisanship has never been a virtue. It has been, at best, virtue-signaling -- a legislative both-sidesism that has infected US politics for far too long.

Kev also quoted Sara Reardon of Nature, who explained why the delta variant of COVID is worse.

Researchers report that virus was first detectable in people with the Delta variant four days after exposure, compared with an average of six days among people with the original strain, suggesting that Delta replicates much faster. Individuals infected with Delta also had viral loads up to 1,260 times higher than those in people infected with the original strain. The combination of a high number of viruses and a short incubation period makes sense as an explanation for Delta’s heightened transmissibility, says epidemiologist Benjamin Cowling at the University of Hong Kong. The sheer amount of virus in the respiratory tract means that superspreading events are likely to infect even more people, and that people might begin spreading the virus earlier after they become infected.

Lauren Floyd of Kos shared:

An Alabama doctor gave the kind of account of her job during the COVID-19 pandemic that nearly brought me to tears in one paragraph. “I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” Dr. Brytney Cobia wrote in a gut-wrenching Facebook post on Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late. ”A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same,” Cobia added. “They cry. And they tell me they didn't know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn't get as sick. They thought it was 'just the flu'. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can't. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

That story prompted Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to change his tune and now support getting vaccinated. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed the Out of Reach report put out by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The report defines housing affordability as a full time worker paying no more than 30% of income towards an apartment charging fair market rent. There are over 3,000 counties in the US and a minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 218 counties. There are no counties where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment. Clawson included a map that turned the equation around. What would the minimum wage in a state need to be to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment? West Virginia has the lowest need – a wage of $14.83 an hour. But the minimum wage in the state is $8.75. West Virginia is the only state where the affordability wage is under $15 an hour. There are 15 states where the minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom place would need to be $23 an hour or higher. California is at the top where a worker would need $39.03 an hour to afford a two-bedroom place. In another pundit roundup Kev quoted Paul Krugman of the New York Times and the changing view of government spending.

First, Covid-19, and the extraordinary policy measures America took to limit economic hardship during the economy’s induced coma, had a lasting impact on economic ideology. Large-scale disaster relief was obviously necessary; even Republicans voted for it. But the positive role played by the government during the pandemic helped legitimize an active role for government in general. Second, the legend of Reaganomics has become unsustainable. It used to be common for conservatives to assert that Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation ushered in an era of unprecedented economic success; in fact, I still hear that sometimes. But these days the response to such claims is, “Do you even FRED, bro?” That is, have you even looked at the numbers available in places like the wonderfully usable Federal Reserve Economic Data site? Overall economic growth has been slower since 1980 than it was in the decades before; thanks to rising inequality, growth for the typical family has been much slower. Real wages for most workers have stagnated.

Christopher Ingraham tweeted a map showing by region what percent of people by party (Dem, Independent, GOP) want to secede from the US. In the South – Texas to Virginia – 66% of Republicans say the South should secede. 50% of Independents agree, as do 20% of Democrats. In the Pacific region – California to Washington – 47% of Democrats have said they want to secede. Ingraham said the data came from Bright Line Watch. He cautions the statements about secession may be only partisan signalling. Elie Mystal replied:

Back to this are we? For people saying "Bye Rednecks" remember, now as before, the problem isn't that white people want to leave, it's that they want to set up a white ethnostate OVER THE OBJECTION of the Black people who ALSO live there. In any event, it should really be the *blue* states that secede, then write a new constitution (this time at convention that represents all of the people) that takes out the concessions made to the slave states. That would be the boss move.

Marissa Higgens of Kos reported that the Louisiana legislature passed a bill banning openly trans athletes from participating in school sports. Democratic Gov. John Edward Bel vetoed it. The legislature tried a veto override. It failed in the House by two votes. A reason why Bel vetoed the bill was to prevent major events from pulling out of or not considering his state. Democratic Sen. Karen Carter-Peterson echoed Bel in saying, “You either want business to come to Louisiana or you want to discriminate.”

Came here on the Mayflower or a slave ship

Yesterday I wrote about companies loudly complaining about now being able to find workers. In the article I quoted Laura Clawson of Daily Kos suggested perhaps they should pay more. A day later Clawson reported that it works! She discussed a few companies that raised the starting wage and were swamped with applications. A sign of a tight labor market is rising wages. Such people as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell doesn’t see that in the data. It seems odd that wages aren’t rising yet raising wages bring in lots of applications. There’s a difference between a tight labor market and stingy (and loud) employers. Clawson concluded:

There’s no labor shortage. Unfortunately, there’s also no shortage of business owners whining about how too-high unemployment benefits are letting lazy bums stay on the couch rather than getting to work, and no shortage of credulous reporters willing to write those stories.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported a little tidbit from Moscow Mitch:

100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration ... 100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration.

Yeah, Mitch, we figured that out a long time ago. Thanks for verifying it. Eleveld reported some of the things Biden has recently said. I’m delighted he’s saying things like this:

The bottom line is this: My Republican friends had no problem voting to pass a tax proposal that expires in 2025, that cost $2 trillion—none of it paid for—increased the deficit by $2 trillion; gave the overwhelming percentage of those tax breaks to people who didn’t need it: the top one-tenth of 1%. They didn’t need it.

That’s the kind of talk common people can understand. Global Trends is a report from the National Intelligence Council that takes a look at the world 20 years in the future. It has an impressive track record. Global Trends 2025 (written about 2005) waved a red flag over a possible global pandemic before that year with a discussion that looks a lot like the last year. So pay attention. Ian Reifowitz of Kos discussed what is in Global Trends 2040 released last month. One of the big warnings is around

the hateful white nationalism and white identity politics—practiced by the likes of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the right wing—that threaten to tear our country apart.

Wrote Reifowitz:

The GT 2040 report describes, in general terms, how reactionary movements like the Trumpist right develop. “Many people who feel displaced by rapid social and economic changes resent violations of age-old traditions and perceive that others are benefiting from the system at their expense. These perceptions also fuel beliefs that economic and social change is damaging and that some leaders are pursuing misguided goals.” As we saw in 2016, those who fear change can be subsequently drawn to someone who promises to bring back the good old days and make their lives “great again.” Such people, the report argues, identify themselves as members of groups who stand opposed, sometimes violently so, to the interests—or even existence—of other groups in a society.

What Reifowitz doesn’t talk about (and perhaps the GT 2040 doesn’t either) is the mismatch between those who cause the perception of “others are benefiting from the system at their expense” and those other groups in this society who are the ones being violently opposed. The first is rich, mostly white, mostly men who have engineered the society to take money away from the poor and middle class and give it to them. The second are the poor, mostly black people. The rich are the ones benefiting at the expense of others. The poor are being blamed. Another aspect is these aggrieved people do see the country helping black people with their tax dollars. But the cause of their pain is not the black person desperate for help, but the rich who make the poor and middle class so desperate. Going on with Reifowitz’ discussion:

To apply this analysis to our own society, Trumpist white nationalism grows out of white racial and cultural anxiety around demographic change. Put simply, we’re talking about people who fear losing the disproportionate power and status they receive simply from being white in America, even if they are poor and/or economically vulnerable themselves. W.E.B. Du Bois called those benefits the “wages of whiteness.” Such people are certainly disadvantaged economically—living paycheck to paycheck or, worse, not knowing when one will work again is never easy, even for white Americans—but they still benefit from white supremacy in that they avoid the disadvantages that system imposes on BIPOC Americans.

Note the “power and status” – they’re afraid of losing their place in the social hierarchy. The country would be so much better if we didn’t worry about a place in a hierarchy. Reifowitz went into a discussion of what holds a nation together. For some countries it is a specific ethno-cultural identity. There is exclusive nationalism, where some people have a special status. Their status is based on such things as race, religion, culture, language, and a few more. They are afraid of losing their status and want leaders to help them maintain it. There is also civic nationalism. According to Reifowitz, it is in a country where:

The members identify themselves as a community of citizens—unified by a commitment to basic democratic ideals—who share not only membership in a political system but who also recognize obligations to one another and to a common good that benefits the whole national community.

They aren’t worried about a hierarchy and their place in it. Reifowitz believes Obama tried to guide the country towards civic nationalism. There are a few quotes to show the point. This is from Obama’s commencement address at Miami Dade College in April 2011:

Whether your ancestors came here on the Mayflower or a slave ship; whether they signed in at Ellis Island or they crossed the Rio Grande: We are one people. We need one another. Our patriotism is not rooted in ethnicity, but in a shared belief of the enduring and permanent promise of this country.

There have been lots of examples of exclusive nationalism over the nasty guy’s tenure and many more since then. An example is the attempt to start an Anglo-Saxon caucus in Congress (which, thankfully, didn’t get very far). That attempt prompted Rep. Ted Lieu to tweet:

Dear @mtgreenee & @RepGosar: I have some questions about your Anglo-Saxon caucus: Will non Aryans be allowed to join? If so, do we have to sit in the back of the room because we’re not white? Can we have fried rice and nachos during the meetings? Asking for a friend.

Obviously, the exclusive nationalism and the civic nationalism are in conflict. Reifowitz wrote that an important part of GT 2040 is that it shows the intelligence and national security leadership of the US government recognize the threat extreme right movements pose to the nation and world. White supremacy isn’t confined to America. Yeah, we’ve known about such threats for quite a while now, though several previous reports (not GT reports) have been prevented from being published. And then there was the nasty guy. But Biden has been talking about taking this threat seriously. He has talked about what is acceptable and what is not. The exclusive view means more injustice for BIPOC Americans. It means a weaker, less stable America, affecting all Americans. Which version wins? The Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government conducted a poll of young people asking the question whether they are more hopeful or fearful about the future of America. They, especially black and Hispanic youth, are much more hopeful now than they were in 2017.

Common sense tells me you should offer higher pay

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos discussed the grumbling of employers who can’t find enough workers as things reopen. She began.

The big push is on to blame the American Rescue Plan for businesses not being able to find enough workers to fill their jobs. Business owners—restaurant owners in particular—are lining up to tell reporters how those darn lazy workers would rather stay home and collect unemployment than go back to work. Rarely do these stories of employer pain ask questions like, say, how much pay they’re offering or how careful they’re being with their workers’ health in the midst of the pandemic. Stories asking people why they’re hesitating to go back to work are mysteriously not so common.

If the employer isn’t going to keep the workers safe and isn’t going to handle misbehaving customers why work for them? Clawson quoted and commented on a few of the noisy employers. Even politicians are raising voices.

Sen. Marco Rubio—tweeting “Florida small business owners are all telling me the same thing, they can’t find people to fill available jobs. You can come up with all kinds of reasons & wave around all the Ivy League studies you want, but what does common sense tell you is the reason?” What does common sense tell me is the reason, Marco? Well, the maximum state unemployment benefit is $275 a week, which means that with the extra $300, people are getting $575 a week at most. That means if unemployment is paying more than work, the work is paying less than $14.50 an hour if they’re working full-time—and again, that’s the maximum, and in a state that’s become notorious for delays in unemployment benefits. Most people are probably getting significantly less, and a living wage for a single person with no children is $14.82 an hour in Florida. So I’m thinking that Florida employers need to offer higher pay. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about American capitalism,” Anne Helen Petersen writes, “it’s the skill and swiftness with which it translates resistance into personal, moral failure—which is precisely what so many of these business owners and politicians have done.” Exactly.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, had a couple quotes worth mentioning. From Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg discussing Republicans and their cries of election fraud and their voter suppression:

Attempts to hijack elections may only be the secondary motive for these laws; the primary reason for them is for Republican elected officials to convince their strongest supporters that they are doing their best to repress Democrats and various Democratic groups. That’s why fictional election fraud is such a good issue for many Republicans right now. Opposing Biden and the Democratic legislative agenda, after all, would tend to unite the party. But a united Republican Party is the last thing that Republican radicals want. They need enemies; they need apostates they can label “Republicans in name only” to prove that they are the true conservatives.

From Charles Pierce of Esquire:

You have to have some appreciation for what a perfectly complete whole the conservative project is. By pressing every advantage, and to hell with good government and democracy in general, they have gained sufficient control of the process to defuse most progressive initiatives, to defang most governors if the state happens to go wild and elect a Democrat, and to arrange for the various judicial branches to be their ultimate backup. Accepting the fact that they lost an election is simply not within their comprehension anymore.

I’ve mentioned COVID and herd immunity a few times. Dr. Craig Spencer, writing for Elemental, explains what it is, and corrects some misconceptions. What he wrote about: * Herd immunity will significantly slow the virus when we get to somewhere between 60-90% of the population vaccinated. But we don’t know the exact number. * Every vaccine shot slows the virus. People aren’t vulnerable at 79% and safe at 80%. * Herd immunity does not mean the virus is gone, merely slowed enough we can resume a lot of activities. * We can reach herd immunity even if we don’t get 100% vaccinated, though at the current rate of refusal, we may not reach herd immunity. I’ve been hearing Republicans getting upset about critical race theory, Clawson reported they are trying to ban teaching it in several states. I’m glad Clawson included a definition.

The words “critical race theory” are being used as a fancy-sounding replacement for the lesson these Republicans really want to prohibit: that racism is real and that it’s structural and systemic. Critical race theory is an intellectual movement that holds, broadly speaking (and with many strains of thought within it), that, as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explain in the introduction to Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, racism is “the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country”; that “large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it”; that race itself is socially constructed; that “the dominant society racializes different minority groups at different times, in response to shifting needs such as the labor market”; that “no person has a single, easily stated, unitary identity” (an idea often discussed as intersectionality); and that people of color know things about their own experiences that white people should listen to. In the face of continuing disproportionate police violence against Black people and other people of color, and a pandemic that has disproportionately killed Black and Latino people, and economic inequality that has been exacerbated by the economic effects of the pandemic, Republican state legislators are insisting that the law should force teachers to teach essentially that racism ended after slavery, or maaaybe after something having to do with a watered-down account of segregation and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ... Again and again, we see that what Republicans are taking aim at isn’t actually critical race theory as its scholars and practitioners frame it. They’re just mad that kids might learn racism did not magically disappear the moment Dr. King said he had a dream. They’re terrified kids might grow up believing things need to change in U.S. society and law. And in their anger and terror, they’re trying to ban the teaching of actual facts from the schools, and use it as a rallying cry not just the Republican base but for “color-blind” nice white liberals. If we can’t think critically about U.S. history and U.S. laws and structures of power, we can never move forward. That’s what this push against “critical race theory”—which is hardly even about the reality of critical race theory—is all about.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed the results of a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll:

So overall 60% of Americans say the president is either executing the right amount of bipartisanship or too much of it. This is helpful data for a White House now gauging how long it should spend trying to woo intransigent GOP lawmakers into cutting a deal on the historic investment President Biden wants to make in America's future. Fortunately, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already driven a stake through the heart of those negotiations. Now Americans are telling Biden, We get it—it's the Republicans.

Bully worship

David Sligar tweeted an image that portrays income distribution. It was created by Dutch economist Jan Pen based on data of the UN in 1971. That means inequality is much worse today. The image shows people in which their height is based on their income. People in the 10th percentile (10% of the crowd earn less) are portrayed as 7 inches (it looks like someone converted from metric to US measurements). Those at the 35th percentile are 2’6”, at 65th are 5’9” (an average height). 85th percentile – 10’ 92.5 percentile – 13’9” 97th percentile – 21’ 99.5 percentile – 49’ 99.95 percentile – 181’ – This figure fills the vertical space of the image. 99.995 percentile – 933’ – All we see of this figure is the shoe and pant cuff. Dan Riffle responded:

The 95th percentile of income is closer—much, much closer—to the 25th percentile than the 99th. The 99th is also closer—much, much closer—to the 25th than to the 99.99th.

Becca Rose tweeted an image of who benefits from a higher minimum wage. People think a minimum wage earner is a teenager who works part time after schools to earn a little spending money while living with parents. The reality is the average age is 35 with 90% 20 and older, 59% are women, 28% have children, 54% work full time. A majority of minimum wage workers are what we’ve been calling essential and front-line workers. As for those teenagers, they’re probably trying to save for college and deserve a good wage too. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote:

For Republicans—and Joe Manchin [conservative Dem from WV]—failing to raise the minimum wage may seem like a passive act. It’s not. This is an active suppression of working class wages that plays a major role in the enormous wealth transfer that has gone on for over 40 years: The transfer of wealth from working class Americans to the wealthy few. … Keeping the minimum wage at a ridiculous low level allows companies to hire workers who must fall back on public support to get by. They subsidize their bottom line by externalizing the cost to everyone. Texas utilities may “hit the jackpot” when an emergency sends prices skyrocketing. But corporations employing workers at a deliberately low minimum wage are hitting that jackpot every day. Take the difference between $7.25/hour and a livable wage and multiply that value times the number of minimum wage workers. That’s the amount of money that’s getting scooped up from the government and shoved straight into the pockets of the billionaires at the top of these corporations every day. It’s the nation’s largest not-so-hidden corporate subsidy. ... Keeping the minimum wage low isn’t about creating jobs. It’s about funneling money. It’s about protecting the wealth concentration engine. It doesn’t just hurt the workers who are receiving those miserable salaries, it harms everyone.

The goal of the rich is that harm. The goal isn’t to be fabulously rich, the goal is to keep money out of the hands of those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, to cause that harm. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, has a couple of tweets worth mentioning. Both have to do with the just concluded CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Shane Goldmacher tweeted the results of the straw poll of who the crowd wanted to run for president in 2024. They ran it twice, once with the nasty guy on the ballot, once without. Alex Roarty summed up the results. Governors who pushed back on COVID restrictions (DeSantis of Florida and Noem of South Dakota) did better than legislators who tried to overturn election results (Cruz, Haley, Hawley). At the bottom were Ivanka at 3%, Rand Paul at 2% and Mike Pence at 1%. Though Dworkin quoted just the start of a thread by David Frum I had to go see the rest of it:

Much of @HawleyMO CPAC speech self-advertised his suffering for the pro-Trump cause. Big mistake. For the pro-Trump movement, victimhood is not an end in itself. For them, their victimhood is a justification for abusing others. They don't want martyrs. They want righteous bullies. Trumpism is not a system of ideas. It's simple bully worship, the kind you saw in schoolyards. Nobody in pro-Trump world cares about any of @HawleyMO half-cooked policy ideas. They only care about Big Tech to the extent that Big Tech is getting in the way of their bullying fun. ... You want to position yourself as Trump's successor? Don't waste time taking about issues. Show yourself the next meanest bully. Belittle people near Trump to show that the outgoing monster can't protect them from you. Trigger their blood lust, and prove you can satisfy it.

The nasty guy spoke at CPAC. Leah McElrath tweeted that she watched it so we don’t have to. Summary: the GOP plans to engage in major voter suppression in state legislatures across the country.