Rules are for everyone else

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos wrote about the Senate Judiciary Committee and what they did today:

The Committee's rules expressly state that there have to be at least nine members, "including at least two Members of the minority," to "constitute a quorum for the purpose of transacting business." Further, "No bill, matter, or nomination shall be ordered reported from the Committee, however, unless a majority of the Committee is actually present at the time such action is taken and a majority of those present support the action taken." Rules are for everyone else, however, so the Committee moved ahead with all 12 Republicans passing her nomination.

Since the Democats boycotted the meeting and didn’t vote and all 12 Republicans voting yes committee chair Lindsay Graham will report to the Senate floor the vote was unanimous. Friday and Saturday will be taken up by floor speeches. On Sunday there will be a vote to move ahead. The final confirmation vote is scheduled for Monday. Meteor Blades, in his Wednesday night owl column for Kos, included a quote of the day:

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~~Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770-1774)

And a tweet of the day, from Robert Reich:

The news has barely mentioned it, but Big Pharma company Gilead is charging $3,000 for a coronavirus drug that costs them less than $10 to produce. Once again, they're set to profit on the people's dime.

In the Tuesday night owl column Blades quoted Joseph Winter of Grist. The coronavirus pandemic significantly increased the understanding of what governments are willing to spend on a problem. Since August (not March) world governments have pledged more than $12 trillion in aid. That’s three times the public money spent after the Great Recession. And, wrote Winter:

If just 12 percent of currently pledged COVID-19 stimulus funding were spent every year through 2024 on low-carbon energy investments and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, the researchers said, that would be enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious climate target.

Sometime a while back I wrote the nasty guy campaign appears to be broke. I wondered why the rich donors who have bought the Senate, and thus the Supreme Court, aren’t keeping his campaign well funded. Kerry Eleveld of Kos has the answer: They’re annoyed that the nasty guy has been spending the money unwisely (or “stupidly,” as in not where it would do the most, or any, good) and that it seems the family and campaign staff have been spending large amounts of money on themselves. These rich people are donating money – to PACs to keep the Senate in GOP hands. In a post last weekend Mark Sumner of Kos reported that as it becomes increasingly likely that the nasty guy will lose in this election his cabinet secretaries are doing as much damage as they can while they can. That means creating new rules for how the government works to make things easier on corporations and worse for the rest of us. Most of the laws around rule making require justifying the rules and allowing public comment. None of that is being done. The rule changes include such things as: Reducing the required rest time of truck drivers. Allow agencies to collect more information without a warrant. Allow more government workers to be classified as “contractors” who don’t get benefits. Make it harder for states to enforce their rules on corporations. Sumner proposed that when Biden takes office one of his first acts should be to reset all federal rules back to what they were January 20, 2017. Then various department staffs should then redevelop the rules for laws passed since then. Sumner concluded:

Trump may not be taking the furniture—yet—but his team is engaged in a massive smash and grab operation, where the smashing is actually more valuable. It’s becoming clear that they’re no longer going to be able to pull the strings of government, so they’re trying to leave them as tangled, or broken, as possible. To be effective, Biden better bring scissors.

And, for the fun of it – cleaning out your computer keyboard.