There aren’t enough politicians able to resist being bought

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos noted that Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have spoken against the $3.5 trillion bill the House is working on. But they don’t say what is in the bill they don’t like. They’ll say $3.5 trillion is too expensive, but they don’t list items the want to see cut. McCarter then discussed one thing in that bill, the extended vision, dental, and hearing care to be added to Medicare. She mentions the need for this provision and the cost. Do they really want to take dental care away from Grandma? In a second post McCarter discussed a report from the Washington Post about a lobbying blitz to stop that $3.5 trillion bill:

The Post lists pretty much ever single major industry behind the effort to kill Biden's economic agenda: "drug manufacturers, big banks, tech titans, major retailers and oil-and-gas giants." In other words, Manchin and Sinema's buddies, and the House Sabotage Squad's best friends. Well, them and Republicans.

The next day Moscow Mitch gave a speech about the bill, saying in part:

I’m praying for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democratic senators that seem to have some resistance to all this. I pray for their good health and wise judgment every night.”

McCarter translated:

In other words, he's reminding Sinema and Manchin which side their bread is buttered on, in the event that the "torrent of political groups representing some of the country’s most influential corporations—including ExxonMobil, Pfizer, and the Walt Disney Company" and their planned lobbying onslaught reported by The Washington Post don't get the job done.

The big objection to that big bill is straightforward: the corporations don’t like the tax increases. Leah McElrath tweeted:

It never stops shocking me how much of the GOP panic about welfare programs boils down to: “Poor people should starve!”

And another:

I’m a psychotherapist by experience, education, and training. And by vocation: thinking about how peoples’ minds work is my default mode. But, barring coercion or psychosis, it really is often this simple: People who hurt others do so because they want to and because they can.

The obvious question is: Why do they want to? My answer is because their position towards the top of the social hierarchy is so important to them, and an easy way to show their superiority is to be cruel to those below them. That insures a comparison shows their life is so much better. A couple days later McCarter posted again, this time about an op-ed written by Manchin in the Wall Street Journal. McCarter’s review of what Manchin wrote:

At least it's not a flat-out refusal from Manchin, but it's still just astoundingly thick and disingenuous of him. Of course, he lists not one single policy that's in the bill. Like his counterpart Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Manchin keeps blathering about deficits and inflation as if multiple disasters are not upon us right now, while stubbornly refusing to say what specifically he opposes or what policies and programs he would change or propose. Instead, Manchin is urging a "pause" on the bill, calling for "significantly reducing" its size "to only what America can afford and needs to spend."

McCarter described the situation in the title of this post: “Floods, fires, tornadoes, Manchin doesn't care. He's happy to tank Biden's economic agenda.” McElrath tweeted about the Democratic response that has been words only to the Texas abortion law recently allowed to go into effect, but her comments apply here too.

It’s infuriating. And I do not believe their continued inaction is due to obstruction by one or two caucus members. No one should believe that. Manchin and Sinema serve as lightening rods to localize the heat and to distract from the corruption of the whole. Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi have more than 134 combined years in politics. They learned how to wield political power among the likes of the late Tip O’Neill and Edward Kennedy. There are limitless carrots and no doubt private coercive sticks they could use. And yet here we are. The only thing I know for sure is their action and their inaction matter MUCH more than their rhetoric. Stop listening to what they say and start paying more attention to what they choose to do AND not to do.

A few days after Manchin called for a “strategic pause,” Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that Pelosi was asked about it. Her response was: “Obviously, I don’t agree.” And when asked about dropping from $3.5 trillion, she replied, “Why?” Hmm, “corruption of the whole” ... I’ve document before that Manchin has been bought. He attended a Texas fundraiser (he represents West Virginia) to pull in the cash. I’m sure the same is true for Sinema and the Sabotage 10. Given the inaction on some highly important issues (Supreme Court reform, voting rights) I wonder how much Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden have been bought. Is that why their actions have been so wimpy? Perhaps there aren’t enough politicians able to resist being bought to keep America from total Republican/Corporate control. Which means the drive to this moment began with the Reagan tax cuts in 1981, which allowed the 1% to accumulate more wealth than is good for the country and democracy. Hunter of Kos discussed an article by Politico in which prosecutors updated a judge on the huge pile of videos taken by police body cams during the Capitol attack. The prosecutors found that about 1,000 events might be characterized as assaults on federal officers. Hunter wrote:

A description of “1,000 separate incidents of assault” continues to not sound like an everyday tourist visit to the Capitol, no matter what House Republican seditionists consider "tourism" to be. It's also a plausible number. If you count every shove of a police barrier as an assault on the police trying to hold those barriers in place, every cloud of bear spray or other irritants, every push of Capitol Police officers as a crowd of sedition-minded violent thugs tried to break through windows over the officers' heads—yes, it seems you could get to the 1,000 number without much effort.

Will we get justice for those thousand assaults? That isn’t clear. No one seems to have the stomach to deal with their leader, the nasty guy.

I do have one idea, though, since the Supreme Court has now endorsed the idea of privateering through states with letters of marque, bringing alleged lawbreakers to justice, and getting cash rewards while the state looks the other way. It would serve all states well to quickly produce laws allowing for the same bounties on those who attempt to strip voters of their constitutionally provided electors.

In another post Hunter discussed an investigation by ProPublica. The nasty guy started a purge of the Republican Party of anyone not loyal to him. It was a top down effort. This report says that his followers are working to complete the job and doing so from the bottom up, by invading, overwhelming, and annexing the lowest levels of local Republican groups. Hunter wrote:

ProPublica's details of how Republican conspiracy theorists are aggressively seeking to topple any local party figures who do not toe election hoax lines can be better read as a narrative of how fascism, in all its anti-law and pro-violence details, is now bubbling up through the party in a possibly unstoppable fashion.

This has been encouraged by Fox News for years. But until this year the target has been Democrats. Now it is disloyal Republicans.

The Republican Party is being reconstructed at all levels around a core of conspiracy theories considered to be more important than the truth—while demonizing and expelling any remaining party officials who disagree. The party's local operations are rebasing themselves around the conceit that elections they do not win have been "rigged" against them, with new vows to nullify future elections based on those hoaxes. It's a party based on the promotion of false propaganda and the quashing of truth so as to assume "justified" authoritarian powers, one with a militant paramilitary wing willing to wander city streets to knock heads or, indeed, invade government buildings in an effort to erase elections that have gone against them. Fascism has a long history in America, a history with its own slogans, symbols, and hats. The focus on "reforming" elections so that fewer Americans are allowed to vote, coupled with new laws giving party loyalists more explicit powers to probe and nullify local election results party leaders object to, is an end-game move. The Republican Party's now-radicalized base doesn't intend to let future elections go against them. Either by threatening violence or disputing the validity of elections themselves, they are making their belief that Republican Party power trumps the needs of democracy itself very clear. Believe them.

Twitter user Karma One Six One tweeted:

Today we saw white supremacists, proud boys and antigovernment extremists invade a high school campus in Vancouver, WA, flashing white power signs and one wearing a skull mask. It was coordinated, led, and will happen more and more often unless it’s shut down. They put kids at risk. For some of you; your kids. For others reading this, it could have just as easily been your kids’ school. This is significant escalation.

Police didn’t do anything. Parents did. Alas, it means parents and other community members will need to watch for such groups and be ready to protect their kids and their schools. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that enough Texas House Democrats had to return home to make quorum to allow the state Republicans ram through their voter suppression bill. Walter Shaub, former Director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted:

There is no more important issue in America right now than voting rights. All the other issues you care about—pandemic, infrastructure, wars, poverty, hurricanes, everything—are affected by voting rights. And yet we have people citing other priorities and saying give him time. It’s not right. It’s inexcusable. And the focus needs to shift now. Because if it doesn’t, you’re going to find really soon that someone other than you is setting your priorities in ways you never imagined possible.

Nick Anderson of Kos Comics, has one about a quorum – made up of voter purges, gerrymandering, voter fraud myths, and voter suppression. Garry Kasparov tweeted:

Calling people "alarmist" is usually just a way of trying to discredit them, demonstrated by the fact that it goes on even after they've been proven correct. When they cannot answer your arguments or refute the facts, they attack your tone and tactics. But that's not what they really want. They want you to stop, to shut up, to be ignored. If you weren't right, they wouldn't care. ... The problem isn't people being scared. The problem is people not being scared enough. I wish deep concerns were enough to inspire the bold action often required in today's besieged world. The fear comes when it's too late for the easy path. ... Why am I angry? No, why aren't you?