The nation can afford to take care of everyone

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data on Saturday. In new cases per day the state hit 4990 This is the highest number of cases since June (peaks in April and November are above 8300). The CDC reports that cases across the country have been falling since early September, including in such hard hit states as Florida and Texas. Michigan is one of five states where cases are still rising (I don’t remember the other four and didn’t look for them). In contrast to previous surges in cases, this one has been a slow and steady rise over three and a half months. The peaks in deaths per day for the last five weeks (some of which have been adjusted) are 41, 47, 42, 42, and 33 (the last one likely to be adjusted). Joan McCarter of Daily Kos titled a post with “Biden’s Supreme Court commission proves to be the farce we all expected.” Her opening paragraph:

The “blue ribbon” commission appointed by President Joe Biden to study the problem of Republican court packing, particularly at the U.S. Supreme Court, has gone beyond being an ineffective and useless body (as most blue ribbon commissions usually are) to being downright dangerous. It released a draft report Thursday, ahead of a scheduled Friday meeting, full of Federalist Society narratives and Republican lies.

Since the commission was created in April the court has allowed the Texas abortion ban to go into effect, and blocked Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium and his end of the “remain in Mexico” policy. They did this and more through the shadow docket where there is no formal argument and opinions are unsigned. In regular business they gutted the Voting Rights Act and made it harder to unionize. All that since the commission was created in April. Some of the things in the report: * Doubting that ideological balance should be a goal. * Justices aren’t partisan because they don’t always rule along partisan lines. * Saying that refusing to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supremes in Obama’s last year is standard practice. * Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh lacked “evidentiary support” (wrong – her testimony was evidence, besides the FBI botched its investigation of Kavanaugh). McCarter quoted a tweet by Southpaw, who quoted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s statement on the commission’s report. Whitehouse said the report left out several things, some of which are: * During the last three nominations and confirmations the Federalist Society received enormous anonymous donations. * Anonymous checks, up to $17 million, funded advertising related to the confirmations. * There is a fast lane of cases of politically loaded cases that get to the Supremes through deliberate losses at lower courts. * There have been 80 cases with evident Republican donor interest and all 80 were won on a 5-4 vote (before Barrett joined the court). Much of Whitehouse’s complaints of the court are because of the power of the Federalist Society. So there is one thing Biden should do with this report: trash it. I listened to this week’s bonus episode of Gaslit Nation, the one I can listen to as a donor to Gaslit Nation on Patreon. I did not read the transcript of this week’s regular episode. I listened to the bonus because hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa answer listener’s questions and I had asked a question (though I’m not sure how one goes about asking a question, so maybe they didn’t see the one I posed). My question wasn’t included. Before Kendzior got to the questions she discussed Merrick Garland. I didn’t take notes while I listened, so I won’t go into details. Here’s the general idea: Merrick Garland got the reputation of being a warrior against GOP because the GOP controlled Senate refused to consider him for the Supreme Court. But that reputation is not true. Garland was put in charge of the Department of Justice because he is a friend of the nation’s criminal elite and his job is to protect them. One of those friends is Jamie Gorelick. She’s been a friend since he was in college and she hired him as her assistant when she was deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton. She is also (as stated in the episode’s description)

an exemplar of the Big Law corruption we discuss so much on this show, that nexus where state corruption, organized crime, and corporate corruption meet under the protection of a broken system of lawyers and lobbyists.

Gay CA Democrat of the Kos community discussed (mostly quoted) a report by CNN about the cuts Sens. Manchin and Sinema are demanding be made to the $3.5t human infrastructure bill in Congress. First, Sinema was in a snit over a “breach of trust” because Pelosi didn’t call a vote by the end of September for the bipartisan infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate. Pelosi didn’t because there was also an agreement the two bills would be advanced together. Sinema is using this as an excuse for her bad behavior. On to the bill itself. Both Manchin and Sinema say it is too big. They want something below $1.9t. Then the article got into Manchin’s specifics. He doesn’t want Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing (and Bernie Sanders and other progressives say removing that coverage is a red line). He doesn’t like the enhanced paid family/medical leave. And ... Manchin, coal man that he is, rejected aggressive climate measures. He justified it saying Biden’s target of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 won’t happen. Besides, he said, we’re in the midst of an energy crisis (no, we’re not, said those of us who lived through the energy crisis of the 1970s). Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that a new poll shows Sinema is loathed in her home state of Arizona. If she was running next year she would face an incredibly tough Democratic primary. Her current antics are putting her on a path out of office. Joan McCarter of Kos reported Manchin and Sinema, plus a few conservative Democrats in the House, are trying to force a choice between Medicare vision plans and extending Medicaid to twelve GOP states that refused to do so under the Affordable Care Act. McCarter, who noted that conservative Democrats again pit vulnerable communities against each other, wrote:

It’s an unnecessary trade-off. Because the nation can afford to take care of everyone, it should be the number-one principle of elected Democrats: no person left behind.

McCarter quoted Mark Pocal, who again made the point about how the cost of this bill is less than half of the Defense budget already approved. Rep Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is holding firm, said:

A lot of people have asked: “Isn’t something better than nothing?” And the answer, quite simply, is no. Because when it comes down to something rather than nothing, it’s the same people who are forced to settle for nothing over and over and over again.

Meteor Blades, Kos staff emeritus writing the Climate Brief, wrote:

Without passage of a bill containing aggressive programs, Biden’s team is going to have a devil of a time in Glasgow at the climate summit persuading China, India, and Brazil that he can even deliver the U.S. pledges on emissions cuts, much less that their nations should do better than they are. ... It’s actually easier to respect a numbskull like Sen. James “Snowball” Inhofe, who wrote an entire book calling climate change a hoax and seems to truly believe it, than Manchin, who pretends he’s down with the science even as his bank account gets ever fatter feeding off the teat of the fossil fuel industry.

Some good climate news: Laura Clawson of Kos reported Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced plans to have seven, maybe more, lease sales for offshore wind farms. The areas for lease will be along the East Coast, in the Gulf of Mexico, and off the coasts of California and Oregon. This is a step towards Biden’s pledge of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. No movie tonight. I watched the Detroit Symphony Orchestra livestream last evening, then spent this afternoon teaching handbell techniques. So the two felt like my escape from daily stresses.