Biden Courting Disaster

As Vox's Ian Millihiser explains, the real threat to the Biden administration is the 6-3 conservative Roberts Court, and it will use its power to shut down Biden's advances and to set America back decades starting this summer.

Enter the Roberts Court, fortified by Trump’s appointees. With six conservative justices, the Court has the votes it needs to make Bannon’s goal a reality — and at least five members of the Supreme Court have already endorsed a plan to erase much of the executive branch’s authority.

It wasn’t always this way. In the late 1980s, Justice Scalia was one of the Court’s staunchest defenders of a strong administrative state. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush delivered three landslide victories in a row to Republicans, and the GOP was at the apex of its ability to gain power the old-fashioned way — by winning elections.

So conservatives benefited from court decisions that gave the Reagan and Bush administrations broad leeway to set federal policy. Both administrations could use this leeway to deregulate.

But the right’s approach to federal agencies shifted drastically during the Obama administration. With the GOP’s grip on the presidency waning at the very same time that they had a firm hold on the judiciary, conservatives had an obvious interest in increasing the judiciary’s power to strike down new rules pushed by federal agencies. By Obama’s second term, the conservative Federalist Society’s national lawyers convention became a showcase of proposals to deconstruct the administrative state.

All of this culminated in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Gundy v. United States (2019), which called for strict new limits on federal agencies — and for the judiciary to even strike down many federal regulations as unconstitutional. Though Gorsuch’s opinion was a dissent — that is, he didn’t yet have a majority for it — five justices now on the Court have largely endorsed his framework, which relies on a conservative legal principle known as “nondelegation.”

In other words, it may be only a matter of time before the Court starts striking down Biden administration regulations that rely on legal arguments that would have been treated as nonsense just a decade ago.

At least since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, federal agencies have had wide latitude to implement the policies the president campaigned on. And agency-initiated regulations answer such important questions as who has access to health care, how much workers are paid for their labor, and a wide range of environmental questions that go well beyond the Clean Power Plan.

So, no matter what issue you care about, there is likely a federal regulation that shapes the nation’s approach to that issue. If the Supreme Court strips the government of much of its power to promulgate these regulations, it could effectively grind down the Biden presidency — not to mention dismantle much of American law.

 

In other words, we may nt get through the Biden era without permanent damage to the federal government, and states then freely able to sabotage and exploit citizens at will. A federal government with no power to federalize much of anything means red states will become fortresses that hold the poor captive in service to GOP "ideals", and there will no change during my lifetime to fix most anything.

The Bush-era assholes who had no problem with a "plenary executive" now see Biden as a threat.

That threat will be removed.

Don't You Know Who I Am, Boy?

For a political party dedicated to the destruction of the federal government, Republicans sure love abusing their power of office whenever they can.

It was Thursday afternoon before a Senate recess was about to begin, and senators were in a hurry -- especially Marsha Blackburn. 

As senators bolted from the chamber after the week's final vote to catch their afternoon flights, the Tennessee Republican hopped in a waiting car along with an aide and made her way down Constitution Avenue. But the car was pulled over by US Capitol Police. 

Blackburn then jumped out of the car, identified herself as a senator and showed the officer her congressional pin, according to a text message and a source familiar with the matter. The officer then let the car go. 

US Capitol Police says it has no record of the incident, yet the senator's office later confirmed the account and said it was the police asking for her identification. Her office said she was a passenger when the car was pulled over. 

CNN's account of the incident is based on a text message from one of her aides and two other sources who have been told about the matter. 

Leo Kowalski, an aide to Blackburn, told his friends that after being pulled over, the senator "hopped out, flashed her pin, hopped back in the car [and] said 'drive!'" 

"Officer didn't say a word, just shook his head," the aide said in a text message, which was reviewed by CNN. 

One source familiar with the account told CNN that Blackburn identified herself as a senator and was allowed to leave. The source added it's unclear whether the responding officer made that call or was directed to let her go by a superior. 

While minor traffic infractions are common for many Americans, legal experts say senators using the power of their office to get off the hook for a ticket could either run afoul of Senate ethics rules -- or at least create the appearance of impropriety. 

"Ethics applies to infractions large and small," said Norm Eisen, who served as then-President Barack Obama's special counsel and special assistant for ethics and government reform. "The whole idea of ethics is we are all the same. No one is above the law. That is one of the core principles. Here when you have a member flagrantly using of all things congressional insignia to get preferential treatment, that's improper." 

Eisen added: "That is not what that badge is for: to be treated differently than any other American motorist." 

 

Don't think for a second that Blackburn will suffer any adverse consequences for doing this. She's not a Democrat. Only Democrats have to follow laws. Believing this will hurt Blackburn back home in Tennessee is also a massively foolish proposition: she'll be hailed as a hero for telling off the hated US Capitol Police (who are The Enemy for saving Democrats from the January 6th terrorist attack).

If anything, Blackburn just bought herself another $5 million for her war chest and another 100,000 votes.

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Last Call For The Most Real Fact Of Real Estate

Emory University law professor Dorothy Brown lays it out in the NY Times: in America, your home's value is based on racism. Still. In 2021. And it has been for generations.

John, who is Black, and his wife, who is Japanese American, purchased a family home in a suburb of Atlanta in 2004.

When he was interviewed for my book, John — who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his family’s privacy — said the couple chose to buy in College Park, where 80 percent of the residents are Black, because they expected their children to identify and be treated as Black. They wanted the kids “to be in the village of Black community life, and to understand the cadences and relationships that are built there.”

But the family’s time in College Park didn’t last long. Because of the relatively low home values in their neighborhood and the resulting low property taxes, the public schools in the area were underfunded. So after their second son was born, they decided to move to an area with a better-funded school district.

This time, they bought in Candler Park, an area that is 87 percent white and less than 5 percent Black. In 2014, John and his wife sold their College Park home in a short sale for $60,000 — $144,000 less than what they paid for it.

Were they just unlucky? No. Is this massive loss through real estate unusual? Not for Black families.

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Black Americans are often unable to build wealth from homeownership in the same way their white peers are, in large part because home prices are generally set by the people who make up the majority of buyers: white Americans. White families typically prefer to live in predominantly white neighborhoods with very few or no Black neighbors. Homes in these neighborhoods tend to have the highest market values because most prospective purchasers — who happen to be white — find them most desirable.

Black Americans, on the other hand, tend to prefer to live in racially diverse or all-Black neighborhoods. Research has shown that once more than 10 percent of your neighbors are Black, the value of your home declines. As the percentage of Black neighbors increases, the property’s value plummets even further.

A study published in The American Journal of Sociology in 2009 found that “race, per se, shapes how whites and, to a lesser extent, Blacks view residential space.” The researchers showed videos of neighborhoods with different racial makeups to Black and white participants and found that even after they controlled for social class, whites found the all-white neighborhoods significantly more desirable than either the racially diverse or all-Black neighborhoods. The mere presence of Blacks in a neighborhood made it less appealing to whites.

This is where the past meets the present. “There’s a carry-over of the redlining and steering days, before the fair housing laws were passed. So the difference in property values almost tracks 100 percent with the demographics of the area,” said Wayne Early, an Atlanta-based realtor and community economic activist.

 

White people don't buy homes in Black neighborhoods, because they don't want Black neighbors. Black folk moving in lowers the property values by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, because the people with the wealth to buy homes are almost all white.

 

That's it.

 

That's the entire story.

 

Black folks stay poor. They can't afford to move out when they do want to move to a better neighborhood, because they take a loss on the property unless they stay in Black neighborhoods with lower property values.

 

Systemic racism is alive and well, and in no area is that more apparent that in the American housing market.

The Political Beat Beats Women Back

There should be zero surprise that after decades of access political journalism and Trump's war on the press that women in the reporting field are suffering non-stop harassment from politicos, readers, and critics, to the point where social media is now a daily minefield that male journalists just don't have to deal with, and the male-dominated press still does not understand why they should care.

"It started late one day, and you could see it kind of building on social media,” Washington Post national editor Steven Ginsberg recalled of the torrent of online abuse directed last month at Seung Min Kim. The Post reporter had been photographed showing Senator Lisa Murkowski a critical tweet sent by Neera Tanden and seeking comment, a standard journalistic practice somehow interpreted as out of bounds or even unethical. The first thing Ginsberg and other Post editors did was reach out to Kim—“just to say: We’re here, we see it, we care, and how are you doing?” But the racist and sexist attacks only escalated, propelling Ginsberg to put out a statement to not only take a stand against harassment, but to try to move the ball forward by explaining why what Kim was doing was completely appropriate. “She and other minority women endure vile, baseless attacks on a daily basis, no matter what story they are working on or tweeting about,” he wrote. “The attacks on her journalistic integrity were wildly misguided and a bad faith effort at intimidation.” Ginsberg’s goal, he told me, was “to defend and educate.”

No journalist is above criticism. But what female journalists described to me goes beyond legitimate scrutiny of a headline or story framing and into their sex lives, their families, and other topics unrelated to their work, a wildly disproportionate level of pushback to any perceived journalistic offense. The old newsroom motto “don’t feed the trolls” seems increasingly quaint as top editors and media executives grapple with how and when to respond publicly to the deluge of smears filling a reporter’s inbox or chasing them across social media. “The environment for journalists is getting increasingly dangerous,” Ginsberg said. If not heralding a new era of how media organizations deal with attacks on female reporters, recent statements from the Post and The New York Times reflect the extent to which the problem has worsened, particularly for women on the male-dominated beats of politics and technology.

Earlier this month the Times issued a strongly worded defense of tech reporter Taylor Lorenz, whom Fox News’s Tucker Carlson sicced his followers on by bashing her on his prime-time program for, ironically, speaking out about how destructive the online harassment she’s experienced has been to her life and career over the past year. A week later the Times put out another statement—this time defending Rachel Abrams from “harassment” by One America News after the right-wing network urged viewers to contact the reporter over her upcoming “hit piece.” The statements were striking given that institutions like the Post and the Times don’t tend to acknowledge the toxic internet culture their reporters are constantly subject to. Speaking of the Lorenz incident, one reporter at the Times told me that she was glad the paper put out a statement “to show that the organization was identifying what was happening” and calling it out for what it was.

But the Times reporter, along with several other female journalists, said that overall, major media companies are not doing enough to support them, in part because a lot of news organizations believe the best way to deal with online abuse is to ignore it; journalists are coached to do the same. “What that ignores is the emotional toll that it takes on reporters, and the fact that it’s often a misunderstanding of our reporting” that warrants a response, the Times journalist said, noting that she’s seen false narratives about her work perpetuated because the paper’s social media policies keep her from commenting or engaging. Compounded with the lack of response from leadership, “you’re really just left with this feeling of being hung out to dry,” she told me. (The Times declined to make an editor available to discuss how the paper handles harassment of its reporters.)

“Even the most open-minded media organizations are still run by men who don’t fundamentally understand the misogynistic nature of these attacks,” said another reporter, among several who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of worsened harassment, as well as potential punishment by their employer for speaking out. “I really feel like there’s a space here for some male allies to step up and call this what it is,” the Times reporter told me, pointing to instances where there were multiple bylines on a story, and the only writer who got harassed or bullied online was the woman. This has especially been the case for women of color. Male and female reporters have also received asymmetrical responses after writing similar stories: Such was the case recently for Apoorva Mandavilli, a health and science reporter for the Times, who has spoken publicly about the experience.

Another reason media organizations may still be struggling with how to deal with this abuse is their failure to respond to the digital moment: So-called trolls no longer live only in the comment section at the bottom of an article or in hate mail. The nature of online abuse has evolved along with online media itself. “No media organization right now is prepared for this. Zero,” one reporter told me. “When you’re getting thousands of tweets and messages, and you’re being falsely attacked on TV and in articles, it’s imperative that you respond.” 

 

And the problem is people don't want to respond, because journalists are taught never to be the story themselves, and here their female colleagues getting harassed and threatened daily is definitely the story. 

We need a better press model, and four years of Trump have taught everyone that only sensationalism matters, and now it's physically harming people.

We have to do better.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp signed the state's voter suppression omnibus package into law yesterday, and the symbolism of the signing ceremony is a perfect description of what the bill is designed to do.

Georgia state troopers arrested state Rep. Park Cannon on Thursday as she knocked on Gov. Brian Kemp’s door, interrupting his livestreamed announcement that he had signed an elections bill into law.

The officers forcibly removed Cannon, a Democrat from Atlanta, dragging her through the Capitol and pushing her into a police car. She was charged with obstruction of law enforcement and disrupting General Assembly sessions, according to the Georgia State Patrol and released on bond late Thursday.

Cannon was with several other protesters when she knocked on Kemp’s office door, saying the public should be allowed to witness the announcement of the bill signing. The sweeping legislation requires ID for absentee ballots, limits drop boxes and changes early voting hours.

Tamara Stevens, an activist who was with Cannon, said she wasn’t being disrespectful or causing a disturbance.

“She knew he was signing a bill that would affect all Georgians — why would he hide behind closed doors? This isn’t a monarchy,” Stevens said. “You have a women of color fighting for the rights of Georgians and they arrested her for knocking on the door because she wanted to witness our governor sign the bill.”

Cannon was charged with the two counts taken to the Fulton County Jail after she refused repeated warnings to stop knocking on Kemp’s office door, according to the Georgia State Patrol.

“She was advised that she was disturbing what was going on inside and if she did not stop, she would be placed under arrest,” said GSP spokesman Lt. W. Mark Riley. “Rep. Cannon refused to stop knocking on the door.”

Court documents show she was charged with “knowingly and intentionally” knocking on the governor’s door during a bill signing and stomping on Officer L.T. Langford’s foot three times “during the apprehension and as she was being escorted out of the property.”

“The accused continued kicking on LT Langford with her heels,” according to the arrest warrant.

 

A black woman and state lawmaker was disappeared so quickly away from Kemp and all the white men at his ceremony that it almost created a sonic boom.

 

The only thing that vanished faster yesterday were the voting rights of Georgia's Black population. As I said on Twitter yesterday:

As former GA Secretary of State, Kemp knows precisely what this bill will do to Black voters in the state.

He's counting on it. https://t.co/gY0LNjja3T

— Gender Reveal Cannon Zandar (@ZandarVTS) March 26, 2021

 

Don't expect the Supreme Court to fix this either. The time for ending the filibuster and setting national voting access laws is now.

Last Call For Tales From The Trump Depression, Con't

Joe Biden continues to clean up Donald Trump's mess, as new weekly jobless claims, while still ludicrously high thanks to Republican mismanagement of the economy, are finally going down towards pre-pandemic levels.

The number of Americans applying for jobless aid fell to its lowest level since the coronavirus pandemic erupted a year ago. Some 684,000 people applied for unemployment benefits in the week ending March 20, the Labor Department said Thursday. The number, adjusted for seasonal variation, is a drop of 97,000 from the week before.

Another 241,000 people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program for the self-employed and gig workers.

"Today's unemployment report shows a slowly-improving labor market, as for the first time in over a year, the Department of Labor has reported fewer than 1 million new claims for benefits," Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said in a statement.

Prior to the pandemic, a typical week saw around 250,000 new unemployment claims, and the number never topped 700,000, even during the depths of the Great Recession. Economists predict that fewer people will file for benefits in the coming weeks as more people receive vaccines and businesses reopen.

"[W]e expect claims to fall sharply as the economy reopens fully across the second quarter," Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics told investors in a note.

 

We're still in the Trump Depression, folks. It's taken three multi-trillion dollar stimulus packages just to keep the country from sinking beneath the waves, a government GDP boost of more than 50% of 2019 numbers just to get to the point of massive food bank car lines and only 10 million jobs lost for good.

But things are finally starting to stabilize. A lot of work still has to be done, and a lot of things still have to go right. Luckily, we're finally in a position where that can begin to happen.

 

Busting The Filibuster, Con't

An inevitable attempt to "reform" the filibuster by Democratic moderates like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and Republican "mavericks" like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski was inevitable, and equally inevitable is the fact that the "Group of 20" will fail completely to come to any terms, because the majority of them want the filibuster around to blame for not actually passing legislation.

 

The survival of the Senate's effective supermajority rule to pass bills could hinge on a working group of 20 senators that includes the most moderate members in both parties.

If the group can cut deals and deliver victories, it could become the model for lawmaking under President Joe Biden. If it fails, the Democratic-led Congress will face pressure to pursue partisan avenues to enact its ambitious agenda, including the simple-majority budget process and nixing the filibuster.

The group, evenly divided between the two parties, is off to a rough start. It was sidelined for the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package. It is ill-defined and lacks a clear focus or method. It has yet to show signs of success in the new presidency.

Its ability to prove that the Senate can function under the 60-vote requirement carries high stakes for the future of the chamber — and for politics and policymaking over the next four years.

"The argument against the filibuster is that nothing happens and it's all obstruction. And if we can make it work, we can get legislation passed without changing the rules," said Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and has worked across the aisle.

Republican members of the group say they want to defuse the push to ax the filibuster.

"That's certainly our goal: to diminish the hue and cry by the left for elimination of the 60-vote rule," said Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas. "To say, no, there are ways in which we can work together, that the Senate can function, and needs to."

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, another GOP member of the group, agreed.

"I do think that group will be the group that decides whether or not we can maintain the 60-vote threshold," Young said. "I don't see any reason for me to continue to participate in the group if some of the members significantly erode the filibuster, or decide to effectively abandon it altogether."

The group will serve as a critical test of Sen. Joe Manchin's theory that the filibuster should be preserved because it promotes cooperation. The West Virginian is the most outspoken Democratic supporter of the 60-vote threshold, and without him the party lacks the votes to modify it.

"Let's start talking to each other — not talking over each other or through each other as senators. We're talking as individuals with each other," Manchin told NBC News on Tuesday, when asked about the role of the group. "Good commonsense people should find common ground."

The two issues that have generated the most optimism about bipartisanship lately are an infrastructure package and legislation to enhance U.S. competitiveness with China.

The group of 20 was scheduled to meet on Wednesday, senators said, as Congress grapples with a host of contentious issues including a hike in the minimum wage, gun violence, immigration and the migrant influx at the border, and voting rights. But that meeting didn't materialize, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

 

Understand that this charade is supposed to fail, and fail miserably. But it will eat up months of time, if not years, without having to produce any results. And when it doesn't, Republicans will have a golden opportunity to take back the House, on top of ending any shot at anything passing for the next 46 months. 

 

Joe Manchin especially must know this, so what's his game here?

Sen. Joe Manchin said Wednesday that he favors a large infrastructure package that would be paid for in part by raising tax revenues — a point of contention between the two parties.

"I'm sure of one thing: It’s going to be enormous," the West Virginia Democrat, who is seen as a swing vote in a chamber divided 50-50, told reporters at the Capitol.

While he didn't predict a price tag, Manchin said Congress should do "everything we possibly can" to pay for it. He said there should be "tax adjustments" to former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law to boost revenues, including by raising the corporate rate from the current 21 percent to at least 25 percent.

The tax benefits in the Republican law were "weighted in one direction to the upper end," Manchin said. He also suggested an "infrastructure bank" paid for with revenues, potentially a value-added tax, that would be used for "rebuilding America."

"I'm not afraid to look at other things," he said.

 

A grand total of zero Republicans in the Senate would vote for a dime in higher taxes, so I have no idea what he thinks he's doing, but the infrastructure package will have no Republican support. Mitch McConnell made that clear early last week.

Hope you enjoyed the American Rescue Plan Act. It's the last major piece of legislation that will ever make it through this Congress, or the next one.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

Yet another first for President Joe Biden's already historic Cabinet: the first openly transgender Assistant Heath and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine was confirmed this week in a 52-48 vote.

All Democrats and Independents voted to support Levine, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) crossing the aisle to support her, prompting cheers from advocates who called the vote a breakthrough.

“I firmly believe that turning points, such as today’s Senate confirmation vote for Dr. Levine’s appointment, are powerful indications that this nation is truly heading down the pathway to lasting transgender equality,” said Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, who served in the Obama administration and was the first openly transgender official to work in the White House.

Levine, who most recently served as Pennsylvania’s top health official, is the first openly transgender official to be confirmed by the Senate. Her candidacy was widely opposed by religious-rights groups, and some Republican critics also zeroed in on gaps in Pennsylvania’s nursing home data that they said complicated the state’s response to the pandemic.

The assistant secretary for health oversees a broad portfolio of public-health initiatives, and President Biden has said that Levine will play a key role in the nation’s coronavirus response. The Trump administration’s assistant secretary for health, Brett Giroir, served as the nation’s coronavirus testing czar.

The assistant secretary for health also oversees the surgeon general, Vivek H. Murthy, who was confirmed on Tuesday.

LGBTQ advocacy organizations applauded the vote, with many advocates having viewed Levine’s candidacy as a symbolic victory amid efforts to ban or restrict treatments for transgender youth.

“With the confirmation of Dr. Rachel Levine, we are one step closer to a government that mirrors the beautiful diversity of its people,” Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

 

Dr. Levine has been one of the nation's top physicians for decades, and helped lead Pennsylvania through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic as the state's Secretary of Health. A pandemic-tested official who actually did the right thing?

Yes, more folks like that in America's top health advocacy and response positions, thanks.

StupidiNews!

• North Korea has launched two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan after carrying out weapons tests over the weekend, South Korea has "strengthened its surveillance" according to US officials.
• Vice President Kamala Harris will lead the White House's efforts to reduce undocumented immigrant border crossings from Mexico, she will visit the border this weekend.
• The Academy Awards will not allow remote acceptance speeches at this year's awards ceremony, causing a major backlash among Hollywood producers, directors, and movie stars.
• The US Treasury has already sent some $325 billion in household stimulus payments as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says more help is on the way.
• NASA is targeting April 8 for the first flights of Ingenuity, the powered flight drone that hitched a ride with the Perseverance rover that landed on Mars earlier this year.
  

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

I know this is starting to sound like a track on repeat forever, but January 6th was a coordinated white supremacist terrorist attack on the US Capitol and it was encouraged by Donald Trump and the GOP with the express intent of killing enough lawmakers in order to install Trump as leader.

 

A key member of the Oath Keepers militia told associates he had coordinated alliances with the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups in advance of Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally, according to new evidence filed by the Justice Department.

Spurred on by the president's incendiary rhetoric at that day's rally, Trump supporters, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, rioted at the Capitol and assaulted police officers later that day in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Kelly Meggs, the Florida leader of the Oath Keepers — who’s been charged along with nine others with conspiring to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election — said in private messages obtained by prosecutors that he’d been in touch repeatedly with Proud Boys leadership in particular. He said he had worked out a strategy to confront potential violence from antifa, a loosely organized collection of left-wing extremists.

“This week I organized an alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers, and Proud Boys,” Meggs wrote in a Dec. 19 message to an associate via Facebook. “We have decided to work together and shut this shit down.”

In Dec. 22 and Dec. 25 messages, Meggs got more specific, describing tactical maneuvers they would conduct with the Proud Boys if they encountered antifa: “We’re going to march with them for awhile then fall to the back of the crowd and turn off. Then we will have the Proud Boys get in front of them the cops will get between antifa and Proud Boys. We will come in behind antifa and beat the hell out of them.”

The evidence is the first to suggest coordination among the various extremist groups as they prepared to descend on Washington. Oath Keepers attorneys have emphasized in court papers that evidence they were preparing for violence was limited to potential confrontation with antifa — not a plan to storm the Capitol.

But prosecutors say the planning, plus a growing body of evidence that the Oath Keepers executed a coordinated plan to enter the Capitol and rallied to the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, after first breaching the building, suggesting it was an element of their effort. In addition, prosecutors revealed messages of Oath Keepers celebrating the Capitol assault and promising to “reload” for further action.

Prosecutors unveiled an indictment last week against four Proud Boys leaders for similarly coordinating movements in advance of Jan. 6, with an emphasis on dividing into small groups ahead of their march on the Capitol. Along with the Oath Keepers cases, the Proud Boys charges are the gravest to arise from the Jan. 6 assault. Prosecutors have arrested more than 300 participants in the Capitol attack. Dozens unaffiliated with either militia have been charged with brutal assaults on police and breaching the building or causing property damage.

 

I'll keep saying that long after the convictions are in on terrorism and sedition charges, too.

 

The reason Republicans don't want these folks investigated is because the Republicans are aiding and abetting them.

 

The voters voting for these Republicans?

 

You're aiding and abetting them too.

 

If you don't want to be called what you are, which is a white supremacist, stop supporting the violent party of white supremacy.

 

 

The State of Statehood, Con't

Just a couple of years ago, DC statehood was a non-starter even among Democrats with 64% of the country and a vast majority of both parties against the notion. A lot has changed since July 2019 when that Gallup poll on statehood was taken, however. What hasn't changed are the terribly racist and stupid Republican excuses against DC statehood, knowing full well that it will give Democrats two more Senators.

Each time statehood comes before Congress, Republicans often cite the intent of the Founding Fathers in their opposition, along with a potpourri of other claims. Remember when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was concerned that D.C. statehood would impact his staffers’ ability to park their cars near the Capitol? Or when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said that Wyoming was “more deserving” than D.C. of statehood, despite its smaller population, because it was a “well-rounded working-class state.” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) echoed a version of this argument on Monday, asking D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser whether the District had mining, manufacturing, and agriculture, because “that’s how nation’s build wealth.”

“We do not have any mines, Congressman,” Bowser said, pointing out that D.C.’s diverse economy was not reliant on the federal government. She said in her opening statement that she was expecting a series of bad-faith arguments from statehood opponents.

The new argument du jour from Republicans came courtesy of Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who said that D.C. ought not be a state because it didn’t have car dealerships, landfills, or airports. (The GOP witness, Zack Smith of the Heritage Foundation, said basically the same thing while putting it differently, contending that D.C. lacks the “amenities and resources found in many other states.”)

While the Constitution does not establish any prerequisites for states, Hice’s argument was especially befuddling because D.C. does have a number of car dealerships. When multiple speakers pointed that out, Hice responded that his claims were not arbitrary but instead “based in reality … I apologize for being wrong [about the existence of car dealerships in the District]. I have no idea where it is.”

But somehow, that didn’t put the car dealership question to rest. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) piggybacked off Hice to note that, while D.C. may have a car dealership, it’s a Tesla dealership. Again, the Constitution makes no mention of an electric car exception, but Norman too was wrong, because that isn’t D.C.’s only car dealership.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Republicans were “simply trying to gin up whatever argument they can think of,” saying that, while they accused Democrats of trying to pass statehood for partisan purposes, Republicans “are the ones trying to create a political and ideological test.”

Many Democrats, meanwhile, painted statehood as an issue of fairness and of racial equality. D.C. would be the only majority-minority state, as Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) mentioned. “D.C. statehood is a racial justice issue,” she said, noting that the measure could help diversify the halls of Congress.

While some of the specifics differed, the four-hour hearing mirrored ones and appeared unlikely to change any lawmaker’s mind on the issue. While the measure is likely to pass the House, it faces a larger challenge in the Senate. Advocates say it won’t make it to a vote unless the Senate abolishes the filibuster.

 

And that's the bottom line.

 

Not a single Republican will ever vote for a majority Black state to be created, with two US Senators and autonomy and a budget in the billions. It's the most tacit admission yet that Republicans are racist assholes who know they will never be able to convince Black folks to vote for them.

 

That terrifies Republicans more than anything else on this Earth.

Going Viral In A New York Minute

Hizzoner Bill de Blasio is ending remote work for NYC employees and sending tens of thousands back to to offices, desk, and cubicles in May.

 

For the last year, New York City has been running in the shadow of a deadly pandemic, with many city and private sector employees forced to work from home, stripping New York of its lifeblood and devastating its economy.

But with virus cases seeming to stabilize and vaccinations becoming more widespread, city officials intend to send a message that New York is close to returning to normal: On May 3, the city will compel its municipal office employees to begin to report to work in person.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to bring the nation’s largest municipal work force back to the office represents a significant turnabout for a city that served as the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, coming to symbolize the perils of living in densely packed global capitals.

The move is meant to broadcast that New York City will soon be open for business, and to encourage private companies to follow suit — lifting the hopes of landlords whose skyscrapers have largely sat empty as office workers stayed home.

“We’re going to make it safe, but we need our city workers back in their offices where they can do the most to help their fellow New Yorkers,” Mr. de Blasio said Tuesday. “And it’s also going to send a powerful message about this city moving forward.”

Yet the move by the city has sparked concern among some workers and union leaders who fear the return to the office is premature. New York City has among the highest coronavirus case rates in the nation. Many workers will have to commute an hour or more on mass transit. Others will have to juggle their children’s episodic in-person school schedules with their new in-person work requirements.

Across the globe, government and business leaders have grappled with the question of how and when to safely reopen, as the worst of the pandemic seems to have passed.

In the private sector, commercial real estate landlords like SL Green and RXR Realty have made a point of bringing their own employees to the office during the pandemic. In London, JPMorgan Chase is planning to bring back some workers starting March 29, and it is hoping to bring interns back in June.

In Texas, municipal workers in the city of Houston are working both in person and remotely at the discretion of their department director, though the mayor has encouraged the remote option. Masks are strongly advised, even though the state has lifted its overall mask mandate.

In Philadelphia, city office employees are still working from home when possible.

The new policy in New York, which will be rolled out in phases over several weeks, will affect about 80,000 employees who have been working remotely, including caseworkers, computer specialists and clerical associates. The rest of the city’s roughly 300,000-person work force, many of them uniformed personnel including police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers, have already been reporting to work sites.

 

It's a bad idea, as I've said before.

We'll see what happens, but all indications are we're going to see a spring COVID-19 spike and it's going to be pretty bad. Hopefully not as bad as December/January, but it's going to be bad, and tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, will die.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Last Call For Welcome Back To Gunmerica

Spring has sprung, and along with it, AR-15 killings in mass shootings with Republicans screaming about thoughts and prayers and the rest of the world rightfully believing us to be insane people who need to be quarantined.

The suspect charged in the murders of 10 people at a Boulder, Colo., grocery store — the second mass shooting to shake the country in less than a week — is a 21-year-old man from a nearby Denver suburb who used an AR-15 type of assault rifle, law enforcement officials said.

The police in Arvada, Colo., said they had two encounters in 2018 with the suspect, identified on Tuesday as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa of Arvada — one on a report of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and one of criminal mischief. It is not clear if he was convicted of a crime.

A police affidavit made public on Tuesday said that last week he bought a Ruger AR-556 semiautomatic pistol, though it is not clear if that weapon was involved in the shooting on Monday. The affidavit said he had both a rifle and a pistol at the store.

The suspect’s identity was known to the F.B.I. because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the bureau, according to law enforcement officials.

Among the victims of the massacre on Monday was Officer Eric Talley, 51, with the Boulder Police Department, who had responded to a “barrage” of 911 calls about the shooting, Chief Maris Herold said.

The authorities identified the nine additional victims as Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65.

Chief Herold said at a news conference that police officers had run into the King Soopers grocery store within minutes of the shooting and had shot at the suspect. No other officers were injured during the response, she said. She said Mr. Alissa was taken to a hospital for treatment of a leg injury

On Tuesday he was taken to a jail in Boulder and was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder. Officials gave no indication of a motive.

Court records show he was born in Syria in 1999, as did a Facebook page that appeared to belong to the suspect, giving his name as Ahmad Al Issa; the page was taken down within an hour of his name being released by the authorities. Michael Dougherty, the Boulder County district attorney, said the suspect had “lived most of his life in the United States.”

The Facebook page said he went to Arvada West High School, where he was a wrestler, and listed wrestling and kickboxing as being among his interests. Many of the posts were about martial arts, and one, in 2019, said simply, “#NeedAGirlfriend.”

The shooting came just six days after another gunman’s deadly shooting spree at massage parlors in the Atlanta area.

 

This will keep happening as long as we tolerate it, and enough of us tolerate it that it will keep happening. 

Welcome back to Gunmerica.

Post-Messed-Up In General

While President Biden is appointing new members to the board that oversees the US Postal Service, Trump's agent of the agency's destruction is hard at work trying to lock a decade-long plan into place that will effectively end the era of mail in America for 90% of the country.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will unveil the largest rollback of consumer mail services in a generation as part of his 10-year plan for the U.S. Postal Service, according to two people briefed on the proposal, including longer first-class delivery windows, reduced post office hours and higher postage prices.

The announcement set for Tuesday is part of DeJoy’s strategic vision for the agency, one that has left postal advocates wary of any changes that could further diminish operations. Mailing industry experts have warned that substantial service cuts could drive away business and worsen the Postal Service’s already battered balance sheet.

DeJoy is expected to emphasize the need for austerity to ensure more consistent delivery and rein in billions of dollars in financial losses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. The agency is weighed down by $188.4 billion in liabilities, and DeJoy told a House panel last month that he expects the USPS to lose $160 billion over the next 10 years.

The plan, which he told the panel was eight months in the making, is meant to reset expectations for the Postal Service and its place in the express-shipping market. It’s couched in the notion that the historically high package volumes of the pandemic era will persist, and reorients the agency around consumers who don’t use the mail service for letters, advertisements or business transactions as much as they once did.

“Does it make a difference if it’s an extra day to get a letter?” DeJoy told the House Oversight and Reform Committee in February. “Because something has to change. We cannot keep doing the same thing we’re doing.”

DeJoy will roll out his plan as Democrats have renewed calls for his ouster and the removal of the agency’s governing board, which backs him and the proposals. More than 50 House Democrats last week asked President Biden to fire the board’s six sitting members for cause — citing “gross mismanagement,” “self-inflicted” nationwide mail delays and “rampant conflicts of interest” — and to allow a new slate of Biden nominees to consider DeJoy’s fitness for office.

Biden already has nominated two Democrats and a voting rights advocate to fill three of four vacancies (board Chairman Ron Bloom, a Democrat, is serving in a one-year holdover term) on the board of governors. If confirmed by the Senate, Democrats and Biden appointees would hold a 5-to-4 majority with the votes to remove DeJoy, if desired.

Biden cannot fire DeJoy; postal operations are purposefully insulated from the presidency and Congress to prevent politicians from tinkering with the mail system for political gain. The postmaster general answers only to the board of governors. Bloom told the House panel in February that the board “believes the postmaster general in very difficult circumstances is doing a good job.”

Most of DeJoy’s changes will not face regulatory road blocks. The postmaster general unilaterally controls operating hours at post offices, and the board of governors appears to back DeJoy’s changes to delivery times. Bloom will join DeJoy on a webinar Tuesday to announce the policies.

 

Remember two things: 

One, President Biden may not be able to get America out of this. He can only appoint governors and he'll need Senate confirmation to do it.

Two, you can personally thank Bernie Sanders for getting us into this mess. By making the perfect the enemy of the good, he blocked President Obama's appointments to the Postal Board of Governors in 2016, allowing Donald Trump to later appoint all the governors himself with Mitch McConnell's help.

We could have saved the Post Office. There's a coin-flip chance that it doesn't make it through the decade without the mail being permanently privatized.

The Big Gun Or The Good Package(s)?

President Biden and the White House are preparing to release their budget plans for two massive Marshall Plan/Public Works Authority-style infrastructure and family care bills that will of course get zero GOP support, and be the impetus for abolishing the filibuster.

White House officials are preparing to present President Biden with a roughly $3 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that includes numerous sweeping domestic policy priorities, according to three people familiar with internal discussions.

After completing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package earlier this month, Biden administration officials are piecing together their next major legislative priority. While no final announcement has been made, the White House is expected to push a multitrillion jobs and infrastructure plan as the centerpiece of the president’s “Build Back Better” agenda.

That effort is expected to be broken into two parts — one focused on infrastructure, and the other focused on other domestic priorities, such as universal prekindergarten, national child care, and free community college tuition. Many details of the plan were first reported by the New York Times. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, stressed planning was preliminary and subject to change. Some aides stressed that the final price-tag of the package remained unclear.

The sprawling package, although still in the works, follows weeks of uncertainty about Biden’s second big legislative effort following the relief package. Crucial decisions will still have to be made about how the administration seeks to advance the measure. Congressional Republicans are unlikely to support trillions more in additional spending or the tax hikes that the White House is eyeing to fund these initiatives.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that the administration had not decided on its next step. “President Biden and his team are considering a range of potential options for how to invest in working families and reform our tax code so it rewards work, not wealth," Psaki said. "Those conversations are ongoing, so any speculation about future economic proposals is premature and not a reflection of the White House’s thinking.”

The infrastructure part of the plan includes hundreds of billions of dollars for repairing the nation’s roads, bridges, waterways, and rails. It also includes funding for retrofitting buildings, safety improvements, schools infrastructure, and low-income and tribal groups, as well as $100 billion for schools and education infrastructure.

The infrastructure component of the proposal includes $400 billion in spending to combat climate change, including $60 billion for infrastructure related to green transit and $46 billion for climate-related research and development. The plan also would aim to make electric vehicle charging stations available across the country. The measure would also include $200 billion for housing infrastructure, including $100 billion to expand the supply of housing for low-income Americans.

The second component of the effort would include many of Biden’s other domestic priorities. Those include universal prekindergarten and free community college tuition. The package would also dramatically expand spending on child care. The measure would also extend for several years the expansion of the Child Tax Credit recently signed into law for just one year as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

The legislation would also include extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, as well as free and reduced tuition at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

 

This is basically everything we've been badly needing for the last two decades, folks. This bill has zero, I repeat, zero chance of any GOP support, and I suspect that should the bill miraculously pass because the filibuster is gone, that the GOP red state attorneys general will sue the pants off the Biden administration to stop anything from happening, and then blame the Democrats. They may even win in the Supreme Court outright on much of the plan.

But then the GOP owns all of that failure. And with no filibuster, Biden can add to the courts.

This is where the real battle of my lifetime begins.