Ridin' With Biden, Con't

House Democrats correctly saw that liberalism has its limits among voters, and embracing the more moderate Biden plan kept them control of the House, albeit narrowly. But even the Blue Dogs are lining up now behind Biden's big spending bills, as they see the key to expanding their House lead in 2022.

 

Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan could be forgiven if he wanted to break with early parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Ryan’s Youngstown-centric district went through a political transformation over the course of the last decade, going from safely Democratic to a place where Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump by just 4 percentage points in 2020. Furthermore, Ryan is “looking very, very closely” at entering the race for Ohio’s open Senate seat, putting himself in front of a solidly pro-Trump electorate in 2022.

But Ryan didn’t hesitate when asked what Democrats should do next after the passage of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

“Double down,” he told HuffPost in an interview last week. “Double down on working families.”

Across the country, Democrats are uniformly lining up behind the most essential parts of Biden’s policy program, aggressively trying to sell the already-passed American Rescue Plan ― which sent $1,400 checks to most Americans and which Democrats say will help crush the coronavirus pandemic and reopen schools ― with Biden himself embracing a prediction of 6% economic growth at his press conference last week.

They are eagerly anticipating his next legislative proposal, which Biden is expected to lay out in a speech in Pittsburgh this week. Early reports indicate the more than $3 trillion package will contain hundreds of billions in infrastructure spending, a permanent expansion of the child tax credit, free community college, aid for caregivers, and a package of tax increases on wealthy Americans and corporations.

Driving this party-wide political bet is a conviction that robust economic liberalism can renew Americans’ faith in their government, give them a political advantage on economic issues and stem continued defections among working-class voters of all races to a GOP almost exclusively focused on culture war issues.

“We’re going to keep building until every American has that peace of mind and to show that our government can fulfill its most essential purpose: to care for and protect the American people,” Biden said Tuesday during an event at Ohio State University in Columbus, with Ryan in attendance. “When we work together, we can do big things, important things, necessary things.”

Ryan said the relief package amounted to a “huge sigh of collective relief” in his district ― not only because of the checks but also because of rental assistance and aid to restaurants and music venues.

“I think people are starting to get confidence in the government again,” Ryan said. “You can already feel a lot of voters saying, ‘I didn’t vote for Biden, but I appreciate what he’s doing.’ And if we keep going down this road, a lot of these people are going to approve of it.”

 

Democrats have a short window to make legislation that allows them to prove that the federal government works for the 99% and not just the 1%. Blue Dogs finally understand this, because the alternative is fascist Trumpism. But in order to do that, they will have to be willing to kill the filibuster completely.

We'll see what they are willing to do.

Last Call For Cuomo's Mary Jane Moment

Maybe I'm just a cynical bastard, but it seems to me that embattled NY Dem Go.v Andrew Cuomo, now facing more than a half-dozen sexual assault allegations from current and former staffers, is trying to buy his way out of impeachment through a major new marijuana legalization deal, something he's resisted for years now.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers formally announced a final deal on legislation to legalize marijuana in New York State late Saturday night.

The bill—called the Marijuana Regulation & Taxation Act—would permit adults 21 and over to purchase marijuana, grow the plant in their home, and divert funds to education and drug treatment.

It would also create a cannabis management office and a regulatory framework that would cover adult-use, medical marijuana, and cannabinoid hemp, the latter which includes CBD products. (Existing medical and cannabinoid hemp products programs would be expanded under the legislation.) A social and economic equity aspect of the bill aims to help people harmed by marijuana prohibition enforcement get into the upcoming business.

"For generations, too many New Yorkers have been unfairly penalized for the use and sale of adult-use cannabis, arbitrarily arrested and jailed with harsh mandatory minimum sentences," Cuomo said in a statement. "After years of tireless advocacy and extraordinarily hard work, that time is coming to an end in New York State."

The governor's office says the adult-use program is expected to bring in $350 million in taxes each year as well as create 30,000 to 60,000 jobs statewide. Retail sales of marijuana would include a state sales tax of 9%. Localities' sales tax would be 4%, with counties getting one-quarter of tax revenue and three-quarters would go to the municipality.

Under the bill, 40% of the revenues would go towards education, 40% to community reinvestment grants to communities harmed by criminalization of drugs, and 20% to drug treatment and public education programs.

Lawmakers are expected to pass the bill this coming week, after hammering out an agreement with Cuomo late last week.

One of the legislation's sponsors, Manhattan State Senator Liz Krueger, said in a statement, "My goal in carrying this legislation has always been to end the racially disparate enforcement of marijuana prohibition that has taken such a toll on communities of color across our state, and to use the economic windfall of legalization to help heal and repair those same communities."

She added, "I believe we have achieved that in this bill, as well as addressing the concerns and input of stakeholders across the board. When this bill becomes law, New York will be poised to implement a nation-leading model for what marijuana legalization can look like."

 

I'm not questioning the legislation, in too many states with marijuana legislation, it continues to punish Black and brown folk and freezes them out of yet another business opportunity in favor of white-owned business investors who only see dollar signs. The criminal justice reform elements are definitely here in New York's proposed legislation. Colorado, Ohio, and even California need to take notice.

What I'm questioning is the timing.

If this is part of an unspoken deal to look the other way on the voluminous allegations against Cuomo, it's eventually going to come to light, and it's going to be the end of Democrats in New York. If Republicans in the state were even remotely sentient, they'd make that accusation straight away.

That needs to be investigated by Tish James in the AG's office. This is some dank weed, indeed.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Georgia Republican and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused to let Trump steal the state's election and has been number one on Trump's list of "traitors" for a while now. His political future is basically nil and all indications are he'll be primaried out well before his November 2022 reelection.

 

He's already been removed as the state's chief election official by last week's omnibus Jim Crow voter suppression package, and Georgia Republicans are making sure that no Democrat ever wins again in the state, and that means never again allowing elected officials to objectively run elections in Georgia, but making sure the GOP state legislature does.

It is a remarkable turn of events for a conventional Republican politician whose down-ballot election in 2018 went largely unnoticed outside his own state. Yet after refusing to buckle to Donald Trump’s requests to change the state’s vote count and feuding with Trump over the former president’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, Raffensperger’s reelection campaign is unfolding, improbably, as one of the most consequential of the election cycle — with implications for the GOP in every state and at all levels of government.

Jason Shepherd, the chair of the Republican Party in Cobb County, Georgia, said he has friends who are “completely uninvolved in politics” who tell him “there is no way they are going to vote to reelect Raffensperger.”

That sentiment, he said, is coming from “the type of person you’re almost surprised they know the name of the secretary of state.”

“I don’t want to say there’s zero chance, but at this point right now, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone in the party who supports the reelection of [Raffensperger],” he said.

Raffensperger still has more than a year to turn it around. But he is running up against the heavy weight of GOP’s election fraud orthodoxy. Earlier this week, Rep. Jody Hice, a defender of Trump’s effort to overturn the election, announced he’s running with Trump’s endorsement to unseat Raffensperger. And the Georgia Republican Party isn’t exactly sitting on the sidelines.

The state executive committee publicly called this week on Raffensperger to repudiate his staff for misquoting Trump’s words in a December phone call in which Trump urged a Georgia elections official to find “dishonesty” in the vote in an attempt to reverse the election results.

The party said Raffensperger has “dodged repeated attempts” by committee members to discuss the issue with him.

Closer to home, Raffensperger failed this past weekend to get Republicans in his own precinct to elect him as a delegate to his county’s upcoming Republican Party convention, said Stewart Bragg, executive director of the Georgia Republican Party. After Raffensperger wrote a letter asking to be elected, no one at the precinct meeting moved to nominate him, Bragg said.

In a statement, the chair of the Fulton County Republican Party, Trey Kelly, said he was unaware of any letter from Raffensperger, adding that, “like many others who did not attend Saturday, he was not added to the delegate or alternate list for the county convention.” A person close to Raffensperger also denied that he sent a letter seeking election.

His representatives otherwise declined to comment for this story, pointing to Raffensperger’s past public statements.

Raffensperger's official responsibilities have also been targeted by Republicans in the state. On Thursday, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law, signed by Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, that removes the secretary of state as the state election board chair — to be replaced by a person approved by the state legislature.

The law, in effect, hands control of the five-person board over to the state legislature: Two other members on the board are picked by the respective legislative chambers. The law also gives the state election board the ability to suspend county election officials, who are replaced by an individual picked by the board.

Raffensperger is not without a fan base. In fact, he’s the most popular Republican in Georgia, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll in January — even more than Kemp or Trump.

But that feat is in large part because Raffensperger is admired by Democrats, who viewed him as a truth-telling, elections administration equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci after the November vote. Nearly 45 percent of Republicans in the state disapprove of Raffensperger’s performance, according to the poll.

Raffensperger has been a focal point for Trump and his supporters since shortly after the presidential election. Even as early as November, he said he was preparing for a primary challenge because of how angry some in the state may be with him.

In an election cycle where secretary of state races are likely to get a near-unprecedented amount of attention, Georgia’s may be the most competitive. Not only is Raffensperger facing a Trump-backed primary challenger, Democrats will be gunning for the office in 2022 as well, enraged by the Republicans in the legislature pushing through bills that will restrict voter access to the polls and emboldened by the party’s successes in the state’s last election.

 

Don't feel sorry for Raffensperger. He literally did the bare minimum of his job as a Republican, and he's still a Republican. Like all of them, they need to go.

Sunday Long Read: Insur-(Rocky) Mount-able Differences

The revitalization of Rocky Mount, North Carolina is typical of many small towns in the Old North State, like where I grew up. The textile mills and tobacco farms are long gone, but the city's long history of racial division remains, and while the area is getting a huge investment boost, it's only going to certain areas of town, as The Assembly's Katie Jane Fernelius reports.

It was a mill town, a tobacco town, and a railroad town. But as the new millennium loomed, it was a dying town.

“The severe textile slump has done what the Yankee soldiers could not: forced the closing of the South’s oldest textile company,” wrote The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A grand building on the banks of the Tar River, Rocky Mount Mills had been twice burned down and twice rebuilt. But by 1996, it closed—a casualty, some claimed, of NAFTA.

The tobacco companies were next. In 1998, the industry that had made the town a city 100 years earlier finally heard its death knell as a group of major tobacco companies surrendered to the throng of state attorney generals and entered into the Master Settlement Agreement, which obligated the companies to pay over $200 billion in damages.

Then in 1999, there was Hurricane Floyd. The storm tore through a region still recovering from a tropical storm that had hit just 10 days prior, flooding the Tar River and submerging the city. According to some estimates, 4,000 housing units were destroyed. Dozens died.

The industrial exoskeleton of the city barely remained intact.

“The main business corridors in Rocky Mount soaked for days in several feet of brown water,” reported one newspaper, a year after the storm. “Decades of work spent building the communities were washed away in a single event.”

That was then. To read about Rocky Mount today is to read about a city on the eve of its debutante, with tire manufacturers, freight companies, and even the DMV all flocking to the city and committing to new manufacturing plants, cargo terminals, or headquarters there.

In 2019, Forbes listed the city as one of the best “small places” to do business. Last year, PBS NC profiled its historic preservation and revitalization. WRAL-TV lauded the city’s craft brewery incubator and tiny-home hotel.

When the Goodmon family-run Capitol Broadcasting Company purchased Rocky Mount Mills to repurpose it as a mixed-use complex, the Urban Land Institute wrote that the investment would turn the city “into a destination for millennials ... ultimately shifting the fortunes of the eastern North Carolina town of Rocky Mount."

It’s a familiar story for CBC, whose massive investment in Durham’s American Tobacco Campus helped convert the vestiges of the city’s industrial economy into a charming and nostalgic backdrop for trendy, modern living.

Some might call this revitalization. Others might call it gentrification. What cannot be denied is that Rocky Mount—a city Forbes listed just 12 years ago as among the country’s 10 most impoverished––is now the center of a well-financed campaign for its revival.

This would be a relatively straightforward story about a resurgent city finding its stride. But Rocky Mount isn’t a city united. Two Main Streets run downtown, separated by railroad tracks that divide the city and demarcate the boundary between its twin counties. To the west, majority-white Nash County and to the east, majority-Black Edgecombe County.

A fall from prosperity, the potential of a renaissance, all on a foundation of deep racial divisions––that’s the challenge ahead for Rocky Mount. And on the ground, there are widely different views about just how insurmountable those difficulties are.

 

On the Nash County side, everything is great. On the Edgecombe County side, well. 

And if this isn't the story of America, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile In Myanmar...

The death toll in Myanmar as the military junta government cracked down on protests this weekend has risen to at least 114 as soldiers have shot civilians in cold blood in dozens of cities and towns.

Local media in Myanmar say security forces killed at least 114 civilians in 40 cities and towns on Saturday, in what appears to be the deadliest day of protests since the coup last month.

The brutal crackdown came as the military marked the annual Armed Forces Day holiday. In a televised speech in the capital, Naypyitaw, coup leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing continued to justify the coup by accusing the government of deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi of failing to investigate the military's accusations of voter fraud in the November general election — which saw Suu Kyi's party win in a landslide.

Min Aung Hlaing addressed the ongoing protests against the military indirectly — denouncing demonstrations against the coup as "terrorism" that is "harmful to state tranquility." The general promised fresh elections, but did not provide details on when a new vote would be held.

The deaths of 114 protesters on Saturday comes in addition to the 328 killed by the junta since the coup, according to figures released Friday by the activist group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. AAPR notes that around a quarter of those killed died from shots to the head, which the group says raises concerns that demonstrators are being targeted for killing. In addition to the dead, more than 3,000 demonstrators have been arrested, charged or sentenced since the start of the coup, according to AAPR.

As violence continues to escalate, so too do fears that armed groups who oppose the military coup are positioning themselves to join the fray.

"The Myanmar Armed Forces Day isn't an armed forces day, it's more like the day they killed people," said Gen. Yawd Serk, chair of one of Myanmar's ethnic armies, the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South, in an interview with Reuters. "If they continue to shoot at protesters and bully the people, I think all the ethnic groups would not just stand by and do nothing."

In a statement on Twitter, the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, Thomas L. Vajda, denounced what he described as "horrifying" bloodshed and called for "an immediate end to the violence and the restoration of the democratically elected government."

"These are not the actions of a professional military or police force," Vajda said. "Myanmar's people have spoken clearly: they do not want to live under military rule."

The European Union, which earlier this week sanctioned 11 people in relation to the coup, called the killing of unarmed civilians — including children — "indefensible" in a post on Twitter. "This 76th Myanmar armed forces day will stay engraved as a day of terror and dishonour," wrote the bloc's delegation to the country.

 

Myanmar - Burma -- is what would be happening here if Trump's cultists had been successful on January 6th only instead of dozens killed, it would be thousands. They came distressingly close.

And Myanmar does need the world's help.

We'll see if anyone can step up.

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.