It’s as bad as we thought at the CDC. From Politico:
The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation’s public health work for decades.
But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department’s new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump’s statements, including the president’s claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.
Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC’s findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.
Caputo’s team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that “the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.”
It’s entirely possible that people DIED because Caputo was worried that the CDC guidance would hurt Trump’s feelings and delayed its release for weeks. This is intolerable. It’s also the tip of the iceberg. Politico had a similar story about HHS and the same cast of characters trying to muzzle Dr. Fauci earlier this week:
A Trump administration appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to prevent Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, from speaking about the risks that coronavirus poses to children.
Emails obtained by POLITICO show Paul Alexander — a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs — instructing press officers and others at the National Institutes of Health about what Fauci should say during media interviews. The Trump adviser weighed in on Fauci’s planned responses to outlets including Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and the science journal Cell.
Alexander’s lengthy messages, some sent as recently as this week, are couched as scientific arguments. But they often contradict mainstream science while promoting political positions taken by the Trump administration on hot-button issues ranging from the use of convalescent plasma to school reopening.
The emails add to evidence that the White House, and Trump appointees within HHS, are pushing health agencies to promote a political message instead of a scientific one.
This Alexander person is an epidemiologist, but recall that tobacco companies and the oil industry were able to find trained scientists to lie about the health effects of smoking and raise doubt about climate change. The point is, political hacks are fucking with public health.
We can’t go on this way. It won’t be enough to have intervals of sane presidents to clean up after Republican vandals, because the vandalism will escalate. Even if Biden wins, we’ll be four to eight years from the prospect of President Cue-a-Nun* Nutball.
What to do? Take the CDC out of executive branch oversight? But what about the DoJ? It’s just as politicized. Thanks to Mitch McConnell, the current SCOTUS is as political as the US Senate.
Broken norms and traditions won’t be resurrected by a transient Democratic hold on power, when we’re always just one election away from being ruled by another amoral, corrupt and possibly insane Republican demagogue. It’s like being handcuffed to a lunatic.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I hope someone is thinking about ways to toddler-proof the federal government. Open thread.
*Stolen from a Twitter friend and used to avoid attracting psychotic people to the blog.
raven
Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, AKA ‘The Swamp,’ is on fire
Baud
@raven:
I don’t know antifa golfed.
zhena gogolia
My husband keeps assuring me that Biden has phalanxes of people thinking about all of this. I pray he’s right. He usually is.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I found out that BLM has an Anchorage Field Office with an airfield. BLM has an air force too! Be afraid, be very afraid.
Baud
You can’t really protect government from democracy, especially one supported by nearly half of the population, except through civil war.
Calouste
Germany has had pretty decent government typically after the Nuremberg trials. Just saying.
Baud
Frankly, if civil servants were wing nuts, I would want Biden’s people to do what Trump’s people did (although with more transparency).
Ken
Who do we know that does golf?
EDIT: According to the updates on the original report, it wasn’t a golf cart, it was a dumpster fire. Who do we know that golfs and is associated with dumpster fires?
EDIT TO THE EDIT: I am obscurely troubled that the original report is getting its updates from twitter feeds.
PsiFighter37
It will be very hard to do. First step is to fire all Trump appointees, except for Jay Powell, on Jan. 20th.
Aziz, light!
Let the Confederacy go, then hold a constitutional convention. It’s the only way to set things right.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@PsiFighter37: Political appointees are gone unless they’re asked to stay when a new administration takes over
ETA: That wouldn’t include judges or the Fed.
Chetan Murthy
I remember that at the start of this Maladministration, there was discussion of how political commissars were being installed in every department. And people drew the parallel to the way the Bolsheviks did things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken: This begs the question: Who has a third floor dumpster?
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Stadiums with three levels.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s the Swamp, you gotta keep it above water level.
Sister Golden Bear
I’m sure it’s mere coincidence that Caputo, who lived in Russia for six years, is the former media consultant for… wait for it… Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile the USPS is trying to ratfuck the election. From Colorado’s SOS:
Also affects CA, DC, HI, NJ, NV, OR, UT, WA, & VT, where voters don’t request ballots because a ballot is mailed to every registered voter.
Gvg
@raven: the reports also said a golf cart and a dumpster fire and now they are saying a maintenance tractor….with pictures that show it melted to the frame, maintenance uses to go all over campus. It’s parked next to what appears to be a dumpster and I think it’s half melted. Does not appear to be structural damage. No stories seen on causes.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
The DOJ should be out of executive branch oversight as well. It should truly be independent. The SCOTUS can be packed. Question is, will Biden or the Dems actually do this?
Mallard Filmore
I suppose states have jurisdiction for some of the crimes committed by these people.
“Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner thinks President Trump’s coronavirus admissions should land him in prison.
In a Thursday appearance on SiriusXM’s The Dean Obeidallah Show, the MSNBC legal analyst gave an incredibly harsh assessment of Trump’s interviews with veteran reporter Bob Woodward. Trump’s insistence in March that he wanted to “play down” the coronavirus threat despite knowing its deadliness “upped his own criminal ante to second-degree murder,” Kirschner said, breaking down the pieces of the alleged charge step by step.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-federal-prosecutor-trump-admitted-190200145.html
https://democraticunderground.com/100214064508
raven
@Gvg: Remember when the grill set the building outside Jordan-Hare on fire?
Omnes Omnibus
@Aziz, light!: That’s not a solution.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Yeah, that’s my depressing conclusion as well.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
One could make the argument that all we’re doing (and have been doing for the last several years) is delaying the inevitable. But that’s honestly “Eeyore, We’re all doomed!” talk that isn’t particularly helpful
jheartney
The problem is centered the Republican Party itself, which decided many years ago to ally itself with the anti-civil rights South. But it’s more than that; around the same time the GOP was rolling out the welcome wagon to white Dixiecrats, there was a conscious decision to create an alternate media.
Nixon’s first VP was Spiro Agnew, who made it his mission to tour the country delivering “liberal media” rants in Trumpian fashion, (albeit written by William Safire). When Reagan took office, they built on this by removing the Fairness Doctrine and creating both Fox News and hate radio. The internet gave them another outlet for the same thing.
It’s not an accident that large portions of the country are both ruby-red and eager consumers of Q-based conspiracy theories. This has been a very long time coming, and it was done deliberately. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch laid the foundations for Trumpism.
If we want a livable country back, we’re going to need to deal with this. It’s not going to be enough to throw up hands and say the First Amendment trumps all. We’ll need to think creatively and work to degrade the existing right wing media, and to stop it from infesting political discourse. If we can’t do that, the Constitution will eventually fall.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Given how awful the inevitable is, delay is good.
Leto
@Baud: I was thinking about this earlier, specifically Republicans have been poisoning government service (outside the military) for 40 years now. If we’re witnessing the death of the Republican Party, as well as modern conservatism, will they want to go into government service at all? Outside of political appointments. Also how the fuck are we going to recruit talented people into government service after this 4 year shit show? We’ve ruminated on this before, but it just popped up in my brain again as something else (n+1) that we have to fix because of Republican incompetence.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I want to do more than just delay. We’ve seen how delaying has worked over the past several years. Republicans wreck shit while in control, Dems try to fix it, while Repubs throw sand in the gears of their efforts. I want to start reversing all of the right-wing shit and take the fight to them. I want to pack the Supreme Court and the judiciary. I want to ram through necessary bills while we have control of Congress. Because that is what it’s going to take to save American democracy
Bruuuuce
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The question in my mind re SCOTUS is whether the new Administration will have the will and political capital to impeach Frat Boy Brett for the documented perjury he committed at his confirmation (which reminded me of the scene in The Court Jester where they rush Danny Kaye through the knight’s tests, but not nearly as amusing in real life).
Jeffro
Massive win in November
Followed by massive consequences for the crooks, and massive changes made swiftly for the benefit of the country
– no more filibuster
– double the federal courts
– reinstate progressive tax rates
Etc etc. and TELL Americans, weekly, about all the good being done while Dems are in power
It’s that or outlaw the Republican Party
VeniceRiley
If we can manage to get the senate, then job #1 is expansion of every federal court by, say, 6 more judges and appointing the most competent justices we can find.
Jeffro
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): seconded
this election is still, somehow, not a done deal but I think our side realizes just how close we’ve already come to losing the whole thing. Let’s act like it once the new Congress and President Biden are in office.
Keep that urgency, Dems! We have to make big, bold moves…and quickly
Jeffro
@VeniceRiley: yup
double the size of the House, too. It would nearly eliminate the EC problem, among many other benefits
Baud
@Leto: People still want jobs.
Kathleen
Weren’t some folks here speculating about this scenario on a couple of threads yesterday?
BREAKING: Anthony Scaramucci just said on CNN: There will be more people resigning from the admin. and there will be former admin. officials that come out and explain the danger of the presidency.
Have they told u this firsthand?
Yes, absolutely, firsthand. Jason Lincoln Jeffers (@shamanartist) twitter.com/shamanartist/status/1304872225045196801 September 12, 2020
Gvg
@Ken: it makes more sense once you have seen the melted object that used to be what they are calling a maintenance tractor. It’s next to a dumpster looking thing but it could be a big cart to be hitched behind the vehicle. Also looks damaged.
its called the swamp because Steve Spurrier said it’s where the gators play. Historically it also was a low small valley that gave a good view for people watching 80 years ago, then they built stands.
the stadium has 3 levels underneath the stands with wide concrete ramps leading up to each level so that 90,000 people can get in and out without causing a fire hazard. The 2nd level has concession stands and many restrooms. The ramps and throughways are of reinforced concrete like a freeway and on non game days there are all kinds of carts parked there, plus the coaches get to park their cars there. Game days generate a lot of trash, food and drink debris, paper towels, etc. I never really counted, but there must be dozens of dumpsters and they probably switch them out as they get full. They must also be bringing in supplies…I just sort of took it for granted, never thought about how it was done.
also they used to let students run stadium steps when ever they weren’t using the stadium…it was open during the day. Not sure that is still the case.
Benw
Don’t vote for any more racist fascists. Cmon America, yes we can!
Bruuuuce
One thing that must be done is to enact into law that candidates for the federal bench must receive Acceptable or better grades from the American Bar Association, after this maladministration discarded their recommendations to install multiple unqualified candidates.
Then we need laws requiring all candidates for appointed positions receive hearings and a final vote within a reasonable time (say, 120 days for the hearing and 180 days for the vote), and that acting appointees must come from the chain of command within agencies, rather than allowing outside saboteurs such as Cheetolini named.
I know the Nazis will try to game those laws, but it would be a start
sacrablue
Oh crap! Cheeto Mussolini is coming to my neighborhood on Monday. I don’t know what time he will arrive but chances are Air Force One will be flying directly over my house. Fortunately, I have a medical appointment late morning, so with any luck I won’t be here. I believe he is coming here to teach us how to rake our forests.
Brachiator
Democracy is tough. Democracy is fragile. You don’t need an army to break it, just ignorant and lazy citizens and complicit politicians.
Trump is a third rate mobster. Hopefully, we will soon throw him out on his ass.
But it is sobering to note how eager people are to join his administration and join in with the crowd of slobbering toadies who live to kiss his ass, stroke his ego and do his warped ass bidding.
Serving your country? Forget about it!
I remember, during the height of the pandemic, Rudy G stating out loud that state governors needed to please Trump in order to get his help. Say nice things about him.
Right wingers like to talk about how stalwart and morally upstanding their heroes are. This is largely fantasy, but even so the degree to which Trump so easily subverted even a pretense of righteousness is astounding.
In the past we have had presidents whose terms were clouded by corruption. Many historians tried to assert that these presidents “allowed” corruption to go on around them, or did not know the extent to which some of their staff was dishonest.
With Trump, being a crook is a job requirement, and contemporary historians and academics have been reluctant to call Trump what he is, arguably the most dishonest and psychologically warped president we have ever had.
But this is, for now, a democracy. And masses of citizens have developed a taste for populist autocracy. They may want some more in the future.
catclub
Fire him, too. Reappoint Yellen.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Doesn’t mean they’ll succeed, which I suppose goes without saying, but I still feel needs to be said.
Martin
There are things they can do. Congress needs to use its oversight powers. Republicans you say? Biden should tell these agencies to be as aggressive as possible. Then Democrats push a series of reform bills to boost those oversight powers, to turn norms into laws.
Make it easier to initiate oversight, and put real penalties on obstruction, but also make it so that oversight can’t drag out forever. And it can’t be DOJ discretion to charge someone with obstruction of Congress – if the appropriate congressional committee forwards a recommendation, DOJ is required to act on it.
wmd
My primary reason for hope is that the Millennials and Gen Z skew heavily anti crazy. And actuarial tables will mean a large bulge of the over 65 crazies will die off before the decade is over.
After this election we really need to develop talented and thoughtful policy people from those generations. We’ve got lots of issues to stay engaged on, and the passionate and rational leaders need to turn into lawmakers. To the extent we can slow gerrymandering down we should – the TX statehouse races are on the fundraising page. Regardless of gerrymandering developing leaders from those generations is important. Some should be running for office in ’22, lots more by ’24. The actuarial facts will make those campaign skills successful in ’26 even in gerrymandered districts, and possibly sooner.
Benw
@sacrablue: is there any chance you and your neighbors can spell out FUCK TRUMP in huge letters on your roofs? You would be my heroes!
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruuuuce: I don’t think that we should give veto power over the federal judiciary to a trade association.
sanjeevs
@Kathleen: The FBI elected Trump with their email investigation, October surprise and deliberate slow rolling of the Trump counterintelligence investigation.
it was already practically a branch of the GOP in 2016, can’t imagine what it’s like now. Needs to be abolished and a new agency put in its place
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Bruuuuce:
That’s the job of the House, not the Executive.
RSA
I don’t think toddler-proofing of the government is possible, at least in the sense of eliminating bad behavior by way of rules and such. So much of what makes government work (in my experience) is due to norms, organizational knowledge, individual judgments, and the like—stuff that isn’t necessarily written down, but which you can still depend on because most people are acting in good faith. (Even the ones that aren’t are typically trying to do no harm.) Trump and his minions are the opposite: bad-faith actors working for their own gain. It’s enormously destructive, both to the mechanics of government and to the confidence the public should have in government.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Bruuuuce:
Speaking of the ABA:
The Republicans have already dismissed the American Bar Association as a “liberal advocacy group” so no wonder they still rubber stamped Trump’s Federalist picks
WereBear
I think an excellent step is to purge all the stupid stuff dating back to placate the Confederate States, starting with the Electoral College.
Kathleen
@Leto: Just had this conversation with my sister in law in Dallas. For example, Ohio was fortunate to have Dr. Amy Acton as the Director of the Department of Health for the State of Ohio. She was really responsible for the policies that helped the state stay relatively safe during the early days of the virus.
Rethuglicans started filing law suits against her because they couldn’t get hair cuts and free iced tea refills and it was just like the holocaust dontchaknow.
Then they showed up in front of her home brandishing rifles and signs comparing her actions to Nazis in Germany (Dr. Acton is Jewish). She was also insulted by a Rethuglican legislator. Shortly after that Dr. Acton resigned her position.
Fast forward to the present. DeWine offers position to Dr. Joan Duwve from South Carolina. She accepts, then withdraws 12 hours later after she realizes how Dr. Acton was treated.
https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200911/dewines-new-health-director-suddenly-quit-after-seeing-how-dr-amy-acton-was-treated
Gvg
@raven: huh, no I didn’t…maybe I was too focused that year was our first national championship after building up to it for a few years…I was very focused on us then.
i don’t follow nearly as close any more. Helping to raise my nephew and fostering a few toddlers just took too much time, and I got out of the habit.
I sure did have fun then though. The basketball championship years were great too.
PsiFighter37
@catclub: He is not the greatest IMO – and I think one his biggest issues was that he was not as versed in communication as he should have been when he stepped in – but he has gotten better. I would prefer someone who has an economics background, but that alone is not grounds for trying to fire him early. Would I reappoint him again in 2021? I think it depends on the national situation; Obama didn’t really have a choice but to reappoint Bernanke in 2009. I highly doubt Yellen has any interest in going back to the Fed. One person who I think would be an interesting / timely choice would be Raphael Bostic, who is the Atlanta Fed president and would be the first black and first gay Fed chair.
Nonetheless, getting rid of Powell is one of the lowest priorities Biden should have when he takes office – and keep in mind that Obama was the one who originally appointed him to the Board of Governors to begin with.
Kathleen
@sanjeevs: Amen. Will be interesting to see if more is forthcoming.
Bruuuuce
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You’re correct. I plead stuffed with the halal food (lamb over rice, spiced just right) that I’m now polishing off, so the blood flow to my brain was reduced :-)
PsiFighter37
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I would make being a Federalist Society member an automatic disqualifier for being on the bench. It would piss off people in the Lincoln Project, but it needs to start getting to the point where they are deemed the Fox News of the judiciary – as soon as you hear the words, you know that they should be discounted at face value.
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear: Kicking the Electoral College to the curb would require a Constitutional amendment – the heaviest of lifts.
Bruuuuce
@Omnes Omnibus: I understand your concern. However, I also ask who’s better qualified (and, as past experience shows, reasonably honest) to determine competence in the law?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kathleen:
DeWimp also never lifted much of a finger to defend Acton against the onslaught
Leto
@Baud: @Kathleen: I guess people don’t want jobs that bad.
Gvg
@mrmoshpotato: I don’t see how to do it, so I put it aside. but honestly, I think it needs to go when we can. It’s anti democratic and I have been kind of shocked by it since I was a child. It’s for the future.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
Keep in mind that’s a very public position during a pandemic
Benw
Holy hell I just saw an ad (during the GT/FSU game) of an ABC news televised town hall for Trump with “undecided” voter questions with “no question off limits” hosted by George Stephanopoulos. That is INSANE! How can they keep normalizing him AND giving him free ad space? I’m so angry
Chip Daniels
I’m a proponent of shaming and shunning, making Trumpsters social pariahs.
It has to start at the grassroots level, where being a Trumpist becomes the equivalent of belonging to NAMBLA or something.
I remember how this worked in the late 60s and early 70s cultural shift, where people who supported segregation and the Vietnam war were slowly driven from the acceptable social scene. It also worked to help make same sex marriage socially acceptable.
“Cancelling” is just a new word for the most ancient of practices where societies draw boundaries around what is acceptable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruuuuce: I don’t think it is wrong for the ABA ratings to be considered and taken seriously. I just don’t think that it should be required by law. IIRC only about 15% of lawyers are members.. I have been off and on. I am not now.
mrmoshpotato
@Gvg: Oh I totally agree that the Electoral College should be burned to the ground. It should’ve been wrecked along with the Confederacy. But it takes more than the stroke of a pen.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@wmd:
Turns out the worst of the crazies are 50-64, so you may have to wait another decade or so.
PPCLI
@VeniceRiley: Also add 200 representatives to Congress, and pass a voting rights/anti-gerrymandering bill.
Omnes Omnibus
I am 100% with you on this.
Bruuuuce
@Omnes Omnibus: IANAL, so am working from a position of moderately informed layperson, who was under the impression the ABA represented the complete legal profession. Is there a better way to preclude unqualified candidates from being confirmed (assuming something other than the currently corrupt Senate)?
PsiFighter37
@Benw: Take advantage of it. “Does your dick really look like a shriveled-up mushroom?” “Do you and/or your sons snort coke or Adderall before reading a speech off a TelePrompter?” “Is Stormy Daniels a better lay than Melania?”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Looking at the wiki page for the ABA, around half of all lawyers in the US in 1979 were members. I wonder why it declined to only 14-15% today?
Chip Daniels
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Racists and misogynists will always be with us; There is and always will be an audience for a system of unearned privilege, where you are told you’re special because you were born with a pink penis.
TS (the original)
@Benw:
Your media still thinks he is normal. Ever noticed how ex FoxNews hosts and ex GOP politicians/campaign aids/administrators get the high paying media jobs?
Do not be surprised that the media filled with GOP supporters will also want a GOP administration – be it one as disastrous as that which currently exists.
sacrablue
@Benw: I would be more than willing but about 50% are Trump supporters, but most are the type that won’t admit it publicly. There is one house down the street with a tiny yard sign. He’s a Viet Nam vet with a foreign born wife. He is totally paranoid and has his shotgun ready to fight of the invasion of antifa and black lives matter folks.
Bruuuuce
@mrmoshpotato: The EC can’t easily be burned down. But it might be bypassed by the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Even more reason to flip some state legislatures and governorships blue, so that we can get to the point where it kicks in.
Leto
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): This situation is actually the perfect scenario. With the right wing becoming increasingly insane, distrustful of government at all levels, how are we going to staff government positions? The current insane government is allowing the insane citizens to drive off qualified/competent people. Ok, so who’s coming to replace them? On the non-political appointed side, how are we going to recruit people into government service when they know this awaits them? I’m not even going to mention shit pay, but the this encompasses insane citizens, political appointees who manipulate data, when witnessing corruption brings down the weight of the federal government (as well as the insane citizens) on to them as well as their family?
How do we recruit the best and brightest when this is what awaits them? It’s a question we have to face. It’s a similar question I pose about the military.
Kathleen
@Leto: Just your typical government bureaucratic slackers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruuuuce: Assuming something other than the current corrupt Senate, the current system has worked reasonably well. Presidents have nominated judges (on the whole) who are competent and qualified. Judicial philosophies have varied as well as left/right orientations, but that’s the way it is supposed to work.
Kathleen
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): He really didn’t.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Bruuuuce:
Something that’s concerned me about the PVIC. If states ever flipped the other way, couldn’t they just withdraw from the interstate compact? Granted, there would be a two-year delay, but it sounds like it could be another Mexico City Policy. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but it’s something that I think about
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: It’ll never happen via amendment since smaller states will never ratify.
Jinchi
It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand how nuns got involved in this conversation and why he would be giving them cues at all.
Bruuuuce
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s still better than the EC, and in the meanwhile, we might get sane (or as sane as it ever gets) and reasonable government
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
Prosecute the people harassing them and strengthen our grip on power by stacking the federal judiciary making it difficult for Republicans to be elected through cheating and undermining our legislation
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@PsiFighter37: are you saying Powell should be reappointed to another term in 2022?
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
The number of reps should be such that all districts have approx the same population. So at the very least the least populated state that has one rep sets the population for every district. WO has just under 600,000, CA has 66+ times that. Hell DC is more populated than WO and should be a state.
Bruuuuce
@Ruckus: [sarcasm=”ON”] Oh, heaven forfend we should make DC and Puerto Rico states, and upset the delicate balance of GOP dominance in the Senate! They might have to split Montana and Wyoming to get their majority back! [/sarcasm]
Kent
It might make the distribution of electors more equitable. But wouldn’t eliminate the winner-take-all structure that makes CA irrelevant and swing states like WI for all the marbles in the 2020 election.
There’s basically no reason for the EC at all.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: Eh, WY, not WO.
Kent
Yep. None of it is permanently binding in any way.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent:
Except it’s there and nearly impossible to get rid of.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
The EC was a huge mistake
Benw
@PsiFighter37: haha I wish!!
Kent
Not really. No group represents the ENTIRE legal profession. And there will never be any consensus on what is meant by “qualified” Best thing we can do is if the criteria is transparent.
debbie
@Kathleen:
FWIW, they were also threatening Dr. Acton’s neighbors. Even worse, the local police chief stood up for the protesters because the Second Amendment was very, very important.
This area is really very blue. How he is still in charge of the police is beyond me.
Kent
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The EC was not a mistake. They knew exactly what they were doing and why.
The real mistake was thinking that you can combine liberal immigrant-based industrial colonies with aristocratic slave societies and not wind up with some sort of unholy compromise that will haunt the nation for centuries.
Benw
@sacrablue: where I live the Trump voters are loud n proud! They own him.
Bruuuuce
@Kent: Transparency would be a great thing. Which is why, sadly, it’s unlikely to happen
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes dad!
debbie
@Kathleen:
He spoke up and defended her many times during the press conferences. I’m not sure what more he could have done. Hell, they’re trying to impeach him now.
Jinchi
Democrats are still steadfastly defending the filibuster and pretending that its a vital part of deliberative government instead of an obstacle to any constructive solutions the the nation’s problems.
So no, they are not going to pack the court. They’re going to continue to pretend that justices are magically above politics once placed on the court.
Kent
I thought she resigned 12 hours later because the entire Ohio GOP had a conniption fit when they discovered that she has worked for 6 months as a field organizer for Planned Parenthood 35 years earlier. https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2020/09/11/newly-appointed-ohio-health-director-withdraws-from-position
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I know.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
Wow, you’re super optimistic tonight, huh? lol
Danielx
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Given their resistance to wearing masks and whatnot, it might not take as long as you think.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jinchi:
If that’s what the Dems actually think, then they’re absolute fools
debbie
@Kent:
They hadn’t gotten around to actually connipting when she quit.
Ruckus
@Kent:
I believe in the sense that Goku means, that it was unnecessary and not democratic he’s right. It was a deliberate attempt to make land and therefore money the rational for power. That and the restricting of the growth of the house limiting the power of the populated states has done a lot for limiting the power of the people vs the power of the monied. Yes the house might get a bit more unwieldy with an increase to it’s size but it would still be a better representation for the people. It would help if the senate had to have house approval for say judges. A yea or no vote at the least.
Mike Adamson
Alexander is not an epidemiologist, his specialty is methodology and design.
Jeffro
@WereBear: down with it!
@mrmoshpotato: gotta start the national conversation sometime or it’ll NEVER happen
Kent
That might be a real question in your mind. But there is zero chance it actually happens. You would need a 2/3 vote in the Senate just like with presidential impeachments and that isn’t happening. Pelosi and the Dem leadership aren’t going to waste any time and capital on doomed exercises like that. There is too much other important shit to get through Congress.
Jeffro
@PPCLI: love it, YES! Double the House and you effectively eliminate the EC
Jeffro
@Kent: Hold hearings, drag him through it all over again…and then just pack the court with 2 left-leaning judges (for Gorsuch and Kavanaugh). Next!
Kay
Horrifying how such extraordinary levels of corruption have been normalized.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ruckus:
Yeah, that’s how I meant it. It was a mistake from a representative democracy standpoint
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Isn’t there a prohibition on that type of stuff being released within 60 days of an election?Nvm: it’s just a norm. Something else that will need to be a law
Viva BrisVegas
@Bruuuuce: @Bruuuuce:
The Civil War was fought, at least in part, for control of the Senate. Requiring that new western territories become slave states was the non-negotiable part of the southern states demands that led to secession. Those new slave states would have provided pro-slavery senators and continued a pro-slavery senate.
The number one priority of a Biden Administration should be statehood for PR and DC and thus control of the senate for years with four new Democratic senators. That and elimination of the filibuster would allow for the effective implementation of Democratic policies for the first time since LBJ.
raven
@Viva BrisVegas: fuck lbj
Jinchi
Harry Reid had the perfect opportunity to ditch the filibuster when, having won a near super-majority in the Senate, he learned that minority leader Mitch McConnell had committed to a plan of absolute obstruction of every bill and nomination put forward by the Democrats. Couple that with a half dozen conservative Democrats (like Lieberman) who regularly found opportunities to hobble or threaten the party agenda while the global economy was in free-fall and ditching the filibuster should have been a no-brainer.
Kent
You can draw a straight unbroken line from the white supremacy that created the EC and Senate 250 years ago and the process that gave us Trump.
It’s the world we live in. From our perspective it was obviously a horrible mistake in the sense that it was the wrong policy. But none of it was mistaken in the sense of being “accidental”. It produced the exact result that white conservatives intended, and continues to produce that result.
Jeffro
@Ruckus: that’s still too many people for one Rep to represent. I mean, I hear what you’re saying, but a Rep representing a million people or more?
There are seven US states with only one Rep: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Delaware. Wyoming has the smallest population there, with just under 600k. So…let’s just say Wyoming gets 2 Reps each (the other single-Rep states would too, btw)…therefore each Rep district around the country is going to be around 300-400k, boom! We just doubled the size of the House, diluted the EC, and now people are (in theory and also LOL) that much closer to their elected representatives.
Jeffro
@Kent: I’m great with eliminating the EC – that actually *IS* the goal.
But in the meantime, doubling the House works really well too
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
I understand the EC was intentional. It’s just you make it sound like it’s pointless to try to keep the US together because it was doomed from the start. Maybe I’m reading you wrong?
Jinchi
Better check with Jim Comey.
Jeffro
@Jinchi:
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): the filibuster will go well before a Dem administration packs the court. Which is a shame…they should both happen on the afternoon of January 20th, 2021
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Put aside “norms” and “the election” for a moment.
The President has ordered the attorney general to go after his political enemies. The attorney general, and X number of federal prosecutors, are following that order right now and we don’t know at what point they will stop following it. Or if they will.
Bruuuuce
@Viva BrisVegas: Yes. And also, the Dems are going to have to laugh at all the inevitable GOP claims that this is partisan consolidation of power (as if they haven’t been trying to do that, with Twitler as its culmination, for 50 or 100 years). Sadly, the so-called impartial media will surely play those claims up, 24/7
Jay
Kent
Sure. Go ahead and hold hearings. Kavanaugh doesn’t show up and you appeal to who???? The supreme court? You think you are going to get a majority of supreme court justices to agree to hauling one of their own up to Congress for a performative hearing like that? They will vote against it in a heartbeat on principal of separation of powers between co-equal branches.
Drag Christine Blasey Ford and other witnesses back into the limelight to get her life picked over again by 10,000 internet trolls and crazies?
And for what? He’s not going anywhere
Like I said, wishful thinking. Not gonna happen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The founders weren’t all big believers in representative democracy. Especially not as we see it today as one person, one vote.
The Constitution was a kludge that allowed potentially independent nation states like Massachusetts and South Carolina to form one larger country.
Kay
Can the national health agencies publish without the political censors in the Trump Administration?
What if they did? What could the Trump people do about it? Just release it.
Jay
Jeffro
@Kay: horrifying is the exactly right. It’s all on the line now.
Kent
No, what I’m actually saying is that the US was created with two original sins. The genocide of the native peoples and slavery. Both driven by a toxic mix of white supremacy and Christianity.
We are paying the price ever since. That’s why we can’t have nice things.
Doesn’t mean we don’t fight for progress. As MLK said. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But none of this is any sort of mistake in the sense of being accidental. It was all very deliberate. That’s why it is so naive to think that if we can just break the filibuster and pack the courts of whatever then we will issue in a new progressive era. I’m not so optimistic. I think the orcs will always be at the door and the fight will be endless.
Jeffro
@Kent: You’re…special. This is strictly about bringing him back for his perjury, making him own it, tarring the GOP with it, and moving on. I don’t give a fuck if Kavanaugh shows up or not and I wouldn’t recommend appealing it to anyone if he doesn’t show. Let him skip it – the absence would speak for itself. Also, it’d take a whopping day of our time.
You put him out there, remind everyone why he shouldn’t be there…and then you slap two more liberal judges onto SCOTUS who should have been there in the first place. Hell, do the Kavanaugh hearing in the a.m. and confirm the two new judges in the afternoon.
Maybe stop and read a bit before firing off. Or better yet, ask a few questions.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent:
The filibuster is a Senate rule and can be changed by a majority vote of the Senate. The number of justices on the court is set my statute.
Fair Economist
@Jeffro: Doubling the House doesn’t fix the EC. Trump would still have won in 2016.
Wapiti
@Kent: Yup, the winner-take-all is the key.
Kent
I don’t mean we don’t try to do those things. I’m 100% in favor of both. I just don’t think the battle will ever be won. Things were much more tilted towards the Democrats during the FDR era and that only lasted a decade and we were quickly back to Eisenhower and McCarthy.
I’m completely in favor of the ruthless exercise of power by Democrats for as long as possible. I just expect the worm to turn again and sooner than we expect or want. I see people here pointing to the CA GOP and how they turned themselves into a permanent rump party and expecting that to happen nationally. I see zero chance of that happening at a national level. They will come roaring back. There are trillions of dollars behind them.
Jay
SFAW
@Kent:
Who cares if SCOTUS closes ranks? Impeach his ass for perjury he seemed to have committed during his confirmation hearings. [Yes, I realize getting a conviction would be a heavy lift.]
Kent
@SFAW: It would require getting the votes of Senators like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. Good luck with that.
Bill Arnold
@Viva BrisVegas:
There was also big money at stake re new states for the slave breeding states like Virginia; new markets (or not) for their human “product”, and money was politics even then.
This book is worth reading and well researched, though a very heavy emotional slog (and long). My (white & northern & part Quaker) ancestors are clean (of direct slaveholding) AFAIK, but it still made me hate them a bit.
THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST – A HISTORY OF THE SLAVE-BREEDING INDUSTRY (Ned Sublette & Constance Sublette, Oct. 1, 2015)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: Getting rid of the filibuster will better define the differences between the two parties.
Ksmiami
@Baud: Destroy the GOP, it’s enablers, the Rt wing news media and the electoral college.
J R in WV
@Jinchi:
Me too, I didn’t get it until I read the note denoted by the * associated with the phrase. Then it connected, similar to referring to Bernie Sanders as Wilmer to avoid Bernie bois from destroying the conversations here on B-J…
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
Not arguing at all with your numbers, I did say at the very least in my comment, so that representation would be a lot closer to equal in all states. One of the big things of course is that capping the number of reps cost the most populated states equal representation.
Jeffro
@J R in WV: LOL it has taken me like 8 of these comments for it to finally sink in…so sad!
@Ruckus: You did, that’s true. We’re definitely going to have to bump the number of Reps way, way up, that’s for sure.
PS to all those who noted that bumping up the # of Reps doesn’t help us in the EC…have to give y’all props, you’re right. If we stay winner-take-all in the states, then nothing changes. There’s great reasons to double the House anyway, so let’s do that AND get rid of the EC.
J R in WV
@Jay:
This is actually a good thing. As a professor at U Delaware, he probably had tenure. He won’t have that at NOAA; he can be fired for not believing in science there.
SFAW
@Kent:
Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
Another Scott
Someone else wants “Retribution” and not “Reconciliation”…
Hmm….
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Gvg
@Viva BrisVegas: Don’t count on PR being democratic. I believe they have totally different parties there and I don’t know that they know how the GOP has screwed them. I am kind of put off by hearing Hispanics in Florida haven’t all gone democrats. I know many of them are traditional conservatives but I would have expected them to notice the dangerous racism.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
But this is, for now, a democracy. And masses of citizens have developed a taste for populist autocracy. They may want some more in the future.
They have already partly succeeded. The question is, will they try it again.
hitchhiker
if we win, we have to go big and do it right away. we can expect an immediate and comprehensive covid plan, given that Ron Klain is already working with the campaign.
first up:
that ought to protect us for the next election, or at least give us a fair shot to restoring faith in fairness. we can maybe give the Rs one shot at working with us, but if they screw around and pretend to want to help while blocking everything, fuck ’em.
next:
i could go on.
JAFD
@Leto: Back when I was young… the federal and state Civil Services were full of people who’d spent their adolescences in the Depression, and took their WWII and Korea ‘veterans’ bonus points’ to the Civil Service exams. Mayhaps the children of The Great Recession will do the same …
The Constitutional Convention and the Electoral College – remember that these guys were trying to assemble a non-autocratic government for a country a thousand miles end-to-end, when the fastest way to send a message was a relay of horseback riders, or on sailboats. It was a kludge even then, but ‘even Homer nods’.