President Biden, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas, and NH Transportation Commissioner Victoria Sheehan walk across a failing (but apparently not too dangerous) bridge in Woodstock, NH. pic.twitter.com/SqQ2xViHBq
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) November 16, 2021
President Biden is greeted by New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who said last week he won’t run for Senate in 2022, as Air Force One arrives in Manchester. The NH congressional delegation, four Democrats, joined Biden on the flight from DC. pic.twitter.com/pJ92bHJ9YM
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) November 16, 2021
(Sununu’s disavowal is considered a sign that New Hampshire continues to trend purple, if not blue — were it the other way around, there’d have been front-page Dems in disarray! stories instead of a few cautious tweets pointing out Sununu wasn’t making Mitch McConnell’s job any easier.)
President Biden trekked to New Hampshire, a key state in the 2022 midterms, to tout his signature bipartisan infrastructure bill's benefits in an event held on a bridge that local officials have sought funding to repair for years https://t.co/Zzc3MCWIzb pic.twitter.com/V5XIIfVn6q
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 17, 2021
Biden says 'Build Back Better' bill will be passed within a week https://t.co/6bBhhGuibI pic.twitter.com/4gJmFzg4Cf
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 17, 2021
HOYER says debate on Biden agenda to start Wednesday with vote sometime between Thursday and Saturday
— Erik Wasson (@elwasson) November 16, 2021
NBC News: Speaker Pelosi told members of House Democratic leadership they will NOT leave Washington for Thanksgiving without passing the Build Back Better Act. @NBCNews
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 16, 2021
debbie
Nancy SMASH! for the win!
moonbat
GOOD! Go, Nancy Smash!
debbie
DougJ’s not wrong about Ohio.
lowtechcyclist
Well OK, but how about the Senate?
Kristine
I walked away from Twitter for a short while a few days ago when one of the unhappy Dems blew off the infrastructure bill as a “roads bill”. Only the second thing Biden’ s had passed. Not enough. No big deal. The previous administration couldn’t pass anything like it in four years but doing so in ten plus months didn’t mean anything.
Maybe I’m wrong to believe that it is a big deal and it will matter. But I’ve been driving on some crap Illinois roads for a while now. Seeing them being repaired. Seeing expanded public transportation. Broadband.
“Roads bill.” Sheesh.
zhena gogolia
@Kristine: An unhappy Dem legislator or just a random unhappy Dem?
Skepticat
The vaccine mandate case has been assigned to the 6th Circuit, where 19 of the 28 judges were appointed by Rethuglicans. I had been worried it would go to the 5th District, which put the mandate on hold, but this isn’t any better.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve already reported someone on twitter for spreading disinformation about the vaccine. The person’s comment was addressed to someone excited that their child was going to be vaccinated. The fact that lightning doesn’t immediately strike these people is proof there is no god
Ned F.
And right on cue…
The popularity of the new law was evident today when Republicans began to tout its benefits for their districts, despite their votes against it. Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL), for example, told his constituents: “Funding the Northern Beltline has consistently been one of my top priorities.” He added, “Birmingham is currently one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country without a complete beltline around it. Completing the Northern Beltline will benefit the entire region and enhance economic development and employment opportunities.” Completion of the road will create more than $2 billion in 10 years, he noted, and could create 14,000 jobs.
And yet, Palmer voted against the bill. When it passed, he tweeted: “The Democrats’ recklessly expensive infrastructure bill finally passed tonight after weeks of disarray among their caucus.”
From Heather Cox Richardson’s blog.
Kristine
@zhena gogolia: not a legislator. Just an account I came upon during a morning’s wander.
I know it’s Twitter and we overestimate its impact. “Just a roads bill” got under my skin.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
Schumer is saying “by Christmas,” but that, methinks, is misplaced optimism in light of other pressing business to be hammered through.
Geminid
Don’t forget the Motor City!
President Biden will fly to Detroit this afternoon, tour a General Motors plant, and deliver remarks at 4:30pm.
NotMax
@Kristine
“Epic fail! That pothole one street over is still there!”
//
Soprano2
@Kristine: I get so tired of the people for which nothing but everything they want is enough. They will never be satisfied with everything. You should ignore them. I guess they never drive on roads or use bridges, huh? *rolleyes
Geminid
@Kristine: There has been a lot of misleading information propogated about the infrastructure bill. Part of this is it’s procedural relationship to the BBB bill. The process has led some BBB proponents to label the infrastructure bill as their bill, that we have to swallow to get our bill. Once they understand the actual bill, though, most Democrats agree that they both are our bills.
But the “unhappy Dems” you describe are also being egged on by people on the left who will use any and all opportunities to undermine the faith of liberal Democrats in their party. These people want the Biden administration to fail.
Kay
Due to covid and reporting revisions, but boy, Biden cannot catch a break. It was mystifying to me why they were all saying the economy was bad all summer- it was freaking booming here. I have never seen it so hot, not in the 1990’s, not ever. Every single manufacturing facility here was hiring- many with billboards and “walk in” interviews and they had a kind of race to the top on wages- in the ads. I watched the starting wages go up.
At some point, even if it’s anecdotal and local – my observations and talking with people who are desperately trying to find employees– you’re “WTF is going on here- this is NOT what is happening”. I’m not in some tiny, unique “boom” pocket. This disconnect between what we were being told and what was happening had to be noticed by a lot of people.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
Sounds to me that, while Pelosi’s taking care of business in the House, Schumer needs to keep the Senate in session until they deal with the debt limit and the BBB. He can let them take a break if the Senate takes care of the debt limit before the House passes the BBB.
And they also need to hurry up and deal with voting rights, because states are already drawing their new Congressional maps.
I hear complaints about impatience, but there are things going on where the clock is not our friend.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I saw a story yesterday at Raw Story about GM plants gearing up for production in October. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t touted anywhere else. The press has their narrative that the economy is bad right now because people are freaked out by inflation, and they aren’t going to budge off of it for awhile. Probably until the price of gasoline starts going down again.
Soprano2
Same thing is happening here, and it’s still happening! Literally anyone here who wants a job of some kind should be able to find one. Of course, you know where the idea that the economy sucks comes from – Republicans, and the press dutifully repeating their talking points.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Aaaaand the person I reported wants to know why I won’t engage in civil discussion about the merits of the vaccine. I ignored them.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What category of reporting do you use? I’ve tried reporting rabid anti-vaxxers to Twitter for “encouraging self-harm”, but it doesn’t quite feel like I’ve got the right category.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Construction in STL has been over the top for quite some time now.
Gin & Tonic
Now that it’s getting far more difficult for air travel from the Middle East to Minsk, refugees are going to Russia and are taken from there to the Belarus-Poland border.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I used something like spreading misinformation about health
ETA: And actually this was on FB so twitter may have different categories.
Nelle
The gas station nearest me has dropped the price 20 cents per gallon in the last week. I don’t get out enough to know if that is an anomaly or not, but it certainly isn’t inflation.
Kay
@Soprano2:
If people are “freaked out by inflation” it sure isn’t stopping them from BUYING. They’re buying like mad. Part of the “supply chain” issue is they’re buying a ton of shit and it has to be brought in.
Watch what they do, not what they say.
Someone has to explain some things to me- like why they “can’t afford” 2 gallons of milk at 4 dollars a gallon but they’re paying 20k over asking on a lower middle class ranch house here, or how they’re paying cash for a 10,000 used car. Someone got way over their skis on the “bad economy” narrative – it no longer has any connection to real life.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I posted yesterday that we got a new washing machine. The guy installing it said it was the only one in their storeroom but at least it now takes only one month to get one whereas for a while it took three
kindness
Love Nancy. I cringe at what bullshit will fall from the mouth of Manchin.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Update on a project I mentioned a while back, removing shitty old paneling in one room and putting up drywall. Taking off the paneling revealed that the underlying wall is 1/2″ plywood. In decent condition, and on precisely 16″-centered studs. There is even insulation behind the plywood on the exterior walls, which I was afraid would be missing. So I left the plywood and am just going over it with 1/4″ drywall. Makes things easier.
JMG
@Kay: People judge prices not so much in absolute dollar terms as by frequency of purchase. So if food and/or gas prices go up, they notice it because they buy those things regularly, whereas when they buy a car, a much larger dollar purchase, the price is seen as a one-time event, or at least a one time every few years event.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Right? I am on a wait list for a roof on a house we have in Michigan. They’ll do it in August. You cannot find a 100k to 150k house here- that’s “nicer entry level” here, not a fixer upper. There are none. There are no 2 or 3 bedroom family apartments either. They’re full up. I guess I’m just baffled where people who make btwn 30 and 50k are getting all this money they seem to have. I keep being told they don’t have it. They must be paying for all this shit with bitcoin.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: Yep, just make sure to stagger the seams (drywall seam not on same stud as plywood seam) and it should come out beautiful.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
My back hurts just thinking about it. Best wishes it goes smoothly.
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Real estate went insane at the start of the pandemic. I guess it still is.
Mo Salad
My reply to jeneps:
Their combined weight is less than one car. You do understand that vehicle traffic would weigh many times more than that, right? “Apparently not too dangerous”? That’s some snotty-ass shit there.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: It seems obvious once you say that, but I doubt I would have thought of that. Reason # 105 that you are a treasure here.
rikyrah
@Ned F.:
Vote No
Take the dough
Nancy Smash had them pegged ??
Kay
Shouldn’t there have been some analysis of demand as a driver? They just now noticed that?
I’m no expert but I had read once that there was supply AND demand. I believe that second one is also key. I guess we could discuss them separately as media has now done for the last 6 months, we were on “supply” and now we’re finally getting to “demand” but I don’t why we would.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I once made the mistake of tweeting that my daughter was excited to get vaccinated in one of President Biden’s threads. The result was a flurry of antivaxxer QTs about how I was abusing my daughter (and several followups just saying I was lying).
Anonymous At Work
Newsflash:
First, let me lead off by saying that I am not a fan of the NBA rules or playstyle, preferring NCAA. Second, LA Lakers (where there are no lakes) are the Yankees of the NBA (yes, that’s a bad thing). BUT!!!
No arena, stadium, polo ground, cricket pitch or soccer field should ever, EVER EVER have a name with “dot com” in it. Like the Staples Center is about to become the “
Pets.comCrypto.com Center”Feel pity, people…
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I would suggest that these two things are connected. That when wages go up and they’re looking at a scenario where everyone is looking for employees so they’re unlikely to get fired or laid off they feel flush and secure so they buy more shit. I just think it’s amusing that “demand” is explained by the stock market going up or stimulus checks instead of wages and employment security going up- both things happened. It’s like they don’t want to talk about what happens in a tight labor market, and how it benefits working people.
OzarkHillbilly
eta blockquoted for clarification.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
That can be part of an inflationary spiral, though–the problem arises when people don’t have anything to do with their money that serves as a hedge against inflation. They spend because the money will lose buying power if it sits around, and the spending continues to drive prices up even if people can’t really afford the products.
Investment products are returning well, but that’s risky. This is why one way to curb inflation is to raise interest rates, to make savings attractive in the face of inflation. But a problem they had back in the 70s was that for most of the decade, there was a regulatory wall between general interest rates and what bank accounts could offer to consumers. Eventually that changed.
We could be heading for an era of higher interest rates that we haven’t seen in a while. Right now they’re still pretty low.
schrodingers_cat
@Kristine: The DSA Squad has already poisoned the well with their no vote and non-stop tweeting how voting with Kevin McCarthy was the righteous thing to do.
Their minions are just following the suit.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Here too. You should see the houses that are being rehabbed because of the hot housing market. The house next door to us that has been vacant over 10 years and was embroiled in some kind of post-divorce dispute was sold to an investment group this summer that is now fixing it up to sell.
NotMax
@Kay
Workers are fungible, bazillionaires aren’t.
//
smedley the uncertain
@Nelle: Gasoline out here on the NY state western frontier is hovering around $3.50 +/-. On the Seneca Territory it’s $3.07.
Go figure…
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or, you know, higher wages, more employment security and tons of overtime. Such a strange, strange analysis that skips right over people getting paid for the work that they do. The lazy moochers are only buying used cars because they got a stimulus check. “No one wants to work” except they all are working, hence the unemployment rate and jobs numbers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: But but but the stock market is the measure of all things economic.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: I saw no point in arguing with the guy. I don’t argue with flat earthers either.
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s what Republicans are saying. I saw a graph showing that as soon as Biden was elected Republicans started saying that the economy was bad and things were going in the wrong direction, and lamenting that the press doesn’t seem to know how to handle that. I think the press has instead absorbed and amplified that message in spite of all the indicators that say differently, and the fact that the price of gasoline has been going up for the past six months plays into that. People see that price everywhere they go, and they know that last year they were filling their tank for $40 and now it costs $60 or more, so they’re open to the idea that inflation is terrible right now and it’s all Biden’s fault – even though it’s mostly their fault!
I agree with everything you’re saying, but the press doesn’t seem to be spreading that message much.
Kristine
@WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
first thing that popped into my head. “Don’t cross the seams.”
Soprano2
@Gin & Tonic: Drywall *shudder* Never again, I’ll hire people to do drywalling. It was the worst part of our kitchen remodel. We used 12 ft sheets, and the two of us did it all. Ugh….*shudder* again.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2:
It’s the mirror image of what happened in 2016: the instant Trump was elected (he didn’t even have to enter office), Republicans switched from saying “the economy is terrible” to “the economy is great” and there was a stock rally. There was no real change in fundamentals; mostly they went from asserting that various numbers were fake to believing they were real. And Trump overtly, literally told them to make that mental switch in his rallies, saying things like “We used to say that was fake but now it’s real, right?” It’s as if the Ministry of Truth didn’t even bother to hide that they used to say we were at war with Eurasia.
Soprano2
@Kay: I keep telling people on FB that they should have taken Dr. Rohlf’s Econ 101 class so they could understand how supply and demand work! I don’t know how people thought they could buy lots more stuff, get relatively large raises, have the supply chain be completely fucked for over a year, and yet have prices stay absolutely the same. That’s just not how it works. When demand goes up and there are shortages, prices go up. That’s how the free market they claim to worship is supposed to work!
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The infrastructure bill was never intended to be sold to activist progressives. That’s why they all call it the “bipartisan infrastructure bill”. It was intended to be sold to mainstream Democrats, centrists and normies.
I sure hope Democrats aren’t hoping to sell this to DSA members, but I’m confident they aren’t.
There are way more centrists and normies and Trump-wary Republicans, so if I were a Democrat up for re-election I don’t know that I’d spend any time at all on DSA members. This isn’t for them. It’s a centrist bill that will be sold to the broad middle. They can either sell it to that group or not.
Kristine
In gardening news, it’s currently 60F here in NE Illinois and I will finally get around to planting the orange crocus bulbs that were mentioned in the Sunday morning thread a few weeks ago. I’ll work cayenne pepper through the dirt and rub it into the bulbs, and figure that squirrels ? will get half anyway. But orange crocuses to go with the purple and white ones—the thought just makes me happy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kristine: That’s actually a good idea. Assuming the plywood is hung vertically, one would hang the drywall horizontally. Most “amateurs” (for lack of a better term) don’t like hanging drywall horizontally tho.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Way to not understand my comment.
DSA Squad members AOC, Pressley, Bowman, Omar, Bush and Tlaib voted against it and are bad mouthing it.
Soprano2
Every time someone says this to me I mention that the unemployment rate in my county is 2.1%! In business school I was taught that this rate of unemployment was impossible to achieve. Who is left to hire when the unemployment rate is that low? Homeless people? Hardcore drug addicts? Sheesh…..
Kayla Rudbek
@Soprano2: yes, it’s going to be interesting if we do move over to Maryland from Virginia. Right now it looks like we could get more house for our money if we move, although it would be a pain in the neck. But depending on where I wind up working, it wouldn’t make sense to stay here.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I’m sure that conservatives are back to saying that U-6 is the “real” unemployment rate and it’s terrible, even though it’s better now than it was when TFG was president, and they pretty much ignored that number for his whole presidency.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The centrists and Right leaning Democrats got what they said they wanted- they got an infrastructure bill to sell to normies and swing voters in their districts and they got it first. If they can’t sell it, I sure hope they don’t plan on blaming the 150,000 DSA members because no one should buy that.
Centrism is a real thing. It’s a political strategy along with an ideological bent. They got their preferred bill, in the order they wanted it- ahead or as a replacement for BBB (juries still out). Now they have to prove it works as a political approach.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: *Aaaaahhhhh* *shudder* You brought back horrible memories of hanging 12 foot sheets of drywall horizontally – in a 12 ft by 13 ft room. Worst remodeling experience of my life.
Just One More Canuck
@Matt McIrvin: I believe that Arnold in The Terminator supplied the best response to those dickheads when he said, “Fuck you, asshole”
NotMax
@Soprano2
Duct tape and push pins. Eventually one becomes accustomed to how it looks.
:)
Kay
@Soprano2:
It’s nice for “good workers”- people with a long work history and a good record in manufacturing because honestly for the first time in my adult life I feel like they’re valued something close to how they should have been valued. They can leave and get another job in 15 minutes, and they know it. Their employers know it too.
Did you see the Fed Ex, UPS comparison? Fed Ex relied on low wages and lots of people to churn thru. The company assumed an endless supply of employees at low wages, forever. UPS is unionized and people stick around because they accrue more benefits the longer they stay. UPS didn’t have the staffing problems Fed Ex had. They kept their people. When the massive demand spike hit UPS had long term employees who know what they’re doing – Fed Ex had a transitory workforce who booked out the door for an extra dollar an hour someplace else.
Tony Jay
OT? Will you people never learn?
Over in the Autumnal Sludgepark that is the UK, Tories are being very, very Tory, and their pet stenographers are playing along.
You may recall l’affaire Paterson from way back in the day (two whole weeks ago) when Flobalobbius Maximus tried to put a hefty boot through Parliament’s long-established (and very lax) standards for MPs conduct by ordering his Party’s MPs to ignore a report calling for a fellow Brexiteer, Owen Paterson MP, to suffer mild punishment for blatant lobbying offences, and also vote for a complete revamp of the standards system that would – no doubt completely unrelatedly – remove the threat of investigation hanging over his own balding pate for various out-in-the-open corruption scandals?
Well, that was a huge error in judgement. The fallout is still reverberating, with half of Johnson’s MPs (the ones from marginal and recently won seats) furious because he made them look like corrupt arseholes for following his orders (if the cap fits) and then like hypocritical arseholes (same cap, different day) when he did a complete screeching u-turn and tossed Paterson, the planned standards ‘reforms’ and all lingering shreds of credibility under the bus 24 hours later. The other half (the mainly southern Bluebloods comfortably ensconced in seats that have been Tory since Winchester was the capital) were just disgruntled that the disorganised oaf had turned on all the lights in Roach Hotel in an amateurish attempt to protect his own mottled hide and had still managed to fuck even that up. Tory Communications Central have tried everything short of extra hemlock in Queen Betty ‘No Blacks or Irish’ Windsor’s morning porridge to change the subject, but now that the fully grown tiger is out of the bag the sheer scale of corruption amongst the august membership of the Mother of All Parliaments just keeps on grabbing those eyeballs. Blood in the water, feeding-frenzy, etc.
It didn’t help that their attempt to quietly ease their flaccid manhoods out of the poultry’s cloaca with a hush-hush nodded-through revote (necessary because they had, after all, voted to fuck that chicken in the first place, and that shit’s like, legally binding or somefink) was scuppered by serial loon and unreconstructed Old School gibbering Tory bellend Christopher Chope MP, whose serial commitment to blocking any and all votes he doesn’t personally feel have had sufficient debate by yelling “Object!” when the Government’s Whips are just about to zip up the bodybag led to much tittering on the Opposition benches and red-faced fury on the Government ones. The BBC tried to soothe their fevered brows with sympathetic coverage, but their actual quotes and tweets made it plain that their main objection wasn’t with Chope’s fuckery (he’s deployed it in the past to block numerous Private Member’s Bills the Tories quietly disliked but didn’t want to be seen to oppose) but with that fuckery forcing them to once again defend their original vote with excuses that rose in pitch to mirror their descent into mendacity. When even a soulless crypt-dweller like Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who embodies the musty, frockcoated ‘gentleman by blood only’ hubris of a pre-Dickensian villain in the manner Lindsay Graham does the scented, silk-petticoated ‘stiletto under the pillow’ paranoia of an Antebellum brothel-wench, feels impelled to blame his decision to handle the original vote in such a cackhanded manner on the tragic death by suicide of Paterson’s wife (a grief he kept very well concealed for a year and a half) you just know they’re out of excuses and would rather be absolutely anywhere else than in the spotlight.
This is really bad for the Tories in general and Johnson in particular. He’s got this far because the pro-Tory News Media have carried him shoulder high above the rising waters of Brexit, and because the Old-Faith Revivalists running the Opposition have been far too busy making Planet Labour a safe haven for right-wing Islamophobes of all (upper) financial brackets to do anything that might make waves with Murdoch and Co, but that was then, and the mood is very different now. It would take a Tory leader of absolute authority and rare genius to square the circle of keeping the current levels of in-your-face corruption topped up while simultaneously giving the appearance of a Government determined to purge the political world of ‘sleaze’, and while he’s a consummate bullshitter, Flobalob is far from that leader.
Frex, yesterday Starmer bestirred himself from his usual position, waiting cap in hand perched uncomfortably on a stool in a draughty corridor outside the offices of Tony Blair’s assistant deputy vice-secretary for political outreach (UK Branch) to hold a Press Conference in which he outlined the aims of a vote Labour is forcing in Parliament today to ban MPs from having most kinds of 2nd jobs (about the only part of the 2019 Labour manifesto the Tories haven’t ripped off and rebranded as their own idea). Evidently this had Flobalob rattled, because while Starmer was still speaking a tweet sallied forth from Number 10 announcing that the Tories were going to move with “all haste” to institute some of the recommendations of a three year old report and ban MPs from doing ‘unreasonable’ amounts of paid work, with very specific subsets of political lobbying officially banned.
Now, you might think that this bears all the hallmarks of a weak Government being bounced into playing catch-up on a growing scandal by an Opposition that had read the room a lot better than they had, but that’s because you don’t work for the British News Media. All of them, and I’m including the FTF Guardian here, ran with headlines that were variations of “Prime Minister backs ban on MPs working as paid consultants’, like the cowardly bastard had just come up with the idea all by himself. By the time Starmer had finished speaking the hacks at the press conference were already lobbing questions at him about “would he support the Government’s drive to address this issue?” and making sure their pieces to camera included references to Johnson brilliantly ‘gazumping’ and ‘torpedoing’ Labour’s brief moment of cutting-edge trendiness. They’re fucking pathological. It’s an entire industry of talentless wraiths whose only verifiable ambition is to become a loyal Groom of the Stool to whichever sociopathic scarecrow the Tory Party’s donors prop up outside Number 10.
Anyway, all that patina of manufactured victory was wiped clean this morning when they sent out today’s shameless spokesbots to ‘refine’ what Scruffy the Slimer had really meant in his tweet. “MPs should still be allowed to work about 10 to 15 hours a week in second jobs as long as they are not offering political consultancy” opined the International Trade Secretary, like it’s beyond the wit of corporate overlords to just raise the hourly rate they pay for political consultancy insider lobbying legislative analysis and keep on buying all the MPs they want. “If we ban all second jobs, I think you are going to deter a whole class of people who represent the business opportunities in this country.” bloviated Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the 1922 Committee (bagman for the Tory MP Trade Union) as if he’s not talking about people who are only supposed to represent the people of the constituency that elected them, and not, if I may parse his phrasing, the businesses who want the opportunity to leech off the public purse by bribing elected officials to lobby for their interests.
They’ve just finished the latest bout of Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament where, by all accounts, Starmer laid into Johnson with a vigour he usually reserves for attacking members of his own Party. Which is nice for a change. This is an open wound that Labour need to keep splashing vinegar on, defining not just Johnson, but his entire Government and the Party that forms it, as corrupt, untrustworthy and not fit for office. Flobalob is badly wounded, and likely to be even more so after he’s had a meeting with furious backbenchers later today. He’s inevitably going to try and change the narrative by throwing red meat to the Press and Party (expect huge spats with Europe, more threats to destabilise Northern Ireland, a panic about ‘immigrant terrorism’ in the wake of the Liverpool bomb) but I get the feeling that his days are numbered. Sooner or later, he’s going to be given the pistol and the bottle of brandy and told to make his peace with the Great Old Ones so the Tory Party can start the hustings for a new leader who will, of course, represent an entirely fresh face and a new beginning, etc etc.
The only question remaining is, how hard will he fight to stay in power? How much damage will he do to Party and country on his way out? Who will he take down with him? The answer, well the answer is as hard and as much and as many as his paymasters tell him to, and they all answer to the Botoxed Pixie of the Kremlin, so fuck knows.
TL:DR – Confused? You will be, by next week’s episode of ‘S#%t’
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: So all the Democrats who voted for the infrastructure bill are right leaning and/or centrist? Is that your assertion?
Cameron
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Is “domestic terrorism” a valid category?
jonas
The Dems’ War on Thanksgiving is real!
New Deal democrat
@Kay:
On the economy, there is both good news and bad news for Democrats, which is something I’ve addressed in my economic writing.
The good news is that consumers continue to spend at a pace that is a record except for the two months right after Biden’s stimulus passed:
https://bonddad.blogspot.com/2021/11/now-thats-good-news-another-blockbuster.html
There hasn’t been a consumer spending Boom like this since the 1970s, and the supply chain simply can’t keep up with demand that is almost 10% higher than it was just a year ago. That in itself is going to cause demand-pull inflation.
But inflation is the bad news. Realistically it can no longer be categorized as transitory:
https://bonddad.blogspot.com/2021/11/dear-democrats-yes-inflation-is-problem.html
Higher gas prices are probably going to feed through into the rest of the economy over the next 12 months. Also, housing inflation (which is over 1/3 of the total CPI) is measured via rents, which have had a tendency to follow house prices with a 1 to 2 year delay. Well, house prices are up 20% YoY, so it is probable that the housing component of CPI is going to be elevated throughout 2022. High inflation going into the midterms is not going to be a good look.
jonas
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Golly, if a president doesn’t have the authority to order everyone to get a vaccine in the face of a public health threat, maybe there are a LOT of things a president’s hands are tied on going forward. The judges should keep that in mind. But of course the Unitary Executive is only in force during Republican administrations. When a Democrat is in office, it’s checks-and-balances all the way, baby.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
I agree that the Republicans have been spreading tales of doom and gloom. And this is also true of Fox News and right wing owned media. Maybe a lot of pundits have been negative.
However most business news reporting that I have seen has accurately reflected the booming economy. This is also the case with some NPR podcasts I follow such as Marketplace, The Indicator and Make Me Smart.
This is also the case with respect to regular government reports from the Federal Reserve, the so-called beige books. The press typically cut and paste the press release summaries of the Fed reports, so they typically report this information accurately.
In short I think the actual news about the economy has been upbeat but some people have been paying too much attention to negative opinion and punditry.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s part of a bigger argument in the Democratic Party. It’s an argument about “who is the base?”
If it’s true that “progressives” (the most activist, with DSA as the furthest Left) do not actually reflect the base then it should show in what brings out the base. So if they come out on a centrist pitch- the infratsructure bill- then that’s the base. If they don’t, then a centrist bill or agenda won’t bring them out and the centrist argument for how they are the base is less persuasive.
If this had worked the other way- if progressives had gotten what they wanted in a BBB passed the same time as infratsructure, the onus would be on them to show it’s popular and that they represent the base. The only way to show that is elections. The same is true for centrists. They have to prove their approach is a politically beneficial approach for Democrats.
Peale
@OzarkHillbilly: Can’t find a plumber for two weeks. Pretty much everyone in my non-cross sectional middle class office co-worker cohort is planning or in the process of home renovation. So many people have relocated, so of course they are now spending on the new nest.
@Kay: Its why they go on and on about the Quit Rate. People are leaving. They are retiring. And they are taking advantage of new jobs. But its article after article written by disgruntled English majors waxing philosophical about what it all means. But to hear people talk about it, lazy workers are just living large off of enhanced unemployment checks that ended in September and somehow getting by on $1,500 checks that the government issued in the Spring. Pretty thrifty are all these lazy workers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: Good thing you weren’t hanging stretch board. (4’6″ wide) I worked a number of jobs hanging that stuff. A real pain in the ass. Not that much heavier, but that extra 6 inches makes it a lot more awkward.
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
That’s fine and I agree but you cannot tell me people think the economy is bad if they’re spending this much. They think …something, but they can’t be that concerned since they spending like they’re really confident. Something else is going on here, because they’re being told over and over that the economy is really bad and they seem to be wholly committed to both believing that and also not at all acting on that belief.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
May be way off base but I’d imagine properly applying the mud horizontally is an extra PITA, also too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie: If people are eating labeling that a cultural divide I just can’t meet them half way.
Kay
@Peale:
The whole thing is fascinating to me. I honestly think they are having real trouble making a transition from an economic approach that had lots and lots of low wage workers – so many you could pay them 9 bucks an hour and they’d still show up and if they didn’t youd just pull another one off a shelf- to one that has different rules and different drivers of behavior. We haven’t had working people with leverage in my lifetime. It’s different. I personally think it’s great (and also quite good for my business) but I could see how it would make a low wage, high unemployment dependent CEO really nervous :)
I do better when they do better. If that’s not your business model you’re panicking.
New Deal democrat
@Kay: The decline in consumer confidence is completely partisan, and is limited to the GOP:
https://jabberwocking.com/republican-hysteria-over-the-economy-has-reached-record-levels/
The economy is doing great – now. I am simply pointing out that high inflation is likely to persist next year. If incomes fail to keep up, that is likely to cause a problem.
Taken4Granite
@Kay: It’s even more ridiculous here in New Hampshire. A house near me, presumably comparable to one of the houses selling for $100-150k in your area, sold for over $400k in January, and sold again in May (I haven’t looked up the latter sale price). As OH says, it began around the start of the pandemic. The town where I live is about the perfect distance from Boston for somebody who has a job there but only has to go into the office once a week. I’ve seen several houses just in my neighborhood go under contract within a day after going on the market, and the house next door sold without my having known it was on the market.
We also have a shortage of apartments statewide. That was true even pre-pandemic, but it’s gotten worse since then.
I don’t know where the buyers are getting the money. By non-bubble standards of mortgage underwriting you need an income in the $100k-150k range to afford a house, especially given the high property taxes around here (and if you work in MA you also have to pay MA income tax).
Brachiator
@Kay:
The infrastructure bill was always easier to sell. People can see the future economic benefit of repairing a road or building a bridge. Many of these items are a one time big cost.
I support the BBB bill. Some of it is innovative. But other components are just the old standard supposedly progressive wish list in a new package. And it will be an ongoing expense.
Also the way a lot of the bill is being cut back, the strategy has to be to try to establish some basics. Future administrations will have to push for BBB 2 and 3 improvements.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay:
Hahaha!
Soprano2
@Brachiator: Yeah, but most people don’t hear those news sources – they listen to the news on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or their local news station, all of which are pushing the inflation panic button and talking about how people are unhappy with the economy because they can’t get everything they want RIGHT NOW! Relatively few people listen to NPR Marketplace or the business press.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Nah. Well, not for me anyway. Of course, back when I still had shoulders hanging it any way they wanted wasn’t a problem either. Even High impact board or lead lined wasn’t all that big a deal. When working residential, I always had to hang it by myself (except for lids, that’s a 2 person job because we never used jacks).
Kay
@Peale:
FedEx needs higher unemployment and workers with less leverage more than UPS needs that. UPS had a more resilient model, which turns a lot of what we’ve been told about “nimble” companies on its head.
Turns out the workforce of a company are really important. They are not, in fact, wholly replaceable widgets that one can pull off shelf just in time, forever. We created that economy. If we want to we can create a different one.
The school bus driver shortage is another example. The school bus drivers here are in a school staff union, with a pension and benefits. When schools opened they came back to work because they’re invested in this job. They’ve earned higher wages and benefits than entry level people. The districts that relied on private companies and contractors? They can’t find drivers.
This is an important job. You’re managing not just a big vehicle but 70 kids. Responsible for them. You can’t, in fact, just “find” those people when and if you need them. They’re not stored in a fucking warehouse.
JCJ
@Anonymous At Work: We should refer to it as the Cryptosporidium Center.
Cryptosporidium – the bug that made Milwaukee famous
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve noticed that Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman are backtracking some. NYC gets a lot of money out of the infrastructure bill, and their actual constituents like it.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
I thought you’d like that one. 8-)
Ben Cisco
@Soprano2: Obligatory.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
The strange thing is that higher living costs and lack of housing is creating more homeless people and contributing to high structural unemployment.
Here in California I see homelessness expanding wildly. I also see lower income people move out of the state, pushed out by lack of housing and jobs. They are also being pushed out by gentrification to the point where some smaller cities are becoming almost exclusively upper middle class.
I presume that some of the people who leave the state find jobs. But the ones who can’t get trapped into homelessness.
lowtechcyclist
Yep, the cat’s still alive.
Kay
@Brachiator:
Okay. I too believe there are more centrists and normies than activist progressives in the Democratic Party. But if that’s the plan it has to work, and if it doesn’t it will be completely reasonable for the activist progressives to say “we should have done BBB” and unreasonable for the centrists and moderates, who after all got what they said they needed, to blame progressives. With power comes accountability for results. That should be true for progressives and centrists. If one of those groups wants to say “I am the Democratic Party, I most reflect the base” then they have to turn out the base in a midterm.
I’m fine with either side of the argument winning, but they have to win.
lowtechcyclist
Nah, still too much money floating around at the top, with nowhere in particular to go.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The prose alone is worth the read.
NotMax
@Kay
When was editor-in-chief of the high school yearbook, dedicated the traditional two-page spread given to someone important to the school over the previous year to a popular school bus driver.
The powers that be were less than pleased about that once the published yearbook arrived, but there was nothing they could have done about it as it was the one and only year the yearbook was not nominally overseen by a faculty member, so I had free rein.
lowtechcyclist
FTFY.
brendancalling
@Taken4Granite: I live next door in Vermont and it’s just as bad, if not worse, here. My landlord sold the house I live in, and is trying to evict me (I don’t think she can, but is it worth the hassle?), and there is NOTHING I can afford here without settling for a long drive to and from my job. If the worst happens, I’m going to leave Vermont—bye bye students and school district—and move back to Philly to regroup.
Soprano2
@Taken4Granite: I am in a relatively low-cost area. Lots of people move here from high-cost areas and are able to pay $200,000+ cash for a house!
Kay
@Brachiator:
Sinema now says the fault is with Democrats for raising expectations. You see how this strikes me as avoiding accountabilty for the decisions she made?
She needs lower expectations to sell her version of the Democratic Party. Okay. Noted. We’ll lower the bar so you can wiggle under it.
Is there some reason she can’t just say “I’m a Right leaning Democrat and that’s popular and good path for the Party”? That’s what progressives say about their position. If it’s not true, fine, but just fucking BE a centrist, Sinema. Defend your position.
Sure Lurkalot
@rikyrah: I think a good ad would show the Republican touting the benefit of an infrastructure improvement to his constituents with a pause…then a commentator saying, “but did he vote for this?”, followed by a “no, no, no, no, he’s a Republican”, hysterical background laughter and then a recap of the project that Joe and the Democrats fought for. Start and end with the good things the bill does.
Ksmiami
@OzarkHillbilly: it’s leveled out but the supply just hasn’t kept pace with growth /demand. Partly this is an overhang from 2008…
NotMax
@Tony Jay
I still maintain the name Rees-Mogg sounds like a creature out of Lovecraft.
“You summoned that? Jeeze, what a crappy spell.”
;)
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I’ve always seen the business about U-1 vs. U-3 vs. U-6 as a bit of a red herring since they generally move in parallel, just with an offset. It’s not as if one goes up while another goes down.
There was a website called ShadowStats that was popular for a while during the last recession and claimed to have some better, truer calculation of unemployment. Sometimes, people would get that confused with the U-3 vs. U-6 business. But if you looked at the history, the real purpose of ShadowStats’ number seemed to be to follow regular unemployment in lockstep until the moment Obama entered office and then go nuts. I remember they were claiming that true unemployment was higher around 2014 than it had been in 2010, which even I could tell was blatantly wrong just from observing my surroundings.
Soprano2
@Kay: I have never understood the idea that high turnover is good. Training people is an expense! I’d much rather have good, experienced people stay than have lots and lot of turnover. It’s an idiotic idea.
L85NJGT
That is definitely a through truss bridge.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
Then a lot of people are stupid. Even some who consider themselves knowledgeable.
However CNN and MSNBC are good sources if you click on their Business sections. Business Insider is also good.
The decline in newspapers has also seen a decline in good business and economic reporting. And general beat writers who are assigned a business story often get it wrong.
And there are editors and publishers who push a negative slant when they can.
Readers must be more critical. And sometimes the business section are more complicated than the headline level stories. Pundits who over simplify should just be avoided. The same way that any sane person avoids Fox News.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: AMEN!!! It was the absolute worst part of our remodel. I think I’m still cleaning drywall dust from some corners of the house. LOL
Kay
@NotMax:
I actually had a deranged school bus driver in high school. We thought it was funny but looking back on it he really was nuts and probably shouldn’t have been driving a school bus. He would get REALLY MAD and slam on the brakes and pound the dash and things, which we found hysterical. He was young, looking back. He was probably 25. Kids are so weirdly oblivious. Self centered. He used to read a book that was inside another book so porn or the communist manifesto or something. We talked about him a lot.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Sinema reminds me a little of the Greenwald types who keep insisting that the political spectrum is reversed and the right is really the true left. There’s this weird obfuscation going on there.
CaseyL
@OzarkHillbilly: I follow a vlog where a couple is building their own house, and ISTR you’re also supposed to stagger the drywall panels so that the seams are offset from one another, not just offset from the plywood beneath them.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I dealt with one of those people on a radio program commenting site. The whole time Obama was president he went on and on about U6 being the “true” unemployment as opposed to the unemployment rate, which he said was “fake”, and how the government wanted to cover up how bad it was. As soon as TFG became president, that mostly stopped and he started believing the government unemployment numbers again! It was uncanny.
NotMax
@Kay
Marx/Engels slash fiction.
A niche market.
:)
Soprano2
@Brachiator: I’m talking about the ordinary people I work with. They mostly don’t listen to news, they talk to each other on Facebook and notice how prices at the pump and in the store are higher. They all blame Biden for that, even though he has nothing to do with it.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I stopped listening to NPR Marketplace when their persistent low-tax advocacy made me too fucking angry.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
He’s nominative determinism in an ill-fitting tweed carapace. They claim he’s a Catholic but I reckon they just misunderstood his adherence to the ‘Old Ways’.
Brachiator
@Kay:
I don’t get Sinema and Manchin. But they don’t represent any centrist ideology. They stand in the way and have power only because the Democrats in the Senate have a razor thin majority and cannot get Republicans to vote with them.
Librarian
@NotMax: The Rees-Moggs have been around for a long time. I seem to remember that one was an editor of the London Times back in the day.
JMG
@Soprano2: There’s political science research showing that elected officials lose not just popularity but actual votes when a community has a spell of bad weather. People don’t think they’re electing a President to serve as Chief Executive, they think they’re electing a wizard with supernatural powers. Trump’s main political strength was that he believed he was a real wizard and told people he was.
Self-government is just too much trouble for many of our alleged citizens.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Walmart made the same announcement yesterday, per Lincicome, about expecting inventory to meet demand through the holidays, though I think their earnings news was a projection
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: TBF I heard liberals doing the same thing during the George W. Bush years. There was this whole line about how unemployment numbers had been cooked since whenever the government switched over from whatever they’d been reporting previously.
My attitude is, if someone thinks U-6 or whatever is the true rate, fine–all that’s going to do is adjust the whole history up or down a bit, it won’t make a huge amount of difference in the stories you tell about trends. But you have to be consistent if you want other people to be consistent.
NotMax
@Librarian
If the spats fit….
;)
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
The president takes responsibility for the economy. That’s just how it is.
Trump could claim he did a good job even though he inherited a healthy economy from Obama.
And yeah people get misinformation from buddies on FaceBook and Twitter, but you cannot turn this around and claim that the media is bad.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: I got in a yelling match in a bank parking lot (pre-covid) with a woman wearing some kind of pro-gun T-shirt, and she revealed in the course of it that she was a school-bus driver. Heaven help us.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s been going on forever though, as you may know. I had a law school professor who told me the only real fights in the Democratic Party are between liberals and Lefties. My grandmother was a Left union person- the only reason she was a Democrat is they encompassed labor unions, her real passion- and she was always mad at the Democrats.
I was never a Greenwald fan and partly it’s because he’s new to politics. He has no context further back than 2000. It’s not interesting to me because I’ve already heard it. That he thinks this is some new and brilliant insight he alone has is amusing. He thinks that because he was was on the unengaged, fuzzy “Right libertarian” side until Iraq. I don’t blame young people at all for thinking it was new in the Bush years – they don’t know better. It sounds new every time, right? “What if there were a POPULIST horseshoe…” :)
They did this exact same play with Obama. They allied with Grover Norquist. JFC. The “populists”. You could weep.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Well, they sure think they represent centrist ideology — they ostentatiously advertise themselves that way, until it requires accountability, and then it’s someone else’s fault. Manchin said the other day that this is a “center right country,” so he couldn’t support legislation too far to the left.
Baud
@JMG:
Baud! The! Gray! 20XX!
(Now back to building my international diplomacy resume. See y’all later).
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
I ran into the grocery store to get bread maskless and I hate shopping so I was bewildered by all the choices – plus I have to do price by weight! – and this very nice man in scrubs started chatting with me and he said so sadly and quietly “where is your mask”? I felt terrible. I did get the stupid bread though. I don’t think I should have to buy food now that my kids are gone. Can’t we just eat saltines?
sab
@Soprano2: That is what always stunned me about businesses going to the big accounting firms for business advice. Their turnover is 25-30% annually. It’s part of their up or out business model. That’s insane. In almost any other business a manager with a fraction of that would be fired.
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: Are you wishing for my death? Is this supposed to be funny?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: If DSA was the base then Bernie Sanders would have been the 2020 nominee.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: It’s always been possible to draw that two-dimensional economics vs. culture chart, kind of like D&D character alignments, and point out that the “left on economics, right on culture” quadrant is underserved by elected officials and the world of pundits–and that the people who think “right on economics, left on culture” is the Great American Center are a bunch of privileged dopes. That’s a genuine insight.
But what irritates the hell out of me is when people don’t recognize that part of the problem is that culture matters a thousand times as much as economics to the people in that “populist” quadrant. You can’t really get them on a socialist economic appeal as long as you soft-pedal that you’re for expanded civil rights. You’ve got to give them a little of that lynch-mob flavor sooner or later.
Brachiator
@Kay:
The infrastructure bill was a win. The Democrats need to keep emphasizing that and make sure that worthy projects get attention. They will have to keep their promises about good jobs.
And this should be good for the entire party. It may also pave the way for a BBB bill getting passed.
There is no reason to try to pit centrists against activist progressives.
I also believe that Biden and the Democrats will need to push what I think will be good results from 2021 tax filings, which has enhancements to the child tax credit, the earned income credit and the child and dependent care credit.
Again, Biden has done more for lower income and middle income people than any president in decades. All Democrats should take advantage of this.
Anonymous At Work
@JCJ: Cryptid Center. Players named it after the refs and vice versa.
PST
@debbie:
I had some questions about stickers yesterday after I noticed a half sticker the last piece of tomato I ate. Authorities agree that stickers have no carbohydrates and are safe for those of us on the keto diet.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Manchin talks a lot of incoherent bullshit. I wish a good reporter would call him out on this.
“Senator Manchin, Treasury Secretary Yellen and Fed Chair Powell both insist that the economy can safely absorb the spending proposed by the president. Bond markets have reacted positively to the passage of the infrastructure bill. Why do you keep expressing doubts when the facts are against you?”
I wish that some senior Democrat would tear into Manchin, but we need his vote.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Exactly. In which world is spending on infrastructure not a progressive priority?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Is anyone on here familiar with induction cooktops? We just got a new induction cooktop range and so far I am mostly really liking it. It boils water amazingly fast and is so easy to clean. One weird quirk though, that I have noticed…I made some minestrone on Sunday (using the instant pot because I hadn’t pre-soaked the beans and the pressure cooker cooks unsoaked beans really well) but reheated some of the leftovers on the induction cooktop on Monday night.
I used a lower setting because it was really thick and I didn’t want to burn it to the bottom but I did get it up to a vigorous simmer for several minutes. But then when I put it in the bowls it didn’t seem boiling hot. Then last night I made a curried lentil dish and noted the same thing when I was taste testing for seasoning. Even though the dish had been simmering for 8-10 minutes when I took a small spoonful to taste test it, it was pretty warm but no where near hot enough to burn my mouth.
It was bubbling vigorously with the lid off the pan for several minutes, and the lentils were cooked, but the spoonful I scooped wasn’t anywhere near “boiling hot” – I mean, usually when I cooked something like that on the old gas range I’d have to let the spoonful cool to comfortably taste it.
I feel like to get a dish that hot I’ll need to crank the burner setting up from 3-5 to somewhere in the 6-7 range. I guess I’m trying to figure out how something can be visibly boiling for an extended period of time but still not be boiling hot throughout the pan. It’s not as big a deal for vegetarian dishes but I don’t want to be taste testing meat dishes that haven’t reached food safe temps despite seemingly having been boiling for many minutes. Has anyone else noticed this with induction cooking?
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: The vast majority of the caucus agrees that the infrastructure bill is a win, but the fact is, there are coalitions within the party that are jockeying for control, and there are winners and losers. The progressives — joined by the POTUS and party leadership — tried really hard to keep the two bills linked. In the end, they lost, and their leverage is gone, which jeopardizes the BBB. It doesn’t mean the infrastructure bill is no good, but it’s a fact that the centrists prevailed.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: My personal take has always been that we are a Center-Center country, and that “Center-Right” more properly describes the electoral coalition/strategy that people like Karl Rove promoted for the Republican party, back before it became a Right party. Now the Democrats have put together a Center-Left electoral majority, although gerrymandering in the House and and geography in the Senate lessens their power.
So I’d say Manchin is wrong in his characterization of the country, and also is ignoring the nature of the coalition he is grudgingly a part of. But a lot of what Manchin says publically is a hot air, and may or may not have much bearing on what he actually is going to do.
Steeplejack (phone)
@debbie:
Kay
@Brachiator:
I agree on the child tax credit. Biden should be really proud of what he’s done for middle and lower income kids. I think he is proud of it, based on how he talks about it. They will absolutely benefit.
On infrastructure I’m not sold. Highway and transit funds are great but is sticks in my craw that they didn’t raise taxes to pay for it. It continues the conservative economic frame of the last 30 years that people can have all the public spending needed to maintain a modern economy without paying for it. That’s not the liberal or Democratic economic theory- it’s Reagan. That is just compounded when the centrists and Righties in the D Party tell me they’re concerned about spending. They can’t be that concerned. They just spent 500 billion with no increase in revenue. They’re concerned only with LIBERAL priority spending.
I’m afraid it’s going to end up like Obama’s recession-inspired infrastructure spending, which he got zero political credit for and we still got creamed in the midterms. I saw the projects. Some of the money came here. It just didn’t help Democrats politically.
Sure Lurkalot
/status/1460981846305562631Some companies not spreading doom and gloom.
ETA, sorry about the mixed link…this feature sucks on my IPad.
Barbara
@Kay: Hey, at least the roofing company called you back! We had a company come to look at our roof to give us an estimate — more than four months ago and we still don’t have an estimate.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: There is a lot of regional variation in this country which is the size of a continent. WVa is pretty right wing, where I live is deep blue. And even here, 2 and 3 word slogans like those favored by Twitter and blog left and the Squad like Abolish Ice, Defund the Police are not popular.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Manchin isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, so maybe he confuses the country with the Senate, in which conservatism is wildly overrepresented? I agree his inaccurate notions about the country’s collective political bent may ultimately have little bearing on what he does. But I can’t help but be pessimistic about BBB’s chances since its fate will be determined by a pair of power-hungry flakes.
Brachiator
@Kay:
The GOP revised the entire tax code, individual, corporate, estate and trust, to benefit the wealthy. The Democrats need to comprehensively revisit this. They also need to boost and modernize the IRS and increase its enforcement authority. This is about more than just raising taxes to pay for infrastructure. Also, good infrastructure partly pays for itself by enabling increased productivity.
Also, the infrastructure bill is a done deal. Why do you keep objecting to it? Shouldn’t we be building on this victory instead of acting as though we are just getting started?
Yeah the GOP and much of the media will do everything they can to deny Democrats credit. The Democrats know this and have to fight it. They have to make sure that worthy projects are done. They have to be able to ask voters, is your life better? This is the best antidote against media distortions.
Nelle
@OzarkHillbilly: You and Soprano are reminding me of why my father was fond of the boyfriend I had in 1969. Dad needed to put in sheetrock for a ceiling and that boyfriend was 6’5″. They got that job done much easier with that kind of help. If he’d waited three years, i dated a guy who was 6’8″. Dad taught me what to look for in a boyfriend.
Steeplejack (phone)
DougJ is en fuego this morning.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: We are a center-left country by actual majority preference, but if you weight the preferences by political structural advantage, it turns into a country with a wavering stalemate between center-leftists and actual genocidal fascists itching for a bloody ethnocultural purge.
The minority who actually find themselves in the center of this stalemate are deeply stupid people. A lot of the fascist followers may actually have left economic preferences, but these are utterly swamped in the political balance by their cultural hatreds so they effectively do not matter.
Geminid
My recollection was that Speaker Pelosi wanted to decouple the two bill three weeks ago. And before November 8 she pressed hard for the infrastructure vote. Joyce Beatty was the key negotiator with the both the moderate hold-outs and the Progressive Caucus. But Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi clearly wanted that vote, and I don’t think they rolled over for the “centrists.”
Matt McIrvin
@Nelle: Recently someone on Twitter asked masculine-identifying people to post something about their masculinity that was positive and good and harmed no one. I thought for a while and decided I’m pretty good at opening jars.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I think they rolled over because the stalemate became too politically damaging to continue.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
The progressives never had as much leverage as they imagined. And Sinema and Manchin, with their own agendas, just made things worse.
The passage of the infrastructure bill gives Biden a big advantage. He can beat back the nonsense from right wing media that he hasn’t accomplished anything and cannot get bipartisan support. This is all irrelevant bullshit but it fills the media space.
The Democrats have work to do, preventing the BBB bill from being minimized. I am already pissed big time at the idea that the child tax credit enhancements might only be extended one year. This is incredibly stupid.
I don’t care that much about centrist vs progressive. I do care that a lot of Democrats don’t seem to be very smart when it comes to crafting policy or reaching effective compromises.
The GOP wrote their tax bill, froze out moderates and told everybody to vote for it. I don’t want the Democrats to be as ruthless or authoritarian, but damn they should agree to general principles and a set of priorities.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: A clear majority of voters do prefer the center-left Democrats. I don’t think that means we are a center-left country, though, just that Democrats have attracted enough people in the center to their center-left coalition.
Nelle
@Matt McIrvin: Hmmm, do you live nearby??
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: You think they rolled over. Do think Biden and Pelosi think they rolled over?
A lot of this back and forth presupposes that the BBB bill will fail. Speaker Pelosi is going to prove otherwise by Thanksgiving, I believe. As for the Senate, we won’t find out until next month. But I don’t think the Speaker is just going through the motions, and that Biden is just putting on a show when he says he’s confident aboout the BBB bill.
Matt McIrvin
@Nelle: I can be replaced by a $12.99 device made by OXO.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Yep. Unity is much easier for Republicans because they are homogenous. Everything revolves around the concerns and priorities of white Christian men.
Fake Irishman
@Brachiator:
Under the latest draft, the expanded child care credit would only be extended for one year, but the existing one would be made refundable, which would be a huge win for working class (and many middle class) families
trnc
WTF?
Brachiator
@Fake Irishman:
Again, that the expanded credit would only be extended for one year is fucking stupid. The Additional child tax credit was already refundable. The revision is good.
We shall see what happens next.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: If we define “rolling over” as “surrendering leverage as centrists demanded,” yes, I think anyone who’s assessing the situation honestly should own up to the somersault. As canny politicians, Pelosi and Biden are certainly putting on a show of confidence because that’s one way of creating pressure on the people who will actually decide this thing. Maybe I’m wrong and they have the centrists’ votes in the bag already in both chambers, but that’s not the impression I get from what people are doing and saying publicly. That said, I wish them all the luck in the world!
Geminid
@Fake Irishman: I think there is also a belief that this tax credit will be too popular not to be renewed next year. Republicans will be making a lot of bad votes next year. A no vote on the child tax credit is one that could really hurt some of them next November.
Matt McIrvin
@trnc: DougJ is parodying Brooksian Red America vs. Blue America witterings with no basis in reality until they make it so; pay it no further mind
If this were an actual story, though, we’d probably see MAGA people consuming fruit stickers for the cause on YouTube within the week.
trnc
I don’t know enough about the judges to say, but republican appointees haven’t all taken the wingnut line on the covid vax so it’s too early to despair.
trnc
@Matt McIrvin:
OK, thanks for the explainer.
Matt McIrvin
@trnc: “See, it’s ironic, we’re making fun of liberals for THINKING we eat fruit stickers! I ate 45 of them ironically in the last hour.”
Brantl
@NotMax: 1/4″ drywall? Piece of cake.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
that assumes that there was leverage to surrender
trnc
Yeah, it’s always a good idea to treat the workers at the food court well.
Kay
@Barbara:
My Michigan roofer is a woman-owned roofing company. That’s not why I use them but she does call me back. She’s younger so she texts me back :)
trnc
@Matt McIrvin:
:-D
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Damn good stuff.
Starmer is often quite good here. You can see his talent as a prosecutor. It’s too bad he cannot be as focused in simple shit, like reporter interviews.
Unlike Theresa May, Boris Johnson seems to stupid to know when he is done for. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him hang on long after all his lackeys have clearly abandoned him.
I hear that he may try to throw Jacob Rees-Mogg under the bus. This would be funny as hell. But it would also be like throwing Dracula into a crypt. I don’t think that Moggie would give a shit. He always acts as though he is above it all.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
I think the reference is to William Rees-Mogg, Jacob’s father, editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981. William Rees-Mogg famously wrote a Times editorial in 1967 protesting what he considered unduly harsh sentences imposed on Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a drug-possession case, under the headline, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Pramila Jayapal has expressed confidence. While I’ve seen a lot of anger about the decoupling by people outside Congress, I haven’t seen much pushback from the rest of Progressive Caucus members besides the six who voted no. But the entire Democratic Caucus is being pretty quiet about their internal debate right now. Maybe after BBB passes we’ll get a better look at the members’ takes on recent decisions.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There was leverage insofar as the dozen or so centrists who insisted on decoupling the two bills really did want the infrastructure bill to pass. Well, they got what they wanted, and now we’ll see if the bad-faith actors act in good faith.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
I had not paid attention until recently, but then I kept seeing stories and podcasts in which conservatives branded the child tax credit as welfare, sending checks to unworthy people who did not work.
Some of these people fundamentally did not understand the damn tax code. Others were happily spreading lies.
Some also think that the child tax credit is new. And from comments, I would deduce that some right wing idiots don’t even realize that they have been taking the existing child tax credit on their own tax returns for years.
Anyway, this is just to say that Republicans will try to hurt the Biden administration just by lying about the child tax credit.
The Democrats have to be prepared to counter this nonsense.
It is, unfortunately, part of the game.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
How does that work with 16″ studs? Or an 8′ ceiling? I guess it would be OK for 9’ceilings… Teach me, experienced Ozark guy!
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Quotes Tony J:
Yes, indeed, hahaha! I read that to Wife in the next room so we could laugh together. Well done Tony J !!!
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Starmer is quite good when he’s in a forum, like a court, where evidence is presented and a neutral jury decides who is telling the truth. In the House of Commons, where you have no time to provide evidence, a braying mob of Tory MPs constantly hoot their approval of Flobalob’s blatant lies, and the ‘jury’ consists of political correspondents who already ‘know’ that the guilty party made the best case, not so much.
Johnson is, at his core, a greedy and spiteful fantasist with zero loyalty to anyone who can’t hurt him. If his owners say stay and fight, he’ll do that. If a compromise is made that lets him skate away to live it large on someone else’s credit card while rewriting history to blame everyone else for his failings, he’ll do that.
Rees-Mogg is one of the most corrupt fucks in Parliament. I can’t see Johnson under-bussing him unless he has no choice, and then we’ll see what kind of toxin Moggie’s Undead corpse releases as revenge.
Tony Jay
@J R in WV:
8-)
I’m trying to keep my America-centric invective up-to-date for if I ever need to seek asylum there.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Was it the Telegraph that recently reported that Moggie had got a 6 Million loan at ridiculously low rates? Somebody has given the high sign that it is OK to attack him. They may think that he can shrug off any criticism, in the same way that he casts no reflection in a mirror.
debbie
@PST:
Fiber!
topclimber
@Matt McIrvin: Way late, friend. Nonetheless, you nailed it.
ETA: Late on my end. Also, note the infrastructure allusion, all you non-English majors out there.
topclimber
@Matt McIrvin: Hey, way late again. But who is better at playing with kids?
topclimber
@Brachiator: Way late yet again but what’s not to like about running in 2022 on extending a tax credit that benefits our base?
sab
@Tony Jay: Good luck with that with our current fuck you foreigner don’t move here immigration policy.
ETA Unless you are extremely rich. What genius decided letting the Australian Murdochs in was a good idea. Also Elaine Chaos’ horrible family.
Tony Jay
@sab:
But I’m soooooo white. Extra white. Whiter shade of pale. I’m ivory going back to the Stone Age. I’m so white I don’t tan in sunlight, I curl up at the edges.
The lifetime of communist affiliations and terrorist sympathising might tell against me, though. 8-)