Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Shocking News Open Thread: President Biden Is A Skillful Politician!

by Anne Laurie| April 9, 20217:03 pm| 230 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

“Obama’s constant frustration was that politicians didn’t understand economics. Biden’s constant frustration is that economists don’t understand politics.” https://t.co/kjd9g12ZBo

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 8, 2021

President Obama was one of a kind. His challenges were different from those of any president before him, as were his responses. President Biden is best in class, for his particular political class. And maybe that’s what we need most, right at this particular moment!

Earnest Ezra would like you to believe (that he believes) Biden has changed — changed utterly! Biden, IMO, remains the very good politician he’s always been, but our *circumstances* have changed. Despite his performative naivete, it’s still an interesting read, especially in the NYTimes. “Four Ways of Looking at the Radicalism of Joe Biden”:

… Over the past few months, I’ve been talking to White House staff members, to congressional Democrats, to policy experts and to the Biden administration’s critics to better understand why President Biden is making such a sharp break with Joe Biden. Here are a few of them, though this is by no means a complete list.

The collapse of the Republican Party as a negotiating partner. Most discussions of the renewed ambitions of the Democratic Party focus on ideological trends on the left. The real starting point, however, is the institutional collapse of the right…

A new generation of crises created a new generation of staffers. I’ve been struck by the generational divide within the Democratic Party. Washington is run by 20- and 30-somethings who run the numbers, draft the bills, brief the principals. And there is a marked difference between the staffers and even the politicians whose formative years were defined by stagflation, the rise of Reaganism and the relief of the Clinton boom, and those who came of age during financial crises, skyrocketing personal debt, racial reckonings and the climate emergency. There are exceptions to every rule, of course — see Sanders, Bernie — but in general, the younger generation has sharply different views on the role of government, the worth of markets and the risks worth taking seriously…

Biden has less trust in economists, and so does everyone else. Obama’s constant frustration was that politicians didn’t understand economics. Biden’s constant frustration is that economists don’t understand politics…

The backdrop for this administration is the failures of the past generation of economic advice. Fifteen years of financial crises, yawning inequality and repeated debt panics that never showed up in interest rates have taken the shine off economic expertise. But the core of this story is climate. “Many mainstream economists, even in the 1980s, recognized that the market wouldn’t cover everyone’s needs so you’d need some modest amount of public support to correct for that moderate market failure,” Felicia Wong, the president of the Roosevelt Institute, said. “But they never envisioned the climate crisis. This is not a failure of the market at the margins. This is the market incentivizing destruction.”…

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Shocking News Open Thread: President Biden Is A Skillful Politician!Post + Comments (230)

Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Grifters Gonna Grift

by Anne Laurie| April 4, 20211:57 am| 36 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trump Crime Cartel, Media Mudlarks

buy the ticket, ride the ride https://t.co/pIsLnsNnGc

— kilgore trout, a student of martial arts (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 4, 2021

A reassuring indicator that The Former Guy is truly Former — The NYTimes is now willing to tell us that he (and his party) would happily steal the pennies off a corpse’s eyes:

… Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election.

Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.

As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.

The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars…

The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.

The recurring donations swelled Mr. Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed…

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Unlike ActBlue, which is a nonprofit, WinRed is a for-profit company. It makes its money by taking 30 cents of every donation, plus 3.8 percent of the amount given. WinRed was paid more than $118 million from federal committees the last election cycle; even after paying credit card fees and expenses like payroll and rent, the profits are believed to be significant.

WinRed even made money off donations that were refunded by keeping the fees it charged on each transaction, a practice it said was standard in the industry, citing PayPal; ActBlue said it does not keep fees for refunded donations. WinRed’s cut of the Trump operation’s refunds would amount to roughly $5 million before expenses. (Archived versions of WinRed’s website show it added a disclaimer saying it would keep its fees around when refunds surged.)…

Republicans widely hailed WinRed as one of the standout successes of the 2020 cycle, and in a memo last October the company declared itself the “trusted, recognizable platform” for Republican giving. “Scam PACs, shady operators and outright fraud is unfortunately a common occurrence in the online political donation world — particularly on the right,” the memo stated. “WinRed helps civilize the Wild West of the G.O.P. donation ecosystem.”…

Now WinRed is exporting the tools it pioneered during the Trump re-election across the Republican Party, presaging a new normal for G.O.P. campaigns.

Today, the websites of various Republican Party committees and top congressional Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, include prechecked yellow boxes for multiple or recurring donations…

I do remember Democrats, at the time, pointing out that this was ethically questionable, if not actually illegal. But it’s certainly a useful tool for a party that’s committed itself to fewer, but dumber ‘more loyal’ members. (And that’s even before they sell their mailing lists to a bunch of non-political scammers!)

This is a perfect way to frame it. He robbed supporters blind so he'd have the raw cash when he needed it, expecting he could refund it when he didn't.

If it isn't a crime, it frigging should be. https://t.co/L77Vs0MXxU

— Zd (@Zeddary) April 3, 2021

you could have just donated to a soup kitchen. big sad for you. get rekt.

— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) April 4, 2021

Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Grifters Gonna GriftPost + Comments (36)

Open Thread: Black Farmers Are Owed A Break

by Anne Laurie| March 25, 20218:03 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: Civil Rights, Excellent Links, Food, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Report from @lreiley that should shut down, "Oh, no, there is no systemic racism." From the new Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack: “We saw 99 percent of the money going to White farmers and 1 percent going to socially disadvantaged black farmers." https://t.co/Bv2ysMKYSb

— Michelle Singletary (@SingletaryM) March 25, 2021

Elections have long-overdue consequences, sometimes, and this snippet of the American Rescue Act is a good start. Tom Vilsack, like his new boss, seems to have learned from his previous mistakes:

… In an interview with The Washington Post, Vilsack for the first time noted the extent to which the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated existing disparities across the American economy.

The distribution of coronavirus relief increased those gaps, he said.

Of those who identified their race or ethnicity, Black farmers received only $20.8 million of nearly $26 billion in two rounds of payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program announced by the Trump administration last April, he said.

“We saw 99 percent of the money going to White farmers and 1 percent going to socially disadvantaged farmers and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent,” he said. “Look at it another way: The top 10 percent of farmers in the country received 60 percent of the value of the covid payments. And the bottom 10 percent received 0.26 percent.”

Of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 — 1.3 percent — are Black, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s down from 1 million a century ago, because of widespread land loss.

Vilsack said the Biden administration would be focused on closing those inequalities. The USDA will battle three systemic problems concurrently, he said: a broken farm system, food insecurity and a health-care crisis…

After months of national debate about systemic racism and reparations for slavery and segregation, Vilsack says he will make rooting out racism at the agency, and in agriculture, a priority. The American Rescue Plan will pay $5 billion to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt…

Of course, one reason for Sec. Vilsack’s interview is that the Disloyal Opposition has already been busy trying to gin up resentment:

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Open Thread: Black Farmers Are Owed A BreakPost + Comments (101)

Sunday Night Open Thread: Well, Something Good Came Out of Gamestonks…

by Anne Laurie| March 21, 20219:16 pm| 68 Comments

This post is in: Nature, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Tech News and Issues

Reddit users investing in gorilla conservation https://t.co/kC8r653ePu

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 18, 2021

“Apes Together Strong” is a popular saying in Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, and some users are taking that seriously.

Reddit users have been symbolically adopting apes and donating to foundations including The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the World Wildlife Fund.

Some users are naming GameStop, or GME as they’re known on the New York Stock Exchange, as the adopter.

Donations have exceeded $350,000 (£250,000) in less than a week.

The foundation tweeted that the funds will go towards their field programmes where they track, monitor and study gorillas in their natural habitats…

The trend started when the user Pakistani_in_MURICA posted an adoption certificate in WallStreetBets on Friday.

The user had adopted a gorilla named Urungano and listed GameStop as its sponsor.

The post won a bevvy of awards and karma – Reddit’s way of liking content – and inspired a number of fellow users to adopt or donate.

“I have three adopted infant Gorillas now. Sorry but animals are my kryptonite,” one Redditor commented…

On the other hand, I’m not sure about giving fellow primates Zoom access…

Chimp’s zoo Zoom call: Chimpanzees at two Czech zoos go wild for video calls https://t.co/fGrFq2G2Tw pic.twitter.com/dtd4S3SIKR

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 18, 2021

Sunday Night Open Thread: Well, *Something* Good Came Out of Gamestonks…Post + Comments (68)

Thursday Evening Schadenfreude Open Thread: Shots in Arms, Money in Pockets

by Anne Laurie| March 18, 20216:01 pm| 90 Comments

This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Schadenfreude

“Democrats are relentlessly hyping President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, while Republicans are trying to change the subject to Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head and the Mexican border.” https://t.co/2rw76FicJW

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 18, 2021

Politico is forced to admire President Biden’s tactics, very much against its own will:

… Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, arguably the shrewdest Republican strategist in Washington, has started floating a half-hearted anti-stimulus message that the coming recovery would have happened anyway.

“We are about to have a boom,” McConnell said last week after the Biden bill passed. “And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion.”…

It may be an overstated political cliché that if you’re explaining, you’re losing. But you’re almost certainly losing if you’re explaining, ahead of time, why the economic boom you’re expecting on your opponent’s watch shouldn’t be attributed to your opponent. One lesson of the volatility of the past dozen years is that fairly or not, the president’s party tends to get the credit or blame for the economy—or at least for the way people perceive the economy. Biden is visiting swing states this week to sell American Rescue Plan’s focus on giving Americans vaccines and money, but with economists across the ideological spectrum forecasting explosive growth, many veterans of the 2009 stimulus wars believe the economy will be all the sales pitch the bill needs.

“We’re going to see some fairly amazing economic numbers, and I imagine for the next few years, people will look around and say: ‘This is pretty darn good!’” says American Enterprise Institute fellow James Pethokoukis, a conservative economist who believes the Biden stimulus is somewhat excessive. “I’m sure Republicans will try to spin this, and I have long-term concerns myself, but the reality of a crazy strong expansion will be tough to spin away.”

Democrats seemed to have learned a bunch of lessons from the backlash against the Obama stimulus—that it’s important to sell your own product, that it’s even more important not to trash your own product, and that it’s supremely important to make sure your product works as well as possible. Even though the Obama White House pushed for the biggest possible stimulus it could get out of a bailout-weary Congress in 2009, most economists believe the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would have produced a stronger recovery if it had been even bigger. Biden was determined to make sure his relief act didn’t undershoot as well, even if that meant he would face criticism for ignoring the budget deficit and failing to attract Republican votes…

This is 100% what I expected. Biden is an old-school coalitional politician and he's smart enough to recognize that progressives are an increasingly important part of the Democratic coalition's present and future. https://t.co/Bm0wWwU4ER

— Seth Cotlar (@SethCotlar) March 18, 2021

Thursday Evening Schadenfreude Open Thread: Shots in Arms, Money in PocketsPost + Comments (90)

Friday Morning Open Thread: Minimum Wage vs. Pandemic Relief?

by Anne Laurie| February 26, 20217:19 am| 169 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, President Biden, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

Minimum wage increase imperiled in covid relief bill by Senate official’s ruling https://t.co/d9CKdRrFDH

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 26, 2021

Accursed Friday news dump, per the Washington Post:

… Democrats had been anxiously awaiting the decision, but their next steps are not clear. Liberals are pressuring Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to challenge the ruling on the Senate floor, although the White House has dismissed that idea.

Schumer released a brief statement Thursday night vowing to fight on, without saying how…

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that Biden was “disappointed in this outcome” but “respects the parliamentarian’s decision and the Senate’s process.”

“He will work with leaders in Congress to determine the best path forward, because no one in this country should work full time and live in poverty,” Psaki said. “He urges Congress to move quickly to pass the American Rescue Plan.”

The ruling was made by Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a nonpartisan official who is little known outside Washington but might command tremendous influence over certain elements of Biden’s agenda. Her ruling pertains only to the Senate, where the legislation will move forward under complex rules that prohibit certain items that don’t have a particular effect on the budget. MacDonough determined that, as written, the minimum-wage increase did not pass that test — an outcome that had been predicted by a number of Democrats, including Biden himself.

Despite her ruling, the House is preparing to vote Friday to pass the stimulus relief package with the $15 minimum wage included and send it to the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement Thursday…

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Pelosi’s decision to pass the $1.9 trillion relief bill with the minimum-wage language intact means Schumer will face a potentially consequential decision. He could take out the minimum-wage language before putting the bill on the Senate floor, or try to keep it in the bill — whether by challenging the parliamentarian’s ruling or trying to rewrite the provision in such a way that it could pass muster under the Senate’s complicated rules…

… White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain has publicly ruled out trying to overrule the parliamentarian, and Democrats probably would not command the necessary votes to succeed anyway, since at least one Senate Democrat — Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) — has said he would not vote to overrule the parliamentarian…

Several liberal Democrats said Thursday they need to do whatever it takes to raise the minimum wage — including eliminating the filibuster, the 60-vote rule that gives the minority party enormous sway in the Senate. Manchin and Sinema have said publicly they oppose taking that step.

“We still need to pass the minimum wage, and if that means getting rid of the filibuster, so be it,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said.

.@SpeakerPelosi:

“House Democrats believe that the minimum wage hike is necessary. Therefore, this provision will remain in the American Rescue Plan on the Floor tomorrow. Democrats in the House are determined to pursue every possible path in the Fight For 15.”

— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) February 26, 2021

Media Village Idiots gleeful over prospects of Dems in Disarray!; more cautious observers wonder if Repubs are the ones stepping on their own… agenda:

A 15 dollar min wage won 60% of vote in Florida in 2020. A political reporter thinking this some kind of risky vote is equivalent of doctor recommending you balance your humors. https://t.co/eqtuFPX6ib

— Alex Hazanov. (@alexhazanov) February 26, 2021

Walk the plank? I can’t think of a district where the $15 wage is less popular than the Democratic member of congress https://t.co/aq3EWNO5oA

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 26, 2021

reminder that this could be prevented if a mere 17/50 republican senators did NOT regard poor people as vermin https://t.co/THPSFKyI9k

— josh ???? (@josh_posts) February 26, 2021

indeed. it all totally glosses over the reason for all these contortions, which is that approximately zero senate republicans are going to vote for major dem proposals https://t.co/S81annNzhE

— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) February 26, 2021

Needless to say, I place my trust in Nancy Pelosi. (Worse comes to worst — and there will be a lot of words said before the final legislation is sent to President Biden — we Democrats have gone on the record as supporting an essential economic upgrade.)

I do assume there will be some form of Recovery Act passed before mid-March, because either enough Repubs will realize they’re better off doing the right thing, or Manchin & Sinema will decide that posturing as ‘centrists’ for their voters won’t be enough to save them come the next primaries.

Friday Morning Open Thread: Minimum Wage vs. Pandemic Relief?Post + Comments (169)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Our President

by Anne Laurie| February 23, 20217:59 am| 153 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Open Threads, President Biden, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You

"We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic," Biden continued, speaking from his own experience about the "black hole" experienced by those who've experienced profound grief.

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) February 22, 2021

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Our PresidentPost + Comments (153)

I don’t care how fun he is after a few whiskies. fuck that guy.

It was down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

All your base are belong to Tunch.

I really should read my own blog.

The willow is too close to the house.

What fresh hell is this?

This is a big f—–g deal.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

Verified, but limited!

This fight is for everything.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Yes we did.

There will be lawyers.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Reality always wins in the end.

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

We have all the best words.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Shocking News Open Thread: President Biden Is A Skillful Politician!

Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Grifters Gonna Grift

Open Thread: Black Farmers Are Owed A Break

Sunday Night Open Thread: Well, Something Good Came Out of Gamestonks…

Thursday Evening Schadenfreude Open Thread: Shots in Arms, Money in Pockets

Friday Morning Open Thread: Minimum Wage vs. Pandemic Relief?

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Our President