In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the House of Representatives passed the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill requested by the Biden administration.
Seems to me that we've been under minority rule for the better part of the last 30 years. There are numerous issues that are popular with the public but that Republicans refuse to consider — gun control, minimum wage, ending citizens united, decriminalizing drugs, etc.
Yes. My FIL, as wonderful man as was, drilled in my head for years that available land will only be for so long. Dirt = $$. Buy land. Buy property. Real estate.
Right one of my exes was a shining example of that philosophy but think of that poor Vermont community that thought they at least had a quiet rural habitat and some white militia type bought a huge chunk of that land to use to train the militias—and his property rights are up against their right —he dares them to challenge him. I hope the Nytimes continues to follow this story.
It's painfully clear that Daniel Banyai, owner of Slate Ridge, the organization in question, is operating outside of the law. He has no permits for the use of his property as a gun range and paramilitary training. He has outstanding arrest warrants for gun violations, and an enormous cache of illegal weapons and still his neighbors can’t shut him down.
Is this where we are now in America? Where a group of angry, white (mostly) men (mostly) can arm themselves and terrorize an entire community with impunity?
And Slate Ridge is by no means unique. Similar armed camps are organized across the nation.
Once upon a time, mobs of armed, angry white men threatened mostly black Americans. We never really dealt with them then and now they endanger us all.
Hate has no allegiance to nation, color or creed. It’s a cancer that exploits any vulnerability and destroys everything it touches.
So I’m glad u looked into it— I was horrified when I read this article and I’ve been aware of the spreading of these fringe groups now because the Southern Poverty Law Foundation spreads information and map about which type of group is near you— there are lots in NH etc when you contribute to them the share maps and the latest. They are an organization with lots of funds to fight these groups in court. Perhaps they will help this Vermont horror show.
Yes, this is where we're at now. Cf. the string of outrages committed by the Bundy clan out west. Serial criminals who are never properly held to account.
Art imitates life: “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.” Which is why many of the formerly enslaved were denied the opportunity to own land for many years.
I am hearing the sound track from Gone With the Wind as the father gives Scarlett the lesson of her life. Da da ya ya— I so love the film. Today while my son took my 87 year old husband for his second dose, I was trying to take a nap. Later the song Strange Fruit came to me— I used to listen to a lot of Billie Holiday.
Yes. I hear my FIL's words echoing in this so very much. His parents immigrated from Europe, he himself bought farmland and worked it hard. Yet in the end, through all kinds of sordid life events, the land really became a curse.
So very true. The fact that after all the horrible bloodshed in this country-/the first one that came to mind was that man who holed up in a Las Vegas hotel and just started shooting a concert crowd with military grade weapons and bullets.—we haven’t been able to budge the laws. There’s a Sandy Hook parent that started a movement to raise money to at least get the gun manufacturers to have some liability after that kind of disaster. I support that group and I can’t imagine how those parent feel after that massacre that our congress impeded any efforts.
Really, this is a travesty to not have laws that go further to prevent insane criminals getting their hands on weaponry. I have a college friend whose granddaughter was killed at Marjorie Stoneman. She was the youngest murdered, 14 years old.
If the south still has the notion that black people aren’t really fully human and I think a lot of them still do — this delusion was invented to protect their honor and their whole way of life. My husband’s eldest son married a wonderful brilliant and hardworking woman who is a true steel magnolia. One time she notably spoke up at a family gathering and said —growing up I thought dam Yankees was one word.
The argument can be made that the Constitution was designed for minority rule by giving the Senate the power it has. It was a necessary condition to get southern states to sign on. This fact was recognized and used throughout US history to keep slavery in place, to limit civil rights, ... The Republican party going back at least to Richard Nixon has used this fact to stay in power.
Tim, you are certainly right about the racist roots of contemporary Repo appeals. But I would add that constructing the Senate [and the electoral college as they thought it would function] as an anti-democratic bulwark was strongly supported by many Northern framers. They feared the "unruly passions" of popular majorities would lead to assaults on property and wealth--and they were probably right. The tensions between the Haves and Have-Nots were widespread, even beyond the Slave/Non-Slave divides. As other respondents have pointed out, constitutional protections of property--including but not limited to claiming persons as property--have shaped our history from its beginnings.
Methinks we're going to need a nationwide Texas Catastrophe to get the people who keep electing Republicans to see the error of their ways. Apparently, 500,000+ Covid deaths and all that comes with fighting the pandemic weren't enough.
Willful ignorance and prideful stupidity are tough obstacles to overcome.
Three weeks to the equinox and the first day of Spring.
It is hard to figure, Ralph. Time and again I’ve tried to wrap my head around it, to ascertain some principled reason why the Republican Party obstructs to the apparent detriment of their constituents.
I can almost understand an objection to a nationwide minimum wage on the rationale that it could cost jobs in the short run, but beyond that, the reasoning keeps coming down to a politics of division – a political philosophy to hold power at all costs, even the loss of life.
The people who vote for them must be getting something of value for their support and you have to ask yourself what that might be. Beyond those who benefit from the tax cuts, business deregulation and suppressed wages, what is the Republican Party actually doing for their average supporters?
One answer – everything they can to disenfranchise minority voters they know will ultimately vote them out of office and thereby put the reins of power in the hands of a coalition of minorities and liberal white voters. In fact, by 2045 people of color will no longer be in the minority – something the Republicans know all too well and are already preparing for.
Richard Nixon was elected twice, so was Ronald Reagan, both employed a rhetoric of thinly veiled racism. George HW Bush beat Michael Dukakis only after floating the Willie Horton ad. And then Democrat Bill Clinton followed suit with his Crime Bill – for which he expressed regret only when his wife decided to run for President. These campaigns were grounded in an appeal to racism.
This admission by Nixon henchman, John Ehrlichman is illuminating.
“Dan Baum, the author of 1996's "Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure," wrote in Harper's Magazine in 2016 that while researching his book, [John] Ehrlichman gave a reason for the war of drugs that had little to do with protecting Americans from reefer madness.
"You want to know what this was really all about?" Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."”
Sound familiar? Then: Black people are criminals – lock them up and deprive them of their right to vote for life. Now: Immigrants are criminals – lock them up, toss them out, deny them their rights. And the whopper: The 2020 election was stolen because the Democrats cheated (translation: people of color voted against us in numbers large enough to win the Presidency and cost us the Senate.)
Biden’s Covid relief bill is collateral damage in the Republican’s continuing war on the Constitution. They will manufacture justifications that sound like, “limited government”, “fiscal responsibility”, “defending against socialism” – but none of that matters to them as the last four years have demonstrated - tax cuts, subsidies and deregulation that benefit large contributors, i.e., socialism for the rich.
One thing Republicans did well during their last lap in power was ram conservative judges through the Senate. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, the outcome of which could impact the rights of minority voters across the nation.
“On March 2, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a challenge to a pair of Arizona voting policies that make it harder for people to vote, especially in communities of color and Native American communities. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, is significant because it likely won’t just affect voters in the state. It could have broad implications for the fairness of our democracy across the country because of what the decision might mean for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, known as the VRA.”
So, I don’t know if more suffering and death are going to tilt the scales – 500,000 deaths, many resulting from Trump’s criminally botched response to the virus, have made no significant difference to core Republicans, not to mention the MAGA nation. Getting people back to work, relieving the anxiety of debt – these will help turn the tide and Biden is certainly doing all the right things.
But if we lose the battle to preserve the right of all Americans to vote, it will be for naught, because that seems to be the glue that holds the Republican house of cards together. The man who invented the Big Lie does not give a damn about the integrity of our elections – he and his followers want to remove as many people of color as possible from the voting rolls to stay in power. And that is something their voters seem to support.
Living inside the drug war zone (Kensington, Philadelphia) I believe that the only solution is that which worked in Switzerland, and now in Portugal. Decriminalize all drugs; use the money saved from the failed enforcement to make the drugs easily available through clinics if you qualify as an addict, create back-to-work programs with other social services. The factual data is that Portugal has seen the opioid addiction rate drop by 50%, the crime rate of addicts by 80%, and the inner city neighborhoods rejuvenated.
Thank you for posting this TED talk. As a lifelong addict of course now being managed with other drugs a system that doesn't stigmatize.and punish addiction is the only way forward in this country. A few generations of Black and Brown people have been isolated from society
How does that help anyone?
It only helps those whose goal is to put them where they can't see them and don't have to think of them.
So very true— thank you for that perspective going back to the Nixon years. I wish Stacey Abrams would give an on line master. Lass on exactly how she succeeded in getting Georgia to turn blue. It almost makes me feel like moving to Alabama so I could knock on doors etc
You are absolutely correct. Republicans can only win if there is voter suppression and voter suppression always means suppression of people of color. Everything they do smells like racism to me. Your points about the War an Drugs being just one way to criminalize Black people is very real. Dumping drugs in ghettos has happened since after WWii that I know of but surely before.
The biggest fight going forward will be against voter suppression. It's time for a new national Voting Rights Act.
Because this is all states’ rights and it would be illegal. So they just continue the gerrymandering and the deliberate process of making voting rights more and more opaque kind of like our impossible income tax laws.
Something has to give to break this impass because if the Supreme Court continues to refuse voting rights equality then, as John Roberts knows very well, the Court will be changed so that it cannot stop it.
Some of the decisions they’ve made lately have been moderate and pleasing despite dt’s jamming it with his picks— and maybe Garland will get confirmation this week.
In the end this is the only way they can stay in power and thereafter to use violence to prevent it being questioned. They've already experienced the "economic deficiencies"... to say nothing of human values...of slavery and they know that this system left them trailing very far behind northern wage-labour factories in the first half of the 19thC. The end result of this GOP autocratic strain (or stain) of thought is effectively a return to a situation where the few rich ruled a sub-class of poor whites while both sat upon a majority slave-class. Very similar by the way to the social classification system set up by the Spanish in the 16th C in Central America well before Northern European Colonialist started to arrive on the East Coast. The question that comes to mind is, in this sort of society there will obviously be far too many people in the slave class even with a massive drop in this labour's productivity, so what do they do with them? Restart the movement "Back to Africa? I don't think that anybody on either side of the Atlantic would be particularly interested. So what could they do as the new "Plantation Aristocracy certainly won't want to feed surplus slaves? Soylant Green here we come with the blessing of Trump!
Stuart, I have long believed that the ultimate goal of the Republican party was to create a social structure not unlike that you describe. I am, by nature, a cynic, so I have no problem visualizing their end goal. When I think about how long the folks in the Rust Belt, the closed coal fields, the Reservations with no power or water, the inner cities, the migrant laborers, service industry workers and domestic workers have been grasping at straws to survive, I wonder how and why more people don't see what's going on. The very base Trump and the current Republican party appeal to are too stupid to understand that they, too, will become part of the underclass in the not too distant future. Those who are white will have a slight edge as they always have. But not by much.
It's easy for those of us who are modestly fortunate to say more education will solve the problems but it's not that clear cut or simple, especially when even moderately well educated people have swallowed the decades of crap the Republican party has been dishing out. Nothing has trickled down other than poverty, hunger, sickness, 2nd rate education, (no, I'm not slinging mud at teachers but at legislators and administrators).
We call ourselves the wealthiest nation in the world. How can that be? On what do we base that notion? We have become a country, where, from cradle to grave, the expectation of a better life for all is nothing more than a very mean spirited pipe dream. How can anyone expect a person in the United States to live on the 12 year old Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 an hour? And yes, there are many states that have a higher minimum wage, but there are a good number that don't. Not one lawmaker pushing against the $15.00 minimum could live on that let alone live on the current $7.25.
I think of Heather and her talks referring to Mudsills. This is where we're headed. I am angry, sickened and sad.
Now thats downright depressing - the number of states with $7.25 in 2010 and STILL $7.25! Nice to see NYS actually increased the past 10 years to $12.50! But mind-boggling at the states that just remained the same. Thank you, Daria. Since I retired have paid little to no attention.
Maggie, you know, my husband and I have been discussing the minimum wage issue for a while now. And that piqued my curiosity in re how individual states have addressed the minimum wage. It is downright depressing and unreasonable. It's hard to imagine what basics people are doing without because they don't earn enough to cover their expenses.
In many ways I think we’re the dumbest nation on the planet— we can’t figure out how to give citizens healthcare, we are so stupid about the minimum wage, our tax code is as complicated as a brand new hieroglyph every year, we won’t get around to a modern train system, our public schools pay good teachers not much. No wonder the French shake their heads and smile. My friend says—you Americans love to fight.
Boy does that say it all! You look at those issues & think whats the big deal? Take care of the stuff that matters - thats the reason our politicians are put in office & THATS what they are supposed to do! How hard is that? Yet they spend all this time working on their re-elections! Could it be that should tell us something?? Maybe?
A long and valuable posting, outlining the racial evils Republican voters seem to support. HCR concluded her comments today by writing "The coronavirus relief bill illustrates just how dangerously close we are to minority rule" and this posting enlightens us as to the vile nature of that minority.
We’ve already had so many major catastrophes though like the California fires recent Texas too etc but it’s clear that they just don’t give a u know what. It’s got to come down to the voting rights. There are a good number of repugs who have announced they won’t run for the next cycle.
Ralph it won't change the vote in TX even though the Repulsives have crated the disaster there. They are busy working on voter suppression even as we speak. So that would not work--and, as Liz has pointed out, we already have had an unmitigated and preventable disaster for all of 2020, yet an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism.
"..an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism."
And incompetent fascism at that. (Mussolini did make the trains run on time.)
Point taken, Linda. Ted Cruz (R, Cancun) would probably be re-elected today.
At CPAC there is a golden calf/statue of the former president, and all those bible-thumping christians apparently don't want to see the screamingly obvious biblical parallel.
You know, right after I posted that I just knew it was really "casting aspersions" (as my grandmother used to say) on pigs & hogs. But then, I really like calves, too so it just was a trade-off!
I believe that Biden, Warnock and Ossoff won because the pandemic made enough people wake up to the realization that culture wars are not enough reason to continue the horrors of the last 4+ years. However, as you aptly point out, "ignorance and prideful stupidity" remain.
How many catastrophe’s do those Red State dingalings need?
They just stick their hands in the air and ask their god to grant them miracles rather than plucking their heads out of their bums and using their brains.
Honestly, we should herd them to edge of the Earth they likely think is flat and then boot them off.
The Pandemic is a national disaster that has been woefully mis managed and lasted a whole year— mostly the repugs denied it was going Oman’s I heard the big conference that had this weekend continued to spread the lie. Sickening
Cross Country Ski season is over a month early here in Northern Michigan, and it didn't begin until nearly the end of January. Used to start mid-November. Grieving...
I just don't understand. I would guess that many of the insurectionists storming the Capitol Jan. 6 are part of the very people in need of the stimulus check, unemployment benefits, a wage increase, covid relief, small business funding, and all that is in the bill. But the Republicans supposedly on their side don't want to help anyone. Period. Trump twiddled around doing absolutely nothing but spreading lies and hate. Now that much needed help is proposed by a true leader, it's still blocked by selfish, greedy, power mongers. It makes me sick. America is in shambles physically, medically, financially, socially, emotionally, and attacking itself. I can't be more depressed.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson. I hope the sadness, depression, and frustration does not harm you in any way. You have to be so tired of this. Stay well.
How much of their financial trouble was self made as their idol’s was. Always going into debt for more and more, without a qualm to be in a constant state of bankruptcy, which enabled them to never have to pay their debts. Constantly scamming the system
I am depressed too, but I still have hope. Grievance Republicans are lost. Nothing will turn them and they are a potent enough voter base that they are currently driving the Republican Party. But Stacey Abrams (and others) have shown the way. There are untapped votes out there to be mobilized. They can be motivated by outreach from a party that governs and passes legislation they need and want. The cure for democracy is more democracy...otherwise we're done.
Thanks for posting this. Shows what people were the insurrectionists. I knew that most would be those in arrears and lots were probably men who abuse children/partners. Much work does have to be done to figure out why there are those who simply hate.
It's remarkable how many insurrectionists were turned in by those who know them best -- their former spouses or partners. There's a clear pattern of harassment and violence toward women going hand in hand with white supremacy.
I’m very sorry to hear you’re depressed but I understand because when all is said and done and things go on and on like this it is overwhelming because for sure our founding fathers, as white and propertied as they were did not intend our country to end up like this. In my own stages of shock, horror, denial and anger I fantasized a lot about just moving to Provence. But I’ve got a 30 year old son who will be dealing with this mess and I love our country too much not to fight.
Great idea Liz! I spent some of my 60th BD in Aix-en-Provice. My dearest friend recommend it, as the finest of western society that she has seen. So, we visited, and I agree. My wife has kids and g’kids also, and they are her anchor. I tell her it’d be MORE valuable to the family to experience France and Italy for an occasional week, than to never get there.
Oh well, perhaps I could find another person, or two or three, to think about co-owning a property there. You know, our own version of “Under the Aix Sun”
The floor is open ..... Stewart, are you here now?
Going back down there on Saturday for a week or so.....still a little early to take a glass or to eat outside though. Have to see to clearing up the administrative matters following my mother-in-laws recent demise.
Sharing one's time between the States and Province would be ideal as in both places you have some things which you might find it difficult to live with full time. Tourism is one thing, living somewhere is something else. Being able to get away for a little while can give a necessary breath of fresh air.
My Mecca is Forcalquier. It’s the loveliest town just far enough away from most tourist traffic so it retains all the charm of an actual town. I love Aix too and started going to Provence in 2000. I also love Lyon and Marseille but when I got to Forcalquier in 2019 I felt like it was home.
Fourcalquier is enjoying a certain amount of bad press of late as recently an ex-mayor Christoffe Castener distinguished himself as being largely considered as the worst Minister of the Interior (Police) ever during the "Gilets Jaunes episodes. It has to be said that his past history was hardly encouraging as he was a known associate, when much younger, of certain Marseilles gangsters!
Lovely little Alpine valley town though. It's a relatively short drive into the hills from my place.
Forcalquier appears quite a bit smaller. I prefer a bit of an urban beat, and I didn’t realize Aix is nearly 140,000 people. In the old town of Aix, the village feel is so endearing .... On my 60th, we rode a local bus into the countryside, and hopped off near ‘nowhere’, but where Cézanne painted. This was enough, at a bend of the lane, near nowhere but an antiquated inn and cafe - and the mountain path of the glorious paintings of Cézanne. We spent a long while on the same little bluff .....
Hey I’ll chip in — wouldn’t that be fun — we could call it the Provence HCR Foundation—we’d know it informally as a halfway house for those of us who get burnt out from caring and posting too much in the middle of the night. And there would be no rules.
perhaps, there could be just one rule - “No texting in the middle of the night.” Then, we could have general agreements, like, "Leave the place sweeter than when you arrived.”
This is why I hate U.S. politics – It is not a democracy as we have been lied to, but a game with convoluted rules that make no sense, played by overpaid, underworked politicians with no concern for their constituents’ lives or welfare. (Need I mention Ted Cruz?)
There should be no filibuster to prevent a majority vote from performing its job. (Why haven’t the Dems done that?) There should be no Districts to Gerrymander and no Electoral College to give some votes more weight than others. Each Person’s Vote should be counted the same. Of course the Repugnant Party can’t have a true Democracy, which is why they are now working to suppress more votes in their controlled states.
Yes, a game. And yes, overpaid. And since you mentioned Ted Cruz .. I saw a clip of him at CPAC trying to be a standup comedian. He actually joked about going to Cancun. These are the people we 'hire' to represent our interests. I feel pretty good in my state of WA that my congressmen and women are doing a job I admire.
What you hate is not US politics or politics at all for that matter. What you have, and good for you, are 74M white supremacists who support the likes of Trump. They are the crux of the problem.
They have in the past, but did not with Trumpsky's Free Stuff for 1% Tax Act. Otherwise, it's been a long time since the GOP presented anything to filibuster.
The reason Mitch McConnell is so powerful is that he understands every tiny rule of procedure like the back of his hand—he plays Congress like someone who is an international chess champion but not encumbered with an iota of empathy
Pay member of the House and the Senate $15.00 per hour. Let them learn how difficult it would be to live on that income. Someone who makes $15 per hour would not even qualify as middle class. They are the working poor - barely struggling to get by. Legislators have lost their collective minds. Outrageous.
I believe that those wanting to run for office must live on the income of an average family for a year. Those in office need to be stripped of their entitlements after they leave office. No free healthcare for themselves and their families and no income for life. They do nothing for their constituents now. They should be granted retirement based upon what they did for the people they are supposed to work for and not become millionaires during their time in office via lobbies for corporations and special interests.
I was just having a discussion with a nurse practitioner about this today! Congressman have the very best medical care imaginable. Yet they vote and pass laws that dictate medical benefits for all of us. They have absolutely no idea the lives the majority live. Not one iota.
Some of them know better and some don’t but I think the main thing is that once the Congress people get elected their biggest concern is getting re elected I’ve wanted there to be term limits for a long time but they’re not voting for that for sure.
Thank you Heather. Your letter perfectly explains how dire the situation is in the Country. For those who thought we were out of the woods when Biden was elected, can clearly see we are not. Not by a long shot. This is a grim reality check that if a bill this monumentally important to all citizens cannot muster a single GOP vote and even opposition from some Democrats proves as a Democracy, we are screwed. This will be status quo as far as voting for the next 4 years, maybe less. This voting pattern clearly shows Party over People. I feel this perfectly illustrates that regardless of the election results and the vast numbers that voted for Biden, it is not reflected when the rubber meets the road.
The GOP is out to destroy Democracy, make no mistake about it.
But Linda the statistics show that most people want this bill to pass. I think this will bite the repugs in the ass over the upcoming midterms. I sure hope so anyway.
Liz, unfortunately there is a bizarre cognitive dissonance int he electorate: polls consistently show that people have specific policies they really want to see happen but also "like" their congressperson even if that person opposes (for no good reason) those very same policies. This has a lot to do with he kinds of propaganda people in congress are permitted to send to their constituents, which often mischaracterizes what is actually going on. When the ACA was being debated, pollsters were using the following ploy to see what was really happening: they asked two questions--"Do you like/not like Obamacare? Do you like/not like the Affordable Care Act?" Perhaps unsurprisingly, people who responded to the poll who were utterly uninformed (that is, the majority of the country most of the time) said they "did not like" Obamacare but DID like the ACA. Go figure.
So put more simply —deceptive practices becoming standard tools. Thank you— we get tons of conservative people an robo calls because my husbands ex was a rabid conservative— but I didn’t realize how standard it was for Congress to not even bother to have real conversations with their constituents— I bet they would say — I don’t have time because I always have to be fundraising for the next election.
The problem of believing polls answered by a relative few rabid partisans raises its ugly head yet again. Ask Tulsi Gabbard how easy it is to be added to a poll sample.
That does not account for the 74 million people who voted for the Cheeto in 2020. That is not a few rabid partisans. Polls are problematic for a host of reasons but the numbers of people who support enhancements of social welfare programs and who really want some help have remained very consistent over the years. The problem is that the "GOP" have mischaracterized programs that pull people out of poverty, provide access to education and jobs, and help people find safe and secure places to live as "radical liberal socialism" (an oxymoron, but whatever). The only way to change the cognitive dissonance about rational social welfare is to be vocal, to push for enactment of rational social welfare reforms, and then to be vocal about the results.
Linda, did you read my response from 2 days ago about your prospective campaign? I could repost it, but LFAA was very busy then, and searching through a morass of 700+ comments has little appeal.
TPJ, there were so many posts on that conversation! I probably did read it but I have chemo-brain and am teaching a full load online (just finished grading student essays--oy vey) so I have no idea! My prospective campaign for what? The Oxford Comma? I'm a big fan of the Oxford Comma . . . 🤣
Very sorry to you too, Linda M! I was thinking of Yvonne who's mulling running for office, but not thinking when I wrote "Linda." Apologies for some avoidable confusion.
Very sorry, Linda! I was thinking of Yvonne who's mulling running for office, but not thinking when I wrote "Linda." Apologies for some avoidable confusion.
At what point does the Republican citizenry realize that their Republican “representatives”are not, in fact, representing them? Can that fact not be brought to bear on the situation?
Interesting! Did you read Patrick Munson’s comment somewhere here about addiction to power? It’s impossible to find a single comment again. Thank you for the link.
They ARE representing them in the way that matters most to the base - by supporting their cultural assumptions. For the first time in its history, the United States is becoming truly pluralistic: a nation of minorities. This change is destroying the sense of place and relevance for many white people, especially white men. How they make sense of the world is being upended. Trump exploited these fears and gave them a political home. No issue, policy, or bill is more important than core identity.
I've thought this as well but the people I know who are DJT supporters (and who also think Biden is evil) are actually happy. And live well. And don't think there is anything wrong with their views, positions, etc. They have friends, homes, jobs, and are content. It is absolutely mindboggling to me.
Yet, change is the only constant. If hate can be taught (aka ruling by fear, so too should resiliency skills. Instead, it seems, a false sense of entitlement may be at the core of their giant tantrum.
I object to the popular truism, "The only constant is change". I prefer the adage, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Think of the phases of the moon and the changing of the tides. They do not require humanity to manage them. The first step towards peace is to call off the war against nature. If we accepted our place in nature we would celebrate the role of scavengers rather than conquerors.
We will lose, and must lose this war. Climate change will out and the Democrats will win the Senate in 2024!
I think they have been told so often that Democratic administrations will lead to “socialism” (which they do not understand correctly) they’ll vote not for the Republicans but against the socialist Dems.
I agree with your assessment of republican voters today. My friend, who is a legacy Republican, voted for tRump twice (and admits to be embarrassed about it), but told me that she believes our country is in VERY DEEP TROUBLE with Biden (read Democrat) as president. She truly feats for the future of our country.
Propaganda plain and simple. I have had clients come in embarrassed to tell me that they voted for Trump and when I ask why they say because “we do not want socialism in this country!“. When I ask them if they like their Social Security and their Medicare they say yes but that’s different. And I say no it’s not but they don’t believe me.
“Family indoctrination”; her parents, grandparents, siblings have always voted republican, and feel the democrat’s policies are BAD for the economy and hence bad for her pocketbook. We had a conversation, and she did not know anything about voter suppression, or gerrymandering or the fact that the rich got significantly richer with t****’s tax cuts while she saw almost no gains at all. She didn’t know anything about “trickle down economics”. I strongly feel there needs to be an aggressive push to educate “legacy” republicans.
I agree with Susan but there is another part of the equation that makes these white folks continue to vote Republican: they believe in the idea of the Zero-Sum Game, which is what the Republicans flog tirelessly as the reason why they should be in power. They are convinced that if someone else gains the advantages (however minimal) the white folks have, then somehow white folks lose. We all know that this is absolutely untrue. Greater access to wealth, to education, to entrepreneurship, to amassing savings that can be passed on to the next generation, to safe and affordable housing, to safety and security in our cities, to a functioning infrastructure all benefits EVERYONE. But the racist and sexist (and I would also venture to suggest that this is a religious exclusivity issue as well) gaslighting and Othering that goes on appeals to people who don't really value equality or equity. They want to be the ones who can feel superior, so they actually damage their own self-interest in order to ensure that others have it worse. It's gobsmacking.
The more I read this explanation of the reality of how Congress is not working for the People who voted for change, the madder and sadder I became. I do appreciate being informed, but it is getting to me, on top of everything else. I live in Texas where the incompetence of leaders has led to billions of dollars in damage and tragic death in the recent freeze.
So very sad. It’s all going to be an uphill battle... I hope the For The People act passes.
Whatever happened to the emoluments clause? Is it just words? Not really a law?
What happened with the security breech to the Pentagon? What happened about the bounties on American soldiers? Do we just ignore these things? Come out after an election that they’re still claiming was stolen and play nice?
This is what our country is becoming. Divided by hate. So very sad.
I think we are buying into the division. Us vs.them. Republicans vs. Democrats Evil vs.Good The good news is the majority of the citizens support this bill. This is what we need to focus on. We are speaking for the majority of the citizens. If we insist on being self righteous and denigrating Republicans in the process we will alienate our citizens who identify as Republican. By focusing on the evil of the Republican Party we are giving our power away. Keep our eye on the goal of the merits of this bill. Stacy Abrams is a great example of keeping her eye on the goal and look at what she accomplished against all odds.
What happened to our country? We are allowing seditionists to be voting on critical bills in our government and pretending it is fine? Why do they have the right to anything? Where is justice? Why are we even thinking about the former, so-called POTUS being allowed to run for an office he trashed thoroughly, was impeached twice for egregious behaviors, and then his attempted coup on our democracy? What happened to prosecution of felonies?
I bet if I broke into my state capital and smashed things and tried to kill my elected officials, because the POTUS told me to do, whatever, I would not be sitting here in my warm little home. Why are all these thugs being protected?
Good Qs, Penelope; sadly, we have no equally good As. But the last chapters of the story aren't written yet. The investigations are ramping up and results will come, inexorably if slowly.
Thank you so very much, Dr Richardson, for your letters and how you very simply lay it all out. It's very much appreciated. From day to day. Today, I'm so very saddened and disheartened, as others here have already mentioned in these wee hours, at the lack of Republican support for the American Rescue Plan. It hurts me to my core that we can not, as a nation, come to an understanding and embrace measures that are designed for the good of the people. I also think of President Biden and what a kind and compassionate, yet very seasoned politician, man who is trying to lead our nation through these very darkest of times. God speed to all of us.
This makes me so angry I can’t even put it into words. These people are pure evil. I cannot understand what they hope to gain by destroying our country. It’s this kind of behavior by those people that throws me back into raging despair.
I love Heather's letters each morning. They tie everything together so well but many times like today I just become angry and frustrated. I do not understand how the Republicans can so blatantly ignore the needs of their own constituents and this Country. If I was a Republican and these people were my representatives I would be up in arms over their willful neglect and abuse of power. They do not represent the will of their constituents which in turn harms the whole country.
I have, also. What I find even more disturbing is that people I considered friends for decades ‘came out’ as rabid supporters of djt after the election. I am still stunned.
Me too but mine were family members. Family that I love. But it's impossible for me to visit with them anymore because they are now blatant about their support for DJT and all his ilk. They think Biden is evil. It's been really sad to see this.
There is PLENTY of bipartisanship. It's just NOT in the Congress, especially the Senate. Jen Psaki has been pointing out in her briefings that a super-majority--more than 70% of Americans--is in favor of the Biden legislation. Sounds pretty bipartisan to me!
Don’t forget Georgia gave us a fighting chance in the Senate. We do matter. I’ll always remember Obama’s analogy of changing the direction of a ship. Slow and steady. Also words matter. Certain words are much more energizing than others. 😃
Christy, the problem is, we are not currently reflective of who approves bills. We will, hopefully only get this bill passed for the most part by the power of Biden not a bipartisan movement. He only has 3 chances to use that particular move.
It is a bit silly to write about this again but having read most of the comments that are still so focused on the specifics I will. What do you do when you confront a situation that makes no sense? You look left you look right up, down it still makes no sense; you have to back up, take a larger view. Sometimes this means looking to the past and Heather is good at that but sometimes even that doesn’t make sense if you aren’t standing back far enough to recognize the underlying causes of the history.
What is going on when people repeatedly devote their attention and conform their behavior to a path that is ultimately self-destructive? Where do we see this time and again in human history and individual human lives? The answer is addiction. In this case power addiction the most powerful and sinister addiction of human kind.
What can someone un-addicted do when confronted with someone who is behaving from the demands of addiction? First understand that from within the addiction lying is normal, respected, not recognized but rather celebrated as what is justifying the addiction. And recognize that as the addiction becomes deeper and consequences pile up the addicted are not more likely to see the error of their ways, rather they are going to double down on their lies and justifications to support their addiction in any and all ways they can. Also, recognize that within a cohort addiction, a group process, the whole group is affected. In this way they are pulled together by the energy of addiction and made more solid in the fantasy that they are living to support it.
Rationalizing, negotiation, placating, hoping for the best, thinking the future is going to change without drastic measures is the behavior of the co-dependent, the other pole of the disease of addiction. Not one Republican is going to support a single effort by the Democrats. It is not going to happen. It is much more likely that a Democrat or two are going to be sucked into the addiction. It has nothing to do with the need, popularity or justness of the individual bill. We haven’t been governing that way for a long time now.
Forcing the addicted to experience the consequences of their actions is the only way to break this cycle. What does that look like in the massive arenas of politics and public opinion? Well, until we starting using the word ‘addiction’ we haven’t even started.
I agree that there is an addiction to power. And it is strong. Looking at it further, though, I tend to view human behavior from a lense of fear. We, as a species, are wired to survive. To live. And when we sense that something is going to disrupt that, challenge that, fear kicks in. And fear is very strong. The fight-flight-freeze responses take over. And you can study a person and see which of these the person is drawn to when in fear of their livelihood. And when your central nervous system is on high alert, your smart brain does turn off. Your problem-solving, rationalizing, judgment .. it goes off line while your body uses all its resources to stay alive. Live in this state for long and you develop chronic stress and anxiety. THEN you begin to look for fixes. Things that you can easily become addicted to.
Remember that a diagnosis is not reality in itself. It is a label that can be used to categorize observation and response. It is useful when there are specific actions that can be brought to bear under the diagnosis category that have been shown to alter the natural history attendant to the diagnosis.
In this case Addiction to Power, the addictive process is active just as it might be with a more classical substance addiction. What would happen if you went into a room full of individuals in active addiction to (fill in the blank). This is predictable, the first reaction would be denial. “No I’m not.” I have been through this many times it is completely predictable. The attention of the addicted individual will be moved from what ever they were doing, often the practice of the addiction, and focused on their lies of denial.
Therefore, I do suggest that if our dear minority leader, as an example, was publicly named as power addict his attention would fall on denial of that to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps even defending the filibuster.
If only it was that simple eh? But what if it was? Why is it hard to call him out like that? Perhaps it is because it cuts to the heart of an issue that is closer to us all than we would like to admit. People don't change because they are comfortable.
I tend to hyper-focus on this concept, yet I see it in almost all dysfunctional human behavior. A fear of something. And almost always it includes safety, being seen and heard, and basic survival. Not even comfort. Just survival.
Patrick, I like your analogy.. Understanding the current political mess as addiction, "withdrawal" will be very painful. Until we can make those addicted admit they are "powerless" there will never be withdrawal.
I appreciate your sentiment but I don't really intend it as an analogy but rather as a diagnosis. A diagnosis is a conclusion that allows us to understand what is happening and predict what is going to happen. It also gives us avenues of action.
For instance if instead of writing “In a statement Mitch Mc…. Complained … a deliberately partisan process.” IE. If instead of quoting M.M. she wrote, ‘Continuing to define his own truth from within his power addiction M.M. characterized the Relief bill as partisan even while he personally refused to be involved in the negotiations offered at the White House.’
That said, I also want to assert that HCR is a historian commentator whose job is reflecting on what is happening not necessarily making a diagnosis. It is not up to me to say what her job is of course .... I’m not saying that calling this out as addiction is her personal task but I do think that in our comments it would be useful to make this connection.
Thank you for that last paragraph! As I really am interested in your diagnosis (though I’m sure it’s more complicated than just that), but frustrated by those who feel the need to rewrite Dr. Richardson’s treasured letters to suit their personal fancies.
Listening to Politicology (podcast), a speaker mentioned she’d heard some repubs were foregoing the vaccine bc getting it would give Biden a “win.” Seriously?!! That’s the definition of self-defeat.
Marcy that is definitely the "shoot yourself in the head because it will upset the other guy" bizarro thinking of most adherents of the Trumpista Party.
Meanwhile, there are far more people wanting the vaccine than getting it, while we wait for an increase in supplies. Gov.Baker in MA has been completely irresponsible about the current stage of roll-out - dumping a million people into eligibility at once, for 50 thousand shots a week, funneled through a website clearly designed by Franz Kafka in a bad mood.
Teflon Baker is often the most popular US governor, and has been nearly untouchable. But his bungling on vaccine access seems to really hurt him now. It won't help him win the GOP pres nomination in 2024. His infuriating comment last month saying (basically) that there were good people involved in the insurrection is, to my mind, a backdoor expression of interest in that promotion.
This was the playbook during the entire Obama administration. Don’t ever give the Democrats a win by admitting that you support something they have proposed. They’d rather have something to fuel the outrage machine that keeps people voting for them.
Personally, I wish the Dems had tried a little harder to make a bipartisan bill. Even getting a few GOP votes would have looked better. However, given that time was important and the lack of good faith from so many of the Republicans, I understand why they chose not to.
They learned their lesson from the Obama years, when they would trim their own sails to fit what the Rs said they wanted (Obamacare is Romneycare is what the Heritage Foundation proposed as an alternative to Hillarycare back in 1993) and they still didn't get any support from those bad-faith actors. At least the Democrats are no longer playing Charlie Brown football with Lucy.
This works otherwise in other parts of the world. In France the dominant societal philosophy has been "left-of-center". More conservative governments have mostly accepted the opposition Partie Socialiste's definition of what it is possible to think and do.....they fixed the goalposts for elected politics. The result is that half the population would now vote for the far-right party of the Le Pen Family...Rassemblement National....as the subjects for political discussion and action that are wanted by the people are judged "unacceptable".
While I agree with the sentiment, you cannot negotiate with terrorists. Bipartisan means that both sides work together; the Republiqan party is not working with anyone.
it appears some work is going on in the background. I am proud of the Biden-Harris administration for continuing to talk to all of us, to point to the people as what Bi-partisan means.
It would have been a waste of time to try harder to gain Republican support. They do not intend to give support to ANY policies of the Democrats because they are dealing in bad faith. The Republicans used their majority to pass things they thought important; Democrats should do likewise. If after trying to gain bipartisan support, but not being able to do so, Democrats should just move on. The Republicans do not get to define what “trying” looks like either.
Good morning HCR. Nice blog! I greatly appreciate how you lay out the facts with such clarity! You must be a really top-flight history professor.
However, what you describe as "dangerously close... to minority rule" strikes me as minority rule as status quo. The fact is that, for the past several decades, when Democrats win they can only govern with a GOP ball-and-chain pulling them down and can never fully deliver on their campaign promises, even when they are supported by a large majority of American voters. The structural lack of real democracy written into the US Constitution (2 Senators per state, the Electoral College, voting procedures determined by state governments, etc.), ratified over 230 years ago when half of the original 13 colonies had economies based on slavery and the overall population was mostly rural, is a huge, huge problem. Americans have grown accustomed to this, and our venerable Constitution continues to be revered, but it is slowly killing the American experiment, along with other more recent and surprisingly undemocratic institutions such as Facebook, owned by a tiny number of unelected and barely regulated entrepreneurs.
So poor Joe Biden is faced with an impossible task. If he cannot get his big economic/anti-covid spending bill passed without ditching the most important element, which is the $15 minimum wage increase, he will lose the main ingredient holding progressive and moderate Democrats together. As a practical matter, without a sincere change of heart from Manchin and Sinema, he is 2 votes short of a functioning Senate majority. If he cannot legislate real change and improvement in his first two years, we will all be cooked.
This is urgent. There will be no second chances. I see no alternative but to eliminate (not just modify) the filibuster, immediately. If Manchin and Sinema intend to pursue what they see as their personal political fortunes ahead of the commonweal, and cannot be convinced otherwise in private, they need to be shamed, primaried, expelled, whatever.
I would love it if one of HCR's well-informed blogmates (or even HCR herself!) could explain to me what - if any - are the positive aspects of the filibuster. How often has it been used since 1900, how successfully, by which parties, under what circumstances, etc. All I know is that filibusters these days are really just the threat of a filibuster, that it only takes 41 Senators to say they will vote against a bill, and that is enough to keep it from even being considered by the whole Senate, much less voted on. So there is no vote and no debate. And how often have Democrats/Republicans used or threatened a filibuster since the days of LBJ? Was there filibustering under Obama? Or Trump?
I remember back in the early sixties when the US. Senate, after 2 months of Dixiecrat filibustering, managed to find the (then) 67 votes needed for cloture and passed the 1964 Civil Rights act, and I know more recent changes to the filibuster have removed the need for endless Jimmy Stewart speeches, but what is it that concerns Joe Manchin so much about eliminating the filibuster? Have he or Kyrsten Sinema expressed any coherent viewpoint?
I mean, I keep railing against this filibuster, but maybe I have missed some important concept....
Have you tried Simple English Wikipedia?. Sometimes you don't need to know everything. (Simple English is not available for every topic and I've seen one entry that probably was a copy of the regular one. That's no help...)
I am not well-informed about the filibuster. But the original THEORY was that it encouraged extended debate and full airing of issues. In practice, endless blather (or currently its threat) effectively blocks necessary action and reform.
Recall, too, that in the 1850s filibustering had a different but still sinister meaning. Filibusters were violent southern adventurers who invaded Caribbean islands or Central American nations to drag them into the Union as slave states. William Walker in Nicaragua was the classic example. Cf. several books by Robert E May. In sum, the term conjures up many negatives and precious few positives.
There has to be some skeletons in Manchin etc's cupboards that can be used against them or some other more macchiavelian way of getting them to come on board. Lincoln, FDR and LBJ showed the way.
I'm kind of fond of LBJ. He did all the wrong things in Vietnam, in part because he was getting inaccurate data and bad advice, but he got the job done when it was time to pass civil rights legislation and build the essentials of a safety net. Yes, he really knew how to count the votes, but what really impresses me still about LBJ is that even though he was an unashamed racist, he was nevertheless able to employ moral reasoning to understand that while racial equality was anathema to him personally, it was both necessary and right for the American people, and it was up to him to make it happen. He found it in him to to understand and accept, at least on an intellectual level, that racism in America would lead to a dead end sooner or later. I'm sure 4 years of Trump and this GOP have had him rolling over in his grave.
LBJ was like an elemental force of nature in politics. Manchin would crumble into dust if LBJ confronted him. He seriously erred in Vietnam, but at least he agonized over the complexities and the suffering, unlike Shrub who got bored and lost interest in his own unwise wars. LBJ 's domestic policies were much more valuable, reflecting his desire to permanently solve America's most intractable problems.
Caro's biography seems to requite a new volume with each one completed. It is now about as long as Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but covers 1000 years less.
Caro's writing is far more exciting than Gibbon's but perhaps that is because it covers much that happened in my lifetime. But it is his dogged specificity that sets him above most non-fiction writers. Caro uncovered through a series of (I think) memos the secret of LBJ's rapid rise in the Senate Through Brown and Root he gained access to the big money, mostly oil, in Texas and parceled it to congressmen wherever needed. Caro describes one of LBJ's minions riding a train up to NH with several shopping bags of cash to deliver to Senator Styles Bridges who dutifully voted for the oil depletion allowance. Doubt that vote kept Bridges constituents any warmer. But yes, I would probably still take him (LBJ) if he were to rise from the dead.
Kudos to Caro for his writing. But literary tastes change over time, and vary even at the same time. Of course Gibbon seems pompous and florid today, but he still repays close attention. He was a fine scholar, master of English prose, and memorably opinionated. My Modern Library Gibbon will be among the last of several thousand books to go when decluttering becomes inevitable.
He did appoint Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. But this, and his other nods to civil rights were driven largely, I believe, by his grasp of what was necessary to maintain power. LBJ's succession to the presidency after JFK was a drop off a cliff for, at the very least, the youth of our country.
May I strongly recommend Robert Caro's 4, and I hope 5, volume work on LBJ?
I'm guessing you may have already read it. But successful majority leaders
are often bullies. And I agree, he is a paragon of virtue compared to Trump.
Actually, I haven't read Caro's book(s), but I should, thank you. I do remember reading that LBJ suffered terribly as the bodies came home to Dover from Vietnam, and, frankly, all politicians at the higher levels are pretty enamored of power. I also seem to remember that he was a smart guy, able to see the writing on the wall before - possibly - losing to Tricky Dick Nixon. "I will not seek, nor will I accept my party's nomination," are not words we have heard from any recent candidates, especially not sitting Presidents. Cut from a different kind of cloth back then...
Living in Italy, where there's a parliament, prime minister, votes of confidence, etc., I have often thought that party discipline is a pretty fine thing.
At least in Italy they don't take themselves too seriously! Party discipline is great when you have a dozen parties sharing the political field where party boundaries are fluid and alliances constantly changing. They also suffer from equality between the 2 halfs of their parliament...a sure recipe for inaction and impotent symbolic flaring! Ah Italy...always time for another coffee at the corner café and to watch the world go by.
And to think I haven't had a coffee at the corner cafè since last March when the lid came off this COVID thing. I finally had to learn how to use the little Italian espresso maker called a "moka", so my new habit is that plus one of my wife's homemade morning pastries and an hour of backgammon.... I hate to say it but I may soon have some nostalgia for this otherwise horrible year.
I do not understand why Manchin doesn’t want to put a stop to the Republicans holding such power over the majority of Americans do that nothing is being accomplished.
His reluctance may be driven by genuine concern for small businesses for whom this might be very tough. I have no figures, but teachers in rural WV may make this or less.
Krugman in the NYT says there is scarce evidence of minimum wage increases creating hardships for small businesses, though common sense says it surely must happen sometimes. The real question is how to weigh the benefit of millions of underpaid workers getting a big, even life-changing raise against the failure of a relatively small number of marginal mom 'n pop businesses. Ideally, the wage increase would be contemporaneous with Medicare-for-all (or something similar) and other improvements to the safety net, so smaller businesses could be relieved of some of what they now pay for employee insurance, but none of this will happen if the DEMs (all rowing together) can't pass legislation by simple majority in the Senate, because they will get NO help from the GOP, that's for sure.
Another question is: why should any business be allowed to incorporate sub-living wages and the presumption of employees relying on Medicaid and food stamps into its business plan? And of course the answer is that ripping off employees is a great way for owners and stockholders to pad their profits if they can get away with it. And ever since Reagan kicked the stool out from under the unions and the Citizens United SCOTUS decision made it legal for big businesses to corrupt politicians, underpayment of workers has contributed greatly to the earnings gap between the few haves and the many have-nots. The American middle class has been quietly decimated and now many folks cannot afford decent housing or tertiary education thanks to nearly 40 years of misgovernment by the GOP (who knew exactly what they were doing) and DEMs who allowed themselves to be seduced by untrue theories of free markets and invisible hands and bootstraps.
Well, Bruce, I could go on in this vein, but the bottom line is that if Joe Manchin is a Democrat, he needs to vote like one.
The simple solution, repeal the filibuster, would be a fine solution but it is an arrow that has no nock. Schumer tried to repeal it but McConnell threatened to lock down all Biden's appointees as well as all legislation if the filibuster was removed from the Senate Rules. With the March deadline approaching, the passing of COVID relief in time was threatened.
I have missed something. I was under the impression that the DEMs had achieved a 50-50 tie in the Senate and would no longer need McConnell's permission to pass legislation, assuming all Democratic Senators vote like Democrats and Kamala Harris breaks the tie. This would limit the problem to convincing a couple of outlying DEMs to get with the program, assuming prior elimination of the filibuster.
Seems to me that we've been under minority rule for the better part of the last 30 years. There are numerous issues that are popular with the public but that Republicans refuse to consider — gun control, minimum wage, ending citizens united, decriminalizing drugs, etc.
More than 30 years if you consider that in the beginning we were ruled exclusively by white men with property.
Yes. My FIL, as wonderful man as was, drilled in my head for years that available land will only be for so long. Dirt = $$. Buy land. Buy property. Real estate.
Right one of my exes was a shining example of that philosophy but think of that poor Vermont community that thought they at least had a quiet rural habitat and some white militia type bought a huge chunk of that land to use to train the militias—and his property rights are up against their right —he dares them to challenge him. I hope the Nytimes continues to follow this story.
It's painfully clear that Daniel Banyai, owner of Slate Ridge, the organization in question, is operating outside of the law. He has no permits for the use of his property as a gun range and paramilitary training. He has outstanding arrest warrants for gun violations, and an enormous cache of illegal weapons and still his neighbors can’t shut him down.
Is this where we are now in America? Where a group of angry, white (mostly) men (mostly) can arm themselves and terrorize an entire community with impunity?
And Slate Ridge is by no means unique. Similar armed camps are organized across the nation.
Once upon a time, mobs of armed, angry white men threatened mostly black Americans. We never really dealt with them then and now they endanger us all.
Hate has no allegiance to nation, color or creed. It’s a cancer that exploits any vulnerability and destroys everything it touches.
So I’m glad u looked into it— I was horrified when I read this article and I’ve been aware of the spreading of these fringe groups now because the Southern Poverty Law Foundation spreads information and map about which type of group is near you— there are lots in NH etc when you contribute to them the share maps and the latest. They are an organization with lots of funds to fight these groups in court. Perhaps they will help this Vermont horror show.
SPLC is my go-to for information on hate groups. I have donated to that wonderful organization for 25 years.
I found the ICAP posting about this in connection with voting interference (intimidation). If you'd like, I can copy the article.
Yes, this is where we're at now. Cf. the string of outrages committed by the Bundy clan out west. Serial criminals who are never properly held to account.
And serial politicians who are also never held to account
Same is going on in Idaho and Montana and here in WA. Scary.
Very
Also in Oregon, the state with the most KKK north of th Mason Dixion line.
What community I. Vermont ? I don’t know this story I grew up in Vermont
https://gunandsurvival.com/2020/10/30/militia-training-site-terrifies-neighbors-in-west-pawlet/
I read the article. Very scary. What most people don't know is that private militias are illegal in all 50 states. https://twitter.com/i/status/1327294270169116674
Thanks. Terrifying. I grew up in Rutland.
Art imitates life: “Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.” Which is why many of the formerly enslaved were denied the opportunity to own land for many years.
I much preferred the native American conception of land....that it could not be owned but can be part of all of our environments...collectively.
They are brilliant.
I am hearing the sound track from Gone With the Wind as the father gives Scarlett the lesson of her life. Da da ya ya— I so love the film. Today while my son took my 87 year old husband for his second dose, I was trying to take a nap. Later the song Strange Fruit came to me— I used to listen to a lot of Billie Holiday.
Yes. I hear my FIL's words echoing in this so very much. His parents immigrated from Europe, he himself bought farmland and worked it hard. Yet in the end, through all kinds of sordid life events, the land really became a curse.
The Trumpsky crime family has stocked up on land for decades. Using other people's money.
Sure.
So very true. The fact that after all the horrible bloodshed in this country-/the first one that came to mind was that man who holed up in a Las Vegas hotel and just started shooting a concert crowd with military grade weapons and bullets.—we haven’t been able to budge the laws. There’s a Sandy Hook parent that started a movement to raise money to at least get the gun manufacturers to have some liability after that kind of disaster. I support that group and I can’t imagine how those parent feel after that massacre that our congress impeded any efforts.
Really, this is a travesty to not have laws that go further to prevent insane criminals getting their hands on weaponry. I have a college friend whose granddaughter was killed at Marjorie Stoneman. She was the youngest murdered, 14 years old.
My heart breaks for these poor parents. The French were so sadly shaking their heads about Trump- very sorry I would say— didn’t vote for the thug.
I can't imagine that loss. Don't Republicans have children. Can they not even care.
If the south still has the notion that black people aren’t really fully human and I think a lot of them still do — this delusion was invented to protect their honor and their whole way of life. My husband’s eldest son married a wonderful brilliant and hardworking woman who is a true steel magnolia. One time she notably spoke up at a family gathering and said —growing up I thought dam Yankees was one word.
Their children go to private schools.
And there is ms green who says these events never happened
She’s dirt.
Yes and we have known about it all that time too! So what has been done to change it? Not much and surely not enough. Whose fault?
All of us
The argument can be made that the Constitution was designed for minority rule by giving the Senate the power it has. It was a necessary condition to get southern states to sign on. This fact was recognized and used throughout US history to keep slavery in place, to limit civil rights, ... The Republican party going back at least to Richard Nixon has used this fact to stay in power.
Tim, you are certainly right about the racist roots of contemporary Repo appeals. But I would add that constructing the Senate [and the electoral college as they thought it would function] as an anti-democratic bulwark was strongly supported by many Northern framers. They feared the "unruly passions" of popular majorities would lead to assaults on property and wealth--and they were probably right. The tensions between the Haves and Have-Nots were widespread, even beyond the Slave/Non-Slave divides. As other respondents have pointed out, constitutional protections of property--including but not limited to claiming persons as property--have shaped our history from its beginnings.
Yep
I should read through comments before posting! I mirror your assessment!
I agree
Methinks we're going to need a nationwide Texas Catastrophe to get the people who keep electing Republicans to see the error of their ways. Apparently, 500,000+ Covid deaths and all that comes with fighting the pandemic weren't enough.
Willful ignorance and prideful stupidity are tough obstacles to overcome.
Three weeks to the equinox and the first day of Spring.
It is hard to figure, Ralph. Time and again I’ve tried to wrap my head around it, to ascertain some principled reason why the Republican Party obstructs to the apparent detriment of their constituents.
I can almost understand an objection to a nationwide minimum wage on the rationale that it could cost jobs in the short run, but beyond that, the reasoning keeps coming down to a politics of division – a political philosophy to hold power at all costs, even the loss of life.
The people who vote for them must be getting something of value for their support and you have to ask yourself what that might be. Beyond those who benefit from the tax cuts, business deregulation and suppressed wages, what is the Republican Party actually doing for their average supporters?
One answer – everything they can to disenfranchise minority voters they know will ultimately vote them out of office and thereby put the reins of power in the hands of a coalition of minorities and liberal white voters. In fact, by 2045 people of color will no longer be in the minority – something the Republicans know all too well and are already preparing for.
Richard Nixon was elected twice, so was Ronald Reagan, both employed a rhetoric of thinly veiled racism. George HW Bush beat Michael Dukakis only after floating the Willie Horton ad. And then Democrat Bill Clinton followed suit with his Crime Bill – for which he expressed regret only when his wife decided to run for President. These campaigns were grounded in an appeal to racism.
This admission by Nixon henchman, John Ehrlichman is illuminating.
“Dan Baum, the author of 1996's "Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure," wrote in Harper's Magazine in 2016 that while researching his book, [John] Ehrlichman gave a reason for the war of drugs that had little to do with protecting Americans from reefer madness.
"You want to know what this was really all about?" Ehrlichman asked, referring to the war on drugs.
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."”
Sound familiar? Then: Black people are criminals – lock them up and deprive them of their right to vote for life. Now: Immigrants are criminals – lock them up, toss them out, deny them their rights. And the whopper: The 2020 election was stolen because the Democrats cheated (translation: people of color voted against us in numbers large enough to win the Presidency and cost us the Senate.)
Biden’s Covid relief bill is collateral damage in the Republican’s continuing war on the Constitution. They will manufacture justifications that sound like, “limited government”, “fiscal responsibility”, “defending against socialism” – but none of that matters to them as the last four years have demonstrated - tax cuts, subsidies and deregulation that benefit large contributors, i.e., socialism for the rich.
One thing Republicans did well during their last lap in power was ram conservative judges through the Senate. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, the outcome of which could impact the rights of minority voters across the nation.
“On March 2, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a challenge to a pair of Arizona voting policies that make it harder for people to vote, especially in communities of color and Native American communities. The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, is significant because it likely won’t just affect voters in the state. It could have broad implications for the fairness of our democracy across the country because of what the decision might mean for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, known as the VRA.”
So, I don’t know if more suffering and death are going to tilt the scales – 500,000 deaths, many resulting from Trump’s criminally botched response to the virus, have made no significant difference to core Republicans, not to mention the MAGA nation. Getting people back to work, relieving the anxiety of debt – these will help turn the tide and Biden is certainly doing all the right things.
But if we lose the battle to preserve the right of all Americans to vote, it will be for naught, because that seems to be the glue that holds the Republican house of cards together. The man who invented the Big Lie does not give a damn about the integrity of our elections – he and his followers want to remove as many people of color as possible from the voting rolls to stay in power. And that is something their voters seem to support.
Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-anti-left-anti-black-war-on-drugs-2019-7?r=DE&IR=T
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/supreme-court-case-challenging-voting-restrictions-arizona-explained
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/
To follow up on that point about the drug wars, read “Chasing the Scream,” by Johann Hari:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245552-chasing-the-scream
Living inside the drug war zone (Kensington, Philadelphia) I believe that the only solution is that which worked in Switzerland, and now in Portugal. Decriminalize all drugs; use the money saved from the failed enforcement to make the drugs easily available through clinics if you qualify as an addict, create back-to-work programs with other social services. The factual data is that Portugal has seen the opioid addiction rate drop by 50%, the crime rate of addicts by 80%, and the inner city neighborhoods rejuvenated.
15 minutes that opened a whole new world for me:
https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en
I have seen this first hand as I have dear friends who live in Portugal. The changes there are astounding.
Thank you for posting this TED talk. As a lifelong addict of course now being managed with other drugs a system that doesn't stigmatize.and punish addiction is the only way forward in this country. A few generations of Black and Brown people have been isolated from society
How does that help anyone?
It only helps those whose goal is to put them where they can't see them and don't have to think of them.
Thank you, Jeff.
An amazing presentation- thanks again.
WOW!!! Thank You for this. Will spread far and wide.
Wow - thank you.
So very true— thank you for that perspective going back to the Nixon years. I wish Stacey Abrams would give an on line master. Lass on exactly how she succeeded in getting Georgia to turn blue. It almost makes me feel like moving to Alabama so I could knock on doors etc
There are doors everywhere, in every state, in every community. You are right, let's
ALL channel Stacey Abrams.
You are absolutely correct. Republicans can only win if there is voter suppression and voter suppression always means suppression of people of color. Everything they do smells like racism to me. Your points about the War an Drugs being just one way to criminalize Black people is very real. Dumping drugs in ghettos has happened since after WWii that I know of but surely before.
The biggest fight going forward will be against voter suppression. It's time for a new national Voting Rights Act.
And it promises to be one hell of a fight.
Why wouldn't they just remove voting rights for all and get it over with? Autocracy.
Because this is all states’ rights and it would be illegal. So they just continue the gerrymandering and the deliberate process of making voting rights more and more opaque kind of like our impossible income tax laws.
Something has to give to break this impass because if the Supreme Court continues to refuse voting rights equality then, as John Roberts knows very well, the Court will be changed so that it cannot stop it.
Some of the decisions they’ve made lately have been moderate and pleasing despite dt’s jamming it with his picks— and maybe Garland will get confirmation this week.
In the end this is the only way they can stay in power and thereafter to use violence to prevent it being questioned. They've already experienced the "economic deficiencies"... to say nothing of human values...of slavery and they know that this system left them trailing very far behind northern wage-labour factories in the first half of the 19thC. The end result of this GOP autocratic strain (or stain) of thought is effectively a return to a situation where the few rich ruled a sub-class of poor whites while both sat upon a majority slave-class. Very similar by the way to the social classification system set up by the Spanish in the 16th C in Central America well before Northern European Colonialist started to arrive on the East Coast. The question that comes to mind is, in this sort of society there will obviously be far too many people in the slave class even with a massive drop in this labour's productivity, so what do they do with them? Restart the movement "Back to Africa? I don't think that anybody on either side of the Atlantic would be particularly interested. So what could they do as the new "Plantation Aristocracy certainly won't want to feed surplus slaves? Soylant Green here we come with the blessing of Trump!
Stuart, I have long believed that the ultimate goal of the Republican party was to create a social structure not unlike that you describe. I am, by nature, a cynic, so I have no problem visualizing their end goal. When I think about how long the folks in the Rust Belt, the closed coal fields, the Reservations with no power or water, the inner cities, the migrant laborers, service industry workers and domestic workers have been grasping at straws to survive, I wonder how and why more people don't see what's going on. The very base Trump and the current Republican party appeal to are too stupid to understand that they, too, will become part of the underclass in the not too distant future. Those who are white will have a slight edge as they always have. But not by much.
It's easy for those of us who are modestly fortunate to say more education will solve the problems but it's not that clear cut or simple, especially when even moderately well educated people have swallowed the decades of crap the Republican party has been dishing out. Nothing has trickled down other than poverty, hunger, sickness, 2nd rate education, (no, I'm not slinging mud at teachers but at legislators and administrators).
We call ourselves the wealthiest nation in the world. How can that be? On what do we base that notion? We have become a country, where, from cradle to grave, the expectation of a better life for all is nothing more than a very mean spirited pipe dream. How can anyone expect a person in the United States to live on the 12 year old Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25 an hour? And yes, there are many states that have a higher minimum wage, but there are a good number that don't. Not one lawmaker pushing against the $15.00 minimum could live on that let alone live on the current $7.25.
I think of Heather and her talks referring to Mudsills. This is where we're headed. I am angry, sickened and sad.
Minimum Wage by State, 2010-2021:
https://www.laborlawcenter.com
Now thats downright depressing - the number of states with $7.25 in 2010 and STILL $7.25! Nice to see NYS actually increased the past 10 years to $12.50! But mind-boggling at the states that just remained the same. Thank you, Daria. Since I retired have paid little to no attention.
Maggie, you know, my husband and I have been discussing the minimum wage issue for a while now. And that piqued my curiosity in re how individual states have addressed the minimum wage. It is downright depressing and unreasonable. It's hard to imagine what basics people are doing without because they don't earn enough to cover their expenses.
In many ways I think we’re the dumbest nation on the planet— we can’t figure out how to give citizens healthcare, we are so stupid about the minimum wage, our tax code is as complicated as a brand new hieroglyph every year, we won’t get around to a modern train system, our public schools pay good teachers not much. No wonder the French shake their heads and smile. My friend says—you Americans love to fight.
Boy does that say it all! You look at those issues & think whats the big deal? Take care of the stuff that matters - thats the reason our politicians are put in office & THATS what they are supposed to do! How hard is that? Yet they spend all this time working on their re-elections! Could it be that should tell us something?? Maybe?
They’re so good at the smoke and mirrors they don’t have to get anything done and they still have their rock solid base.
Thank you R. Dooley.
A long and valuable posting, outlining the racial evils Republican voters seem to support. HCR concluded her comments today by writing "The coronavirus relief bill illustrates just how dangerously close we are to minority rule" and this posting enlightens us as to the vile nature of that minority.
We’ve already had so many major catastrophes though like the California fires recent Texas too etc but it’s clear that they just don’t give a u know what. It’s got to come down to the voting rights. There are a good number of repugs who have announced they won’t run for the next cycle.
Ralph it won't change the vote in TX even though the Repulsives have crated the disaster there. They are busy working on voter suppression even as we speak. So that would not work--and, as Liz has pointed out, we already have had an unmitigated and preventable disaster for all of 2020, yet an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism.
"..an unconscionable number of people voted for fascism."
And incompetent fascism at that. (Mussolini did make the trains run on time.)
Point taken, Linda. Ted Cruz (R, Cancun) would probably be re-elected today.
At CPAC there is a golden calf/statue of the former president, and all those bible-thumping christians apparently don't want to see the screamingly obvious biblical parallel.
I won't despair because, well, just because.
Thank you for responding to my post.
I have to respond to the gold "calf" remark - it really looks closer to a hog to me.
Looks are deceptive....hogs are not stupid!
You know, right after I posted that I just knew it was really "casting aspersions" (as my grandmother used to say) on pigs & hogs. But then, I really like calves, too so it just was a trade-off!
Perhaps Sloth, Tasmanian Devil or some slithering beasty might be more appropriate
They have NO clue how ridiculous they look. Remember how Deplorables swamped and sank themselves at that TX boat rally? The jokes write themselves.
I believe that Biden, Warnock and Ossoff won because the pandemic made enough people wake up to the realization that culture wars are not enough reason to continue the horrors of the last 4+ years. However, as you aptly point out, "ignorance and prideful stupidity" remain.
How many catastrophe’s do those Red State dingalings need?
They just stick their hands in the air and ask their god to grant them miracles rather than plucking their heads out of their bums and using their brains.
Honestly, we should herd them to edge of the Earth they likely think is flat and then boot them off.
The Pandemic is a national disaster that has been woefully mis managed and lasted a whole year— mostly the repugs denied it was going Oman’s I heard the big conference that had this weekend continued to spread the lie. Sickening
The weather akready feels like mid summer here in FL. Yup, gonna be a hot one.
I've got both daffodils and crocus blooming before the end of February, and those are mid and early March bloomers for me, respectively.
and i've got my spring pollen allergies early after a couple of weeks of nice warmer weather!
Cross Country Ski season is over a month early here in Northern Michigan, and it didn't begin until nearly the end of January. Used to start mid-November. Grieving...
I just don't understand. I would guess that many of the insurectionists storming the Capitol Jan. 6 are part of the very people in need of the stimulus check, unemployment benefits, a wage increase, covid relief, small business funding, and all that is in the bill. But the Republicans supposedly on their side don't want to help anyone. Period. Trump twiddled around doing absolutely nothing but spreading lies and hate. Now that much needed help is proposed by a true leader, it's still blocked by selfish, greedy, power mongers. It makes me sick. America is in shambles physically, medically, financially, socially, emotionally, and attacking itself. I can't be more depressed.
Thank you, Dr. Richardson. I hope the sadness, depression, and frustration does not harm you in any way. You have to be so tired of this. Stay well.
WaPo has an article on the financial state of the average insurrectionist.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/10/capitol-insurrectionists-jenna-ryan-financial-problems/
How much of their financial trouble was self made as their idol’s was. Always going into debt for more and more, without a qualm to be in a constant state of bankruptcy, which enabled them to never have to pay their debts. Constantly scamming the system
unfortunately, that is what the Republicans say about the people and States that the Democrats are trying to help. Can't have it both ways!
LOL. Republicans make up convenient lies all the time. Seriously?
Thanks, Rebecca. A good read.
paywall
I am depressed too, but I still have hope. Grievance Republicans are lost. Nothing will turn them and they are a potent enough voter base that they are currently driving the Republican Party. But Stacey Abrams (and others) have shown the way. There are untapped votes out there to be mobilized. They can be motivated by outreach from a party that governs and passes legislation they need and want. The cure for democracy is more democracy...otherwise we're done.
Love your optimism and practical suggestions, Susan.
Me too—I have hope.
Don't know how reliable this site is but here's a sketch of the average insurrectionist.
https://demcastusa.com/2021/02/17/the-insurrectionist-next-door/
Thanks for posting this. Shows what people were the insurrectionists. I knew that most would be those in arrears and lots were probably men who abuse children/partners. Much work does have to be done to figure out why there are those who simply hate.
It's remarkable how many insurrectionists were turned in by those who know them best -- their former spouses or partners. There's a clear pattern of harassment and violence toward women going hand in hand with white supremacy.
I have to say that I kind of got a kick out of the woman whose boyfriend called her a “moron”. That ticked her off enough to turn him in. 😁
Misogyny cuts across all classes and races all over the world.
I’m very sorry to hear you’re depressed but I understand because when all is said and done and things go on and on like this it is overwhelming because for sure our founding fathers, as white and propertied as they were did not intend our country to end up like this. In my own stages of shock, horror, denial and anger I fantasized a lot about just moving to Provence. But I’ve got a 30 year old son who will be dealing with this mess and I love our country too much not to fight.
I choose Provence too! But my children and grandchildren are here ... if I were in my 20s or 30s, I’d sure consider it.
Yes I have friends there and I’m much happier when I’m there. I’m thinking seriously of splitting my time between MA and there.
Great idea Liz! I spent some of my 60th BD in Aix-en-Provice. My dearest friend recommend it, as the finest of western society that she has seen. So, we visited, and I agree. My wife has kids and g’kids also, and they are her anchor. I tell her it’d be MORE valuable to the family to experience France and Italy for an occasional week, than to never get there.
Oh well, perhaps I could find another person, or two or three, to think about co-owning a property there. You know, our own version of “Under the Aix Sun”
The floor is open ..... Stewart, are you here now?
Going back down there on Saturday for a week or so.....still a little early to take a glass or to eat outside though. Have to see to clearing up the administrative matters following my mother-in-laws recent demise.
Sharing one's time between the States and Province would be ideal as in both places you have some things which you might find it difficult to live with full time. Tourism is one thing, living somewhere is something else. Being able to get away for a little while can give a necessary breath of fresh air.
I get my first dose tomorrow in Gloucester and I’m thrilled to think of traveling safely again.
What do you feel the would be the challenges facing a liberal American with the village life in the "sur de Francais” ? ?
My Mecca is Forcalquier. It’s the loveliest town just far enough away from most tourist traffic so it retains all the charm of an actual town. I love Aix too and started going to Provence in 2000. I also love Lyon and Marseille but when I got to Forcalquier in 2019 I felt like it was home.
Fourcalquier is enjoying a certain amount of bad press of late as recently an ex-mayor Christoffe Castener distinguished himself as being largely considered as the worst Minister of the Interior (Police) ever during the "Gilets Jaunes episodes. It has to be said that his past history was hardly encouraging as he was a known associate, when much younger, of certain Marseilles gangsters!
Lovely little Alpine valley town though. It's a relatively short drive into the hills from my place.
Forcalquier appears quite a bit smaller. I prefer a bit of an urban beat, and I didn’t realize Aix is nearly 140,000 people. In the old town of Aix, the village feel is so endearing .... On my 60th, we rode a local bus into the countryside, and hopped off near ‘nowhere’, but where Cézanne painted. This was enough, at a bend of the lane, near nowhere but an antiquated inn and cafe - and the mountain path of the glorious paintings of Cézanne. We spent a long while on the same little bluff .....
Hey I’ll chip in — wouldn’t that be fun — we could call it the Provence HCR Foundation—we’d know it informally as a halfway house for those of us who get burnt out from caring and posting too much in the middle of the night. And there would be no rules.
perhaps, there could be just one rule - “No texting in the middle of the night.” Then, we could have general agreements, like, "Leave the place sweeter than when you arrived.”
the loire valley, I'm all in.
This is why I hate U.S. politics – It is not a democracy as we have been lied to, but a game with convoluted rules that make no sense, played by overpaid, underworked politicians with no concern for their constituents’ lives or welfare. (Need I mention Ted Cruz?)
There should be no filibuster to prevent a majority vote from performing its job. (Why haven’t the Dems done that?) There should be no Districts to Gerrymander and no Electoral College to give some votes more weight than others. Each Person’s Vote should be counted the same. Of course the Repugnant Party can’t have a true Democracy, which is why they are now working to suppress more votes in their controlled states.
Yes, a game. And yes, overpaid. And since you mentioned Ted Cruz .. I saw a clip of him at CPAC trying to be a standup comedian. He actually joked about going to Cancun. These are the people we 'hire' to represent our interests. I feel pretty good in my state of WA that my congressmen and women are doing a job I admire.
I admire them too.
What you hate is not US politics or politics at all for that matter. What you have, and good for you, are 74M white supremacists who support the likes of Trump. They are the crux of the problem.
With lots of guns and ammunition and explosives
"Why haven’t the Dems done that?"
They have in the past, but did not with Trumpsky's Free Stuff for 1% Tax Act. Otherwise, it's been a long time since the GOP presented anything to filibuster.
The reason Mitch McConnell is so powerful is that he understands every tiny rule of procedure like the back of his hand—he plays Congress like someone who is an international chess champion but not encumbered with an iota of empathy
Pay member of the House and the Senate $15.00 per hour. Let them learn how difficult it would be to live on that income. Someone who makes $15 per hour would not even qualify as middle class. They are the working poor - barely struggling to get by. Legislators have lost their collective minds. Outrageous.
I believe that those wanting to run for office must live on the income of an average family for a year. Those in office need to be stripped of their entitlements after they leave office. No free healthcare for themselves and their families and no income for life. They do nothing for their constituents now. They should be granted retirement based upon what they did for the people they are supposed to work for and not become millionaires during their time in office via lobbies for corporations and special interests.
Wouldnt that be nice AND appropriate. Why do WE have to fund people who game the very system that put them in office? Rhetorical question, I know.
I was just having a discussion with a nurse practitioner about this today! Congressman have the very best medical care imaginable. Yet they vote and pass laws that dictate medical benefits for all of us. They have absolutely no idea the lives the majority live. Not one iota.
I think they do but many don’t care.
Or they believe (like some unremembered named Republiqan congressman) that $400,000 per year was middle class.
Some of them know better and some don’t but I think the main thing is that once the Congress people get elected their biggest concern is getting re elected I’ve wanted there to be term limits for a long time but they’re not voting for that for sure.
What an idiot Romney was for that nonsense. 400k. I wish.
They sure wouldn’t pass that bill.
And freeze all of their non-wage assets.
"Not a single Republican voted for the bill."
- Not a single Republican wanted to help their impoverished, struggling constituents!
- Not a single Republican was willing to assist their states' governors and mayors.
- Not a single Republican was interested in having their constituents vaccinated.
- Not one single solitary Republican gave (nor gives) a damn for the citizens of this country!!
For SHAME!
Everything you just said would make a great political ad.
Absolutely - and as Tricia said - I wish they would start now also. Waiting will be a mistake.
May I copy and paste?
Of course!
Oh there will be ads. I'm looking forward to mid terms and the ads that are going to come out. I wish they'd do it now!
Not a single Republican wanted to have a primary contest against a Trump-et-er!
It is horribly shameful
Thank you Heather. Your letter perfectly explains how dire the situation is in the Country. For those who thought we were out of the woods when Biden was elected, can clearly see we are not. Not by a long shot. This is a grim reality check that if a bill this monumentally important to all citizens cannot muster a single GOP vote and even opposition from some Democrats proves as a Democracy, we are screwed. This will be status quo as far as voting for the next 4 years, maybe less. This voting pattern clearly shows Party over People. I feel this perfectly illustrates that regardless of the election results and the vast numbers that voted for Biden, it is not reflected when the rubber meets the road.
The GOP is out to destroy Democracy, make no mistake about it.
Be safe, be well.
But Linda the statistics show that most people want this bill to pass. I think this will bite the repugs in the ass over the upcoming midterms. I sure hope so anyway.
Liz, unfortunately there is a bizarre cognitive dissonance int he electorate: polls consistently show that people have specific policies they really want to see happen but also "like" their congressperson even if that person opposes (for no good reason) those very same policies. This has a lot to do with he kinds of propaganda people in congress are permitted to send to their constituents, which often mischaracterizes what is actually going on. When the ACA was being debated, pollsters were using the following ploy to see what was really happening: they asked two questions--"Do you like/not like Obamacare? Do you like/not like the Affordable Care Act?" Perhaps unsurprisingly, people who responded to the poll who were utterly uninformed (that is, the majority of the country most of the time) said they "did not like" Obamacare but DID like the ACA. Go figure.
The power of "key words"! The pavlovian dogs are trained to react to the name "Obama".
And abortion and banning God/Jesus/Christmas.
BENGHAZI !!!
Guns!
So put more simply —deceptive practices becoming standard tools. Thank you— we get tons of conservative people an robo calls because my husbands ex was a rabid conservative— but I didn’t realize how standard it was for Congress to not even bother to have real conversations with their constituents— I bet they would say — I don’t have time because I always have to be fundraising for the next election.
Yes, because Obama's name was attached! Thats all it took. And frankly, the Repubs were likely responsible for a great deal of that fake news.
The problem of believing polls answered by a relative few rabid partisans raises its ugly head yet again. Ask Tulsi Gabbard how easy it is to be added to a poll sample.
That does not account for the 74 million people who voted for the Cheeto in 2020. That is not a few rabid partisans. Polls are problematic for a host of reasons but the numbers of people who support enhancements of social welfare programs and who really want some help have remained very consistent over the years. The problem is that the "GOP" have mischaracterized programs that pull people out of poverty, provide access to education and jobs, and help people find safe and secure places to live as "radical liberal socialism" (an oxymoron, but whatever). The only way to change the cognitive dissonance about rational social welfare is to be vocal, to push for enactment of rational social welfare reforms, and then to be vocal about the results.
Linda, did you read my response from 2 days ago about your prospective campaign? I could repost it, but LFAA was very busy then, and searching through a morass of 700+ comments has little appeal.
TPJ, there were so many posts on that conversation! I probably did read it but I have chemo-brain and am teaching a full load online (just finished grading student essays--oy vey) so I have no idea! My prospective campaign for what? The Oxford Comma? I'm a big fan of the Oxford Comma . . . 🤣
Very sorry to you too, Linda M! I was thinking of Yvonne who's mulling running for office, but not thinking when I wrote "Linda." Apologies for some avoidable confusion.
TPJ, sorry I don't think I saw it.
Very sorry, Linda! I was thinking of Yvonne who's mulling running for office, but not thinking when I wrote "Linda." Apologies for some avoidable confusion.
No worries, my friend.
Liz, yes that's true, over 70%. We, both Democrats and Republicans want it to pass. The problem is, we are not reflective of Congress.
Unfortunately yes.
Doesn't matter if "most people" want this bill to pass. Power matters, and constituents like it that their leaders have power.
I agree with you Liz. It is early days.
At what point does the Republican citizenry realize that their Republican “representatives”are not, in fact, representing them? Can that fact not be brought to bear on the situation?
They *do* represent them - they hate the same people the base hates. The base no longer cares about policy, only grievance.
It's called Grievance Addiction. Please read this article by a psychiatrist with 40 years' experience: https://www.salon.com/2021/02/12/dr-justin-frank-on-the-trial-for-trump-capitol-riot-was-a-source-of-incredible-pleasure/
Interesting! Did you read Patrick Munson’s comment somewhere here about addiction to power? It’s impossible to find a single comment again. Thank you for the link.
They ARE representing them in the way that matters most to the base - by supporting their cultural assumptions. For the first time in its history, the United States is becoming truly pluralistic: a nation of minorities. This change is destroying the sense of place and relevance for many white people, especially white men. How they make sense of the world is being upended. Trump exploited these fears and gave them a political home. No issue, policy, or bill is more important than core identity.
It must be a very sad and frustrating way to live. To have so much fear and hate inside them.
I've thought this as well but the people I know who are DJT supporters (and who also think Biden is evil) are actually happy. And live well. And don't think there is anything wrong with their views, positions, etc. They have friends, homes, jobs, and are content. It is absolutely mindboggling to me.
Crazy, right?
This describes a family member to a tee. Thanks for a coherent explanation.
Same here!
No one likes change.
I like change and there are many other normal people.
Yet, change is the only constant. If hate can be taught (aka ruling by fear, so too should resiliency skills. Instead, it seems, a false sense of entitlement may be at the core of their giant tantrum.
I object to the popular truism, "The only constant is change". I prefer the adage, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Think of the phases of the moon and the changing of the tides. They do not require humanity to manage them. The first step towards peace is to call off the war against nature. If we accepted our place in nature we would celebrate the role of scavengers rather than conquerors.
We will lose, and must lose this war. Climate change will out and the Democrats will win the Senate in 2024!
Yes resiliency can be taught. Just not to hateful, entitled people.
I think that most Republican citizenry is full of hatred, fear, and anger. Those traits dominate their decision making.
I think they have been told so often that Democratic administrations will lead to “socialism” (which they do not understand correctly) they’ll vote not for the Republicans but against the socialist Dems.
But keep your government hands off our Medicare.
I agree with your assessment of republican voters today. My friend, who is a legacy Republican, voted for tRump twice (and admits to be embarrassed about it), but told me that she believes our country is in VERY DEEP TROUBLE with Biden (read Democrat) as president. She truly feats for the future of our country.
I'd be interested to know WHY she thinks the way she does.
Propaganda plain and simple. I have had clients come in embarrassed to tell me that they voted for Trump and when I ask why they say because “we do not want socialism in this country!“. When I ask them if they like their Social Security and their Medicare they say yes but that’s different. And I say no it’s not but they don’t believe me.
Exactly! Their propaganda has been immensely successful. Too bad we haven’t been more invested in figuring out why and taking it more seriously!
“Family indoctrination”; her parents, grandparents, siblings have always voted republican, and feel the democrat’s policies are BAD for the economy and hence bad for her pocketbook. We had a conversation, and she did not know anything about voter suppression, or gerrymandering or the fact that the rich got significantly richer with t****’s tax cuts while she saw almost no gains at all. She didn’t know anything about “trickle down economics”. I strongly feel there needs to be an aggressive push to educate “legacy” republicans.
*fears
I have fumble fingers myself!
I agree with Susan but there is another part of the equation that makes these white folks continue to vote Republican: they believe in the idea of the Zero-Sum Game, which is what the Republicans flog tirelessly as the reason why they should be in power. They are convinced that if someone else gains the advantages (however minimal) the white folks have, then somehow white folks lose. We all know that this is absolutely untrue. Greater access to wealth, to education, to entrepreneurship, to amassing savings that can be passed on to the next generation, to safe and affordable housing, to safety and security in our cities, to a functioning infrastructure all benefits EVERYONE. But the racist and sexist (and I would also venture to suggest that this is a religious exclusivity issue as well) gaslighting and Othering that goes on appeals to people who don't really value equality or equity. They want to be the ones who can feel superior, so they actually damage their own self-interest in order to ensure that others have it worse. It's gobsmacking.
Never, because they don’t understand the process.
...and refuse to learn the truth.
The more I read this explanation of the reality of how Congress is not working for the People who voted for change, the madder and sadder I became. I do appreciate being informed, but it is getting to me, on top of everything else. I live in Texas where the incompetence of leaders has led to billions of dollars in damage and tragic death in the recent freeze.
So very sad. It’s all going to be an uphill battle... I hope the For The People act passes.
Whatever happened to the emoluments clause? Is it just words? Not really a law?
What happened with the security breech to the Pentagon? What happened about the bounties on American soldiers? Do we just ignore these things? Come out after an election that they’re still claiming was stolen and play nice?
This is what our country is becoming. Divided by hate. So very sad.
I think we are buying into the division. Us vs.them. Republicans vs. Democrats Evil vs.Good The good news is the majority of the citizens support this bill. This is what we need to focus on. We are speaking for the majority of the citizens. If we insist on being self righteous and denigrating Republicans in the process we will alienate our citizens who identify as Republican. By focusing on the evil of the Republican Party we are giving our power away. Keep our eye on the goal of the merits of this bill. Stacy Abrams is a great example of keeping her eye on the goal and look at what she accomplished against all odds.
Excellent points here, Susan. I believe as you say, we need to follow Stacey's example; we need to just "keep our eye on the goal!"
What happened to our country? We are allowing seditionists to be voting on critical bills in our government and pretending it is fine? Why do they have the right to anything? Where is justice? Why are we even thinking about the former, so-called POTUS being allowed to run for an office he trashed thoroughly, was impeached twice for egregious behaviors, and then his attempted coup on our democracy? What happened to prosecution of felonies?
I bet if I broke into my state capital and smashed things and tried to kill my elected officials, because the POTUS told me to do, whatever, I would not be sitting here in my warm little home. Why are all these thugs being protected?
Good Qs, Penelope; sadly, we have no equally good As. But the last chapters of the story aren't written yet. The investigations are ramping up and results will come, inexorably if slowly.
Thanks to Heather we have this forum though so we can stay sane.
And be armed with the facts.
and immobilized by those who think that laws are made to costrain others and not them.
Thank you so very much, Dr Richardson, for your letters and how you very simply lay it all out. It's very much appreciated. From day to day. Today, I'm so very saddened and disheartened, as others here have already mentioned in these wee hours, at the lack of Republican support for the American Rescue Plan. It hurts me to my core that we can not, as a nation, come to an understanding and embrace measures that are designed for the good of the people. I also think of President Biden and what a kind and compassionate, yet very seasoned politician, man who is trying to lead our nation through these very darkest of times. God speed to all of us.
This makes me so angry I can’t even put it into words. These people are pure evil. I cannot understand what they hope to gain by destroying our country. It’s this kind of behavior by those people that throws me back into raging despair.
I love Heather's letters each morning. They tie everything together so well but many times like today I just become angry and frustrated. I do not understand how the Republicans can so blatantly ignore the needs of their own constituents and this Country. If I was a Republican and these people were my representatives I would be up in arms over their willful neglect and abuse of power. They do not represent the will of their constituents which in turn harms the whole country.
Thank you for son eloquently voicing what I could not.
They’re haters. I’ve met a few of them and they’re scary people.
I have, also. What I find even more disturbing is that people I considered friends for decades ‘came out’ as rabid supporters of djt after the election. I am still stunned.
Me too but mine were family members. Family that I love. But it's impossible for me to visit with them anymore because they are now blatant about their support for DJT and all his ilk. They think Biden is evil. It's been really sad to see this.
I hear you. I feel the same ways
Sorry to hear that you feel this way, too. It’s not pleasant or comfortable.
There is PLENTY of bipartisanship. It's just NOT in the Congress, especially the Senate. Jen Psaki has been pointing out in her briefings that a super-majority--more than 70% of Americans--is in favor of the Biden legislation. Sounds pretty bipartisan to me!
Yes, but we don't matter. Power is in the hands of Congress.
Don’t forget Georgia gave us a fighting chance in the Senate. We do matter. I’ll always remember Obama’s analogy of changing the direction of a ship. Slow and steady. Also words matter. Certain words are much more energizing than others. 😃
Christy, the problem is, we are not currently reflective of who approves bills. We will, hopefully only get this bill passed for the most part by the power of Biden not a bipartisan movement. He only has 3 chances to use that particular move.
It is a bit silly to write about this again but having read most of the comments that are still so focused on the specifics I will. What do you do when you confront a situation that makes no sense? You look left you look right up, down it still makes no sense; you have to back up, take a larger view. Sometimes this means looking to the past and Heather is good at that but sometimes even that doesn’t make sense if you aren’t standing back far enough to recognize the underlying causes of the history.
What is going on when people repeatedly devote their attention and conform their behavior to a path that is ultimately self-destructive? Where do we see this time and again in human history and individual human lives? The answer is addiction. In this case power addiction the most powerful and sinister addiction of human kind.
What can someone un-addicted do when confronted with someone who is behaving from the demands of addiction? First understand that from within the addiction lying is normal, respected, not recognized but rather celebrated as what is justifying the addiction. And recognize that as the addiction becomes deeper and consequences pile up the addicted are not more likely to see the error of their ways, rather they are going to double down on their lies and justifications to support their addiction in any and all ways they can. Also, recognize that within a cohort addiction, a group process, the whole group is affected. In this way they are pulled together by the energy of addiction and made more solid in the fantasy that they are living to support it.
Rationalizing, negotiation, placating, hoping for the best, thinking the future is going to change without drastic measures is the behavior of the co-dependent, the other pole of the disease of addiction. Not one Republican is going to support a single effort by the Democrats. It is not going to happen. It is much more likely that a Democrat or two are going to be sucked into the addiction. It has nothing to do with the need, popularity or justness of the individual bill. We haven’t been governing that way for a long time now.
Forcing the addicted to experience the consequences of their actions is the only way to break this cycle. What does that look like in the massive arenas of politics and public opinion? Well, until we starting using the word ‘addiction’ we haven’t even started.
I agree that there is an addiction to power. And it is strong. Looking at it further, though, I tend to view human behavior from a lense of fear. We, as a species, are wired to survive. To live. And when we sense that something is going to disrupt that, challenge that, fear kicks in. And fear is very strong. The fight-flight-freeze responses take over. And you can study a person and see which of these the person is drawn to when in fear of their livelihood. And when your central nervous system is on high alert, your smart brain does turn off. Your problem-solving, rationalizing, judgment .. it goes off line while your body uses all its resources to stay alive. Live in this state for long and you develop chronic stress and anxiety. THEN you begin to look for fixes. Things that you can easily become addicted to.
Remember that a diagnosis is not reality in itself. It is a label that can be used to categorize observation and response. It is useful when there are specific actions that can be brought to bear under the diagnosis category that have been shown to alter the natural history attendant to the diagnosis.
In this case Addiction to Power, the addictive process is active just as it might be with a more classical substance addiction. What would happen if you went into a room full of individuals in active addiction to (fill in the blank). This is predictable, the first reaction would be denial. “No I’m not.” I have been through this many times it is completely predictable. The attention of the addicted individual will be moved from what ever they were doing, often the practice of the addiction, and focused on their lies of denial.
Therefore, I do suggest that if our dear minority leader, as an example, was publicly named as power addict his attention would fall on denial of that to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps even defending the filibuster.
If only it was that simple eh? But what if it was? Why is it hard to call him out like that? Perhaps it is because it cuts to the heart of an issue that is closer to us all than we would like to admit. People don't change because they are comfortable.
Tricia, right on. The significance of fear can't be stressed enough.
I tend to hyper-focus on this concept, yet I see it in almost all dysfunctional human behavior. A fear of something. And almost always it includes safety, being seen and heard, and basic survival. Not even comfort. Just survival.
Yes.
Patrick, I like your analogy.. Understanding the current political mess as addiction, "withdrawal" will be very painful. Until we can make those addicted admit they are "powerless" there will never be withdrawal.
I appreciate your sentiment but I don't really intend it as an analogy but rather as a diagnosis. A diagnosis is a conclusion that allows us to understand what is happening and predict what is going to happen. It also gives us avenues of action.
For instance if instead of writing “In a statement Mitch Mc…. Complained … a deliberately partisan process.” IE. If instead of quoting M.M. she wrote, ‘Continuing to define his own truth from within his power addiction M.M. characterized the Relief bill as partisan even while he personally refused to be involved in the negotiations offered at the White House.’
That said, I also want to assert that HCR is a historian commentator whose job is reflecting on what is happening not necessarily making a diagnosis. It is not up to me to say what her job is of course .... I’m not saying that calling this out as addiction is her personal task but I do think that in our comments it would be useful to make this connection.
Thank you for that last paragraph! As I really am interested in your diagnosis (though I’m sure it’s more complicated than just that), but frustrated by those who feel the need to rewrite Dr. Richardson’s treasured letters to suit their personal fancies.
Good point— power is definitely addictive but I mostly think of that word in terms of substances. Thank you Patrick.
Thank you. This is not encouraging news. Why do the Republicans seem to hate even their constituents?
Listening to Politicology (podcast), a speaker mentioned she’d heard some repubs were foregoing the vaccine bc getting it would give Biden a “win.” Seriously?!! That’s the definition of self-defeat.
Marcy that is definitely the "shoot yourself in the head because it will upset the other guy" bizarro thinking of most adherents of the Trumpista Party.
Hey! perhaps we shouldn't be stopping them?
Beware of misdirected bullets. This gang really cannot shoot straight.
That explains why some anti-maskers started campaigning against the vaccine, including spreading lies about side effects.
and some distant family members I know are now asking everyone they know to get the vaccine (calls and texts coming from Kansas hospital bed).
Meanwhile, there are far more people wanting the vaccine than getting it, while we wait for an increase in supplies. Gov.Baker in MA has been completely irresponsible about the current stage of roll-out - dumping a million people into eligibility at once, for 50 thousand shots a week, funneled through a website clearly designed by Franz Kafka in a bad mood.
Teflon Baker is often the most popular US governor, and has been nearly untouchable. But his bungling on vaccine access seems to really hurt him now. It won't help him win the GOP pres nomination in 2024. His infuriating comment last month saying (basically) that there were good people involved in the insurrection is, to my mind, a backdoor expression of interest in that promotion.
Good people, like in Charlottesville?
Oy!
☹
Cut off nose. Spite face.
This was the playbook during the entire Obama administration. Don’t ever give the Democrats a win by admitting that you support something they have proposed. They’d rather have something to fuel the outrage machine that keeps people voting for them.
Personally, I wish the Dems had tried a little harder to make a bipartisan bill. Even getting a few GOP votes would have looked better. However, given that time was important and the lack of good faith from so many of the Republicans, I understand why they chose not to.
They learned their lesson from the Obama years, when they would trim their own sails to fit what the Rs said they wanted (Obamacare is Romneycare is what the Heritage Foundation proposed as an alternative to Hillarycare back in 1993) and they still didn't get any support from those bad-faith actors. At least the Democrats are no longer playing Charlie Brown football with Lucy.
This works otherwise in other parts of the world. In France the dominant societal philosophy has been "left-of-center". More conservative governments have mostly accepted the opposition Partie Socialiste's definition of what it is possible to think and do.....they fixed the goalposts for elected politics. The result is that half the population would now vote for the far-right party of the Le Pen Family...Rassemblement National....as the subjects for political discussion and action that are wanted by the people are judged "unacceptable".
While I agree with the sentiment, you cannot negotiate with terrorists. Bipartisan means that both sides work together; the Republiqan party is not working with anyone.
Republiqan! Love this
it appears some work is going on in the background. I am proud of the Biden-Harris administration for continuing to talk to all of us, to point to the people as what Bi-partisan means.
It would have been a waste of time to try harder to gain Republican support. They do not intend to give support to ANY policies of the Democrats because they are dealing in bad faith. The Republicans used their majority to pass things they thought important; Democrats should do likewise. If after trying to gain bipartisan support, but not being able to do so, Democrats should just move on. The Republicans do not get to define what “trying” looks like either.
Because the ones who give them the most money are haters too and they love their cushy jobs and their status.
Again power— addiction to power.
Because they’re just not very nice
Good morning HCR. Nice blog! I greatly appreciate how you lay out the facts with such clarity! You must be a really top-flight history professor.
However, what you describe as "dangerously close... to minority rule" strikes me as minority rule as status quo. The fact is that, for the past several decades, when Democrats win they can only govern with a GOP ball-and-chain pulling them down and can never fully deliver on their campaign promises, even when they are supported by a large majority of American voters. The structural lack of real democracy written into the US Constitution (2 Senators per state, the Electoral College, voting procedures determined by state governments, etc.), ratified over 230 years ago when half of the original 13 colonies had economies based on slavery and the overall population was mostly rural, is a huge, huge problem. Americans have grown accustomed to this, and our venerable Constitution continues to be revered, but it is slowly killing the American experiment, along with other more recent and surprisingly undemocratic institutions such as Facebook, owned by a tiny number of unelected and barely regulated entrepreneurs.
So poor Joe Biden is faced with an impossible task. If he cannot get his big economic/anti-covid spending bill passed without ditching the most important element, which is the $15 minimum wage increase, he will lose the main ingredient holding progressive and moderate Democrats together. As a practical matter, without a sincere change of heart from Manchin and Sinema, he is 2 votes short of a functioning Senate majority. If he cannot legislate real change and improvement in his first two years, we will all be cooked.
This is urgent. There will be no second chances. I see no alternative but to eliminate (not just modify) the filibuster, immediately. If Manchin and Sinema intend to pursue what they see as their personal political fortunes ahead of the commonweal, and cannot be convinced otherwise in private, they need to be shamed, primaried, expelled, whatever.
Manchin’s own governor supports this bill!
I would love it if one of HCR's well-informed blogmates (or even HCR herself!) could explain to me what - if any - are the positive aspects of the filibuster. How often has it been used since 1900, how successfully, by which parties, under what circumstances, etc. All I know is that filibusters these days are really just the threat of a filibuster, that it only takes 41 Senators to say they will vote against a bill, and that is enough to keep it from even being considered by the whole Senate, much less voted on. So there is no vote and no debate. And how often have Democrats/Republicans used or threatened a filibuster since the days of LBJ? Was there filibustering under Obama? Or Trump?
I remember back in the early sixties when the US. Senate, after 2 months of Dixiecrat filibustering, managed to find the (then) 67 votes needed for cloture and passed the 1964 Civil Rights act, and I know more recent changes to the filibuster have removed the need for endless Jimmy Stewart speeches, but what is it that concerns Joe Manchin so much about eliminating the filibuster? Have he or Kyrsten Sinema expressed any coherent viewpoint?
I mean, I keep railing against this filibuster, but maybe I have missed some important concept....
Filibuster use since 1900: Google is your friend.
Yeah, I know, laziness is no excuse.
Have you tried Simple English Wikipedia?. Sometimes you don't need to know everything. (Simple English is not available for every topic and I've seen one entry that probably was a copy of the regular one. That's no help...)
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster
😉
I'd stand to applaud, but I can't summon the energy.
I am not well-informed about the filibuster. But the original THEORY was that it encouraged extended debate and full airing of issues. In practice, endless blather (or currently its threat) effectively blocks necessary action and reform.
Recall, too, that in the 1850s filibustering had a different but still sinister meaning. Filibusters were violent southern adventurers who invaded Caribbean islands or Central American nations to drag them into the Union as slave states. William Walker in Nicaragua was the classic example. Cf. several books by Robert E May. In sum, the term conjures up many negatives and precious few positives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(military)
Thanks TPJ. Yeah, most folks probably think a filibuster is a kind of hard exotic nut you might break a tooth on...
GILBERT THE FILBERT (Arthur Wimperis/Herman Finck, 1914)
I am known round town as a fearful blood,
For I come straight down from the dear old flood,
And I know who's who and I know what's what,
And between the two I'm a trifle hot.
For I set the tone as you may suppose,
For I stand alone when it comes to clo'es,
And as for gals,
Just ask my pals,
Why everybody knows
I'm Gilbert, the Filbert, the knut with a "K",
The pride of Piccadilly, the blase roue.
Oh, Hades! The ladies who leave their wooden huts
For Gilbert, the Filbert,
the Colonel of the Knuts.
You may look on me as a waster, what?
But you ought to see how I fag and swot,
For I'm called by two, and by five I'm out,
Which I couldn't do if I slacked about.
Then I count my ties and I change my kit,
And the exercise keeps me awf'ly fit,
Once I begin,
I work like sin,
I'm full of go and grit.
I'm Gilbert, the Filbert, the knut with a "K",
The pride of Picadilly, the blase roue.
Oh, Hades! The ladies who leave their wooden huts
For Gilbert, the Filbert,
the Colonel of the Knuts.
Oh, so that's where filibuster comes from. Nice!
There has to be some skeletons in Manchin etc's cupboards that can be used against them or some other more macchiavelian way of getting them to come on board. Lincoln, FDR and LBJ showed the way.
Much as I detested LBJ, he certainly knew how to count the votes and make them count.
Schumer is no LBJ.
I'm kind of fond of LBJ. He did all the wrong things in Vietnam, in part because he was getting inaccurate data and bad advice, but he got the job done when it was time to pass civil rights legislation and build the essentials of a safety net. Yes, he really knew how to count the votes, but what really impresses me still about LBJ is that even though he was an unashamed racist, he was nevertheless able to employ moral reasoning to understand that while racial equality was anathema to him personally, it was both necessary and right for the American people, and it was up to him to make it happen. He found it in him to to understand and accept, at least on an intellectual level, that racism in America would lead to a dead end sooner or later. I'm sure 4 years of Trump and this GOP have had him rolling over in his grave.
LBJ was like an elemental force of nature in politics. Manchin would crumble into dust if LBJ confronted him. He seriously erred in Vietnam, but at least he agonized over the complexities and the suffering, unlike Shrub who got bored and lost interest in his own unwise wars. LBJ 's domestic policies were much more valuable, reflecting his desire to permanently solve America's most intractable problems.
Caro's biography seems to requite a new volume with each one completed. It is now about as long as Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but covers 1000 years less.
Caro's writing is far more exciting than Gibbon's but perhaps that is because it covers much that happened in my lifetime. But it is his dogged specificity that sets him above most non-fiction writers. Caro uncovered through a series of (I think) memos the secret of LBJ's rapid rise in the Senate Through Brown and Root he gained access to the big money, mostly oil, in Texas and parceled it to congressmen wherever needed. Caro describes one of LBJ's minions riding a train up to NH with several shopping bags of cash to deliver to Senator Styles Bridges who dutifully voted for the oil depletion allowance. Doubt that vote kept Bridges constituents any warmer. But yes, I would probably still take him (LBJ) if he were to rise from the dead.
Kudos to Caro for his writing. But literary tastes change over time, and vary even at the same time. Of course Gibbon seems pompous and florid today, but he still repays close attention. He was a fine scholar, master of English prose, and memorably opinionated. My Modern Library Gibbon will be among the last of several thousand books to go when decluttering becomes inevitable.
He did appoint Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. But this, and his other nods to civil rights were driven largely, I believe, by his grasp of what was necessary to maintain power. LBJ's succession to the presidency after JFK was a drop off a cliff for, at the very least, the youth of our country.
May I strongly recommend Robert Caro's 4, and I hope 5, volume work on LBJ?
I'm guessing you may have already read it. But successful majority leaders
are often bullies. And I agree, he is a paragon of virtue compared to Trump.
Actually, I haven't read Caro's book(s), but I should, thank you. I do remember reading that LBJ suffered terribly as the bodies came home to Dover from Vietnam, and, frankly, all politicians at the higher levels are pretty enamored of power. I also seem to remember that he was a smart guy, able to see the writing on the wall before - possibly - losing to Tricky Dick Nixon. "I will not seek, nor will I accept my party's nomination," are not words we have heard from any recent candidates, especially not sitting Presidents. Cut from a different kind of cloth back then...
Truth
Then they will be asked to explain why they changed their minds. That should be interesting...
After they've voted with their party, not before!
Living in Italy, where there's a parliament, prime minister, votes of confidence, etc., I have often thought that party discipline is a pretty fine thing.
At least in Italy they don't take themselves too seriously! Party discipline is great when you have a dozen parties sharing the political field where party boundaries are fluid and alliances constantly changing. They also suffer from equality between the 2 halfs of their parliament...a sure recipe for inaction and impotent symbolic flaring! Ah Italy...always time for another coffee at the corner café and to watch the world go by.
And to think I haven't had a coffee at the corner cafè since last March when the lid came off this COVID thing. I finally had to learn how to use the little Italian espresso maker called a "moka", so my new habit is that plus one of my wife's homemade morning pastries and an hour of backgammon.... I hate to say it but I may soon have some nostalgia for this otherwise horrible year.
I do not understand why Manchin doesn’t want to put a stop to the Republicans holding such power over the majority of Americans do that nothing is being accomplished.
His reluctance may be driven by genuine concern for small businesses for whom this might be very tough. I have no figures, but teachers in rural WV may make this or less.
But, probably not. He is an ideologue.
Krugman in the NYT says there is scarce evidence of minimum wage increases creating hardships for small businesses, though common sense says it surely must happen sometimes. The real question is how to weigh the benefit of millions of underpaid workers getting a big, even life-changing raise against the failure of a relatively small number of marginal mom 'n pop businesses. Ideally, the wage increase would be contemporaneous with Medicare-for-all (or something similar) and other improvements to the safety net, so smaller businesses could be relieved of some of what they now pay for employee insurance, but none of this will happen if the DEMs (all rowing together) can't pass legislation by simple majority in the Senate, because they will get NO help from the GOP, that's for sure.
Another question is: why should any business be allowed to incorporate sub-living wages and the presumption of employees relying on Medicaid and food stamps into its business plan? And of course the answer is that ripping off employees is a great way for owners and stockholders to pad their profits if they can get away with it. And ever since Reagan kicked the stool out from under the unions and the Citizens United SCOTUS decision made it legal for big businesses to corrupt politicians, underpayment of workers has contributed greatly to the earnings gap between the few haves and the many have-nots. The American middle class has been quietly decimated and now many folks cannot afford decent housing or tertiary education thanks to nearly 40 years of misgovernment by the GOP (who knew exactly what they were doing) and DEMs who allowed themselves to be seduced by untrue theories of free markets and invisible hands and bootstraps.
Well, Bruce, I could go on in this vein, but the bottom line is that if Joe Manchin is a Democrat, he needs to vote like one.
Have a good one.
I totally agree and well said!
Maybe we should ask his shrink...
The simple solution, repeal the filibuster, would be a fine solution but it is an arrow that has no nock. Schumer tried to repeal it but McConnell threatened to lock down all Biden's appointees as well as all legislation if the filibuster was removed from the Senate Rules. With the March deadline approaching, the passing of COVID relief in time was threatened.
And I assume, in the absence of the filibuster, that confirmation of appointees is by simple majority.
I have missed something. I was under the impression that the DEMs had achieved a 50-50 tie in the Senate and would no longer need McConnell's permission to pass legislation, assuming all Democratic Senators vote like Democrats and Kamala Harris breaks the tie. This would limit the problem to convincing a couple of outlying DEMs to get with the program, assuming prior elimination of the filibuster.