American Politics from 2019 on

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Scot Dutchy
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Scot Dutchy » Wed Jun 09, 2021 5:11 pm

JimC wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 9:32 am
I can't help myself...

Clearly, Dutch politicians are the best politicians... :tea:
Well you said it. :ab:
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Wed Jun 23, 2021 5:57 pm

https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Jun 23, 2021 8:14 pm

Well, does America need infrastructure, and what has happened so far?
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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Wed Jun 23, 2021 8:16 pm

Not much. "Bipartisan bill" was put aside so they could deal with the election bill. And fail. And drag it out to 4th of july vacation.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Seabass » Wed Jun 23, 2021 8:23 pm

We need Trump back in the White House so we can finally do infrastructure week...
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." —Voltaire
"They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved." —Sebastian Gorka

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by JimC » Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:21 pm

What America needs is ultrastructure! :{D
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Wed Jun 23, 2021 9:40 pm

Critical Race Theory
-bigotry
-institutional
-white rage (Jan 6)

Congress gets lecture from secretary Austin and the general
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h535TzrcjUE
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:02 am

Senators say a deal with the White House is in hand on infrastructure

According to several of the lawmakers involved in the negotiations, the agreement follows the same rough contours of an earlier framework released by the group, which contained $579 billion in new spending, was narrowly focused on physical infrastructure and was envisioned to be paid for by a wide variety of funding sources.

"We came to an agreement on the plan that we have, and it's just a matter of trying to wrap it up tomorrow," said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/2 ... ess-495796
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:48 am

Democrats view it as part 1.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Fri Jun 25, 2021 4:31 pm

Fuck you Georgia, and your election laws.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/25/poli ... index.html
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

User avatar
Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:43 am

elections really a can of worms...due to the very brief words on in in the constitution
By its terms, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 empowers both Congress and state legislatures to regulate the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives. Not until 1842, when it passed a law requiring the election of Representatives by districts,1 did Congress undertake to exercise this power. In subsequent years, Congress expanded on the requirements, successively adding contiguity, compactness, and substantial equality of population to the districting requirements.2 However, no challenge to the seating of Members-elect selected in violation of these requirements was ever successful,3 and Congress deleted the standards from the 1929 apportionment act.4

The first comprehensive federal statute dealing with elections was adopted in 1870 as a means of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee against racial discrimination in granting suffrage rights.6 Under the Enforcement Act of 1870, and subsequent laws, false registration, bribery, voting without legal right, making false returns of votes cast, interference in any manner with officers of election, and the neglect by any such officer of any duty required of him by state or federal law were made federal offenses.7 Provision was made for the appointment by federal judges of persons to attend at places of registration and at elections with authority to challenge any person proposing to register or vote unlawfully, to witness the counting of votes, and to identify by their signatures the registration of voters and election talley sheets.8 When the [THEN] Democratic Party regained control of Congress, these pieces of Reconstruction legislation dealing specifically with elections were repealed,9 but other statutes prohibiting interference with civil rights generally were retained and these were used in later years. More recently, Congress has enacted, in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1982, legislation to protect the right to vote in all elections, federal, state, and local, through the assignment of federal registrars and poll watchers, suspension of literacy and other tests, and the broad proscription of intimidation and reprisal, whether with or without state action.10

Another chapter was begun in 1907 when Congress passed the Tillman Act, prohibiting national banks and corporations from making contributions in federal elections.11 The Corrupt Practices Act, first enacted in 1910 and replaced by another law in 1925, extended federal regulation of campaign contributions and expenditures in federal elections,12 and other acts have similarly provided other regulations.13
https://constitution.congress.gov/brows ... 1_1_1_1_2/
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Seabass » Thu Aug 19, 2021 6:30 am

I don't think it is alarmist to say that there is an actual possibility that 2020 may have been our last free and fair presidential election. If the Democrats don't do SOMETHING to get voter protection laws passed, what will stop Republicans from saying next time around, "Nah, we don't like those results, let's go with these results instead!"? We have one party that has fully rejected democracy and another that either can't or won't do anything to defend it (or what's left of it anyway).
10 new state laws shift power over elections to partisan entities


Among the dozens of election reform laws changing rules regarding how voters cast ballots, several have also diminished secretaries of states' authority over elections or shifted aspects of election administration to highly partisan bodies, such as state legislators themselves or unevenly bipartisan election boards.

"Inserting partisan actors into election administration ... is really a worrying trend when you understand it in the context of what happened in 2020," said Jessica Marsden, counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by former executive branch officials in the White House Counsel's Office and Department of Justice.

Partnering with States United Democracy Center and Law Forward, Protect Democracy distributed a memo raising the alarm over the "particularly dangerous trend" of state legislatures attempting to "politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration."

Analyzing the Voting Rights Lab's state-level bill tracker and bill descriptions, ABC News identified at least eight states, including battlegrounds Arizona and Georgia, that have enacted 10 laws so far this year that change election laws by bolstering partisan entities' power over the process or shifting election-related responsibilities from secretaries of state.

Each law was enacted by a Republican governor or by Republican-controlled legislatures voting to override Democratic governors' vetoes.

These new laws include one that requires local election boards in Arkansas to refer election law violation complaints to the State Board of Election Commissioners -- made up of five Republicans and just one Democrat -- instead of their respective county clerks and local prosecutors; another that generally bars the executive and judicial branches in Kansas from modifying election law; and one in Texas requiring the governor, lieutenant governor and state house speaker to "unanimously agree" to the secretary of state granting local election commissions' or boards' requests to accept donations over $1,000.

Some of these changes appear to be in direct retaliation to actions officials took last year around the election.

Arizona Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, can no longer represent the state in lawsuits defending its election code. That power now lies exclusively with the Republican attorney general -- but only through Jan. 2, 2023, when Hobbs' term ends.

In Kentucky, where the Republican secretary of state and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear were heralded for their bipartisan collaboration to give electors absentee and early voting options they'd never had before, state law now explicitly opposes such coordination during a state of emergency. Beshear vetoed this bill, which curtails his office's emergency powers, but the Republican-majority legislature voted to override him.

And in Montana, then-Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, used his emergency powers to authorize counties to conduct all-mail elections for the June primary and November election. Every county opted to do this in June, and about 80% of the state's counties, including the eight most populous, did in November. But in April, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed into law a bill barring the governor from changing election procedures unless the legislature signs off on it.

"This is unprecedented in ways that I couldn't have even dreamed up myself," Audrey Kline, the national policy director for the National Vote At Home Institute, told ABC News. "It does feel like there's a backlash, and there's really a misunderstanding about how elections really work."

Concern over so-called 'takeover' provision of Georgia election bill

Georgia's sweeping election law rewrite, enacted at the end of March, spurred protests, boycott calls and corporate outrage over changes to the voting process.

Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans have defended the law as "making it easy to vote and hard to cheat," but Democrats, including Kemp's 2018 opponent, Stacey Abrams, described it as "Jim Crow 2.0."

Both Marsden and Kline pointed to its provisions shifting control over elections as among the most concerning enacted so far.

The law removed Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who withstood direct pressure from then-President Donald Trump to "find" enough votes to overturn the election, as chairman and a voting member of the State Election Board, which investigates potential fraud and irregularities.

But the provision the two experts highlighted is one allowing state legislators to request a "performance review" of local election boards. If the State Election Board, which currently has three Republicans and one Democrat, determines a review yields enough evidence of wrongdoing or negligence under the law, the state will appoint a superintendent who takes on the local, multi-person board's responsibilities, including hiring and firing power, and certifying elections.

Enough Republican lawmakers have already called for a performance review in Democratic-leaning Fulton County, the most populous in Georgia and the target of several 2020 election conspiracies. It's a long way from any potential "takeover," which is how Democrats describe the process, but up to four counties could have a superintendent at once.

How a "takeover" could impact a future election's outcome is unclear, but the concept itself injects "confusion and uncertainty" into the election process, Marsden argued.

Extreme bills die, but unease for future elections doesn't

Some of the most extreme pieces of legislation introduced never passed, Marsden noted. In Arizona, a bill that would have given the state legislature power to undo the certification of presidential electors by a simple majority vote up until the inauguration died in committee.

The bill failing isn't a "safeguard," she warned, because this is exactly what some Republicans wanted to happen last year to appoint electors supporting Trump in key battleground states he lost, but baselessly claimed he would've won if not for nonexistent mass voter fraud.

Trump, who may seek a comeback in 2024, still says it should have happened. He again attacked Kemp in a statement Wednesday for not calling one to appoint new electors, which Kemp said at the time would have been illegal.

But the former president's vendetta against officials who did not bend to his demands around the election is not as damaging to the election process as the widespread lack of trust Republicans now have in U.S. elections. Among Republicans, 65% still believe President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected, according to a July AP/NORC poll.

Achieving full nonpartisan elections, conceded Kline, is not really possible. But what must exist are "bipartisan counterbalances" -- like having a Republican-Democratic duo determine voter intent together when a ballot marking is unclear -- and operating under the same set of basic facts.

A checkmark, for example, clearly indicates a voter's intent, she said, even though voters are supposed to fill in the entire oval on a ballot.

What happens when Americans no longer believe in the same set of facts around elections?

"I think we're all wrestling with these questions," Kline said. "Leaving it up to a bipartisan team is probably as close as we can get to a perfect sort of check-and-balance system. But when we can't agree on basic facts, it becomes more difficult."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dozen-s ... d=79408455
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." —Voltaire
"They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved." —Sebastian Gorka

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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Wed Aug 25, 2021 2:20 pm

I'm somewhat optimistic about 2024. The Trumpsters were always there, they just did not make so much noise at the grassroots level in the Obama era. Sure they hated Obama, but other than Obamacare (now accepted by Republican voters), Obama did not do much.

Blog
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com/2021/0 ... 10-20.html
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

User avatar
Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:51 pm

The remaining hurdle: election security.

If Biden gets the election bill passed (and SC does not overturn it), Trump won't run.

If on the other hand even one election in 2022 gets overturned by state legislatures, Trump will run. Forward to 2024: Election will be very tight, even 10 electors overturned would give it to Trump.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

User avatar
Scot Dutchy
Posts: 19000
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:07 pm
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Scot Dutchy » Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:59 pm

Image
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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