American Politics from 2019 on

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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Thu Sep 23, 2021 11:52 am

The debt ceiling originated in 1917 when politicians did not want to spend on WW I
NYT
By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick
McConnell’s strategy …
This time, Republicans have a different goal than they did during the Clinton and Obama administrations. With Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate, Republicans recognize they cannot force spending cuts. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, is instead trying to force Democrats to lift the debt ceiling with no Republican help.

He hopes to make Democrats look fiscally irresponsible at the same time that they are also trying to pass a major spending bill that is the centerpiece of President Biden’s agenda. “This is a totally Democratic government,” McConnell said yesterday. “They have an obligation to raise the debt ceiling, and they will do it.”

McConnell’s argument conveniently omits a couple of relevant facts: A significant amount of the current debt stems from tax cuts and spending signed by Donald Trump and passed with Republican votes. And Congress needs to increase the debt ceiling even if Biden’s spending program fails.

On Tuesday, the Democratic-controlled House passed a bill to lift the debt limit through 2022 and fund the government through early December, as well as provide money for natural-disaster recovery and Afghan refugees. Senate Republicans appear likely to block that bill in coming days, by denying it the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

The potential silver lining for Democrats would be if Republican opposition to raising the debt ceiling unified congressional Democrats and helped them pass Biden’s bill to fight climate change, reduce poverty, expand education and health care, and more. It’s conceivable that Democratic leaders could incorporate the debt-ceiling increase into that larger bill.
this may end filibuster
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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 Sep 24, 2021 4:56 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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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:10 am

Some TV journalists are making fun of democrats not passing stuff. After all, the GOP passed...er...one bill in 2 years. But they were unified! The problem is that even though Dems are in power, 2 of them are essentially Republicans.
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 JimC » Tue Sep 28, 2021 9:37 am

Tero wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:10 am
Some TV journalists are making fun of democrats not passing stuff. After all, the GOP passed...er...one bill in 2 years. But they were unified! The problem is that even though Dems are in power, 2 of them are essentially Republicans.
House democrats... :tea:
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:42 am

Chipping away at 3.5 tirillion Biden plan:
NYT

The power of lobbying
The first reason is classic interest-group politics: Well-financed, well-organized lobbying groups strongly oppose some of the bill’s major provisions.

Most Americans favor lower drug prices, but there is no powerful grass-roots
group devoted to the issue. And there is a major lobbying group on the other side — PhRMA, which represents the drug industry. It has helped persuade a few Democrats to oppose a reduction in drug prices, as our colleague Margot Sanger-Katz has explained.

Another example of interest-group politics are the tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. Tax rates on the affluent are near their lowest levels in decades. To keep them there, groups representing the interests of the wealthy have enlisted some of most effective lobbyists in Washington: former members of Congress.

These lobbyists — including Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota senator, and Nick Rahall, a former West Virginia congressman — have been trying to persuade other Democrats to water down or remove the tax increases, as Jonathan Chait of New York magazine has noted. Fewer tax increases in the bill leave less money for health care, schools and clean energy, which in turn has led to contentious intraparty debates over which parts of the plan should be cut. So far, Democrats have not resolved those questions.

Why are these lobbying campaigns able to succeed even when they are trying to persuade elected officials to defy public opinion? The obvious reason — campaign donations — is no doubt part of the answer. But there is also a more subtle dynamic at work, which brings u
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 Sep 29, 2021 10:32 pm

Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections

The stolen election myth inspired thousands of Trump supporters to take over the Republican Party at the local level, exerting more partisan influence on how elections are run.


One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trump’s supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. “We’re on the point of attack,” Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. “All hell will break loose tomorrow.” The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: “It’s them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?”

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room” podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action,” Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option,” Bannon said on his show in May. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”

Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.


After Bannon’s endorsement, the “precinct strategy” rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.

In Wisconsin, for instance, new GOP recruits are becoming poll workers. County clerks who run elections in the state are required to hire parties’ nominees. The parties once passed on suggesting names, but now hardline Republican county chairs are moving to use those powers.

“We’re signing up election inspectors like crazy right now,” said Outagamie County party chair Matt Albert, using the state’s formal term for poll workers. Albert, who held a “Stop the Steal” rally during Wisconsin’s November recount, said Bannon’s podcast had played a role in the burst of enthusiasm.

ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon’s campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork,” said J.C. Martin, the GOP chairman in Polk County, Florida, who has added 50 new committee members since January. Martin had wanted congressional Republicans to overturn the election on Jan. 6, and he welcomed this wave of like-minded newcomers. “The most recent time we saw this type of thing was the tea party, and this is way beyond it.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/heed ... -elections
"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 Tero » Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:41 am

Bisexual woman runs as Democrat because the GOP won't take her. Then:

By Ja'han Jones
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, is not a serious politician — she is a marketer. And an indecisive one at that.

Sinema is one of the largest impediments to Democrats hoping to enact President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, and she is roiling members of her party because she reportedly hasn’t offered any helpful feedback on what it would take for her to say yes on two critical spending bills.

Sinema is politically dangerous to her constituents and the rest of the country because she seems untethered from any cohesive political, moral or even practical ideology. And in her desperate attempts to establish a legacy of independence, she’s established a legacy of emptiness instead. That’s common for Sinema, who branded herself as a progressive in local politics before becoming the conservative stalwart she is today.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/kyrsten-sin ... d_ms_tw_ma
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 Sean Hayden » Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:50 am

God, I can't wait to leave this race obsessed country.

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Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Thu Sep 30, 2021 11:12 pm

Now I don't hate Sinema quite as much:

Financial records detailed by reporter Alex Kotch for the Center for Media and Democracy and published in the Guardian show that Manchin makes roughly half a million dollars a year in dividends from millions of dollars of coal company stock he owns. The stock is held in Enersystems, Inc, a company Manchin started in 1988 and later gave to his son, Joseph, to run.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ron-stocks
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 » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:23 am

F16FA363-6AFF-4246-B940-353D169B2829.jpeg
Mess with Democrats long enough and they too will "primary" a candidate out.
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 » Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:21 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...

User avatar
Tero
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:35 pm

Quaint rule from about 1917 (both ddbt ceiling and filibuster from that era)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_

United_States_Senate
holding up halfcthe free world economy. Well, and supply side problems.
AFE2345C-3FF4-465C-A6B3-122745A8A6A3.jpeg
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 » Tue Oct 05, 2021 12:55 am

B2C17034-6565-4A81-B5F0-6FD69AB8DC8B.jpeg
B2C17034-6565-4A81-B5F0-6FD69AB8DC8B.jpeg (147.48 KiB) Viewed 1388 times
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 » Tue Oct 05, 2021 9:06 pm

“You said the president is going to have a virtual meeting with House progressives to talk about how this Build Back Better package is now going to be smaller than $3.5 trillion,” Doocy asked Psaki. Progressive Democrats have been pushing for a bigger bill.

“But you have been saying that it costs zero. So are you now admitting that the plan does not cost zero? Or is it less than zero?”

“Well, let’s not dumb this down for the American public here,” she clapped back. “What we’re talking about is how much the topline investments are, which are all paid for, so therefore it costs zero.”

“So just not to dumb it down then,” Doocy said, still interested in his word game, “does the plan cost nothing or is the plan free?”

“It costs nothing for the American people who make less than $400,000,” Psaki responded.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/10/jen ... -not-dumb/
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
Just saying
Posts: 47109
Joined: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:50 pm
About me: 15-32-25
Location: USA
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Re: American Politics from 2019 on

Post by Tero » Wed Oct 06, 2021 2:12 am

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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